As somebody who moved a lot growing up, I am always fascinated by identity.  What it means to be American been the core issue at the heart of a cultural war cynically pursued for financial gain. There is a pervasive sense among conservative voters that they are “Real Americans,” and everyone else isn’t.

“Real Americans” conjures up an image of baseball hats, pickup trucks, and, well, white people. This makes sense as the country was founded on white supremacy. When I was born in Florida, the country was 87% white. My grandfather from Brooklyn and my grandfather from Little Rock both casually used the n-word. The country absorbed mass media in film and television that was even whiter than the population. It was a world that resented and resisted integration because it still operated under the mindset of white supremacy..

We were raised to study history from a worshipful perspective. The Civil War wasn’t about slavery but state’s rights. Manifest Destiny gave us a religious mission to settle the West. We saved democracy from the Germans, twice. Our county could do no wrong. That was the white supremacist programming put into the heads of American children for decades.

That old propaganda to make us all patriotic Americans now detonates inside the heads of aging Republican voters.  Those history textbooks showed amorphous blobs of peoples on maps doing what they’ve always done, which is move around. But our history books showed the map of the white United States grow from inception to “permanent” borders before they were born. Trump voters do not understand how to process the sudden waves of immigration the U.S. experienced since the 1970’s.  They look at maps that show their own demographic blobs shrinking and fear they will disappear.

“Real Americans” fall for bullshit white supremacy theories that were completely mainstream until the last two decades.  Theories like homogeneity is good for a country. Look at Germany and Japan, which they believe were successful because they were pure, rather than sitting at the center of trading routes that developed over hundreds of years. It’s an errant belief. Countries like Albania, Somalia and North Korea are also racially pure but those examples are seldom used to justify racial purity.

The “pure” nations got annihilated in World War Two. President Eisenhower was our first President to see the inherent weakness in white supremacy, both as ideology and practice, when it came to Cold War confrontation on a global scale and he began integrating public life in America, sometimes at the point of a gun. Eisenhower knew racial division was a weakness that could and would be exploited by the Soviets. America’s universalist declaration and constitution would be exposed as lies unless the law applied to all citizens.  He, and many other civic leaders, saw the strength of turning “Real Americans” into real Americans.

There were never truth and reconciliation commissions to address our history and move beyond it. “Real Americans,” are still caught up in trying to justify our past because, well, that past told them they were special. They can react with rage when confronted with our more shameful historic and systemic realities.  They push against the real America because they’ve been programmed to do so.

The “Real Americans” feel their country is being taken away from them and on the verge of collapse because it is. Trump is the final clarion call before the generation that grew up under white supremacy goes to their graves.

It’s long past time America was real for everybody.

Born In The USA – Bruce Springsteen

Is Trump incompetent or evil? I’ve read this question more than a few times online. It amazes me to hear it and think that people believe it is an either/or choice. Incompetence and evil go together like peanut butter and jelly.

In our culture, we frequently get our view of despotism wrong. I remember an episode of the original Star Trek called “Patterns of Force” which stuck in my brain since childhood. John Gil, a federation observer, goes missing on the planet Ekos. When Captain Kirk and Spock beam down to the planet, they discover it lives under a Nazi regime. They find Gil and learn that he re-created Fascism because it “was the most efficient form of government.”

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The fascists, like all authoritarians, were incompetents, which is why they needed the evil to cover it up. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a closer look at some of their policies.

In 1930’s Germany, the so-called economic miracle was a con job.  The whole thing was financed through off-the-books runaway deficit spending for military re-armament. When the bills came due, Germany saved itself first by stealing their own citizen’s property (Jews), then annexing Austria and absorbing their money supply before proceeding to loot the continent beginning in 1939. If the Nazi’s hadn’t launched the war, they would have monetarily collapsed in 1940.

And how about the prosecution of that war? Was that efficient?  The Nazi policy of targeting educated, Jewish, members of their society forced emigration which resulted in the United States building the atomic bomb. The vaunted Wehrmacht had 19 different types of tanks, which made resupply and repair difficult in the field as inoperable tanks could not be cannibalized for parts, unlike the Red Army, which primarily employed the T-34 and could keep its operational readiness rate high through standardization.

Fascism fared no better in other countries.  Mussolini took power in Italy by claiming the fascists would make the trains run on time, which they failed at, but they did succeed at preventing people from reporting their failures.  Spain’s economy stagnated under the Falangists until they replaced them with technocrats in the late 1950s, leading to the Spanish “economic miracle”.

There is nothing efficient or logical about authoritarianism.  It is an emotional appeal for violence when the ruling class runs out of ideas and doesn’t want the blame for their management failure. The easiest way to escape blame is to kill those pointing out ruling class failures.  This isn’t just confined to capitalist systems. Stalin’s purges or the Cultural Revolution are just two examples from the left side of the spectrum when incompetence needs  to be covered with mass murder.

The impetus behind authoritarianism’s growth in the U.S. is the same as it was in any previous country – to hide ruling class incompetence. Indicators of general welfare, like real wages, life expectancy and education have all declined in the United States for the last twenty years, we have record levels of public and private debt and, outdoing their predecessors, our elite have left us an environment that has an expiration date beginning in 12 years.  Sounds to me like gross incompetence.

To cover their mismanagement, our elite selected a man to govern whose only accomplishment in life has been his ability to hide his incompetence. He’s actually gotten quite a lot accomplished in his first two years – he expunged federal data and studies on climate change, flooded the zone with lies to mask the truth and set about dismantling the rule of law through a rigged, partisan, judicial process.

Trump is putting all the tools in place to deal with the ripening fruits of his incompetence.  Something wicked this way comes, you can bet on it.

Know Your Enemy – Rage Against The Machine

News broke last week that future historians (assuming the human race survives) will look back on and say, “Aha! Right there! That’s where they really f’d up!” The Trump administration approved deals for the U.S. to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia to build power plants. I would expect Saudi Arabia to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty shortly after the first plant comes online. After all, if you’ve already got everything money can buy, I guess the final item on the list is an atomic weapon.

This decision was made with no input from Congress or the American people. My guess is that the justification will be: ‘The Saudis want nuclear power and if we didn’t build it for them they’d have gone to the Russians or the Chinese. Which is fairly sound reasoning on a certain level, I guess. Still, it would’ve been nice to have the conversation as I don’t think that issue came up in the last Presidential elections.

I understand the arguments for nuclear power to electrify a nation and combat climate change.  The plants we’ll be assisting the Saudi’s with will be dual use, which means they could also provide the fuel for weapons. As their archenemy Iran is nuclear capable and their frenemy Israel already has nukes, it would make strategic sense for Saudi Arabia to also possess them.

I’m not going to argue on Saudi Arabia’s fitness to have nuclear weapons as they are a sovereign state and other sovereign states have withdrawn from the NPT.  For the sake of argument. it makes no difference their religion or form of government; but, Saudi Arabia possessing dual use technology raises the odds of catastrophe.

Each new state with a nuclear weapon raises the odds of nuclear war. It’s simple math. Increasing the odds would be so many states in such close proximity that the window of decision-making in a nuclear crisis is significantly shortened raising the chance of a fatal miscalculation.

How will Saudi Arabia’s neighbors react? My guess is that Turkey will feel the strategic need for its own nuclear deterrent. If Turkey has one, Egypt won’t want to feel left out. So the odds of nuclear war will become greater still.

If the end goal is to indeed electrify the Middle East using nuclear power. it would be nice if Russia, China, France and the U.S. committed to those plants being single use.  I realize the world doesn’t have enough problems but this should be a no brainer. It’s also worth pointing out that Saudi Arabia gets a lot of sun and has some of the highest grade silica sand for manufacturing solar chips found in the world – I’m just guessing here, but Saudi Arabia could easily power itself and its neighbors with solar energy.

I’m assuming Congress will be doing its job and asking questions like, “What the fuck is going on with you guys transferring nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia without discussing it with us first?”

It used to be something like nuclear proliferation in the Middle East would send waves of panic through the American people and politicians. The spread of nuclear technology has barely been discussed as the media focuses on Trump’s response to his Attorney General’s letter, Kellyanne’s husband and Joe Biden kissing the back of a woman’s head.

Pay attention. This won’t end well.

99 Red Balloons – Nena

We’ve been hearing climate stupidity from the right wing for years but lately Trumpublicans have kicked it up a few notches. They’ve decided that the surest way to attack a Green New Deal and bring about the annihilation of most life on Earth is to tie it to America’s love of hamburgers.

In order to drastically reduce our carbon emissions to avoid global catastrophe, it’s not enough if we all drive electric and use renewable energy to power our homes, other sources of carbon also need to be brought down, like American livestock, which account for almost ten percent of our carbon emissions caused by the methane in their burps and farts. To put it in perspective, you burp or fart out a quarter pound of methane each year. A cow gasses out 265 pounds of methane a year. We have 94 million cattle in this country – that’s 25 billion pounds of methane, which is a lot.

As Republican leaders usually reach for simpleton talking points, they’ve decided that the only way Democrats must want to solve this problem is to kill all the cows.  What they miss is that this particular climate challenge can be solved a number of ways. Vegetarian meat replacements have popped up in the market (still not enough wheat free!) and lab grown meat will soon arrive. For the sake of argument, let’s say we keep eating meat just as we’re doing (which entails a lot of horrific abuse on the animals but that’s another story) and find a solution.

Believe it or not, UC Davis researchers discovered that feeding a cow seaweed with their diet reduces their methane output by more than 90%. That’s a huge reduction without killing a single cow. Providing enough seaweed for 94 million cows means we’d have to farm it off our coasts, which would provide not only jobs but would help remove the carbon we’ve already sunk into the ocean and help replenish oxygen supplies in dead zones. You could probably build a niche market today for such methane-free beef but in order to get the greatest carbon benefits you need economies of scale. That’s where a Green New Deal could come in, providing the regulation and infrastructure funding to push a changeover in carbon-producing industries faster than the market would allow.

So that’s just one way we could deal with the cow problem, I’m sure there are dozens, but as a society we need to find creative economical solutions to many of the carbon-emitting industries poisoning our atmosphere. This is going to take government intervention on a massive scale, on par with our mobilization for World War Two.  If we’re to survive and flourish, we need our best and brightest on the case, developing and implementing plans across a range of industries.

It doesn’t help that the Republican party has chosen to frame our environmental challenges at the sub-literate moron level.  The slack-jawed Fox zombies and ditto heads believe we are coming for their hamburgers and televisions. I say we’re coming for their televisions because Trump has thrown out his “you might not be able to watch TV if the wind isn’t blowing,” line several times in the last month. Yes, America, we have people stupid enough to believe him.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t coming to take our hamburgers away, she’s trying to stop us from swallowing bullshit.

For All The Cows – Foo Fighters

I guess we’re supposed to take Attorney General Barr’s word that everything is cool. He is, after all, an experienced Attorney General as he had the job before under George H Bush. Barr helped put together pardons for the Iran Contra guys before Bush left office.  I presume he’s going to serve a similar role in this administration.  AG Barr tells us that neither the President nor those around hm (other than the 34 people indicted) broke the law, at least not enough to prosecute.

Barr got the job after writing a 19 page paper calling for the Mueller investigation to be halted. He did say under oath at his confirmation hearings that he didn’t think a sitting President should be indicted and that the American people would probably not get to read the report.  He told us how it was going to turn out.  He wasn’t lying.

I believe Barr when he says the President didn’t criminally collude with the Russian government but I find it interesting  that Don jr met with Russians to get hacked Clinton dirt. Trump asked Russia to hack and release the next day.  I saw that last part on live TV, we all did.  The Russians did what Trump asked, but I’ll take Bill Barr’s word for it that it wasn’t criminal.

The case brought up a lot of issues that we the public have a right to know more about. I’ll take AG Barr’s word for it that nothing criminal occurred, but WTF was up with George Nader, twice convicted pedophile, working with Erik Prince and that weird meeting with Russians in the Seychelles? What was up with Cambridge Analytica and the data operation behind it?

Because when I read stuff like that from people that testified under oath I kind of want to know what occurred, even if Bill Barr doesn’t think it broke the law. I’d also like to know what was up with all the shady Russians pouring money into the NRA and why every Russian gangster seems to pass through a Trump property when they show up in America.

I’ll take Bill Barr at his word that no laws were broken, at least none worth prosecuting, but I’d like to know what happened because it seemed there were a heck of a lot of coincidences.  Some of these coincidences are important because both the President and his children (entangled in our national security apparatus unlike any before them) decided to keep running their private businesses. There’s also the strange question of why everyone lied. Why were they so hostile to an independent investigation if there was nothing to hide?

I trust the Attorney General didn’t lie to us but he hasn’t told us the full truth and, after the crazy two years we’ve had, we deserve the truth.  Barr keeping the report from the American people leaves a lot of questions unresolved and feeds public paranoia. We need facts and that’s what Mueller’s report was supposed to provide, not an Attorney General’s interpretation of them.

Everyone today is talking about charges being dropped against Jussie Smollett. He hasn’t been cleared and neither has Trump. Did he not do what’s been alleged because the charges were dropped?  I guess a more relevant question to Trump supporters is, did you think OJ was innocent?  Because unlike our President, OJ was declared innocent.

But I guess we should put our trust in the Attorney General that there’s nothing worth seeing because he told us that before he saw anything himself.

I mean, come on, when have any of this administration’s cabinet secretaries mislead us?

Lie To Me – Depeche Mode

A lot of time and energy was wasted this month about how we can or should talk about Israel. Pundits and even the President got in on the act, leveling accusations of anti-semitism. We have a movement in this country to stifle any criticism of Israel, which is a mistake. Israel is a foreign country we subsidize and one which interferes in our domestic politics (those two things are related by the way).

Israel appeals to Americans for a variety of reasons – it’s a democratic white settler state born out of the twin traumas of colonial collapse and the holocaust, we have a large Jewish population that sees Israel’s survival and prosperity as vital, and we also have a sizable number of Christians who believe Israel must exist today in order to be destroyed tomorrow so Jesus can return.

Israel’s high tech and defense sector are interwoven into the U.S. military/industrial complex. A lot of the military aid we give Israel goes directly into the pockets of U.S. defense companies. Their intelligence agencies work with ours to thwart Islamist terrorism. But they’ve also stolen  our nuclear secrets and interfered in our political system. They look out for their own interests first because, well, they’re a foreign country.

Bibi Netanyahu, the voice and face of Israel to Americans for the last 20 years thanks to his perfect English and ubiquitous availability for TV interviews, is under indictment for corruption. He and Likud have dragged Israel to some dark places and aren’t done yet.  The peace process has been abandoned, Gaza is the world’s largest prison, Israeli soldiers routinely shoot unarmed protesters and the Jewish state looks and sounds more nakedly apartheid.

The longer the Israeli right wing retains power, the more it enmeshes itself with nations hostile to the United States. Russian organized crime, corruption and ex-Mossad workers out to make a buck all work against the rules-based system the U.S. has built since the end of World War Two. Israel is hedging its strategic bets, drawing closer to three nations that are anti-democracy and anti-human rights. Netanyahu has forged an alliance with the Saudis, played footsie with Putin and leased the strategic port of Haifa to China for the new exploitation of Africa.

The idea that America must perpetually go along with whatever Netanyahu wants is ludicrous. Israel has an effective public relations arm in American media that tells us Likud is perfectly reasonable and that to question Netanyahu’s policies is anti-semitic. This does us a disservice when formulating our geo-strategy. Israel is not the 51st state, it is an independent country whose interests do not always overlap with ours.

You may remember that 16 years ago Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, head of Likud, achieved his goal of getting the U.S. to invade Iraq and topple Saddam.  According to the Israelis, toppling Saddam would cut the Gordian Knot and bring peace to the Middle East.  16 years of war with millions dead or displaced shows the error of that reckless gamble.

Likud is not interested in a two-state solution, it never has been. A free and peaceful neighbor is not on the agenda.  Netanyahu’s goals are to secure fresh water, exploit the natural gas off Cyprus (this will be the next throw down between Erdogan and Bibi), keep the Palestinians caged in multiple bantustans and get the Americans/Saudis to deal with the Iranian strategic threat. None of these goals further U.S. interests.

Are you down for all of that? No questions asked?

Are You Gonna Go My Way – Lenny Kravitz

I believe our constitutional system will triumph over Trumpism. But for those of you who like to scare the fuck out of yourselves, I thought I’d come up with a couple of plausible scenarios for how the next two years could play out if Trump is willing to go all the way with his threats.

I base these scenarios on the assumption that Trump is in fact guilty of most of what readers of Seth Abramson’s twitter feed would be familiar, that calls for impeachment will grow and that Trump would lose a fair election in 2020.  The scenarios are ranked from most likely to least likely.

FIGHTING IN THE STREETS

The Democrats launch impeachment hearings in the next 18 months. The evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors is overwhelming. Mitch’s Senate does nothing. Protests build to impeach. A few Senate Republicans waiver in support of Trump. Commander Babyfingers call on his supporters to save him.  Portland-style clashes in several American cities escalate with agents provocateurs encouraging violence. Inevitable gunfire, casualties and civil disorder allow the President to use emergency powers, censoring the “divisive” media and blaming his Democratic opponents for the violence. Active “resistors” get intimidating visits from homeland security or deputized mercenaries.   People watch what they say. The regime continues packing the courts and restaffing the law enforcement and defense bureaucracies.

ENVIRONMENTAL FALSE FLAG

They’ve already come for the immigrants, so the next threat to be dealt with is the environmental movement.  Pipeline protests will gain steam again this summer. The movement was heavily infiltrated during Standing Rock by mercenaries working for oil companies. In the next protest flare-up, mercenaries (or Russians) attack either the KXL or DAPL pipeline – causing a massive spill.  This would allow Trump to claim it was an environmental terror attack and to begin rounding up and jailing members of multiple environmental movements.

This is a twofer for the oil companies: they eliminate domestic opposition to hydrocarbons and they get to collect insurance on the damaged pipeline. Why would the pipeline company care about insurance? Infrastructure like pipelines are designed and financially modeled out to 20 years. Does anyone believe (with fair elections) we’ll be allowing mass quantities of Alberta tar sands to be piped into the US in 20 years? In 10 years? The only way to make the money back would be to destroy it and collect the insurance. It sounds like a mafia solution but let’s not forget what Trump and his cohorts are: mobsters.

This is the cheapest, easiest solution for Trump that doesn’t require destroying the FBI or massive disruption to American business (except those directly affected by the spill). The Republicans can tar their political opponents who want to fight climate change (all Democrats at least in word) as terror supporters, allowing them to gaslight just enough Americans for Trump to gain an election victory in 2020.

THE PEACE MARCH

Trump decides to beat his chest and threatens war with Iran in the run up to the elections. He stirs up a protest movement against pending (maybe) war with Iran (or anyone else who seems convenient).  At the largest demonstration, a sniper murders antiwar protesters, the media reports it’s a right winger but, surprise, it’s a (any sect that seems convenient) Muslim.  The President then accuses the anti-war opposition of being traitors. A larger peace march is called the next weekend. Instigators infiltrate the protests to produce what appears to be a riot. The President then declares martial law.

THE COUP

Putin learns the date the SCO/FBI plan the big racketeering takedown.  The day before, multiple FBI Offices are bombed around the country by white supremacists in coordination with a Russian cyber attack to shut down electrical and communications infrastructure around the country with emphasis on nuclear power plants.  Trump declares martial law and the country suffers both communication and electrical blackouts for longer than a week, producing the riots Trump and his acolytes want. A mixture of Erik Prince’s people, organized crime and Russians use the chaos to target a few thousand individuals on a list, like MBS did, to shake them down, ensure their loyalty, or get rid of them. By the time the lights and phones come back on, news and the internet are censored via the President’s emergency powers. A bunch of lawyers, reporters and troublesome officials are missing and Trumpists can come up with any crazy story to explain/justify what just happened.

KOREAN WAR 2.0

In a fifteen minute war caused by Trump miscalculation, North Korea launches ICBMs at Hawaii and the West Coast before being hit with the annihilating counter-strike. Trump seizes the mantle of nuclear war victor and 4 blue states lie in radioactive ruin.  Trump wins re-election as Hawaii, California, Oregon and Washington no longer exist, Republicans have permanent control of all three branches of government. Bonus points – Republicans make a profit redeveloping “free” land on the West Coast with Russian and Chinese money.

POSSIBLE OUTCOMES

Any of these scenarios could be stopped at any time by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Justice Department or the Senate. Each could also have a variation where Putin or China launch nukes while the U.S. is in disarray. Each could also end  in dictatorship, civil war, revolution or something in between.

As unlikely as these scenarios may sound, we have a malignant narcissist who’s been threatening violence since he threw his hat in the ring and the walls are rapidly closing in on him. He is supported by people both foreign and domestic who want political violence in the United States.

It sounds outlandish but so is the very idea that Donald Trump is President.

The Thin Ice – Pink Floyd

Trump threatened us with the military, police and motorcycle gangs this week. It would be “very bad,” if these Trump supporters had to “get tough.”  One presumes Trump is threatening us with this troika of toughness in case he is somehow removed from office via impeachment or election.

I find it insulting that Trump believes our military and law enforcement are not up to the job of suppressing America without the help of bikers, most of whom look ready for retirement.  I guess the bikers are there as cheerleaders to convince the military and the police it’s a good idea to end our democracy.

I grew up in the military and served as junior officer and can’t imagine any generals other than Mike Flynn (who is on his way to prison) helping the President carry out his threat.  As for federal law enforcement, the FBI and Justice Department have been busy arresting and convicting white supremacist prison, biker and meth gangs for the past year, so I don’t think they’ll be releasing said gang members to terrorize Americans if the President loses what he thinks is a critical vote.

The one group Trump included in his threat that doesn’t take an oath to defend the constitution is motorcycle gangs.  Putin uses motorcycle gangs in Russia to intimidate and sometimes use as auxiliaries in ethnic flareups but those groups are semi-official and presumably chock full of military intelligence. Bikers for Trump is not Putin’s Night Wolves in either numbers or abilities. The only motorcycle gang Trump could possibly call on is the Spetznaz Motorcycle club operating out of Miami populated with organized crime and Russian agents.  Spetznaz could certainly cause trouble but I’d be shocked if the FBI wasn’t already tracking most of their members and itching to pounce.

The only people who will answer Trump’s clarion call will be right wing terrorist mass shooters  The unloved and unloveable will emerge from their basements armed for Armageddon. They are a deadly threat to us as individuals but cannot conquer the nation, in fact, they would increase and harden opposition to Trump among the police, military and population.

Usurping the constitution and taking over the U.S.A. by force would be a difficult operation to plan and execute. Trump is a great marketer but notoriously bad at planning and execution. Trump’s big projects tend to blow up in his face – Taj Mahal, Trump Shuttle, Trump University etcetera ad nauseam. Even winning the Presidency has turned out to be a giant failure as he and his family are likely facing indictments on multiple felony counts as a result. Trump will fuck up his attempt to take down America – bet on it.

Perhaps Commander Babyfingers took some of these thoughts into consideration after the Christchurch shootings.  He deleted the tweet of his threatening interview but still described immigrants as invaders. He’ll continue dog-whistling in hopes that Duck Dynasty and NASCAR fans can somehow wrestle control of America for him by beating some sense into the rest of us.

It’s a fantasy meant to spread fear because our President understands fear. The guy is scared of everything (germs, sharks, brown people) but what he is most afraid of is the truth.

Trump is just a blowhard who’s going to find out our democracy is a lot tougher than he thinks.

Mama Said Knock You Out – LL Cool J

Democrats allowed Republicans to steal the 2000 election in Florida. They didn’t put up a fight. Democrats allowed Republicans to steal the 2004 election by electronically rigging the vote in Ohio. They didn’t put up a fight.  A fight would look petty and partisan, the party leadership reasoned, it will work out for the best if they keep their powder dry.

“I’m not for impeachment,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the Democrats yesterday in the party’s latest decision to keep the powder dry.  The Democratic Party has more dry powder saved than France right before it surrendered to Germany in 1940.

Pundits and politicians praised Pelosi’s decision as genius, particularly the attack on Trump’s narcissism by declaring, “he isn’t worth it.”  The Speaker may be right that Trump isn’t worth it, but our country is.

The President committed multiple felonies during the campaign and in office, some on live television. Congress has a duty to impeach.  I understand McConnell’s senate will look the other way and that Fox news and conservative commentators will bray that it’s all just politics but they’ve been doing the same thing for decades.  The law is the law and it applies to all of us equally. If Republican Senators want to go on the record against the rule of law after evidence has been presented in televised hearings, so be it. Let’s get all the corruption and those who support it out in the open. Those senators can be voted out of office (as long as you don’t live in Georgia, North Carolina or Texas because they rig elections).

If it’s cool that I can lie on my taxes, steal money from charity, commit bank fraud, break campaign finance laws, commit insurance fraud and obstruct justice on a a daily basis with no consequences please let me know because I’ve obviously been playing by the wrong set of rules my entire life.

These high crimes and misdemeanors would  put regular people in prison for years.  It is toleration of these crimes in multiple administrations out of ‘respect for the office’ that got us to the point that we have a reality star President with ties to organized crime and the Kremlin.  How about we respect the office by impeaching crooks? Each time we ignore the lawbreaking, we encourage more of it.

While liberals think Trump is somehow hurt by “not mattering enough”, what Trump heard yesterday was, “keep breaking the law,” as he continues stacking the federal court system, stuffing his pockets and destroying our civil service.  The longer he is in office, the more damage he can do.

There will always be another election right around the corner and we will always be told it is the most important one in our lifetime – is that a reason we should not pursue justice?

If Trump  manages to rig the 2020 election and push the Democrats from the House at least their powder will be dry for the next time.

High And Dry – Radiohead

Jared Kushner is a threat to our national security.

Jeff Session’s Justice Department compliantly rolled over when it came to nepotism laws by allowing Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to work out of the White House and get top secret security clearance.  Kushner, the deep in debt owner of 666 5th Avenue, and Ivanka Trump, who recently trademarked voting machines in China, have no national security education, training or background (hobnobbing with oligarchs and spies of hostile nations notwithstanding).

When a person conducts foreign policy for the United States, they speak for us, they cut deals for us, they work for us.  Jared and Ivanka both maintain their private businesses and clearly use the position to enrich themselves. Neither has demonstrated that they have the good of the nation in mind. They’ve both lied and cheated their way through life as members of multigenerational grifting families. Jared is a billion-dollar-in-debt slumlord while the President’s daughter was involved with Trump properties in Vancouver, Panama and Baku, all under investigation for money laundering. That they’ve been granted security clearances or any role whatsoever in the federal government is absurd and dangerous.

Jared Kushner should not be involved in our country’s foreign policy. This is the guy who tried to set up a secret back channel to Russia with Mike Flynn (who will be going to prison) so they could sell nuclear technology to the Saudis. He led a foundation funding illegal West Bank settlements. He gave top secret intelligence to the Saudi Crown Prince to use in a succession battle. It’s been reported he encouraged Saudi Arabia’s Qatar blockade to extort a loan for his 666 5th avenue disaster.  All this pursuit of private profits for himself, family and friends will have unintended consequences at our expense.

The most immediate consequence is a betrayal of our intelligence sources and methods.  One can only imagine how compromised communications are by hostile powers, and I’m not including the dozens of mobsters and spies they have in their phone contacts. The information he shares with dictatorial and corrupt associates allows them to see what we know and figure out how to blind us. The medium term consequence will likely be a disastrous engagement with Iran at the behest of his Saudi and Likud puppet masters. The long term consequences will be a further crippling of US institutions and legitimacy caused by our leadership being bought and paid for by foreign agents of the plutocratic insurgency.

Kushner and Ivanka are active threats against the security of our nation – Kushner was/is intimately involved in the scheme to nuclearize Saudi Arabia.  Congress needs to do its oversight job and peel this pair open like an onion. We have a right to their communications in the conduct of “government” business to see how much damage they’ve already done.

Jared and Ivanka do not belong in our government, they belong on a witness stand.

Criminal – Fiona Apple