Please don’t miss today’s earlier posts on race & policing, the risks of leaving Trump in office, and some Q&A about the 25th Amendment, including whether the votes of “acting” Cabinet secretaries count.
On to the NEW THOUGHTS!
Thought 1: (12:40 PST, 1/7/2021)
The House Sergeant at Arms Paul D. Irving has been fire-quitted. (The opposite of quit-fired: they were told to resign or they would be fired. Irving chose to quit.)
Everyone seems to be asking this, so let’s just tee it up, okay? Then I don’t have to answer it in the comments of a million different threads on a million different posts on a thousand different blogs.
The 25th amendment doesn’t mention Cabinet Secretaries. It mentions “principal officers”. These are people who report directly to the President and also do not report directly to anyone else. Let’s look at some examples:
First, let’s get this out of the way: I don’t want you to miss this post I just put up a few minutes ago, but the separate topic of this post is also something that needs to be addressed now, not later,. I can’t have both posts top my stories for the day, but I can at least berate both my readers into making sure they read both posts. So go read that other thing, okay? Okay. On to this post.
As you know, I’m US-law curious, with a side of comparative constitutional law & constitutional construction, but I’m not a US lawyer & didn’t go to a US law school. That puts me firmly in the position described by the aphorism
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
That said, I am terrified that Trump is going to do further damage to the US government. Some people have been saying, and I’m sure that many have been thinking, that removing Trump when he only has 13 days left in his term of office is more dangerous than leaving him in as a lame duck.
Personally? I think he’s too dangerous to be left in office for 13 minutes. When I went to bed last night, it was my hope that by the time I woke up, Trump would have been 25th and Biden would be the 47th president two weeks from now instead of the 46th. Make no mistake, I’m not happy about a Pence presidency, even one as short as this would be, but the combination of Trump’s dangerous instability with the circumstances of yesterday’s assault on the Capitol Building creates some unique dangers.
Thought 1:
I’m not saying that I like the use of tear gas, but after being tear gassed with no warning because someone 50 yards away from me threw a firecracker over a fence I literally am confused as to how the masses of people occupying the steps outside were not tear gassed before the could force their way in.
And then they used tear gas inside the rotunda because they wouldn’t use it on people who were charging the Capitol Building but not yet inside… but once the rubicon was crossed, why wasn’t gas used on the people outside the building? Why only inside?
(H/T for the idea to Wonkette)
The Kraken went down to Georgia,
Lookin’ for an election to steal
He was in a bind
He was way behind
Thinkin’ when did shit get real?
When he came across a conspiracy nut on OANN flappin’ her gums
And so he squeezed his knees beneath a desk for fleas and said “Let’s speak to the Dumbs.”
“I guess you didn’t know it, but I won this election, too
And if you can’t face the facts of the case, I’ll sick (sic) marines on you
Antifa crimes all the damn time, but give the Orangeman his due
I got this far as a fraudulent star. Now I’ve got lawyers too.
The judge said, “Address me as ‘Your Honor’, and perhaps I’m sua spont’
But without some facts proving criminal acts
I’m going to kick you to Vermont.
Donny, smooth your spray-on tan and rile up your Dumbs
Cause Biden’s taken Georgia, and he beat you like a drum.
If you keep your post, the Dems are toast, and you’ll still be King Troll
But if you lose, your ass goes in the Hole.
Originally written for the Wonkette comments, but I’m too vain not to share it with both of you. You’ll have noticed that the song is unfinished. I may not get back to it, but I also might write up the end once the end of this attempt at election theft is over. I can’t, after all, finish the song satirizing the events before the events have finished themselves.
Last night I dreamed we were on the boat to heaven, but by some chance we were still dragging Trump along. And there I stood, and I hollered, “Someone save me!” and the drag performers started singing a song….
No, seriously, I had a dream that 1000 drag performers showed up at Lafayette Park & sang, “Girl, don’t go away mad. Girl, just go away,” to Trump on January 19th, his last night in office. This blog post is for the playlist of songs we would have those 1000 drag performers sing that night in Lafayette Park, if we could get them there. I’ll start with a few, but I’m sure as hell taking suggestions. If necessary I’ll keep updating this thing until Trump is out of office.
Earlier today I wrote about Trump’s capacity to destroy the Republicans from within just by remaining active in the party and doing what he do.
Of course, an important premise of that piece was that Trump could and would remain a powerful player, in my mind, the frontrunner, for the 2024 GOP nomination. KG called out that premise in the comments:
I think Trump is going to be fully occupied trying to stay out of prison.
While I take KG’s point, it wasn’t something I hadn’t thought about. It was merely something I had thought about but chose not to include any analysis on within that piece.
So, Trump is the kind of idiot who can’t handle losing, but is too megalomaniacal to notice when he doesn’t have a chance. In addition, part of the original allure of Trump was that he was a winner, and that was only enhanced by pro-incumbent bias in the electorate.
So, now Trump is going out a loser and many people are hoping they’ll never have to think about him ever again. I beg to differ. I want to see him back in 2024, and if necessary in 2028.
I first became politically active when the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance put a citizen’s initiative on the ballot to declare in law that “homosexuality” was “abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse”. Measure 9 was itself an abomination, one that treated anti-discrimination laws as if they were discrimination against bigots, which was somehow supposed to be an unconscionable thing, what with how unfair that would be to the bigots.
Measure 9 lost. The OCA (which then featured Scott Lively as its highly visible 2nd in command) lost. But that doesn’t mean that queers “won”. We spent money and energy and made ourselves visible, made ourselves targets, so we could be attacked intensely for an election season in the hopes that sacrifice would make us safer after the election season. That isn’t victory. Honestly, it was a lot like being in abusive relationship, something I knew a lot about, and provoking abuse as the “walking on eggshells” phase of the relationship grated horribly on one’s nerves. Sometimes one’s fears of what abuse comes next are worse than the actual abuse when it occurs. I had to reasonably fear being killed by my abusive partner, but as it turns out, I was never murdered.
So this must have been in the works for a good while, but apparently hit the White House Gift Store this week:
A snapshot of the White House Gift Store’s ad for the limited edition ‘Trump Defeats COVID-19″ commemorative coin. Uh-oh.