General Wackjob Flynn has resigned overnight, and now new old untrustworty people are being considered for the job of national security advisor; David Petraeus among them. Hey, didn’t he resign under a cloud, for sharing classified material with his mistress? He sounds perfect for the job.
We have a crisis here. The president is manifestly incompetent, he is surrounded by malevolently incompetent advisors, and we don’t seem to have a way to extract him from office. The Electoral College was supposed to be a mechanism to block unsuitable candidates before they took office, but that was exposed as a sham. There is supposed to be a way to trigger impeachment proceedings, but the other branch of our government, congress, is packed with cowards, lackeys, and lickspittles who are going to block any action on that front…and even if they chopped off the head of this monster, there’s a line of succession packed with incompetents.
We’re under the clock. A noted historian says we have maybe one year to fix this predicament.
The marches were very encouraging. These were quite possibly the largest demonstrations in the history of the US, just in sheer numbers on one single day. That sort of initiative has to continue. The constitution is worth saving, the rule of law is worth saving, democracy is worth saving, but these things can and will be lost if everyone waits around for someone else. If we want encouragement out of the Oval Office, we will not get it. We are not getting encouragement thus far from Republicans. They have good reasons to defend the republic but thus far they are not doing so, with a few exceptions. You want to end on a positive note, I know; but I think things have tightened up very fast, we have at most a year to defend the Republic, perhaps less. What happens in the next few weeks is very important.
To stop an onrushing tyranny, we need to check presidential power. How? At this point, we shouldn’t be intimidated by the ugly line of succession, because I think it’s more important to send a message that presidents don’t get to be dictators…and that they ought to be competent at doing their job. (That last requirement ought to send a chill down the spines of every Republican, which may be why they aren’t doing something about the rogue gossamer-haired sphincter running amuck in the White House.)
So what are we going to do?
Impeachment will happen if and only if enough Republican congresspersons come to see its expected costs to their own interests as less than those of leaving Trump in place. This can only be brought about either by Trump’s own delusional stupidity (but that’s down to him), or by sustained and relentless political opposition on every level. Targeting congresspersons potentially vulnerable in 2018 is necessary, but far from suffiicent: demonstrations, strikes, boycotts of Trump-suporting businesses, mockery, civil disobedience, above all the building of a mass movement defending those victimised by Trump’s regime and refusing to treat the latter as a legitimate government. We non-Americans can help with some elements of this, and by pressuring their own governments and politicians to freeze Trump out, but above all by fighting the rise of fascism 2.0 in our own countries.
Incidentally, the fact that Trump has lost his National Security Adviser less than a month into his presidency is surely grounds for optimism. The short-term focus should probably be on: “What did Trump know, and when did he know it?”. (Of course the general answer to that is “Practically nothing, ever”, but you know what I mean.)
I disagree. The issue is not incompetence. When all the incompetent ones have resigned, including our dear President, we will then have to deal with an administration of extremely vicious right-wing creeps who are working — very competently — to roll back all the gains in human rights since the New Deal, and to suppress democracy.
I doubt that we’ll applaud their competence as they do that.
Think Progress has an article up about the possibilities of Quo Warranto.
So far we still have an independent judiciary, and there’s a new election in two years. It’s imperative that nobody try to burn down the Reichstag in the meantime.
We March.
It strikes me that if Donald Trump is impeached then Mike Pence will be far less of a threat. He’s tied his colours to a particularly insecure mast, and if Donald goes down then he has neither the bluster nor the chutzpah to step into Donald’s shoes. And it’s bluster and chutzpah that Donald’s supporters seem to want, rather than the kind of quiet, ossified evil that Pence represents.
Yes, Pence will still be a threat – what with his support from the Republican party – but I doubt anyone could come through the public shame of being at the heart of a failed Trump administration that has crashed and burned without serious damage to their political standing.
I bet Repubs will have no objection to impeachment with Pence the replacement.
Sick. [][][][][][][][][] barf
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45 not “incompetent”. Actually ANTIcompetent, competently works to pick the worst for the job, offers the worst solution to a problem, etc.
“we shouldn’t be intimidated by the ugly line of succession”
I remember an old Private Eye photo of a particularly evilly joyful Nixon with the caption “No one’s going to assassinate me with Agnew as VP”… not that I would suggest for one moment that anyone should assassinate anyone, let alone the SCROTUM*
___________________________
* So-Called Ruler Of The Unfortunate ‘Mercans
Well, last time someone fixed a similar problem by diverting the river Alpheus. Maybe someone could look into seeing if any use could be made of the Lake Oroville situation, it seems rather conveniently coincidental.
Where did this guy get one year?
.
Seems awfully specific for such a crapshoot situation.
Lake Oroville would turn Sacramento into a swamp, when the CA legislature has finally overcome its reactionary wing. Not good. Also, it would kill a million or so people.
I think Pence would be a big step up, under the assumption that he’d keep around the normal republicans, boot out the outright neonazis.
Revolution is starting to look appealing. But it’s very dangerous: the winner of a revolution can become an emperor pretty easily, or the counterrevolution can muck things up for a bit and then put in a saviour dictator.
First thing I see on Google News this morning. NYT: Democrats Demand: What Did the President Know and When Did He Know It?
Watergate II. It’s what I expected. Other questions might be…what did Bannon know and when? What did Tillerson know and when? Even Pence, who claims to have been misled by Flynn…was he? And if so, when did he figure it out and what did he do about it then?
The Dems may not get the DumbFucks, but they can put the pressure on them. Indeed, they must because 2018 isn’t that far down the road and they need to get their game together. (And yes, I wish there were more alternatives, too, but there aren’t going to be in two years.)
The other thing is this…the Dems need to quit stumbling and start building their state parties. Republican dominance at the state level represents some real power for them. That’s where the gerrymandering and voter suppression is happening. That’s also where constitutional amendments will be decided, and you can bet there are some of those on the Republican agenda.
My hypothesis is that there are Republicans who see very clearly that it would be… convenient to impeach our current president, replacing him with the V.P. Replace the incompetent and dangerous narcissistic far right winger who probably would not be re-elected with a competent far right winger who might be re-elected.
Which , given the current lot of Trump supporters is almost guaranteed to lead to civil war.
To repeat an old maxim, generally applicable with the possible exception of vampires, “There is no magic bullet”. No one single action or event will exterminate the dalekocracy, probably not even going all Dalek on their arse. (Not to mention ethical considerations.)
Having said that, I admit an “B Ark” scheme has its attractions.
More realistically, some core / basic principles should be adhered to. I won’t attempt to enumerate a compete(-ish) list here, but will mention some things: Do not be like the nazis! So, don’t lie, don’t initiate or spread fake news, don’t gish gallop, … More positively, coordinate, protest (in person & by phone), donate (e.g., ACLU, SPLC, the sanctuary movement, …), civil disobedience, boycotts (plural), recycle & reuse, volunteer, and so on.
I realise much of that is “the usual”, not much is terribly exciting (most of the time, anyways), and certainly is not as fun as landing the TARDIS and waving a screwdriver about…
@12 “I think Pence would be a big step up, under the assumption that he’d keep around the normal republicans, boot out the outright neonazis.”
This is when I despair and wonder if nobody remembers the last Republican administration by a guy at least as dense as Pence and with “normal” Republicans in charge: A disastrous war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives at a cost of at least a trillion dollars, a destabilized Middle East and a great recession.
The last thing we should want is to impeach Trump.
Yes, he is a disgusting, dangerous, mentally unstable, totally unqualified fantasist fascist surrounded by neo-nazis. But, for the first time in my memory, there’s one slight saving grace: the mainstream press seems to realize how ridiculous he is and they keep pushing back. Impeach him, and the so-called “normal Republicans” will take over and the press will start covering them just like they did with the imbecile from Texas and his malevolent VP: As a relief, finally, to have “grown-ups” back in charge. The MSM loves their Paul Ryan and they’ll love Pence too. And we’ll be fucked.
Trump is not the cause, he’s the consequence. The cause is the Republican party. I hate using medical analogies but Trump is like organ failure and the modern Republican party is the disease. As long as they win elections we’re fucked. Just this week they passed new rules that will allow mentally challenged people to buy guns, coal companies to dump shit in streams and financial advisors to be allowed to cheat their clients. You don’t like Trump’s group of truly deplorable cabinet nominees? The Republicans voted for them.
Do you know what Pence and Ryan and McConnell stand for? There is no Trump agenda. It’s indistinguishable from the Republican agenda. The difference is that these sociopathic fuckers actually know how to use the system and also how to manipulate the press.
Republicans now control 32 sates. We need 34 to call for a Constitutional Convention. Be scared. Very scared. Unless we start winning elections the country will continue to devolve. Voters keep voting for these assholes and unless we figure out how to convince people that voting for Republicans is both unethical and stupid there will be no respite.
Cross posted from the Political Madness All the Time thread.
Republican doofuses are sticking up for Flynn, and for the Trump administration, no matter what.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/devin-nunes-flynn-resignation
Trump thinks the story is “illegal leaks.” Maybe he would have been okay with the whole Flynn thing if no one had found out that Flynn talked to the Russians about sanctions? No one other than his own team and the intelligence agencies, that is. Apparently, they all knew weeks ago. The problem, in Trump’s mind, is that real and damaging information leaks to the press, and via that conduit to we the people.
The reference to North Korea is dark comedy. Doofus Trump made it easier for leaks about the response to North Korea to get out by hosting a “let’s read classified information by cell phone light on the terrace” dinner.
It is way too late for Trump to pretend to be concerned about leaks and the handling of classified documents.
Don’t be ridiculous. It was supposed to ensure only a small, specific class of people got the right to vote. We didn’t discover that this is a problem, by finding out that some uniquely “unsuitable” candidate(s) happened to get the job, in this one very special instance when you’ve decided to actually complain about it, that something or other about it has been exposed (presumably recently).
From the beginning, explicitly in its language, and in its practice every single fucking time we use the system, it was and is clearly and deliberately anti-democratic. That’s the problem. It’s one cog in the same fucking machine that gave us slavery and discrimination and assorted horrible shit. There’s no good reason to expect that sort of thing to give you “suitable” candidates. In that regard, this election was not an anomaly. Nothing’s been exposed here. That’s just what this shitty fucking system is for, and it’s working precisely as intended.
Ares @ #17 — An alternative to convincing people to change their stance, which is always difficult, might be to get more people to vote. From what I’ve read, it seems Democrats do well when there is high voter turn out, and poorly when there’s low turn out as in the last election. That’s the “low hanging fruit” as they say in the tech world. Obviously the Dems need candidates and platforms that will get people to vote for them, which might be a stretch for them, as well as registration drives and get out the vote efforts to help people vote.
Paul Ryan and Kellyanne Conway presented contradictory accounts of Flynn’s resignation.
Ryan said:
Kellyanne Conway said:
…unless we figure out how to convince people that voting for Republicans is both unethical and stupid there will be no respite
Given human nature, mightn’t it be more effective to convince people that voting for Republicans is against their own best interests? There’s a surprising number of Trump supporters who want to keep the ACA, raise the minimum wage, etc. – how do we convince them that voting Democrat will improve their lives and not lead to a One World Government or race wars or anti-Christian pogroms or whatever boogeyman the Repubs are using this week? At this point I feel like the only way to reach these people is to run PSAs on Fox – not political ads per se, but basic info like “did you know the crime rate has been going down for the past 20+ years?” or “did you know abortions only make up 3% of what Planned Parenthood does?” Is that something we could actually do?
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made some obvious and reasonable suggestions, but I doubt that she can get any Republicans to follow through:
The quoted text comes from a statement Pelosi released today.
I’ve posted this at various places:
In a normal Administration, this kind of high-profile axing could be taken as ass-covering: get rid of someone who could be plausibly suspected of being contingent to wrongdoing to avoid the appearance of impropriety by the rest of the Administration. Throw the problem under the bus, even if there’s not really anything there, or at least nothing provable in court.
The Trump regime, however, has blatantly and proudly mired itself in the most suspect and corrupt men. It has relied not only appearance of abiding by The Way We Do Things, but rewriting reality and The Way We Do Things to its own end. It is founded on Trump as the State with his personal trust as the end-all-be-all.
Mere plausible suspicion wouldn’t faze this regime – they’d just deny, distract, twist or brazenly ignore it.
That Flynn’s head is rolling strongly suggests that what he has done is undeniably illegal, indictable, imprisonable, and implicates the Trump regime to such an extent that maintaining him is a reality that even this regime cannot distort.
Do not declare his resignation as a victory – this must go to court and the extent of the regime’s collusion must be revealed.
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Flynn is a weak point, an entry point. If we can pursue this we can open the fissure and drag them all out. He’s our best opportunity right now.
John Oliver had a good idea, and I hope others join him in this effort.
Vox link
Video is available at the link. The video presents more detail, and it also includes examples of the ads Oliver is using to educate Trump.
Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, pointed out that conversations Flynn had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Donald Trump took office are not covered by executive privilege. That means the information in those conversations is subject to congressional investigations.
Pre-election conversations between Flynn and Trump are also not protected by executive privilege.
@Sarah A These are people who believe lies about Obamaphones, Pizzagate, that the fake Bowling Green Massacre justifies a Muslim ban, and that Trump should have the power to overrule courts. Patently ridiculous shit that shouldn’t even need ti be disproven, but is and it still doesn’t matter.
They do not believe these things because their logic and reason lead them to it and logic and reason will not lead them out. They believe them bcause they have invested their HEART in Trump and will discount anything that contradicts him. Your facts and figures mean nothing. Their own suffering, and that of their family, and that of the country, mean nothing. Reality is to them whatever Trump says it is and everything you say is hippy bullshit at best, Satanic lies at worst.
We keep being told that we need to “understand” these people. That’s true. They aren’t like us, they do not have the same values and do not respond the same way we do so trying to convince them the way we convince ourselves DOES NOT WORK. I can go into the primal philosphical difference but this is long enough as it is.
Here is the Private Eye cover of Nixon that richardelguru referred to @9.
Russian propaganda about Flynn’s resignation:
That’s from Konstantin Kosachev of the upper house in the Duma, who posted that on Facebook.
That’s Alexei Pushkov, a senator in the upper house of the Duma, tweeting.
Flynn knew that he was (is) looking at jail time. If they get him under oath he’ll either have to lie under oath or lay out the entire Trump/Russian connection. Neither will be good.
Kellyanne is “dead Barbie walking.” Even the lickspittles in the media are calling her a liar on-air. Her credibility is totally gone. My fantasy is that she’s Trump’s mistress. Oh, please please please!
Of course, the real threat is Bannon. He’s behind all this. He and his little Nazi propagandist Miller of “the president’s power is extensive and will not be questioned.” We can all heil to that!
I agree with anti-competence rather than incompetence. Check out the column published today by Paul Krugman. We who battle creationists know it as “willful ignorance.” It’s not accidental incompetence, but calculated. One might call it “complex specified incompetence.”
Thank you KG @29, it’s even more frightening than I remember!
Humble Bundle is offering a massive anti-Trump bundle of games, the Humble Freedom Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/freedom
100% of the money goes to the ACLU, Medecins sans Frontieres and the International Rescue Committee.
I’m glad to see my fellow gamers stand up for a good thing. If you read comments on gaming websites, you might think all gamers are assholes. Not true! Glad!
People inside the Trump administration are blaming former Obama administration staffers for leaking information to the media.
Daily Beast link
Those excuses come off as weak and inadequate. The focus on leaks echoes Trump’s tweet from this morning. “The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?” The leaks are not the major issue. Colluding with Russia and undermining President Obama while he was still president — those are major issues.
Republicans in Congress are still using the “let’s move on” mode of defense:
if I stop to think a little bit (may be not enough) I remember what the republican primaries looked like. All those guys have not gone away. I do not think there are many of them who hold any real loyalty to the Resident nor any in his administration including Pence. Their ambition and self opinion is too great they are just trying to use their position to further their own goals and think that acting in co-operation and showing loyalty will help them advance or at least hold their position.
If the Resident is forced from office or at least thwarted in his plans by concerted action anyone who has similar ideas maybe some what hesitant in trying to implement similar policies.
These republican policies and these new born again republicans and the corporate stooges have done enough it is past time for a swing to the progressive side, History does not walk on one leg but seems to swing back and forth, Left, right, left, right
All that is speculation how ever about a bunch of what might happen in the future. What we are confronted with is what is now and it is increasingly clear that what is happening now is intolerable and in the end will probably lead to a gigantic failure of unknown dimensions.
it does seem hopeful when at the prestigious Grammy awards their is open hostility to the resident and his policies and their is no shock nor even much general criticism from anywhere outside of the alt-right cesspool.
uncle frogy
One simple thing everyone can do to help encourage Congress to do its job is to consistently and unfailingly refer to Donald Trump as “Republican President Donald Trump.” He is theirs. If he goes on, and they do nothing, they and their brand will be tarnished like no one has ever been tarnished. If the Republicans in Congress do act, do conduct investigations, etc. they have a chance to save what is left of their brand. It is what saved the Republican Party after Nixon. For a while.
The idea of the Electoral College as an organization to avoid mob rule is a post-hoc rationalization. The reason the Electoral College won out at the Constitutional Convention was to preserve the 3/5ths compromise for the Presidential election (i.e., because of slavery).
The Federalist Papers, which are usually cited for the nicer interpretation, were written afterwords essentially as a marketing campaign to promote the Constitution.
Lynna OM — As I was leaving work, a friend was looking at the NYT article on Trump’s assertion of “illegal leaks.” Pretty much what I expected. He wins an election through hacking emails on a private email server…a non-governmental server!…and that’s OK. But something gets one of his BFFs driven out of office (in 24 days) and that’s illegal. Sure, Dumbo, we get it. Also to be expected, Republican MoCs dissembling about the “scandal” and, of course, news is that Chaffetz isn’t going to investigate. No Benghazi or private email servers here. Keep moving folks. And then there’s throwing Flynn under the bus because no one else was involved. However, the WP is already posting stories that TweeterDumb knew. Of course, he did. I mean, he’s superman and knows everything, right. Or he’s not. Pence has the best cover story at the moment…he was “misled.” Sure. Knew nothing about conversations with Russians or other stuff. He was just asking. Completely fell for Flynn’s ruse. I mean he’s been playing the dumbass well all along, so why not now. And where is Bannon in this story? As far as I’m concerned he and Tillerson are the big meat to get on the hook. Bannon is the operator so you know he’s up to his scruffy coif in it, and Tillerson has his own ties with the Russian regime .which makes him a “person of interest” as the cops say.
tigerprawn — But how much more could a brand be burnished than Trump’s, and yet…still…enough people voted for him, and didn’t vote for Clinton, so that he won the election. I don’t think it’s at all clear that damaging their brand is hurting Republicans.
This just in: Per the WP, The Office of Government Ethics is advising the administration to investigate Kellyanne Conway for violating the Standards of Conduct ethics rules by endorsing Ivanka Trump’s products (on Fox News…fer sure) and consider disciplining her.
to quote 45 himself “…. nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. “
@Sarah A #23:
Please forgive me, but at some points I chuckled at the parallels, sort of an in-joke. For the love of everything most hold dear, don’t start a Did you know? campaign. The last time I saw one, it was done by the far right, and contained half-truth, flat out lies and rumors. This is where the second parallel comes in, the campaign was started to discredit a non-party prime ministerial candidate and his family. While he was a former member of the socialist party, a finance minister in a former socialist cabinet, and a finance minister during the end times of communism, his main selling point was being endorsed by the opposition, but not a party member, and he promised to keep all the good stuff his predecessor did.
The third parallel is, that 15-16 years ago, there were 5 parties in the parliament, one had a leader, who was as narcissistic, incoherent and inconsistent as Trump, but farmers liked him, the governing party president who is like Trump in populism, even today, if Los Angeles loses the Olympic bid (unlikely) he might get it, we shall this year. I really hope it will be LA, a sanctuary city in the second Trump presidency, the lighting of the bowl will be at Mar-A-Lago as he doesn’t go to liberals. Anyhow, of matter of influence, the socialists and the young democrats held power. After the opposition candidate was elected, he was in office for one and a half years.
I don’t see much of a choice in convincing them to vote for one party, frankly, such memories give me the heebie jeebies. Convincing them that the GOP isn’t interested in keeping it might, ideally open up a discussion about taking different parties seriously. One could be the Whig Party, but they would say it’s original hair, and the other could be the Tory, not a new party, the complete party from the UK, which is how you do a real favor in a special relationship. The Brits will probably thank you.
My worst case scenario is that Trump will resign or in some other way be removed from office and everyone will heave a hyuuuuuuge sigh of relief and say, “Our national nightmare is over!” No, not really.