Has Trump Overreached?

I heard “out of the corner of my ear” on today’s Today show that Trump had fired several departments’ inspector generals.  I Googled for it; and it turns out to be true:  he did indeed fire 17 IGs overnight, presumably to replace them with the usual yes-men.  I won’t bother including any links since several stories from outlets like Reuters all the way to Bezos’ Washington Post showed up right at the top.

It turns out that there’s a 2020 law that says that the president must give Congress 30 days notice before such a firing; and several congresscritters (including Republicans like Grassley) have already opposed the move.  We’ll see whether there are enough principled Republicans for the Congress to say, “no, you can’t do that”.

Discrimination, Inequity and Exclusion (DIE)

One down, 1460 to go.

I’m not sure that the pardons and sentence commutations are the big story, although that’s what the media are covering, including some mild comments by a handful of Republicans.  Getting less media attention is the executive order putting all federal DEI workers on paid leave and effectively shutting down all government DEI activity.  I have every expectation that we’ll soon see many more departures from basic human decency.

If the numbers I’ve seen on the WWW are true (I haven’t verified them myself), Trump squeeked by with a margin of just 1.5% of the popular vote; and it seems obvious to me that he couldn’t have achieved anywhere near that without the roughly 80% of Christian fundies voting for their god’s chosen one.  All the other guesses, e.g., refusing to vote for a woman, white working class men being abandoned by the Democrats, although probably true, strike me as small potatoes by comparison.

I’m coming to the conclusion that the real problem we have is a faux religion that’s just an excuse to be prideful, hateful, self-satisfied DIEhards.  I wish I could be more understanding; but I’m finding myself simply disgusted.

I Watched Biden’s Farewell Address

He didn’t spend all his time bragging on himself as Trump would have done.  He mentioned some of the good things that have happened during his administration, but that wasn’t the main part of the speech.

About ten minutes in, he started to go after the wannabe oligarchs and even briefly likened them to the late 19th century robber barons.  He warned about the rising influence of social media and its spreading of misinformation; and he warned about what he called the “tech-industrial complex” as an analogy to Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex’.  This part was encouraging.

The next important election in the U.S., one in which you and I don’t get to vote, will happen on Saturday, Feb. 1, when the Democratic National Committee will elect their next chair.  We’ll find out then whether the Democrats will want to be a real opposition party and go after the 21st century robber barons, or if it’ll just be more of the same.  (I’m rooting for Ben Wikler who made the Wisconsin Democratic Party actually effective and who has Chuck Schumer’s endorsement at least.)