The Case for Impeaching Trump

It should have been obvious to anyone not motivated by racial animus, right wing religious zealotry or greed that placing Donald Trump in the White House was a very bad and dangerous idea.  Anyone who had followed is crime syndicate like real estate business and his repeated flouting of the law - there's a reason his home town dislikes him so intensely - could well imagine that the same narcissism and disregard for the law would continue on a far grander scale if this unfit individual came to weld immense power.  Sure enough, all of this has come to pass and Trump now faces an impeachment inquiry as he openly calls on foreign governments to interfere in America's elections and places his own electoral interests above America and its allies national security. In a piece in New York Magazine, the case is made as to why Trump must be impeached and removed from office.  If one is a true patriot, nothing less can suffice.  The man is a menace.  Here are highlights:

Remember that sultry July day during the 2016 campaign when Donald Trump went in front of the television cameras and asked the Russian government to intervene in the looming presidential election on his behalf? “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails [by Hillary Clinton] that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” We now know, thanks to the Mueller report, that Moscow responded by hacking Hillary Clinton’s server that very day. We also know that the Mueller report itself concluded, after exhaustive examination, that there was no prosecutable evidence of a “conspiracy” between Trump and the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. Yet we saw one in broad daylight.

This has long been the paradox of this administration. We tend to assume that nefarious activities of an impeachable variety will always be conducted away from the glare of the media, hidden from the public record, scrubbed of incriminating information. We always assume that what lies under the rock is always more damning than what lies basking on top of it. And we do so for a simple reason. Most criminals assume they might be caught, and take care to avoid it. Nixon ordered the break-in and the cover-up and tried to keep it all on the down low, where indeed it might have stayed if he hadn’t taped all his incriminating conversations.

Trump is different. He proudly released a “transcript” of a “perfect” phone call that proved a direct attempt to leverage pending U.S. military aid in order to get the Ukrainian government to investigate one of his likeliest opponents in the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden. In the texts of U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker to European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland, Ukrainian administration staff, and former Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor at the time:

“Most impt. is for Zelensky to say he will help investigation.” “Heard from White House — assuming president Z convinces trump he will investigate/ ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.” “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

July 21 has my favorite text:

Bill Taylor: Gordon, one thing Kurt and I talked about yesterday … was [the] point that president Zelensky is sensitive to Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic/re-election politics.”

Proof of an impeachable crime does not get clearer than that.

And then yesterday, the president, on his way to a helicopter, smeared a whole lot of butter icing on the top of the impeachment cake.

First, he reiterated his advice to President Zelensky of Ukraine that he should open an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business ventures in Ukraine. Then, not content with bragging about one impeachable crime, he gave notice that he was perfectly prepared to commit another. The amuse-bouche: “I have a lot of options on China, but if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.” The entrée: “Likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens. Because what happened in China is almost as bad a what happened in Ukraine.” He went further: “I don’t think president Xi likes being under that kind of scrutiny.” For good measure, Trump knows that there is no such thing as a fair investigation by a totalitarian state, currently involved in the reeducation or eradication of its Muslim Uighur minority and shooting at protesters in the streets of Hong Kong.

And so the president has clearly committed two high crimes: He has used his position as president to solicit help from two foreign governments, one a Communist dictatorship, in fighting the next presidential election, just as he did in July 2016 with Russia, but this time with China and Ukraine.

And yes, these are clear, unequivocal crimes. The chair of the Federal Election Committee, Ellen Weintraub, tweeted the bleeding obvious yesterday: “Let me make something 100% clear to the America public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election.

Far from faithfully executing the laws, this president is openly breaking them — in full view of the world, and in flagrant violation of his oath of office.

And there is no Paul Ryan–like defense that Trump didn’t know about the illegality of such actions. In Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano’s words, “For heaven’s sake, Trump was just investigated by Mueller for two-and-a-half tumultuous years for allegedly bringing the Russian government into the 2016 election and now he has attempted in one phone call to bring the Ukrainian government into the 2020 election!” Worse, having been found out on the Ukraine call, he went ahead and urged China to investigate as well! This is repeated, reckless, deliberate breaking of the law and expressed contempt for it.

Why would a president say such things? And in public? My view, for what it’s worth, is that Trump’s pathological narcissism overrides reality on a minute-by-minute basis, and that because of this, the very idea of the rule of law, which makes no distinction between the really stable geniuses and everybody else, is impossible for Trump to understand. It’s designed as a neutral check on any individual’s desire to do whatever he wants — and a “neutral check” is, quite simply, beyond Trump’s comprehension

Looking at his long and abysmal business career, the rule of law was always, always an object of scorn, something only suckers cared about and lawyers were paid to circumvent. For Trump, the law is something to break, avoid or pay off. And as president, he clearly believes he is above it.

But narcissism is no defense. Delusional mania and paranoia are no defenses either. This is an open assault on the integrity of U.S. elections and the rule of law by the president himself. We need no more investigations or even hearings. We already have irrefutable proof. The suspect has confessed.

An attempt to get a foreign power to intervene in an internal election process is definitionally an impeachable offense. It was precisely the fear of foreign interference that prompted much of the founders’ discussion of impeachment.

Draw up the articles of impeachment, keep them short and focused on unchallengeable evidence in the Ukraine, and now China cases. Don’t let Trump deploy a barrage of distractions or misdirections. Don’t let the evidence grow cold. Hold a vote as soon as possible. This man is a menace to the core integrity of our republic and Constitution. He must be removed before the damage is incalculable.

Today's GOP: Cranks, Zealots, and Extremists

Today's Republican Party increasingly resembles an insane asylum where the inmates have taken over the asylum.  It seems that just when you think things cannot possibly become more deranged, Donald Trump or Tea Cruz or some professional Christian spouts unbelievable batshitery.  Such insanity is not a new phenomenon in some ways as a piece in Salon explains, but seemingly never before has a major political party been so controlled by rabid dog extremists.  Here are some article excerpts:

Indigenous and deeply rooted in American history, the paranoid politics Hofstadter described began with a panic among Federalists, echoed in New England’s pulpits in 1789, when preachers warned of the Bavarian Illuminati plots to undermine the new republic.

In the 1820s and 1830s the nation was seized with a fear of Masons, who were perceived to be a threat to republican government because Masonry was a secret society with its own system of loyalty and its own jurisdictions. Public hysteria about Masonic plots was followed by an anti-Catholic movement focused on the Society of Jesus, better known as Jesuits. “Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritans,” Hofstadter wrote.

All of this is understandable in a young nation defining itself and defending itself from external and internal threats. It’s when Hofstadter takes what he describes as the long jump to the contemporary right wing that the paranoid style of politics he describes speaks to our current political moment.

It doesn’t take much more of a leap to conclude that the same rancid syndrome, which Hofstadter chronicled as occurring in episodic waves in American political life, is upon us today, and the political cranks and zealots are Republican voters animated by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio.

Hofstadter quoted Harvard professor Daniel Bell’s description of “the modern right wing” of the 1960s. If Bell’s description weren’t so articulate, it could be passed off as briefing notes for Sarah Palin’s speechwriter.

America has been largely taken away from them and their kind; though they are determined to try and repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; capitalism has been gradually undermined . . . the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their agents not merely outsiders and foreigners but major statesmen at the very centers of American power.

The “modern right wing” of 2016? You can find it at a Trump rally in a Birmingham stadium or a Cruz caucus in Iowa—even with Palin on the hustings in New Hampshire—promising to take back our country from the intellectual elites who have dispossessed “real Americans.”

Like today’s Republican presidential candidates, Hofstadter’s paranoids opposed the income tax and worked to repeal it. They were anti-intellectual and anti-cosmopolitan. They had a deep-seated aversion to “the democracies of Western Europe.” They harbored a “nativist desire to develop in North America a homogeneous civilization.” They envisioned the enemy eroding our values and undermining our national security: “A perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman, sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury loving.”

Throw in “African-American”—which was beyond even the most febrile delusions of the hysterical conservatives of the 1960s— and you’ve almost got Rev. Raphael Cruz’s description of the sybaritic, foreign-born Muslim pretender to the American presidency.

If political rhetoric is any measure of the moment, a short excerpt of the speech Sarah Palin delivered when she endorsed Donald Trump on January 19 illustrates how far around the bend the extremists in the modern Republican Party have gone.

Palin might be considered a marginal figure by sensible moderates in both parties. But she’s revered on the far right, and in the 200 words above she addresses most of the paranoid fears of today’s right: a treasonous government selling out our sovereignty, coming after our guns, eroding religious rights, inviting aliens into the country to take our jobs, treating the Constitution with contempt. Palin managed to include in one over-the top speech most of what animates today’s Republican right wing—a constituency of “political cranks and zealots” who have moved far beyond the extremists Hofstadter described in an essay written half a century ago.

Who Will Replace Michele Bachmann as the GOP's Queen of Crazy?

With Michele Bachmann mercifully not running for re-election in 2014 and poised to ride off into the political sunset with her lisping husband "Marcia" Bachmann, the question becomes who in the GOP will replace Bachmann as the "Queen of Crazy" in Congress?   Obviously, it will need to be someone seriously delusional, with religious extremist beliefs and generally utterly detached from objective reality.  Given the serious insanity of many of the Congressional Republicans, there are plenty of would be candidates.  However, a piece in Esquire referenced at Civil Commotion suggests that the heir apparent to the title is Vicky Hartzler (pictured above) , who represents the Missouri Fourth Congressional District.    Here are some article highlights (pay special attention to the part about the Chinese spying through toasters - I'm serious!):

With the announced departure of Michele Bachmann from the World’s Greatest Legislative Body today, we inaugurate a new semi-regular weekly feature in which we study the possible successor to la Bachmann as Queen Regent of the Crazy People. (Louie Gohmert is, of course, emperor for life). A Top Commenter from Missouri has suggested Vicky Hartzler, who represents the Fourth Congressional District of that state and, boy howdy, the Top Commenter is not kidding. Among other things, Ms. Hartzler apparently believes that the heathen Chinee are spying on us through our toasters.

"And I am concerned. They are shipping all the, I’m concerned about the microchips. That they are in many, many of the things that we own. And some of those are embedded, I believe, with, with detection and, uh, capabilities or tracking capabilities."

She'd also rather the government not tolerate those "fringe religions" because the First Amendment says that Congress Shall Make No Law Unless Vicky Hartzler Thinks Your God Is Freaky.

No, it's not their role at all. Their role is to facilitate basic policy for our country and to not to try to lift up one religion over the other, they should be defending the basic rights that we have, that freedom of religion here, and certainly not facilitating or accommodating fringe religions, it's crazy.

However, Vicky Hartzler's God is cool because He does great oppo research.

"The accounts of Absalom and David reveal important truths about campaigning and serving," Hartzler wrote. "Absalom was the first politician. He sought higher office and actively campaigned for it. Absalom won over the hearts of the people of Israel using time-tested campaign strategies. We, too, can campaign successfully following these same guidelines. In addition, if elected, we can serve honorably, heeding the insights gained from the circumstances behind his victory. Absalom was able to win not only because he implemented a winning strategy, but also because God allowed it as punishment for David's sin with Bathsheba."

In 2012, she won re-election with 60 percent of the vote. So, yes, Vicky Hartzler, congratulations. You've made the field.

This would all be laughable but for the fact this half baked lunatic is a member of Congress.  That she won reelection with 60% of the vote - no doubt in a gerrymandered district) is nothing less than an indictment of today's GOP.  Hartzler is more fit to be in an insane aslym than to me walking the halls of Congress.