Author: ProfJerry

Conor Friedersdorf lays out clearly and in detail the case for impeaching POTUS 45.

Donald Trump’s Impeachable Offense

Now, we just need some representative and senators with the requisite instestinal fortitude.

Andrew Sullivan nails it again:

itʼs the impossible reactionary agenda that is the core problem. And the reason we have a president increasingly isolated, ever more deranged, legislatively impotent, diplomatically catastrophic, and constitutionally dangerous, is not just because he is a fucking moron requiring an adult day- care center to avoid catastrophe daily. Itʼs because heʼs a reactionary fantasist, whose policies stir the emotions but are stalled in the headwinds of reality. He canʼt abolish Obamacare because huge majorities prefer it to any Republican alternative, so he is sabotaging it. He hasnʼt built a huge wall across the entire southern border because itʼs a ludicrous project that cannot solve the problem it was designed for. Ditto ripping NAFTA to shreds, which would cause immense disruption to three countriesʼ economies and ricochet around the world. Or attempting to ally with Russia against the E.U., as if Merkel was worse a threat than Putin. Or removing NBCʼs license, which it doesnʼt actually have, for political reasons. Or deporting 11 million people. Or pretending that climate change is not happening. Or a massive tax cut on the wealthy, and arguing, as Trump did Wednesday night, that it would create surpluses as Reaganʼs did, which, of course, Reaganʼs didnʼt.

These are not conservative reforms, thought-through, possible to implement, strategically planned. They are the unhinged fantasies of a 71- year-old Fox News viewer imagining he can reconstruct the late 1950s. They cannot actually be implemented, without huge damage. And so he resorts to executive sabotage — creating loopholes in the enforcement of Obamacare to undermine the entire system. Or he throws a temper tantrum because Obamaʼs Iran Deal is actually working as promised, and attempting to undermine that as well. At this point, the agenda is so deranged and destructive almost every sane senior member of his cabinet is trying to rein it in.

Andrew Sullivan says it all, and says it well:

Trump is not an atheist, confident yet humble in the search for a God-free morality. He is not an agnostic, genuinely doubtful as to the meaning of existence but always open to revelation should it arrive. He is not even a wayward Christian, as he sometimes claims to be, beset by doubt and failing to live up to ideals he nonetheless holds. The ideals he holds are, in fact, the antithesis of Christianity — and his life proves it. He is neither religious nor irreligious. He is pre-religious. He is a pagan. He makes much more sense as a character in Game of Thrones, a medieval world bereft of the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth, than as a president of a modern, Western country.

He loves the exercise of domination, where Christianity practices subservience. He thrills to the use of force, while Jesus preached nonviolence, even in the face of overwhelming coercion. He is tribal, where Jesus was resolutely universal. He is a serial fantasist, whereas Jesus came to reveal the Truth. He is proud, where Jesus was humble. He lives off the attention of the crowd, whereas Jesus fled the throngs that followed him. He is unimaginably wealthy, while Jesus preached the virtue of extreme poverty. He despises the weak, whom Jesus always sided with. He lies to gain an advantage, while Jesus told the truth and was executed for it. He loathes the “other,” when Jesus’ radical embrace of the outsider lay at the heart of his teaching. He campaigns on fear, which Jesus repeatedly told us to abandon. He clings to his privileged bubble, while Jesus walked the streets, with nothing to his name. His only true loyalty is to his family, while Jesus abandoned his. He believes in torture, while Jesus endured it silently. He sees women as objects of possession and abuse, while Jesus — at odds with his time and place — saw women as fully equal, indeed as the first witnesses to the Resurrection. He is in love with power, while Jesus — possessed of greater power, his followers believe, than any other human being — chose to surrender all of it.

The most helpful articles I’ve seen since the election have been those that speak about the need to stay engaged and resist anticipated actions that threaten basic values.

One of the best of these appeared at Grist.

You can read it here:

Shift Happens: Dumbledore’s Army

And he doesn’t want to listen to any, either. That’s probably why many of his Cabinet nominees are climate change deniers. As noted by The Guardian

Trump has assembled a transition team in which at least nine senior members deny basic scientific understanding that the planet is warming due to the burning of carbon and other human activity. These include the transition heads of all the key agencies responsible for either monitoring or dealing with climate change. None of these transition heads have any background in climate science.

Matthew Yglesias presents an argument for moving some of the federal agencies from the District of Columbia to the Midwest.

Makes sense to me.

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

First, congratulations on your surprising victory. You defied a lot of expectations and once demonstrated what can be accomplished through determination and hard work.

Now, however, you are entering into the awesome responsibilities of being the President of the United States. It will require a lot of learning on the job. Allow me to express some of my hopes for you.

• I hope you learn that being President and governing a nation is far, far different from being the host of a reality TV show or from being a successful business man.
• I hope you learn that managing an economy is a far more complicated matter than you might have thought, and I hope you have the humility to seek guidance from those who have a better grasp of economic issues than you seem to have.
• I hope you learn that many of the jobs our nation has lost in the last several years are not coming back, and I hope you find ways of truly assisting those who have been grievously harmed by the loss of a job rather than offering vague and unrealistic promises to bring their job back.
• I hope you learn that in this interdependent world global engagement is far better than isolation, diplomacy is better than arrogance and bluster, and military force should always be the last option.
• I hope you learn climate change is real and that for the sake of the planet and future generations we need to do all we can to prevent further change. I hope you will learn to listen to the community of scientists who understand these matters better than you seem to.
• I hope you learn there are many good people and a few bad people in each of the world’s relgions and that it is misleading, demeaning, and harmful to characterize any religion based upon the actions of a few misguided adherents.

Best wishes and Good Luck!

Ted Cruz Calls Donald Trump a ‘Sniveling Coward’ Who’d Better Leave His Wife ‘the Hell Alone’

Are there any adults left in the GOP?

Ezra Klein provides more evidence – as if it were needed – that the GOP presidential candidates have a tenuous grasp of reality.

The Republican debate was very substantive. Too bad that substance was wrong.

Frank Bruni highlights five questions worth considering following the latest GOP debate.

Five Big Questions After a Vulgar Republican Debate

I hope he’s right that something good may yet come of the chaos that is the current GOP.