Nancy

Documentation. Witnesses. Facts. Truth. That's what they're afraid of.

Monday, December 19, 2016

Our Long National Nightmare Is... Beginning (But Why?)

I just got back from an event held by one of our local city councilmen featuring a number of activists from local not-for-profit organizations talking about what they're doing in gearing up for the changing of the guard in Washington. It was great to hear about their work, but between the fact that it feels like draining the ocean (swamp?) with a teaspoon and the fact that it's incredible that we have to even be having these conversations (bystander training for hate crimes and ICE raids?) is a bit deflating. Yet we have to keep getting ourselves off the mat and fighting:




Keith Olbermann makes his suggestions for how to resist the coming Trump regime, now that it's been codified by the Electoral College.

One of his ideas is to never refer to Trump by his title. Just "Trump." I think I'll go with it.

He also talks about continuing to remind others every day of the Trump camp's, at best, treasonous-adjacent behavior.

I still remain puzzled by the Democratic leadership's complete reluctance to face this issue head-on, before we swear this walking horror show into office. I don't think I'm saying anything here that I haven't said before, but if would seem to me that inviting a hostile foreign country to interfere in an election would invite more than an investigation, which, if concluded anytime after January 19th and without Trump and his cronies behind bars, will accomplish nothing. These are people that do not care about the law, at all:

Newt Gingrich said Monday that President-elect Donald Trump could simply pardon members of his administration who may break anti-nepotism laws, adding that Trump's business ties require "a whole new approach" to addressing potential conflicts of interest in the presidency.
“In the case of the president, he has a broad ability to organize the White House the way he wants to. He also has, frankly, the power of the pardon,” Gingrich told WAMU’s Diane Rehm on Monday morning. “It is a totally open power, and he could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period.' Technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”
He really said that. Really. More from the same story:

After returning from a commercial break, Rehm asked Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, for his reaction to Gingrich's comments.
“There is no billionaire exception in the Constitution of the United States,” Painter said, adding later: “The pardon power can not be used by the president to pardon himself, or to cause other members of his administration to engage in illegal conduct or unconstitutional conduct and then simply use the pardon power in that way. If the pardon power allows that, the pardon power allows the president to become a dictator."

This is real. These are people who are happy to have a dictator with a leader who is happy to be one. We always tut-tut the Germans of the 1920s-40s for having done nothing to stop the rise of Hitler. But what I've come to wonder is how they'd actually do that and at what point they'd decide to. Because right now *feels* like the closest we've gotten to that, and it seems like we're just going to let it happen. I keep vacillating on whether we're going to see any action from our leaders, and right now I'm tipped toward "No." So how are we better than the Germans who didn't stop Hitler? By the time they knew he was really "Hitler," he had control of the military. Well, we're  a month away from an aspiring dictator gaining control of the military. I don't think I'm being alarmist when I say that if we do nothing now, that's it.

Not my best post, but it's where my head is at the moment. If you want better from me, revisit this post.