….And by the way, I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to Puerto Rico!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019
I guess that being a Trump supporter is a lot like being a Southern Baptist, or a member of any other cult — it needs a failure of both brains and character.
Though Congress has steadfastly refused to give Donald Trump the money he needs to build his wall, it appears he is determined to have it.
President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.
He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said.
This is undoubtedly an abuse of power and an impeachable offense.
Is Congress truly so spineless that even this will pass unchallenged? Probably — and if they can’t recognize that their cowardice cheapens and degrades the offices they’re so proud of holding they’re stupid, too.
The Constitutional division of powers works only if all three branches of government are willing to exercise the powers they’re given. Do your duty, Congress.
A decade ago, a friend and I were sitting in a local barbecue restaurant and wondering what had become of the Republican Party we both had grown-up in. George Wallace, I ventured, would today be a Republican, and he recalled that Teddy Roosevelt, a champion of environmentalism, was once a Republican icon. We tentatively concluded that the major political parties had flipped, that the Republicans were no longer the party of the well-educated and accomplished, of pragmatic, forward-looking realists, and the Democrats were no longer the party of blue-collar labor.
What do you know? Even the august New York Times has noticed.
In less than a decade, from 2010 to 2018, whites without a college degree grew from 50 to 59 percent of all the Republican Party’s voters, while whites with college degrees fell from 40 to 29 percent of the party’s voters. The biggest shift took place from 2016 to 2018, when Trump became the dominant figure in American politics.
This movement of white voters has been evolving over the past 60 years.
Complicating this, thanks to the malign influence of evangelicals hostile to the whole of modernity, the Republicans are nearer to enraged vandals than conservatives, with the result that there is no genuine-article conservative party in the United States.
So far as evangelicals are concerned, this time in our national life is an Alamo-like last stand and Donald Trump is their Sam Houston; they think it’s bad enough that they are expected to be polite to the descendants of Ham, and they are never going to live peaceably with abortion or Obergefell.
And, of course, the craven submission to Donald Trump’s serial indecencies has destroyed whatever sliver of credibility the current stable of Republican officeholders might once have had. America needs a new conservative party, and it needs to be led by politicians who refused to abase themselves before Trump.
Remarkably, Trump’s performance behind closed doors managed to go even farther in pleading Putin’s case. “Trump’s extraordinary promotion of Putin proved to be the most tense disagreement,” reports the Washington Post, which adds that Trump’s fervent advocacy for Putin “was coolly received by other leaders at the gathering,” and that the meeting “went off the rails when Trump blasted leaders for not including Russia.”
Sources from inside the meeting tell the Post Trump’s presence was tantamount to having Putin himself in the room:
But having such a forceful advocate for an authoritarian leader inside the room of democracies profoundly shaped the overall tone of the summit, one senior official said.
“The consequence is the same as if one of the participants is a dictator,” the official said. “No community of like-minded leaders who are pulling together.”
Read the Mueller Report. Donald Trump …
Knew of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Expected to benefit from that interference.
Did not notify the FBI that he had definite knowledge of Russian interference in the election.
And tried to obstruct the investigation into that interference.
Whether or not that constitutes treason is a matter for lawyers I guess, but it sure as hell meets any common sense understanding of giving ‘aid and comfort’ to an enemy. Putin owns Trump.
What do you know? We may enter the 2020 election with a shorthanded Federal Elections Commission — the perfect handicap for a certain corrupt madman who lost the popular vote last time out.
As the pivotal 2020 election rapidly approaches, the Federal Election Commission, an independent federal agency charged with overseeing U.S. elections, is left with no enforcement power of any substantive matters with the resignation of Vice Chairman Matthew Petersen.
[ … ]
The latest departure leaves the FEC with only three out of six commissioners, which means that the agency is one vote short of the minimum of four votes needed to initiate audits, engage in rulemaking, vote on enforcement matters, or even to issue an advisory opinion or to hold meetings.
It’s possible that it’s merely another administrative logjam, but I’m inclined to believe the Republicans want a dysfunctional FEC because they know they’ll get their asses kicked in a clean election.
