Civil Commotion

A column in the Washington Post says what I’ve been saying for months: Donald Trump is an existential threat to the country, and Congress’ plain duty is to remove Trump from office.

Few Republican officials today are willing to openly criticize the president, even if they have deeply held reservations about Donald Trump’s ability to govern. They instead keep their lament private, their panic measured and their comments off the record. It’s a situation that needs to change. If you believe in serving your constituents, you are obliged to speak up and speak publicly.

[ … ]

The nation deserves to know the honest convictions of its elected representatives, whether they be defenders or critics of this president, particularly during a chapter of such political uncertainty that many Americans now fear the constitutional ramifications of an early termination to Trump’s presidency. The silence of these members of Congress is both a violation of the public trust and a reflection of their own lack of personal and political mettle.

What too many members of Congress fail to see is this: If you don’t go on the record, your opinion doesn’t count. Worse, neither will your legacy. Refusing to publicly acknowledge your convictions simply affirms your unwillingness to act on them. And that is an indictment of you, not the president.

… that a portion of Michael Cohen’s legal fees have been paid by the Trump Campaign.

The Trump campaign has spent nearly $228,000 to cover some of the legal expenses for President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, sources familiar with the payments tell ABC News, raising questions about whether the Trump campaign may have violated campaign finance laws.

Federal Election Commission records show three payments made from the Trump campaign to a firm representing Cohen.

So there’s the American Gothic crowd up on the high plains, scrimping to send a $25 check to Donald Trump because Dr. Dobson says The Donald is a baby Christian — and the money is actually going to Trump’s fixer, the guy who pays off the porn stars.

They’re never going to listen to me when I try to explain it, because I’m well-known to be extremely wicked, and the pastors they’d listen to either can’t figure it out themselves or are keeping their mouths shut. One likes to imagine that one of these days a glimmer of light is going to break through their fog, and then a sunbeam, and then full daylight — and they’re going to descend on the Dobsons et. al. with genuine-article Old Testament Wrath. But … No. What is far more likely to happen is that, once the country rallies to its self-defense and gets rid of the Bamboozler-in-Chief, this will become a narrative about how the sinful ‘elites’ drove-off a fine and godly man.

Seriously, the stupid are like the poor: They will always be with us, and they will always be prey.

I didn’t leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me,

John Kasich

I can remember saying those exact same words a decade ago at dinner with a friend. This is not the GOP of Dwight Eisenhower, who created NASA and demanded it be under civilian control, invested in computers, and launched the Interstate Highway system. It is not the GOP of Richard Nixon, who created OSHA, the EPA, and opened a relationship with China. This is not the GOP of Teddy Roosevelt, who created the National Park Service and set aside millions of acres of public land for parks and conservation.

This is not the pragmatic, forward-looking, realist GOP of a generation ago. This is the corrupt and predatory GOP of an oligarchy, and it is sustained by the ignorant and enraged base it feeds upon.

I disagree with some of Kasich’s policy prescriptions, but he is decent-minded and not insane — and in the contemporary GOP, that’s saying something.

Well.

Comedienne Michelle Wolf delivered a monologue at last evening’s WHCA dinner that savaged, especially, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Sanders, as everyone who pays attention knows perfectly well, doesn’t merely spin or shade things; she lies. That is, she knowingly says untrue things and tries to pass them off as reality.

It isn’t very funny and, when it is, it is so in only the narrow I-can’t-decide-whether-to-laugh-or-cry sense. The reason this doesn’t work is that, like her boss, Sanders actually is a brazen and shameless liar and, once again like her boss, she immediately attacks the character of anybody who calls her on the lies. It’s like trying to make fun of a pus-soaked bandage; how do you do it?

Granted, her father is both a preacher and a politician, so she wasn’t raised with a good character role-model to hand. But that’s her problem, and there is no good reason why it should be our problem.

So … my vote is for no apology. She is a liar, and she had it coming. She’s lucky, in my judgment, that she can walk in the public streets without passersby throwing empty bottles at her.

Chinese geologists believe that North Korea’s subterranean testing ground for atomic bombs has collapsed.

A study by Chinese geologists shows the mountain above North Korea’s main nuclear test site has collapsed under the stress of the explosions, rendering it unsafe for further testing and necessitating monitoring for any leaking radiation.

The findings by the scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China may shed new light on North Korean President Kim Jong Un’s announcement that his country was ceasing its testing program.

New light, indeed. I can more easily believe that North Korea has stopped testing atomic bombs because they’ve nowhere to conduct a test than believe that the Buffon-in-Chief’s bellicosity has changed their minds.

And, is it needful to add that Kim Jong-un is certainly smart enough to figure-out that Trump’s attitude toward the Iran deal points toward the conclusion that America doesn’t make deals in good faith?

So: What is going on here is probably no more than North Korea is carrying-out an amiable P.R. stall while frantically trying to revive their testing program.