Op Ed Opted Out!

 

The anonymous anti-Trump Op Ed in the NY Times has certainly caused a lot of noise, much of it about the wrong aspect.  Whether you think it was a long overdue and informatively calming piece or whether you think it is treason, you will, if you attempt to look at it calmly and reasonably, be forced to admit it was ill advised. I know this will get about 75% of the people who read this all bent out of shape but if you look at it logically it served no purpose. Setting the President’s pants on fire is not necessarily a legitimate purpose. And frankly, doing it anonymously is the act of a coward not a hero.

Let’s take a calm look at what this guy is saying. He claims that there is an organized group in the administration that has our back; that is protecting us from an ignorant, amoral President by ignoring his commands, even changing them to protect us. Really? Is that what we want? An unelected bunch of plotters deciding that they know better than the elected President how the country should be run?

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump (Surprise!) and I believe him to be neither a functioning human being nor an adequate President but enough Americans did vote for him to make him our President, at least for the next two years. We may not like it but enough of us voted that way and that’s the way our country runs and it’s still the best way to run a country that anyone has come up with.

What has happened here is that this “anonymous” guy and his buddies have looked around and decided that enough people outside their little circle are so wildly against Trump that it gives them the right to circumvent the decisions of a duly elected President. They obviously don’t recognize that they are making the same moves as any revolutionary group getting ready to overthrow a government and weirdly enough the same moves that Trump himself has made in ignoring our constitution and our legal system. We don’t need this government to be overthrown. We need to vote it out of office. That’s how this country worked before Trump and that’s how it will work after Trump. That’s what makes it the greatest nation in the world.

Writing anonymously about what these guys are doing is certainly not treason. But what they are actuallydoing just may be. But let’s try and define what they are actually doing. If they are trying to change the President’s mind on various subjects and get him to agree with them, that’s one thing, but if they are ignoring what the President, legitimately in his role as President, orders and then just not carrying out those orders, they need to be stopped immediately because they are ignoring the wants of the voters that put Trump in office. And before you go there, it isn’t their job to interpret the wants of the voters. Their job to carry out the orders of the President, even if they think the orders are wrong, or the President is crazy or some kind of criminal.

We have laws and amendments to those laws that deal with all the failings of a miscreant president. That’s why congress was given the power to impeach. That’s where the 25^thamendment comes from.

Chief of Staff John Kelly has called Trump an idiot.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has said he has the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader

Economic advisor Gary Cohn has called him a professional liar and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has called him a f**king moron. And those are just the ones who have been quoted in the media. They are all Trump appointees and yet they are all sick of him; just like a lot of us.

Yes, a lot of us think that just about everything Trump is doing is wrong but we still live in a nation of laws. In the end, that is what will protect us from Trump. The minute we stop obeying those laws, men like Trump have an open road to a dictatorship. Many out there are screaming that congress is ignoring the laws and thereby allowing Trump to trample over the rights and safety of the people.  That has been true but the same majority elected those clowns to congress as elected rump and the only legitimate way to get rid of them is to vote them out of office in November. Let’s see if enough Americans will get out of bed or out of the bar, will put down their video game or their porn, long enough to go to a polling place and vote these clowns and criminals out of office. If they do, we won’t need the OP Ed coward or his buddies. We will have a large enough majority in the House and hopefully the Senate to stop Trump and turn this government around.

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Donald Trump promised big time in his election campaign to drain the swamp. He sure did, bringing all the slime to the White House so it could steal with both hands.

But here is a current piece of ethics legislation, sponsored by Elizabeth Warren that would attack many of the current problems our government has with honesty:

1- A lifetime ban on lobbying for former congressmen, Presidents and agency heads.

2-A ban on senior government officials from owning or trading individual stocks.

3-A ban on lobbyist donations to congress.

4-Require elected officials & candidates to disclose tax returns.

It’s interesting that Ben Sasse is on the same route as Warren on these ideas. Maybe something can really get done if these two opposite ends of the spectrum politicians can get together in this one very important item.

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One of the most bizarre outcomes of the NY Times anonymous OP Ed is Libertarian Rand Paul demanding that all the staffers in the White House be submitted to a lie detector test. LIBERTARIAN? What Liberty does he stand for? I’ve said it before and it is truer now than it was then. Paul’s neighbor just didn’t give him a good enough beating. Who votes for this asshole?  How did he get through grade school?

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Bob Corker, Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse have come to be known as the reasonable Republicans, the GOP congressmen who can give us a sensible answer to our questions, the ones who are brave enough to go against Trump. I say that’s just another load of crap. Corker and Flake don’t have the guts to run against Trump for another term. Sasse never votes any way but the twisted party line. These guys talk a good game but their actions are all rotten. In a world that recognized some kind of normalcy, one would expect these guys to acknowledge the problems of their party with more than words, but looking at the most fractious action happening right now, the investigation into Kavanaugh as a member of the Supreme Court, they are on the sidelines. They want to sound like reasonable human beings; they just don’t want to act that way. It’s why they are little better than the likes of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.

McConnell and Ryan especially have crumbled before Trump. They are in a position to stop the mad liar but they simply nod their empty heads and bow politely while Trump fiddles and Washington burns.

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The Republicans keep screaming that a vote for any Democrat is a vote for socialism, that if we elect Democrats we will be living in Venezuela. Why the hell shouldn’t we be like Venezuela? We have a president who aspires to be a banana republic dictator.

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Trump loves to brag about how the economy is up during his administration, how he has delivered the American dream when no one else could. Of course like everything else Trump says, this is bullshit. In fact the economic boom that Trump loves to brag about started ten years ago with Obama’s programs that dragged the country out of the Bush/Cheney inspired economic cash of 2007.  Starting in 2008 the economy began to rise and it did so throughout Obama’s time in office.  Yes, it has continued through Trump’s first year and a half in office but that’s easy. That’s just riding on someone else’s coat tails.

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Today, as we acknowledge the fact of 911, morn the dead and celebrate the brave first responders, we are reminded of the words of the crass, boor who now occupies the White House. On that awful day he called WOR in NY and stated on the air that he guessed that now, “he had the tallest buildings in the city.”

And I’ll bet it doesn’t even shock you.