No More Civility

No mas. We will not allow Republicans and Right Wingers to clutch pearls and call for civility. Not when the sitting president insults people using very harsh terms. A former president threw a soft, almost diplomatic criticism at the current White House, and that’s outrageous? Think about that. Would *you* respond to 100,000 dead with a soft, “the people in charge here aren’t even pretending to be in charge”? Not even raising your voice. You would, I hope, be furious, ready to set fire to every state house that didn’t take the pandemic seriously. I mean, this is the Obama Anger Translator sketch, right? He is so calm and so chill. He can sleep well at night. He’s not quite as chill as “Stoner Mom” Alicia Keys, but he’s close. And he took the courageous step of making a compliant about the current White House losing tens of thousands of citizens seem calmer and friendlier than a typical compliant launched inside a crowded DMV office.

I get it. US Presidents are not human. They are aliens. And once they are in the club, they act like no other human beings, and they protect each other. But Obama could have been a little more pointed in his remarks. He could have said that those in change are responsible for the US death tool being more than double what it could have been. He could have expressed sadness over the number of our dead. He could have assured us that incompetence will not prevail. Instead, he gave us nothing, as he almost always did. His reaction to the Sandy Hook massacre is still the most human he has ever been as president or in the years since.

My Long-Delayed 2010 In Cinema Post

Her’s another post purged from the draft dungeon. 2010 was a very good year for movies. And I’m not including the movies most people think about when discussing 2010. I haven’t seen Inception, so it is not on my list. The King’s Speech is terrible, and yet it won best picture. I should also admit that I will never watch the Toy Story series, even though I understand the third film (released in 2010) takes a horror movie turn. 2010 had solid genre movies set in eastern Massachusetts with The Fighter and The Town. Both are watchable. Both have good performances and set pieces. But I want to drill down to the really good stuff.

In my book, 2010 is the fourth year in a row ending with a zero that had a really good year in global cinema. It didn’t blow people’s minds like 2007 did (a future post). But there was enough greatness to go around. I really liked 2010. Like 1980, 1990 and 2000 before it, it’s a year in cinema I can return to. Here’s my list, in alphabetical order.

Animal Kingdom: The first of several new crime dramas from down under, which includes The Snowtown Murders (2011).

Another Year: Mike Leigh is a master of the British Social Realism genre along with Ken Loach. In Another Year, he makes his most successful film since Secrets and Lies (1996). It’s a team effort, as all characters and dialogue are developed by Leigh and his actors through research and improvisation. For me, the film was a reunion of some of Leigh’s best actors, including Lesley Manville, Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen and Peter Wight, who I had seen last in Naked (1993). It was also the first film I watched that starred David Bradley. The film takes a while to build its central theme of loneliness, but each loneliness subplot it introduces has a payoff, with the biggest saved until the end.

Carlos: Was it made for television, the theater, Cannes, or the Criterion Collection? Perhaps all four. And like another epic made-for-TV project, Das Boot (1981), Carlos is an engrossing, accurate portrayal of the most famous terrorist in the world before Osama bin Laden. For acclaimed director Olivier Assayas, dramatized history and biopics are not his thing. But this exception is one of his five or six great films in his expanding filmography.

Certified Copy: It took a lifetime of making movies, but Abbas Kiarostami finally got to make a film outside his nation of Iran. He made it in France, with MK2 productions (which I always associate with Olivier Assayas) and his good friend, Juliette Binoche.

Greenberg: I was going to do a separate blog post about Greenberg back in 2010. I was going to pitch it as a ‘Five Easy Pieces for Generation X.’ I think it’s great, and ten years later, many agree. I didn’t fall for Noah Baumbach right away when The Squid And The Whale was released in 2005. The comparisons to fellow Brooklyn native Woody Allen seemed too much on the nose. And while Greenberg has a snarky, jaded, and even unlikable New Yorker as its protagonist, it’s a remarkably good drama in which not much happens, similar to Another Year. And yet I think both films top my list for 2010 for their quality, excellent pacing, intentionally awkward (realistic) scenes, and honesty with uneasy themes like loneliness, betrayal, regrets and abortion (yes!). Greenberg gets the edge for a marvelous soundtrack. We X-ers have known for decades that Duran Duran’s ‘The Chauffeur’ is a sublime, perhaps accidental masterpiece. So thanks Noah Baumbach for reminding us. Greenberg is a fine American drama about responsibility, fucking up, and reducing the number of people you hurt while you try to resort your life. I know it can be a love it or hate it movie, but I love it. It encapsulates much of the essence of my generation, as ugly and as unproductive as it seems.

Meek’s Cutoff: Where are the female directors, we ask? Kelly Reichardt has been a consistent feature director since 1994. Marketed and praised as a “feminist western,” it’s a stripped-down drama about peril and getting lost. It’s both an original western and one of very few features made about the pioneers of the Oregon Trail.

Never Let Me Go: I liked the novel better. But Mark Romanek’s film adaptation delivers most of the themes and impact of Kazuo Ishiguro’s work, with the emotional punches to the gut not as hard-hitting. Still, we get an icy and creepy performance from the underrated Keira Knightly. This film also stars Andrew Garfield, proving that 2010 was he breakthrough year as I think he stole the show in The Social Network.

Shutter Island: It’s a solid genre film directed by Martin Scorsese based on the novel by Dennis Lehaine. It’s a third Hollywood feature set in the Boston area in 2010! It’s very faithful to the source material thanks mainly to Mr. Lehaine’s involvement. And for its production values and stellar screenplay and cast, it belongs on this list.

The Social Network: The film that should have taken home the Best Picture Oscar. How does an established auteur like David Fincher follow-up the best film of his career (Zodiac)? He applies what he learned shooing his last film digitally and keeping a well-organized screenplay (something he has done since his second feature). I didn’t think that The Social Network was great when it came out. I was still high from Zodiac, one of the best movies about obsession ever made, and the first all-digital film to look beautiful on the big screen, opposed to looking like a really polished video game or television show. David Fincher and his cinematographers took his flat, sometimes smoky visual style and transitioned it from film stock to solid state drives wonderfully. As for the film, The Social Network is about the talented, well funded, privileged assholes who helped to ruin our world further. And it was only appropriate that an asshole wrote the screenplay. And yet it is engrossing and rises to the equal Fincher’s best work thanks to his always-grounded direction. It also has the best score of the year courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Somewhere: Sofia Coppola made the companion film to her breakthrough, Lost In Translation (2003). While I am not a fan of either Elle Fanning nor Stephen Doriff, they both deliver in this low-key meditation piece on boredom - yes this is a good movie about Hollywood boredom. It has no right to be any good, but it is. Plus, Coppola got rather unprecedented access to her real-life location, the Chateau Marmont. It really helps that the photography was done by the late, great Harris Savides, who also shot Greenberg, as well as David Fincher’s all-digital Zodiac.

Winter’s Bone: We now know that she’s flirting with retirement, but Jennifer Lawrence’s star-making debut in this movie will live forever. It’s a tiny, dark depressing drama. Also starring Dale Dickey and John Hawkes, this little film has quite the stellar cast.

Failed State Status

Almost a year ago, I wrote that the Republic died when William Barr took over as Attorney General. Now, with Barr retroactively covering up Trump’s crimes while in office, the Republic is a failed state. Trump is now a de-facto dictator. And there are no checks and balances left in his way. Today was the worst day for the DOJ in nearly 50 years, if not ever.

Another Reason Rhymesayers Entertainment Has he Best Artist Roster

Prof: Squad Goals (2020). Explicit lyrics below.

Rhymesayers Entertainment has such great artists as Aesop Rock, Brother Ali, Dilated Peoples and Atmosphere. Prof is less serious, but his rhyming here is quite good. The video is excellent.

I got guns, hoes, money, dro
Cars, boats, you should know
Dogs, bros, squad goals
Hold up,  whoa
You name it

Guns, hoes,  money, dro

Cars, boats, you should know
Dogs,  bros, squad goals
Hold up, whoa
You name it

I’m throwing money off balcony into the crowd because I want to

God damn I feel good
Sure that you already know
One things understood
Ain’t nothin that can stop my glow
Mmm dog gonit
Can’t I just take my time?
All these clout chasing motherfuckers rushin all around me I’m like
Bitch hold your horses

(Prof you’re the best)

I’m like true I am
Rosario Dawson know who I am
If it’s cool with you, girl I could move right in
You do not understand just how cool I am
Like see, look at me, look at me
I’m on a beach
Don’t try to holler cause I’m out of reach
I got no service, I’m out on the keys
A couple woman
My dollars and me
Bout to go swimming
Thank god I’m a G
One shot for me
Un bebidas para ti
Let’s skinny dip in the sea

(You know what I’m saying
I’d rather do things we remember later
You know what I mean?)

I got guns, hoes, money, dro
Cars, boats, you should know
Dogs, bros, squad goals
Hold up, whoa
You name it

Guns, hoes, money, dro
Cars, boats, you should know
Dogs, bros, squad goals
Hold up, whoa
You name it

I’m throwing money off balcony into the crowd because I want to

Oooh, seriously, look at myself
Condom model over here
Oooh, seriously, look at my flow
Colder than a polar bear
Oooh, straight up I’m an awesome person
Oooh, you ain’t ready for this sauce I’m serving
Oooh, straight up, I’m an awesome person
Oooh, you ain’t ready for the sauuuce

Young Pookie, your highness
Gone find the finest vaginas
From China to Thailand
Got ‘em whinin
Why not combine ‘em?
Pardon me let me chime in
But there’s science behind my conniving
I’m refined and violent
Throw the lime in, fine dine the hyman

Swag
Swag
(aaahh)

I got guns, hoes, money, dro
Cars, boats, you should know
Dogs, bros, squad goals
Hold up, whoa
You name it

Guns, hoes, money, dro
Cars, boats, you should know
Dogs, bros, squad goals
Hold up, whoa
You name it

I’m throwing money off balcony into the crowd because I want to

(Hey)

Fuck it up, fuck it up, fuck it up, fuck it up, fuck it up, fuck it up

(Hey)
Swear to god, if you could throw it at me that I’ll grab it and fuck it up
(Hey)
Fuck it up, fuck it up, fuck it up, fuck it up, fuck it up, fuck it up

(Hey)
Swear to god, if you could throw it at me that I’ll grab it and fuck it up

Oooh, how bout that drink
You gonna finish that?
If your bro talking shit I’m gon’ get his ass
I got two hands that gon’ fit his ass
Knock him out cold, he gon’ shit his ass
Talk on the phones up in Trinidad
Bout to make films up on SkinaMax
Oh you just jealous because my bedroom sounds like
It’s a fucking womens tennis match
(aaahh)

I feel good
(ooohh-ahhh)
I feel good
(Yeah)
I feel good
(ooohh-ahhh)
I feel good
(Alright, yeah, alright)
(I feel good)

I got guns, hoes, money, dro
(Feel good)
Cars, boats, (oooh I feel good) you should know
Dogs, bros, squad goals
Hold up, whoa (heyyy)

Trump Is Broken

The insanity of this. We know Trump confused Nobel Prize with Pulitzer Prize. Also, we know that the authors of this weekend’s New York Times story are not Pulitzer winners, so he was referring to the organization having won Pulitzers. Also the story mentions Diet Coke and french fries in the Oval Office. It makes no mention of what he eats in the executive residence (although that might be an admission). It was actually a pretty respectful piece. I'm sorry he deleted these tweets. They are a window into the mind of a delusional and very angry old man.

It is well past time to pretend that this president is normal. He is not. He’s unfit for office. He’s mentally ill. How many times has he used the “I was joking” excuse a day after saying or doing something that would make previous presidents take the rest of the week off, or consider resigning?

Enough.

We must all say it: Enough. 

It's Time For New York State To Own Its Electric Power Grid

Here’s another post that sat for months as a draft. No reason to sit on it, other than being distracted and engaging in video game playing and beer drinking.

I have always felt that utilities should be public. Healthcare should be nationalized and treated as a public utility. Internet access should be a public utility. And I think residential and commercial electric power should be owned and maintained by taxpayers. I think it’s incredible that New York Governor Cuomo flirted with that idea last summer after a poorly handled transformer fire caused a localized blackout on Manhattan’s west side.

In this no-longer-young century, we have had several pandemics and several failures in our infrastructure. We need a new commitment to rebuild, and that includes making important pieces of infrastructure public. That includes our power grid.

Does Con-Ed know where the bodies are buried? How in the world does this corporation keep it's license? And by the way, wasn't Trump going to spend trillions on a massive infrastructure program, which would, at last, give us a 21st century power grid, among other modern wonders?

15 Months Later, She IS The Thing

Claire McCaskill’s comment last year questioning why Ocasio-Cortez is “the thing” was and remains stupid. I think establishment democrats are nervous because maybe (fingers crossed) young liberals are not satisfied when all democratic politicians seem to offer voters is "at least we're not Trump.”

Chuck Todd made several errors in his criticism of Ocasio-Cortez. The largest is his conflation of concentration camps with death camps. People die in concentration camps of course, but usually as a result of disease, or malnutrition, or neglect. During the insurrection in Cuba in the 1890's, the Spanish put thousands of civilians in what they called re-concentration camps, so that the army could then sweep through a rebel province in pursuit of guerrillas who were operating among the peasants, and using them for cover. What the Spanish forgot, or didn't realize, was that by putting thousands of men, women and children in overcrowded detention camps, in a tropical climate, they were guaranteeing an epidemic of preventable diseases, which cost hundreds of lives, and brought the McKinley administration closer to confrontation with Spain. The "yellow press", led by publishers like William Randolph Hearst, and Joseph Pulitzer, published story after story highlighting Spanish atrocities, and demanding a U.S. response. The result, eventually, was the Spanish- American War. The US, as we speak, is currently holding more than 53,000 peaceful refugees in concentration camps.

In another episode, Fox News found Ocasio-Cortez’ low net worth to be very funny. Remember, the Republican Party and it's obsequious acolytes at Faux News, can't imagine a struggling working class politician. After all, the Republican base, so called, consists of aggrieved middle and upper middle class whites, who view the poor and the near- poor as both dangerous and unworthy. The notion of such a declasse person actually winning a place at the table of power strikes them as radical and alarming. How dare she presume to occupy a position of authority! As for not having enough to afford an apartment in Washington DC, of course that's  hilarious. Such a thing is contrary to natural law good manners.

The Right Wing is downright obsessed with Ocascio-Cortez (and they will never show her respect and call her by her full last name). Anything she does, from going to a hair salon to making margaritas at home, they pay attention and spend their time attacking and obsessing.

Ocascio-Cortez is a Democratic Socialist. The DSA is the fastest-growing political party in the US. Nearly every candidate she has endorsed has won. So yes, she IS the thing. The old machine that runs the Democratic Party will one day be replaced by young progressives. It might come too late for the nation, but the Democratic party is due for an upgrade. If we Democratic Socialists stay focused and committed, we will change this party.

Governing By Owning The Libs

The crisis this nation is going through is a good time to grab a draft post and finish it. Here’s a simple one. Donald Trump is only the president of his base. Everyone else is, by definition, the  "other", the enemy, the un-Americans, who should go back to where they came from.

His base adores him, in large part, because his enemies are theirs. Anything he does, no matter how ridiculous or harmful to his voters, is fine with them, as long as it irritates Democrats, liberals and progressives. Irrational? You bet. But his supporters have always known that most of his policies are bullshit, that he really can't govern in any traditional or even rational sense of that term, but all that's beside the point. These people don't believe that the hated government can solve problems or get the nation through a crisis in any case. So what if he's a clown, and his administration is a scandalous embarrassment to the nation? They love the show, and the impotent fury of the liberals and the few serious minded conservatives. And, it goes without saying that the paymasters of the Republican party may hate his oafishness, but they couldn't be happier with his tax policies, his anti-unionism, his deregulation of their companies, and his pro-corporate judges. For the one percent, this jerk is manna from heaven!

The Democratic Party Has Shifted. It's Leadership Is Standing Still.

Just a quick post that the reason Joe Biden is the presumptive DNC nominee is because the party leadership and its network of pundits and consultants have decided to carry Joe Biden over the line. The candidate can’t carry himself. So the party flexed its muscles to shift all significant endorsements to Biden’s column to secure a Super Tuesday victory. The typical Democratic voter hasn’t seen Joe Biden much, so they are voting for the Joe Biden they remember. I really do think that’s what’s happening. If Trump supporters imagine their man being an actual billionaire, who got fantastic deals done, and has the expertise and ability to run our massive Federal government, then Biden’s voters think he is still Obama’s attack dog - the man who pumped iron at his desk in 2015 and was nearly gifted a C7 Corvette Z06 by workers at the Bowling Green plant.

Let’s look at that White House Correspondents Dinner clip because I really do think that there are millions of Americans who think that Joe Biden looks and acts the same today as he did here in the spring of 2014:

This is the Joe Biden in millions of voters’ memories. It is this Joe Biden who is running against the ‘strong man’ Trump that his base worships.

And just today, there is more standing still, as Congressman Jim Clayburn announced that his Select committee into the SARS-CoV-2 will not be investigating the 8 weeks Trump wasted in response to the pandemic. Incredible.

Which brings me to the point of this post. While the Democratic leadership has decided to freeze in-place, a small, growing number of progressive Democrats are reflecting the ideological shift at the voter / constituent level. When asked about the differences between her and Joe Biden, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez said it bluntly. She said that in any parliamentary democracy, she and the six or so other progressive representatives would be in their own party. There’s no way they would be in the same party as Joe Biden.

People are getting mad at her for saying it, which is stupid. The establishment Democrats are mad that she's too liberal and attack her from the left, as Nancy Pelosi has, and then the same Democrats are mad that she says she wouldn't be one of them in a different country. Well, which is it, idiots?

Why Is he Still In Charge?

Since the 2017 Boy Scout Jamboree speech, we haven't had a president. We've had an angry man who wants to be the most powerful man in the world, but cannot lead. He wants to pretend to be president, but can't do the hard work of listening to advisers, showing empathy, and taking responsibility.

The press conference on Friday March 20 was the perfect representation of why this man has absolutely no business being president. The country is  on the precipice of a  tragedy, and our national  leader takes umbrage at a reporter's perfectly reasonable question,  and goes off an irrational rant. Trump will continue to become more angry and more unhinged as thousands of Americans die.

SARS-CoV-2 Is Exposing What And Who Is Bad In The USA

Promulgating  and enforcing petty, even absurd rules, is a time tested way for the tin pot dictators who claim to govern us to exercise  their  arbitrary power. As this author explains,  it's  also an effective way to convince us that a system that transfers more and more money and power to the top of the social heap is simply the way the world works, and we all must simply  accept it. It's  been said that in France, the government is afraid of the people. In this country, the opposite is true. 

SARS-Cov-2 has exposed all the unfair, stress-inducing rules and laws in the US that should not come back if and when we get through this pandemic. And it has also revealed our worst people.

We're Surely Doomed

This is a post about climate change. But it is also about pandemics, as we are now living thorough a major pandemic.

My argument is simple. We are all doomed. And I don’t have to go far outside of Congress to make my case.

Here is US Senator Mike Lee, denying climate change, and also advocating that we make the problem worse by reproducing more.

Logic would dictate that if a government accepted the fact that burning coal and other fossil fuels had to stop, they would adjust their policies to discourage consumption. In fact, they would have started to change their policies in 1990, with the groundbreaking, first IPCC report. But instead, the governments of the world -both democracies and autocracies- subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $5 Trillion annually.

Human-driven climate change has irreversible effects, such as the acceleration of species extinction, which in turn threatens human life further.

And what threatens human life further are governments that deny the science and do not govern. That is the contemporary GOP in a nutshell. Since the Reagan era, they have been destroying our nation and the world. The Trump administration simply denies the science and dismantles the government offices charged with tracking threats to human existence.

Which brings us to the Trump administration’s utter and unforgivable incompetence in failing to keep this nation prepared for a deadly pandemic. By my casual count, COVID-19 is the fifth major viral pandemic of the 21st century, and the first one that will kill a significant number of Americans.

Here is Congressman Matt Gaetz wearing a gas mask on the House floor, mocking the pandemic as well as violating the rules that prohibit costumes and being a general asshat.

View fullsize

And here is how the US president reacted in the first month the virus was in our nation.

Before thousands of Americans die due to COVID-19, here is a new defining moment for the Trump presidency. It isn’t my fault. It wasn’t me. I didn’t know.

Today, our president took some more questions. They start at 10:47 in this video. His lies are more transparent than ever. He acts like a child who’d been caught doing something bad. And then explains that his handshakes and touching is expected from a tough guy like him. Someone has to touch the microphones. I expect his test to come back positive tonight.

Now That Rudy Won't Be Indicted, Here's The Rudy Opposition Research From 1993

Happy Fearful Friday.

Last month I wrote that I would try to finish my draft posts. I pushed hard in late 2019. But now it is 2020, and I will push to finish my drafts this year. It seems like I will have a lot of time indoors to wrap them up. One is a piece about Obama and the Democrats that dates back to 2014. That’s 6 bloody years! But the longer I wait, the easier it gets to write. I just have to be like Jim Sterling. Tackle that big subject. Write it. Finish it.

I have 20 drafts to either finish or post, not including this post. This post is an update about Rudy. I had long suspected that there was opposition research out there on him. So here it is, from 1993, when he ran for mayor against David Dinkins.

Four months ago, Rudy looked like he was in very serious trouble. He was being investigated by the DOJ for foreign agent and possibly other financial crimes. Rudy’s media appearances, from September to December 2019 were incredibly incriminating. But by this month, his imminent indictment seemed to disappear, presumably thanks to the intervention of AG William Barr. Roger Stone will walk. Michael Flynn will walk. And so will Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani. Only Michael Cohen will serve his sentence. That’s not just. But that’s life under the iron fist of Donald J. Trump.

"Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous."

Indeed. We need to go back and look at every fucking phone call this man has been on since his January 20 2017 inauguration. And no, Donald, you can’t speak to anyone on the phone without staff on the line.

2020: Expect The Worst

While Donald Trump faces a steeper challenge to win his next and final election, I have to assume that he will win again. Incumbents usually win. And while Trump could lose Michigan, North Carolina and even Texas (which would trigger a Democratic landslide), I still have to set my expectations that Trump will win. Because 2020 is already the worst year for the US since 1968. It might be the worst year since the end of the Civil War.

It isn’t yet March, and this transparently criminal president has been given a new, expanded pass by his party to commit any crime he wants. And holy shit did he go straight to work, plotting revenge, trying to extort immunity from my home state, using the DOJ as his personal legal defense firm, and getting all the chances he wants to cheat in his final election.

I have mentally prepared. The Democrats are a mess. They could get Trump’s New York State tax returns in just days. They refuse, for dubious legal and political reasons. I seriously fear that my mind will be permanently damaged by another Trump term. Maybe if I learned another language or read more books, it would help me maintain my cognitive sharpness. But I feel different after three years of Trump, and I don’t think it’s simply aging. He has hurt tens of millions of us.

Just to make sure 2020 is the worst year of my life, there is a distinct possibility that Roe will be effectively overturned by the Supreme Court in June.

Slate is usually the light version of the Washington Post. But this piece by William Saletan last year is impressive. Trump is treacherous.

That’s an excellent case by case account of Trump: his disloyalty to America, the House members, the Senators. I knew flattery would get anyone immediately on his side. Bad enough! But he's thrown American citizens under the bus, consistently, at the expense of refusing to put America and Americans first, which is the opposite of what he sells to voters. He is just plain evil, coupled with stupidity! I have vivid memories of Erdoğan’s goons beating up on Americans in broad daylight just weeks into Trump’s first term. I thought at first that it wasn't really happening! 

How did we end up with him? How dumb and naive are Americans! I often tie his presidency to our public schools. We have certain states like Texas that control the flow of information to students by choosing more than questionable texts. In some areas students are not allowed to ask questions about what are called "certain subjects." Any class that prevents the flow of accurate information to students is one small part of an uninformed electorate.

Trump is a danger to all of us. He still wants to eliminate the Affordable Care Act. Whom is he trying to please by that? Or more to the point, his hatred of Obama is sick. Trump says he operates on which people he should trust? That only means that the worst dictators in the world can wrap him around their fingers, and they have, simply by flattering him. By then, it's too late. Those fascists have him in complete tow. He's been flattered! And his ignorance and blind ego win the day and dominate us all.

The GOP Confirms Its Identity: Power At Any Cost.

Trump’s takeover of the Republican party was already completed. But we can say that this was the week that Trump was confirmed as bulletproof. No crime can bring him down while he is in office. So he will continue to commit crimes. And those crimes will include selling out US foreign policy to win Trump advantages in the upcoming election. Our democracy is dead.

It also simply needs to be said that this impeachment and Senate trial of Donald J. Trump has been a terrifying chapter in our nation’s history. Terrifying because multiple branches and departments have aided Trump’s crimes. He had a lot of help hiding them and then excusing them after he was caught. This ordeal was also terrifying because of the on-record defenses of Trump’s crimes. Those defenses make it impossible to impeach a president ever again, and make the office more powerful than ever before. This trial has reduced the Senate to a broken chamber - possibly until the nation no longer exists. The Senate has lasted decades being called “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” But as long as C-SPAN has existed, it has been shown to be a mainly empty private club of millionaires who do very little debate. It did have greats. It had Robert C. Byrd, Ted Kennedy and Paul Wellstone. They are long gone.

The American experiment is over. The Republic is dead. And all because the Republicans would rather destroy it than share it with Democrats and the brown people and young women who generally vote Democratic.

And life for those Americans, who represent the majority of voters, is not going to get any better. For starters, I expect Roe to be overturned in June. For another, we still have children in prison camps on our southern border. And now Trump is going to seek revenge over many people, both elected and not, and do it openly.

Trump's manner may be embarrassing to a shrinking number of mainstream Republicans, but he's governing precisely as they would like. He's appointing right-wing judges, deregulation of businesses, and cutting taxes for corporations and the rich. If the price they need to pay for such favors is tolerating his open and boorish racism and cruelty, so be it. They also get a new dose of voter suppression at the state level, often upheld by his stacked Federal circuit courts.

We know Trump well. And we know Republican politicians. Republican politicians are craven cowards. They're classic bullies, savaging the poor and weak and defenseless, but quaking with fear when confronted by Trump. The Donald, as it's been said, is a weak man's idea of a tough guy But to his Republican sycophants, Captain Bone Spurs is a combination of Attila the Hun and Rocky Marciano. He must never be criticized in public, never crossed, never angered, because his wrath is the equivalent of a political death sentence. His cult-like following will not forgive the failure to worship the dear leader.

About those children in cages. This is why the right reacted with such vehemence to Clinton's book, It Takes a Village (1996). To them, children are the property and responsibility of the family, preferably a white,Christian, patriarchal family, of course. Abortion is opposed by these people, because women must be held responsible for their pregnancy, and cannot be allowed to decide for themselves whether to carry a child to term. What happens to the child after his birth is not the government's business, but before his birth, the full police power of the state must be employed to enforce the woman's responsibility to give birth. It helps explain the current and insane policy of Alabama, which briefly indicted a black woman for manslaughter. This pregnant woman was shot five times in the abdomen, leading to the death of her fetus. According to the police, the shooting victim started the confrontation, so the victim was arrested and held responsible for the death of the fetus. And, because the shooter claimed she was standing her ground, she walked free, while her seriously sounded antagonist sat in jail. Meanwhile today, also in Alabama, a white woman was denied her right to claim that she used the ‘stand your ground’ statute when she killed her rapist, who was very high on methamphetamines, and was viciously attacking her brother who had just arrived to help.

This is the United States in 2020. Run by a criminal strongman who uses his office as source of business revenue, our justice department as his legal cleanup crew, and the judiciary branch as his most powerful enabler. He is bulletproof, and is not subject to any checks and balances for at least 11 more months.

India And Pakistan Had a Small Undeclared War Last Year

2020 might be the year that I complete drafts and unfinished posts. Here’s one from last February.

In 1971, the last time India and Pakistan waged war, neither country possessed nuclear weapons. In that struggle, India helped East Pakistan achieve its independence and become the nation of Bangladesh. This time, the unresolved dispute is Jammu and Kashmir. This clash is genuinely terrifying because both nation's have large arsenals of atomic warheads, and the means to deliver them. 

She's Beyond Embarrassing

If we're not embarrassed by Donald Trump being president, why would his ignorant and arrogant daughter's lame attempt to intrude in the conversation of world leaders bother us? The Trumps assume they're our royal family, and they can't imagine that they're not welcome everywhere. And Ivanka can't imagine that her banal chatter isn't fascinating to serious people. Of course she doesn’t do policy or activism. She’s doing precisely what she planned to do in her role as princess of America.

My advice is that we need to forget she exists. Same for all of Trump’s children. Focus on removing Trump from office.

US Alcohol-related Deaths Have Doubled Since 1999

In a paper published yesterday in the Alcoholism journal, it was revealed that the number of Americans who died of alcohol-related causes doubled between 1999 and 2017.

I have no clue why this happened. Surely it can't have something to do with a poor majority being ruled by a rich minority, right? That would be irresponsible to point out as a cause, correct?

The Articles Of Impeachment Are Half-Baked

A quick note on the two articles of impeachment that are about to pass the House in the coming days. I think they are poorly written. This is what a committee of Democrats came up with over a weekend? Well, honestly, can any academic come up with something great over a weekend? I still have dreams about having to write 20-page papers over a single weekend, which I did back in my University days. Results were mixed. I remember if I started a paper more than a week before the due date, results were far better.

My issue is not with the opening resolution. That’s actually okay, since it paraphrases the resolutions from both the Nixon and Clinton drafts. That’s a little cheeky. Fine.

But I find the language of each article to be intentionally weak. They are intentionally devoid of details. In fact, they allude to crimes and actions, but don’t detail them. The document seems to assume he reader knows the details. I find this unacceptable.

I also lament the dryness and repetition of the language. Both articles begin with the identical summary of the power of the House of Representatives to impeach the president. Why not begin the first article with “President Donald J. Trump abused his power and violated his oath of office”? Why not strengthen the second article to read “President Donald J. Trump abused the power of his office to obstruct both the House of Representatives and to obstruct justice in the Independent Counsel investigation, between 2017 and 2019”? Expand it, Democrats. The Mueller investigation and the withholding of aid from Ukraine are part of one big criminal conspiracy to improve Trump’s odds of winning an election.

These thin articles lack deals and impact. The words don’t punch. The seriousness of the articles are not conveyed in the language. The English language is incredible in that there are many ways to convey a message or tell a story. These articles don’t leverage the inherent strengths of the English language.

There are those who agree and disagree with this assessment. Fred Kaplan of The Washington Post argues that the articles are incomplete and weak. His colleague, Dhalia Lithwick, concedes that they are weak and lacking details, but they had to be in order to reduce the amount of words the Republicans could chew on, rant about and distort.

I will always look to the proposed articles by Brianne Gorod and Elizabeth Wydra as what could have been. They are fantastic. Notice how each article begins:

Article I

In his conduct while President of the United States, Donald Trump, in violation of his constitutional oath to execute faithfully the Office of President of the United States, has abused the office of the presidency by employing the powers of the office to advance his own political interests, rather than the interests of the nation….

Article II

In his conduct while President of the United States, Donald Trump, in violation of his constitutional oath to execute faithfully the Office of President of the United States, has abused the powers of his office to try to prevent his wrongdoing and abuses of the public trust from being discovered….

Article III

In his conduct while President of the United States, Donald Trump, in violation of his constitutional oath to execute faithfully the Office of President of the United States, has been personally enriching himself in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause….

That is how it should have been done. Start each article with the point and then list details below. These articles would have been home runs. They detail the crimes, and name those who did the crimes (Trump, Giuliani, Mulvaney). They even tie the president’s decision to abandon the Kurds in Syria to his plans for a Trump Tower in Istanbul.

Instead we have the worst-written articles of impeachment in US history. Look, we know Trump will be acquitted next month and will probably be re-elected. But why couldn’t the Democrats come up with articles that would be remembered and admired for decades to come?

The opposition party is like the articles themselves: Lacking clarity, conviction and courage.

We’re so doomed in 2020.