Musings …

Category: Trump Presidency

  • My Border Deal for Eternity

    What do you think?

    In exchange for comprehensive immigration reform, including all humanitarian dream positions to include:

    • Unlimited protection for Dreamers.

      • Amnesty for all illegals subject to fair examination of criminal activity – illegal left-turns, or even illegal right-turns, will not disqualify.

      • Reasonable path to citizenship – the same residency for legal arrivals.

      • Generous policy for asylum seekers, Whatever I can’t think of at the moment …

      • Well, how about fair requirements for legal immigration from everywhere in the world, especially Mexico.

      In exchange, give him as much for a brick and mortar wall as he wants: 10 billion, 20 billion, 50 billion, 100 billion, whatever.

      It would be worth it! Nancy Pelosy fine with it! In my fantasy, Mitch McConnell and the Senate on board:

      Trump WOULDN’T take it.

  • The 25th Amendment – Section 4 – Encapsulated (Edited Slightly for Simplification)

    – Pence and eight (of fourteen) Cabinet members can declare the President unfit to serve, subject to objection by the President and ratification by Congress:

    Whenever … Vice President [Pence] and a majority of … the principal officers of the executive departments [the Cabinet] … transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, … Vice President [Pence] shall IMMEDIATELY ASSUME THE POWERS AND DUTIES OF THE OFFICE AS ACTING PRESIDENT [my caps].

    – If the President objects, the VP remains acting President and has FOUR days along with the Cabinet majority to resubmit their declaration:

    Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

    – If the declaration is resubmitted within 4 days, Pence remains acting President until the Senate and House decide the issue. Congress has 21 days to decide by two-thirds majority vote in both Houses. If not in session, Congress has 48hrs to convene. They then have 21 days to decide while Pence remains acting President. If Congress fails to uphold the declaration, Trump resumes the Presidency:

    Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

  • The Possibility, Even Likelihood of Pence and the Cabinet Removing Trump Increases Day By Day!

    1. Pence wants to be President.

    2. Congressional Republicans would prefer a President Pence.

    3. President Trump is providing more and more pretext for them to get rid of him.

    4. Another international precipice is inevitable, especially when the distraction provided by the aftermath of Charlottesville ebbs, and inevitably the Russia investigation returns in full force.

    We can expect from experience that the next distraction – as we observe from the pattern – will be an escalation from the last. Considering that the last international distraction was the threat of nuclear first strike on North Korea upon verbal threat – NOT EVEN ACTION – it is hard to imagine what that escalation might be. Expect the international community, at least, to be soiling themselves.

    Note that if Republicans aren’t really frightened, they will nevertheless be able to pretend that they are, and use the pretext, even in the House, to ratify a 25th Amendment Section 4 Application to determine Trump unfit to serve and make Pence President.

    5. There is probably no love for Trump in the Cabinet. Consider the humiliation each went through when in turn they disgraced themselves kowtowing to Trump in Kim Jong Un style.

    6. Cabinet members by acting in concert can escape the personal quandary they each face in resigning separately. Having lost the opportunity to not serve at all, or to have resigned quickly enough before being tarnished or disgraced by association, see John Kelly, it is a difficult choice to leave now, when they, having already lost face, can continue claiming that they can still restrain him. However absurd that argument, a valid reason to stay would be to stave off the danger that their replacements would not just be unable like themselves to do any good, but could very possibly have no interest in restraining Trump at all.

    –

    We have observed the subject of removing Trump via the 25th Amendment grow from academic info re the Amendment to activity by Democratic Congressmen, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), to take action to invoke it by declaring Trump incapacitated. This plan would require Congress to get two-thirds majorities in both Houses, Cabinet participation unnecessary, in advance of getting Pence on board. The possibility of this so far is ZERO.

    The possibility of invocation by secret cabal is REAL and the possibility that both Houses would ratify it will grow until possibility becomes probability, probability becomes expectation, and expectation becomes behind the scenes agreement to end the Presidency of Donald J. Trump.

    We must keep our fingers crossed. Success depends on secrecy!

    The 25th Amendment – Section 4 With Plain Language

  • Question: Would the White House Even Try to Defend Our International Reputation in the Event of a Devastating Attack on Innocent People Living Here or Even on American Citizens? I Think Not!

    I am reading an historical novel about a young American girl who gets a job, during the late 1930s, writing copy for the German Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda’s Broadcasting Division, English Language Service. She writes for a Lord Lyon who broadcasts to England ala Tokyo Rose.

    According to the novel, the department was assigned the job of mitigating the international consequences of Kristallnacht. The supervisor, Dieter, informed them, “… the Daily Telegraph in London called it ‘racial hatred and hysteria by otherwise decent people.’ We have to deal with this in a way that helps our listeners [the English and Americans] get a fuller picture than they have gotten from their own domestic press.”

    That is, even the Nazis were concerned with the international implications and damage to reputation caused by their behavior. They didn’t want people outside Germany to lose the presumption that Germans were “otherwise decent people.”

    This administration has so far indicated no interest or concern for damage to our international reputation caused by its outspoken positions or its behavior.

    If some horrific attack on members of any of the groups already targeted for abuse, or worse, occurred – God help us nowhere near the horror of a “Kristallnacht” – would this administration attempt, even as propaganda, to mitigate damage done to our international reputation?

    I, for one, am afraid not!

    · Berlin Calling, Kelly Durham, 2015, 2017, Kindle Edition, p. 46