Insulting Names, an Early Warning, the Mueller Report, Impeachment, Looking Forward to 2020, Kathleen Parker on Trump and Notre Dame and the Survival of our Planet

Name Calling Ain't Nice

Most of you are aware that the President takes pleasure in adding insulting adjectives to the names of people he dislikes.  Examples are “Crooked Hillary,” “Crazy Bernie” and “Little Marco.”  Conversely, most Democrats are too civil to start referring to the President as “Cheatin’ Donald,” which I will do throughout this posting.  That would be totally accurate in view of his repeated marital infidelities. 

Remember that while Hillary Clinton is not a “crook,”  that while Bernie Sanders has all of his wits about him and that while Marco Rubio is 5’9” tall, “Cheatin’ Donald” was actually sleeping with Marla while married to Ivana, and has committed adultery with both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. “Cheatin’ Donald” should learn to keep his mouth shut.

Jack Lippman

  

Early Warning and Not About Hurricanes

It will be too late to save democracy in the United States if we reach the point where a Trumpian Executive branch has so manipulated the Department of Justice and its Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other Federal law enforcement agencies, that they become tools of the Administration’s political agenda.  Such an occurrence would amount to a disregard of our Constitution and would be possible only with the acquiescence or impotency of the Legislative and Judicial branches of our government.  If this politized control ever extended even further and involved the armed forces, the game would be over … and Americans would be wise to consider emigration, if it were still possible, to friendlier democratic nations where they might seek asylum.  Scary, isn’t it.  That’s why your political involvement is necessary today to prevent this from happening.

JL

Mueller Report and the Thought of Impeachment

Barr, Who Violated his Oath of Office

Attorney General Barr forgot that his oath of office was to the Constitution and not to “Cheatin’ Donald.” He provided a cushion for the Mueller report which despite its heavy redactions was loaded with evidence of the pitiful level to which the President had sunk, but nevertheless which would not meet the exacting standards required in a court of law to convict any defendant who had hired a half-way competent attorney.  Those high standards, however, will not apply in the ultimate court of jurisdiction in this action, the voice of the American voter in 2020.

The real question, now, is whether they will be able to see enough of Mueller’s actual findings to counteract the sanitized version of which the President’s hand-picked Attorney General spoke before the redacted documents were released last Thursday.

Many voters will not be capable of seeing beyond that.  That’s why, as I recommended in earlier postings, that the Democrats not focus on “Cheatin’ Donald” in 2020 and concentrate on bread and butter issues like health care, real jobs to replace those lost to technology and cheap overseas labor and tax relief for other than the wealthy.

                                                            *   *   *

As for the question of impeachment, right now, many Democrats feel that there is enough in the Mueller Report, despite its redactions, to establish a pathway to impeachment of the President.  Although I have endorsed impeachment in the past,  I now disagree.  There is no doubt that the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives can pass Articles of Impeachment, but it is very doubtful that the two-thirds vote needed to convict in the Senate can be reached.  Remember, the Republicans nominated and have, by and large, stood by “Cheatin’ Donald.”  

Failure to convict in the Senate will only give the Republicans an opportunity to scream out to America that the true “facts’ are those broadcast daily on Fox News and the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC just represent “fake news.” (In 1998, failure by the Senate to convict Bill Clinton of the House-passed Articles of Impeachment served to strengthen his position among the population.)

So long as Republican Senators are beholden to “Cheatin’ Donald” to avoid primary challenges from the right, and insure the support of his base on Election Day, the issue of impeachment should be avoided by Democrats.  Remember, many an election has been lost in this country by candidates who overestimated the intelligence of the American people.  So it goes with impeachment.  

The issues laid out above along with the grim shadow the Mueller Report sheds on the President are sufficient to get him out of office in 2020.   Impeachment is too great a risk to take.  Its likely defeat in the Senate would hand the Republicans a potent weapon.

JL

Looking Forward to 2020

And speaking of that election, the major 2020 strategy of “Cheatin’ Donald” and his dutiful Republican followers includes three specific tactics at this point:

Look for more of this

(1) continued emphasis on the danger to the nation’s security and economy posed by immigrants being allowed to try to enter the United States under the guise of seeking asylum under our existing laws,

(2) trying to sow dissention in the Democratic Party, specifically by questioning the patriotism of progressive Democrats, particularly those with Muslim backgrounds, and by reducing the traditional support of Jews for that party by unrealistic endorsement of anything Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu does, and

(3) continued attacking of the press and media which he had specifically accused of being an “enemy of the people.”  "Cheatin' Donald," of course, excludes Fox News from this label.

To blunt these tactics, and defeat the strategy of “Cheatin’ Donald,” the Democrats have one weapon.  That is the “truth.”  Truth is an absolute, not a relative thing.  Failing to recognize it as such results in events such as the current spread of measles among the unvaccinated, who chose to believe in internet-spread fictions rather than scientifically proven truths.  

There may be many “truths” in religion, for example, where different people may have varying beliefs in the nature of the Deity, or even denying that one exists, but that is a matter of faith, which takes over when truth is unprovable.  But this does not extend to politics where "truths" cannot be as ambivalent as they are in matters of faith.  “Cheatin’ Donald’s” strategy also includes the tactic of undermining truth by confusing it with “alternate facts.”  (Donald, the world is not flat, although there may be a significant number of its inhabitants who believe it is.  Some of them will also contract measles.)

All the more, this emphasizes the need for Democrats to concentrate their efforts on bread and butter issues, as described in the article directly above this one, rather than on "Cheatin' Donald."  Attacking him is like punching a pillow.

JL

 
Survival of our Planet – Survival of Democracy

Now let’s get serious … and in fact, frighteningly so.  Planet Earth has been around for a very long time.  And it has been hospitable to life forms for only a tiny portion of that time. Its environment has changed many times over uncountable revolutions around the sun. It took a very, very, very long time for a single cell life form such as an amoeba to appear, for plant and animal species to evolve, develop, flourish, and usually become extinct for a variety of reasons such as climate changes, cataclysmic disasters and natural predators.  Animal life in the form of man, homo sapiens, has dominated Planet Earth for only an infinitesimally minute portion of the tiny portion of its history during which any form of life whatsoever has been present. 

We live here as tenants.  We do not own the place.

All that mankind has created over that very brief period, our literature, music, art, philosophy, history, technology and even our belief in a “divine” power, is miniscule and insignificant when viewed in the context of the apparently limitless universe where time and space merge and of which “our” planet is but a part.  It would be presumptuous to assume that our presence here and our dominance over the planet will last forever.  The dinosaurs were around for longer than mankind has been here, and they are long gone.  Someday, we will be too. We might be subject to a planet-wide flood or fire, be struck by a giant asteroid, we may lose the ability to feed ourselves or we may blow ourselves up.  Don’t kid yourself.  Homo sapiens is not the ultimate species.  (Some say ants might be.)

Nevertheless, it would be wise for those inhabiting our planet to take steps to guarantee the human race’s survival for as long as possible. To survive another ten thousand centuries, a mere droplet in the history of Planet Earth, would be great!  (That would be about 40,000 generations.) It probably will be much less.

Unfortunately, the steps necessary for such survival cannot be taken by a planet which is infatuated with the very, very recent and glorious idea of democracy!  With survival on the line, we cannot afford the luxury of preserving individual rights and making decisions after logical debate by thinking individuals. Democracy, while satisfying to the soul, is not well suited for taking the kinds of actions, possibly very unpleasant and costly ones, needed to prolong the survival of the human race.

To accomplish that, we will need to evolve politically into having one all-powerful technological authority in control of the entire planet, making all the rules, decisions, and taking the steps necessary to continue the efforts necessary to extend the existence and control of our planet by the human race for as long as possible.  The tool to accomplish this might take the form of some kind of artificial intelligence. Doesn’t sound nice, but that’s the way it is going to be over the next few thousand years.  Whatever happens, the ants, or someone or something, will be waiting to take over.

The following time line is approximate, but it should make it clear that we are merely the most recent tenants of this planet.

 __1_______________________2________________________________________________________________________3__4_5.  

   1. Creation of Planet Earth – 4.5 Billion Years ago    

   2. First Appearance of living cells on Earth – 3.5 Billion Years ago

   3. First Appearance of Dinosaurs on Earth – 230 Million years ago

   4. First Appearance of early Human-like Creatures – 66 Million years ago

   5. End of Stone Age – 15,000 years ago, Beginning of recorded history – 5,000 years ago.

JL

A Great Kathleen Parker Column

Parker

Tragic File at Notre Dame

Last week Kathleen Parker wrote in the Washington Post about the President of the United States and the tragic fire which destroyed most of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  If you missed this terrific column, CLICK HERE to read it.  

(It is often difficult to set up links to Washington Post columns … they want you to subscribe … but it is indeed possible to access their columns when they are reprinted in other papers, as we’ve done here.  The same thing goes for the New York Times.  As for reproducing the columns in their entirety on the blog, I have been advised by someone at the Palm Beach Post that doing so is actually illegal, and to use links where possible instead, so that is what I do.)

 JL

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