Impeachment Support Needed in Senate, Bolton Gone (Thank Heaven)

Two More Reasons to Impeach the President:

1. When the President produced an inaccurate corruption of a weather chart originating with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) so that it covered up a potentially misleading misstatement he had made about Hurricane Dorian threatening Alabama, he violated a Federal law.  This should be added to the crimes for which he will be impeached.   That he threatened the NOAA’s scientific and political leadership with firing, via the Secretary of Commerce, if they did not back up the President’s position, is also a criminal action.  The man’s vanity has no limit.

2. While not quite a crime, the President also has disgraced our country by turning back Bahamians made homeless by the disaster in their island nation, who wish to seek shelter in the United State, only 90 miles away, but who do not have proper documentation, which many had lost in the storm’s widespread destruction. (In my opinion, any that get here should be granted temporary refugee status for at least a month.) 

Wreckage at Marsh Harbor in the Bahamas,
 reminiscent of Hiroshima

He feared allowing them in would risk admitting ‘very’ bad criminals and drug dealers who might be among them.  (Note that the President often uses the word ‘very’ when he makes up things. When he doubles it and says ‘very, very,’ you can be sure the upcoming lie will be a big one.)  Of course, the ambiguity with which he says things leaves administrators with the choice of doing their job or pleasing the President.  The NOAA people can attest to that.

President Trump doesn’t have the slightest idea of what being an American means.

(I received the following email today from Alex Sink, whom some of you may recall ran for governor of Florida about a fifteen years ago against Jeb Bush.  I pass it on to you. 
 

"Well, I finally broke down in tears today.

After a very stressful week of dealing with Hurricane Dorian and its impact on the Abaco Islands, yesterday’s reported remarks by President Donald Trump were crushing...Mr. President, Bahamians are NOT "bad people!"  

My family has owned a vacation home shared with three other families for 30 years in Marsh Harbour. Not a year passed that we didn’t visit this beautiful place multiple times and as a result we made many Bahamian friends and became personally involved with Friends of the Environment, a local nonprofit working to protect the beautiful waters and land of Abaco.  (They still have beautiful coral reefs and abundant conch and lobster grounds!)

The eye of the storm passed on Sunday and by Tuesday we had confirmation that our house had been totally obliterated. And while our vacation home was certainly full of wonderful memories for our family and friends, it was just a house. Of more concern was having no word from our house manager and her extended family who have become close friends and are hardworking, enterprising Bahamians who include small business owners, chefs and journalists. They were left homeless and hungry after the storm, and were finally able to be evacuated to Florida last Friday night through the generosity of private aircraft owners transporting these desperate people. This family is but one example of thousands of Abaconians who are wonderful hardworking, entrepreneurial and kind people who have lost everything.  

President Trump, many Americans (especially Floridians) have spent countless vacations on these beautiful islands. Please do not classify these people who have lost everything as unworthy of our love, our financial support and the welcoming spirit of millions of Americans. To shun them is to turn your back on the values of our country as stated on our Statue of Liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

How long will it take for the President’s supporters, including the vast majority of the Republican Party in Congress and among Republican voters, to realize that most charitably, he is a shallow asshole, for which they merely serve as toilet paper?  His presence in the White House continues to demean the office in the eyes of most Americans and of the world.  I am sure that privately, both Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin laugh at him.  Americans should be crying for him, for the failure of the democratic process which put him into office and for their nation.

Impeachment is a responsibility of the Congress, and not doing so is a shirking of that responsibility, as prescribed in the Constitution.  Article 2, Section 4 reads as follows:  ‘The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and Misdemeanors.’   That is part of Congress' oversight responsibility.

The House sets impeachment in motion and a supermajority (2/3) in the Senate, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, is needed to convict. Holding off on impeachment plays into President's strategy of delay and legal stalling, playing "his game" rather than what the Constitution prescribes.  Are there 20 real Americans among the Republican majority in the Senate or are they all just the President’s toilet paper?

Jack Lippman

Bolton is Fired

Late-breaking announcement of the firing of National Security Advisor John Bolton illustrates the disarray of the Administration’s foreign policy decision-making process.  Bolton was the third to occupy that post. The President knows little about foreign policy (He appointed Bolton because he liked the way he sounded on Fox) and likes to do his own thing, ignoring facts and history.  That’s why he likes Putin and Kim and assorted despots surrounded by sycophants and chooses to politicize what should be left to diplomacy, as he has done in the Middle East.  In his mind, leaders do as they please. It took him a while to realize super-hawk Bolton’s trigger-happy dogmatism ran counter to his own equivocating and ambiguity, tools in his thus-far unsuccessful deal-making efforts.  He wants to run everything himself, by the seat of his pants, and daily his inability to function as President becomes more evident.

Bolton, whose judgement is dangerously terrible, at least spoke
up to the President.  Mike Pompeo didn't ... and survives.

It should be noted that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, first in his class at West Point, rose to the rank of Captain in the Army, unlike other Presidential appointees like Generals Mattis, Masterson and Kelly, all now gone, who were used to formulating strategies and giving orders.  That’s what Generals do, rather than simply carrying out orders, which is what Captains do.  Trump’s supporters in Congress and in fact, anyone who votes for him, should have their heads examined.  The President behaves more like a dictator every day.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Pompeo wouldn’t object to mopping the bathrooms in the White House if the President told him to.  That’s what a good bootlicker does.)

JL