While I was out…….

Here it is, May 4th, and I have not made a post since New Years Eve 2018. It was an unplanned hiatus, I assure you. During the past 5 months I have:

1. Been on the hunt for a new and better job. A job hunt brought about by a worthless and archaic personnel policy that serves no useful purpose and even my own supervisors, up to and including my multi-starred and well-paid boss, fought against on my behalf. It was to no avail. Which left me with the choice of: waiting till they “placed” me in a posting in some shithole country on the North American continent, located between Canada and Mexico; or, I could actively seek to shape my own fate in a new and alternate location. I chose option 2.
2. Recovering from a serious injury due to a fall from a set of steps, face first on to some rather unforgiving concrete. It took a month of physicians visits and other treatments.
3. And finally, I was really not in the mood to post, because I was horrified at the astounding political developments that have been going on in the land of my birth, all directly related to the illegitimate tenancy of the orange monster living in the White House.

One and two were manageable, if unwanted, events that are a part of living that unpredictable roller coaster ride that is life. Item three, on the other hand, was a series of events I would never, ever, have expected to see in my lifetime and are an abomination to the political commonwealth that a lot of other decent folks and I have given their life to serving. Seriously, the events of the last two years have not been normal – but the events of the first four months of 2019 have been especially disturbing. I cannot stress strongly enough how not normal and how completely dangerous this is. The Republic of the United States is at a Constitutional crossroads, and what really galls me the most, is how many people are completely unconcerned about it. or worse yet, actively cheering this ugly orange monster on in his assault on the Constitution and the rule of law.

There have been a lot of events since January that are despicable, but first and foremost has to have been the Mueller report. Detailed within it are acts of lawlessness and immorality that it clearly sets out a referall to the Congress via impeachment. However, Mueller himself punted on the question of the President’s criminality, and because he did so, he failed his country in a gigantic way. People say Mueller was being honest and conservative. I’m with Bill Maher when he says, that is utter bullshit.

As a result, Trump is claiming that he was “vindicated” when in fact the report explicitly says, “It does not exonerate the President”. It actually reveals him to be every bit as worthless as I stated that he would be here on these pages during the 2016 campaign.

[The] Mueller report sets out substantial evidence that Trump criminally obstructed justice in at least some instances. The former Justice Department and FBI official Chuck Rosenberg has said that, in the absence of the Justice Department guidelines against the indictment of a sitting president, as a prosecutor, he would have brought an obstruction case against Trump. Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates have made similar arguments. And while lawbreaking is not required for impeachment, it is notable both that all three serious efforts to impeach a president in U.S. history have involved allegations of legal violations and that two of those three instances—against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton—concerned criminal behavior, specifically obstruction of justice.

But any discussion of impeachment that focuses on the Mueller report alone, much less the possible criminal conduct detailed in the report, risks leaving out the obvious. The potentially impeachable offenses committed by the president go far, far beyond the scope of what Mueller investigated. Any impeachment inquiry should consider that conduct as well.

What about his recent instructions to Border Patrol officers, as reported by CNN, to disobey the courts in turning back asylum seekers? His repeated calls for the criminal prosecution of his political rivals? His demands for the U.S. Postal Service to dramatically raise rates for shipping Amazon packages, for no obvious reason other than to punish Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos? His rescinding of the security clearances of a number of his high-profile critics, including former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan? Or consider his repeated decisions to overrule his own intelligence agencies in declassifying sensitive information related to the Russia investigation in order to score political points, with apparent disregard for the potential consequences to the country.

By my count Trump is now guilty of 10 or 11 impeachable offenses and that does not include the violations he has made of norms of Presidential behavior since taking office or his utterly amoral stance on governance and trying to improve the lot of the majority of the nation’s citizenry. And I, a simple lowly citizen and servant of the United States of America have had to sit back, in relative silence and horror and watch this cavalcade of evil unfold. Well no more. It’s time to go on the offensive, get off my ass and get back to the serious business of writing pointed attacks on this feckless piece of orangutan shit. It is 18 months to the next Presidential election and the stakes are huge, nothing less than the survival of American Democracy is on the line. To sit in silence out of some sort of “respect” for people who are undeserving of that respect is nothing short of criminal malfeasance. I will not be a party to that. Congress has a clear cut duty here and should have had articles of impeachment and citations for contempt of Congress ready a long time ago.

Taken as a whole, the picture is of a man who has no concept of the public interest as separate from his own, who has no ability to lead the country morally or even interest in doing so, who has repeatedly breached, in ways large and small, his obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” and “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Notably, Congress has pointed to violations of the oath of office in impeachment proceedings against Clinton, Nixon, and Andrew Johnson.

None of this is normal, and if you are Ok with it, then you too are a worthless human being who deserves to attacked with every bit of severity the rest of us can muster. Trust me on this, this is not the way the country is supposed to be.

The last few months have been incredibly hard for me to take and impossible for me to understand. Trump is an evil and worthless man who has to go, has to be removed from office NOW. You have to make a choice. You either stand for the Republic and the nation it can and should be, or you can be a craven coward and worthless sack of shit, like the guys at this place. Trust me; you don’t want to be like them. They are worthless slime. You want to be someone who stands up for the Republic against it’s most dangerous enemy. A least I do.

So saddle up Sancho. We’ve got some more windmills to destroy. And as much as I have criticized him in the past, Bill Kristol and I are in agreement here.

We've had public figures who sided with dictators abroad; we've had demagogues who indulged bigotry and conspiracy theories at home; we've had politicians with little respect for the rule of law or the Constitution. Until now we've not seen these features combined in a president.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 4, 2019

You just can’t say this enough.