Donald Trump -- What He's Done, What We Need To Do

Professor Robert Reich penned a terrific, intelligent, calm, complete and, of course, very rational but  also brief piece on this President Trump that came out yesterday. It covers what Mr. Trump had done in these short, fast 7 months, why it's wrong--and even scary--and what we need to do.

Remove Him Now

We have endured Donald Trump for 7 months. Although he has had few legislative victories, he has almost single-handedly destroyed the moral authority of the presidency of the United States at home and abroad, brought us to the brink of a nuclear war without consulting anyone, and sown division and hatred.

He has given encouragement and legitimacy to the ugliest in America.

How can this nation endure another 41 months of this man?

We can’t wait for Robert Mueller’s evidence of Russian collusion. Even if Mueller finds that some of Trump’s aides colluded, Mueller might well find that Trump had “plausible deniability.” Top guns often arrange wrongdoing so the they can plausibly deny they knew it was occurring. That’s the art of the deal.

Let’s be clear. There is already enough evidence to impeach Trump on grounds of abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.

There is already enough evidence of mental impairment to invoke the 25th amendment.

I know, Republicans are in control of Congress. But this is no license for Trump to destroy the nation we love.

I know, removing Trump would mean having Mike Pence as president. But a principled right-winger is better for America and the world than an unhinged sociopath.

Republican as well as Democratic members of the House and Senate must commit themselves to removing this president.

Those of you represented by Democrats in the House or Senate must get their commitment to remove him, as soon as possible.

Those of you represented by Republicans in the House or Senate must let them know that you will campaign vigorously against them in 2018 unless they commit to removing Trump as well.

It is time to end this disgrace.

And he's so, so right. On all.

We need to get busy.

Links:

Robert Reich

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

Robert Reich

Robert Reich - Home | Facebook

Impeaching Trump May Not Be Necessary to Remove Him

The Washington Post makes an excellent point, too.

The greatest threat facing the United States is its own president

Quote of the Day -- On Jesus

“Let’s remember, Jesus was a Jewish man of color, born homeless to an unwed teenager, who spent his formative years as an illegal immigrant before returning to his home country to hang out with twelve men, prostitutes, and socially untouchable tax collectors while he taught a radical social doctrine of equality, love, and forgiveness that included paying taxes, free healthcare, and the sharing of resources within a community.”

--Quote from FB friend Diana Pleasant-Hughes' page

Bible Facts on a Sunday

I always refer back to what Jesus said about "homosexuals" and those same-sex attracted.

That is, nothing.

Rather Frightening Facts About This Trump Presidency

I was especially struck by an article today in The Atlantic.

Donald Trump Is a Lame-Duck President

There are some things about this that need to be pointed out.

First, I and a lot of people out here think this is true, unequivocally.

Second, that he is or is considered to be a "lame duck" President in not only his first term but in the first seven months of his presidency is incredible. It's stunning. It is, again, as so much of his presidency, unprecedented. Not only has this never happened before to a president at any time in his presidency but it's stunning it has become so and yet more stunning because he's done this to himself. His own actions and words and miscalculations have brought this upon him.

Third, it may well be good because his judgment is so poor on so many topics facing the nation but...

It's bad for the nation because he's not leading, he's not governing. He's not doing nor is he now able to do those things for which he was put into office. This is just one indication of what the nation can expect with this being true.

It's bad news for stocks 

if Trump is now a lame duck

Lots of us warned about a President Trump.  Lots of us warned last year. Lots of those who did warn were Republicans, too. 

Now it's become true and those "chickens have come home to roost", so to speak.

We warned of a Trump presidency. We feared it. Now our fears have come true. Here are, already, some of the things that have been written and said about our nation, due to this man and his presidency.

The G20 proves it. The world no longer 

looks to America for leadership

Gergen: Trump no longer seen 

as world leader at G20

Because of Trump, 

U.S. No Longer World's Most Powerful Country

U.S. Has 'Resigned' As 

Leader Of Free World, Says Fareed Zakaria

Even people in his own political party are questioning him, if not out and out against him.

GOP senator questions Donald Trump's 

stability, competence

2 GOP senators question Trump's competence

Trump Comments on Race Open Breach 

With CEOs, Military and GOP

Lindsey Graham: 

'Half of what Trump does is not OK

McCain threatens to block 

Trump's Pentagon nominee

We now fear for our nation, for our nation's strength, our nation's future.

Links:

Washington Post Gloats: Trump is Lame Duck President

Why a Lame-Duck Trump Is Even More Dangerous 

Mark this date: Donald Trump is now a lame-duck president

Donald Trump Is Already a Lame Duck

Trump Disbands Manufacturing And Business Advisory Councils

Amid wave of defections, Trump's business, jobs councils disband

Trump shuts down CEO advisory councils

Now charities are dumping Trump, too

16 Charities Have Cancelled Fundraisers At Mar-A-Lago

How Donald Trump Fails Logic and Presidential Thinking

Quotes of the Day -- Now More Than About Ever

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace."

"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals."

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Zeitgeist Has Turned on Mr. Trump

Even before this Charlottesville, Virginia protest and killing, Donald Trump hit new lows in support. The fact is, he lost the popular vote in the November election, getting 3 million fewer votes than his opponent and he's gone downhill ever since.

President Trump's Approval Rating 

Just Hit Another All-Time Low

It's only gotten worse, much worse, since.

Trump's approval rate at all-time low; 

slip in support among base

Anti-Trump rally draws thousands for Presidents return to NYC

Anti-Trump rally draws thousands 

for President's return to NYC

Merck stock spikes after CEO leaves Trump council 

Another bails.

Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank 

says he is leaving Trump

Trump Takes Aim at Executives 

Leaving Presidential Council 

This just broke in the last hour.

Walmart Chief Joins C.E.O. Protests

This hit today:

After Charlottesville, Business Leaders Are Dumping the Trump Administration

Trump Gives White Supremacists 

an Unequivocal Boost

A Trump meltdown for the ages

David Duke loved Donald Trump's 

news conference comments

"Why we voted for Donald Trump": David Duke explains the white supremacist Charlottesville protests

This came out yesterday, also.

Carl Bernstein wants press to probe 

secret anti-Trump sentiment in GOP

What we don't know is a) how we get rid of this President and b) how we all pull together, now or in time to come.

But we must come together.

What We're Fighting, 70 Years On

From the movie 1972 "Cabaret"

The Great Single Airport, Billion-Plus Dollar Bamboozle

Yes sir, Kansas City.  The powers that be in the city, from the Airport Authority to City Hall to the Mayor's office to The Kansas City Star to now, heck, even George Brett have all decided we cannot and will not renovate and renew our only 40 year old airport. They and more have all decided we must, must walk away from our existing facilities, terminals and all, and build anew.

They decided this long ago.

Our Airport Authority decided it first and now they've gotten everyone else to go along with it and its successfully--for them--snowballed, ever since.

The thing is on this, besides the fact that they want us all to accept this fiscally irresponsible idea and expense but they also are, in no way, addressing who's going to pay for it or how our flight ticket prices will increase because of it all.

Forget the fact that, besides being, again, fiscally irresponsible and very expensive, very soon, once it goes through (and it will go through, rest assured), they also no way want to mention how environmentally irresponsible this is.

WE'RE GOING TO THROW AWAY MANY, MANY BUILDINGS OUT THERE.

We're going to just walk away from them.  Poof.

Then, last evening, I even saw this beauty of an article from The Star:

Editorial: Why an increase in 

airline passenger fees could actually be

 a good deal for passengers

So not only is this whole expense going to cost more than 1 billion dollars, it is also completely, totally unnecessary. The current facilities could be renovated for the security they're calling for. They won't but we should.

And now they want us to believe the inevitable increase in our passenger fees is---wait for it---GOING TO BE GOOD FOR US!!

BWAHAHAHAHAHA

If I don't laugh, I cry.

The one gain we've gotten out of this is that finally, finally The Star is acknowledging that the prices and costs for our flights are going to go up.

Small progress.

How's This For Irony, Kansas City?

Last evening, there was a local protest against the racism and ugliness and ignorance and even stupidity of the Charlottesville, Virginia protests and murder. There were lots of them, city to city, across the nation.

What was ironic about ours, you might ask?

Stand Against Hate
Sunday 5 PM · JC Nichols Memorial Fountain · Kansas City
Shared to People Power KC

It was held at a public fountain honoring a well-known racist. 

A person significantly, personally, publicly and professionally responsible for the segregation of our city that lasts and still exists and divides us and keeps people down right to today.

The Racist, Misogynist, Elitist World That Is Donald Trump's America

It has been quite a week.

It's been nearly stunning what all took place in the last 7 days. First there was this:

Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve

Inside Google and Out

It seems a young engineer at Google wrote not just a sexist memo but a very sexist one, declaring Google's inclusive culture, including women, if you can imagine that, was not just negative but "bad for business."  From the NYT:

His 10-page memo, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” argued that “personality differences” between men and women — like a woman having a lower tolerance for stress — help explain why there were fewer women in engineering and leadership roles at the company. He said efforts by the company to reach equal representation of women in technology and leadership were “unfair, divisive, and bad for business.”

So women, who make up more than half of our nation's population, shouldn't be included in technology, according to this young man, this Einstein.

Wonderful, right?

The week got worse.

This happened Friday night.

White Nationalists March on University of Virginia

I thought we were better than this. I thought we were smarter than this. I thought we learned all these lessons, especially about race but about sexism, too, certainly.

When you pair this with the fact that a President and an entire political party just tried to pass a "health care law" in our nation's capitol that would have cut between 22 to 32 million Americans from health insurance rolls, it's easy to see that Donald Trump's America, the nightmare come true, is, in fact, a racist, sexist, misogynistic and elitist one. Great for white people and wealthy ones, at that, and corporations but God help you if you're anything else. If you're female or Black or Hispanic or poor or, heck, middle-class and/or working-class, it sucks to be you just now.

And this doesn't even touch the subject of the ugliness and stupidity and vitriol that came out of the White House and this President's mouth this last week. That may get us all, not just the nation but the world into a nuclear war and nuclear winter. I'm not even touching that.

Welcome to Donald Trump's and the Right Wing's and the Republican Party's America.

Again, God help us.

You Know What Takes Guts?

Guts is throwing off your hand-me-down, 2000 year old religion you inherited from your parents, and they from theirs, ad infinitum, and realizing and accepting that we're all there is and we're all there ever was and there is no Heaven, no Hell, no "God" and that we just have to and ought to do what's right and good and beautiful and fair, just because it's the right thing to do and because this is all there is. Not because if you do anything bad you'll be punished, not at all.

Guts is accepting this is all there is.  Nothing to run to. Nothing further, bigger, better to hope or plan or work for.

Guts is realizing and accepting that this, the here and the now, the way it is now is what there is to work for. The people that are around you now, the people that are around all of us now.

That nothing else matters because there is nothing else.

The staring oblivion and the abyss in the eye.

The realizing and accepting and facing this is all there is.


But that's too much for too many people.

Most people.

Far too many.


Do you have that much guts?

Do you have that much courage?

Trump Supporters

Homer and Goober discuss national and international politics.

Higher and Yet Higher Health Care Costs Thanks to This President

Yes, sir, all that bloviating and equivocating this Republican President is doing is no way going to be good for your or my health care costs in this nation. The health care companies, the pharmaceuticals and insurance companies, especially, are using it to, yet again, still more, just keep on raising and raising their prices---and so, our costs.

This came out yesterday, from the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, no less.

Study says Trump moves trigger health premium jumps for 2018

The Trump administration's own actions are triggering double-digit premium increases on individual health insurance policies purchased by many consumers, a nonpartisan study has found.

So to all the Trump voters and supporters, once again, to you and The Donald, both, we say, THANK, FELLAS!!

The Honkies and Crackers Have Decided to Fight Affirmative Action

Yet one more shameful, completely ignorant thing this administration out of the White House is going against.

Justice Dept. to Take On Affirmative Action 

in College Admissions

Ignore, forget that Black Americans have been discriminated against and held back in so many ways in this nation, since first we brought them to the land. Sure, forget all that. How would you know any of that if you're, first, born very white and second, born to money and privilege and exclusivity your entire life?

David Alan Grier got it so right the other night on Jimmy Kimmel's show.

Entertainment Overnight -- RIP

Quote of the Day -- On Race in America

William Faulkner wrote these very insightful, telling, even indicting lines all the way back in 1956. They could not be more true of us, then as well as, sadly, even now, today, this much father along in 2017.

That’s what the white man in the South is afraid of: that the Negro, who has done so much with no chance, might do so much more with an equal one that he might take the white man’s economy away from him, the Negro now the banker or the merchant or the planter and the white man the sharecropper or the tenant. That’s why the Negro can gain our country’s highest decoration for valor beyond all call of duty for saving or defending or preserving white lives on foreign battlefields, yet the Southern white man dares not let that Negro’s children learn their ABC’s in the same classroom with the children of the white lives he saved or defended.

More should read the entire, brief article:

Southern Harm, by William Faulkner | Harper's

Additional link:

The White Man's Fear of the Educated Negro

We Are One

From Carl Sagan, Nov. 9, 1934 - Dec. 20, 1996

Links:

The Carl Sagan Portal

Carl Sagan - Wikipedia

Entertainment Overnight -- Mashup, Beautiful