Rage Against Trump

My only problem with the House of Representatives impeaching Trump when it did is that it did it soon.

Thanks to Bob Woodward's latest book, "Rage," which comes out on September 15, there's plenty of proof for impeachment and enough to ensure a conviction in the Senate.

Seems Trump know how bad COVID-19 was back in late January and early February but he didn't want to tell anyone how bad it would get because he didn't want to panic anyone and cause the economy - his only strong suit in the 2020 presidential campaign - to crater.  But it did crater, largely in part because Trump tried to downplay the pandemic, which he continues to do today without embarrassment.  Information he had that could have saved lives and even his Presidency was cast aside for political reasons.

Oh yeah, there's more.  Woodward has assembled numerous indictments of Trump's ability to lead - that is, he has none - from people as diverse as Rex Tillerson, James Mattis and Anthony Fauci.  Especially indicting is Woodward's quote from former Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, writing that Coats "continued to harbor the secret belief, one that had grown rather than lessened, although unsupported by intelligence proof, that [Vladimir] Putin had something on Trump. . . ..  How else to explain the president's behavior? Coats could see no other explanation."

And, of course, no one can see another explanation either.

Woodward also reveals that Trump's association with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has gone far beyond détente and blossomed into a full "bromance," with Trump gushing over Kim's abilities as a leader and agreeing with him that Barack Obama is a rhymes-with-glass-pole, Trump telling Woodward that Obama is "overrated" as a leader and laughing at the idea that blacks are victims of systemic racism, a belief that Woodward, a privileged white man like Trump, subscribes to.

As does everyone else with a brain.

I hope the election ends with a Biden victory, and I hope the time between now and November 3 passes soon.  I don't think I can take much more. 

And in the meantime, can we impeach Trump again? 

Goodbye, Uncle Rex

Rex Tillerson is out as Secretary of State. Donald Trump unexpectedly fired him after rumors of Tillerson's departure kept persisting even as the Secretary of State himself vowed to stay on for as long as he could.  Which wasn't very long.

Out most avuncular Secretary of State since Dean Acheson did his best to reassure allies of American commitment to global stability - and he even tried to keep America in international accords like the Paris Agreement and the Iran deal - and he was pretty much the only thing standing between Trump and total chaos (except for Defense Secretary James Mattis).  Now what can we do?  Pray.  Because nothing is going to stop Trump from pursuing his own dangerous, risky foreign policy and making the sort of rash decisions that Tillerson always tried to keep him from going through with.   Trump isn't going to have anyone holding him back.     

CIA Director Mike Pompeo is expected to replace him, and he's supposed to be simpatico with rump on foreign affairs.  The one good thing about this is that Pompeo has the same important qualification for the job of Secretary of State that Tillerson had - he's not John Bolton.

But then, Pompeo probably got the job because, unlike Bolton, he doesn't have an unsightly, camera-unfriendly mustache.

Because some guys just look all wrong with a mustache.

Go ask Alice. :-O   

Going Nuclear

I thought we'd be spared any more saber rattling between Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un.  U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (above) has been in talks with the Chinese in an attempt to cool the tensions between the United States and North Korea and said there would be "lines of communications" with Pyongyang to prevent what Tillerson called the "dark situation" of a nuclear crisis. He even got China to approve sanctions on North Korea.

Then Trump told him to cut it out.

Trump told Tillerson that his efforts were a waste of time and added, "Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"

This sounds like a man who sees the danger of the North Korean crisis and is ready to take bold and decisive action to resolve it.

I meant Rex Tillerson.

It just flabbergasts me that Trump would rather risk - nay, start - a full-scale war in Asia and turn half if not all of Korea in to an ash pit than do anything that could avoid it.  Such a war could easily engulf a good chunk of the rest of the planet.

Both Trump and Tillerson have grandchildren.  The difference between the two is that Tillerson, who also opposed pulling out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, wants his grandchildren to live in a clean, safe world.

Tillerson obviously views his grandchildren differently.  He actually loves them.

Fire and Rain

The sanctions against North Korea to deter its development of a nuclear weapon this past Sunday came too late, as Kim Jong Un's government reportedly miniaturized a nuclear device to fit onto one of its missiles, which was reported on Tuesday.

The dear leader promised "fire and fury" against his adversary like the world "has never seen before."

Kim said that?  No, Donald Trump!

Later it was reported that North Korea was considering an attack on Guam.

As dangerous as Kim and his paranoia toward the United States are, Trump's airheaded machismo is exponentially worse.  The only way to deal with North Korea at this point is to try to find a diplomatic solution to avoid a military confrontation that could lead to a full-scale war worse than the one on the Korean peninsula in the early 1950s.  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been making one declaration after another that the U.S. has no intention of removing Kim from power and uniting Korea under the government in Seoul, and now Trump has undermined him by answer Kim's nasty rhetoric with even nastier rhetoric.  With North Korea promising to rain fire down on the United States - including the East Coast! - those fallout shelters I used to see as a kid are going to have to be put back into service.  

And the Mormons can be expected to congregate en masse along the banks of the Missouri River for the Second Coming when Moroni blows his horn. :-O  

And remember, South Korea would be annihilated by a North Korean attack and and Japan is under greater threat than we are by virtue of its proximity to Korea.  South Korea's forces are too small to beat back North Korea alone, and Japan doesn't have much of a military to begin with these days.  Guess who's expected to step into the breach.  Guess.

Oh yeah, only 37 percent of voters approve of the way Trump is handling the Korea crisis. Good news, until you realize the 37 percent are the same voters that Steve Bannon wants to keep Trump connected to.

With hopes for a negotiated settlement with North Korea slipping away, we have to pin our hopes on the President . . . of China. Xi Jinping is the last person who can talk Kim Jong Un of the ledge over self-destruction.  Kim is, somewhat ironically, interested in survival, and if Xi can convince his fellow Communist leader that restraint in handling nuclear arms is his best recourse, that will help a lot.  But I don't see how he does that.  I don't even see how anyone keeps Trump restrained.

In the meantime, we have Trump trash-talking a guy who might be able to take out Los Angeles in a few months and take out Guam sooner.  I've never been afraid of nuclear war in my entire life, not even when Reagan was President, but I am now.  Even with Secretary Tillerson saying that Americans can "sleep well at night."  

And deciding to hold three consecutive Olympiads in the Far East has turned out to be a really stupid idea. :-( 

Travel News

The partial travel ban that the Supreme Court allowed to go into effect this past week allows people from the Muslim-majority countries of Syria, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and Iran to come into the country as long as they have immediate family members, have a job, or are enrolled as students in an U.S. college or a university, as well as people from these countries who have already been approved for a short-term visa (or have already begun applying for visa), and people already approved as refugees. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and first-time tourists from these countries can't come, though fiancés have since been allowed in.  The Supreme Court will look at the entirety of the  travel ban and rule on it accordingly in the fall.  Three justices are on record as saying that would uphold the whole ban.  One of them was Neil Gorsuch.  (The others were Justices Thomas and Alito.)  Yeah, the whole damn thing is going to be upheld.    

As if the ban hasn't made a mockery out of out foreign-office apparatus, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is getting pretty steamed, as are many congressional Republicans,  over the 31 percent spending cut the Trump White House is planning for the State Department.  Several key positions remain unfulfilled, and Tillerson - who's lost arguments on key foreign policy positions to Steve Bannon, the dark overlord of the Trump White House - wants to know how he can do his job.  So do I.  But he seems like he's inclined to tough it out and make the best out of a bad situation.

In the meantime, I got my new passport, much sooner than expected.  Thanks, Uncle Rex.  I have a feeling I'm going to need it very, very soon.  But in the meantime, I have a nice little folder to smooth out my receipts in.           

An Open Letter To Rex Tillerson, U.S. Secretary of State

Dear Secretary Tillerson:

Congratulations!  On your job? No, not that - I'm congratulating you on the fact that you're getting this open letter I'm writing to you, as open letters are a distinction I bestow onto very few people (although I wish I hadn't wasted it on Anthony Weiner).  And I've written this open letter because I actually like you.

I know a lot of people don't like you, Mr. Secretary, but I do, although I can't explain why.  So here's why I feel compelled to write you an open letter today.  You know that Paris thing?  Not the French election, the agreement to do something about climate change, which President Obama helped negotiate and signed back in 2015 and which your boss, Donald J. Trump, wants to pull out of. I hear that you support keeping the United States in the agreement and that you believe that climate change is real.  Yes! Thank you!  You show great genius, Mr. Secretary, because, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, genius is being able to hold two contradictory ideas in one's mind simultaneously.  Or, in your case, you, as Exxon's former CEO, think oil is an essential fuel for the future . . . and you want to do something about climate change!       

So here's the deal, Mr. Secretary.  Your boss, Donald J. Trump, is going to the Group of Seven summit later this month, and I assume you're tagging along. He says we won't decide on an American withdrawal - an "Amexit" - from the Paris Agreement until after he's conferred with the leaders of the other six nations in the group.  You think the agreement is important, you think we should stay in it so we don't become a total pariah on this planet, and you're the Secretary of State.  Here's my simple request:  Make sure you get your boss on board with this deal! 

I know your boss, Donald J. Trump, thinks global warming is a hoax, although he believed it before he didn't, and that he canceled federal programs Barack Obama had started to make us compliant with the agreement, but several states, including California, and many cities and towns are already pursuing climate-change-fighting programs, and so state and local action may compensate for federal action and allow us to remain on the right side of history.  In other words, we can stay in the agreement without your boss, Donald J. Trump, having to do a thing to implement it.  Your boss keeps his promises with his base, we stay in the deal and let folks like Jerry Brown take the lead, and you get to save face with the rest of the world for the sake of international diplomacy.  Everyone's a winner!

Yes, Mr. Secretary, I know my idea is a crazy one, but it just might be crazy enough to work.  So please, whatever you do, keep telling your boss to keep this country in the Paris Agreement, and those of us who believe in climate change, as you do, will take it from there at the state and local level, at least until we get a new President.  Of course, when your boss leaves office, he'll be out of work, and so will you.  But here's the best part - you'll get to spend more time with your grandchildren.  And if you help save the Paris Agreement, you'll know that they will benefit from it the most.

Sincerely,

Steven Maginnis

P.S.  I'm not kidding when I say this Paris Agreement is important for the planet's future.  Don't do what this country did a hundred years ago; it wouldn't participate in another international agreement hammered out in France, the Treaty of Versailles, and so we didn't join the League of Nations, and we all know how that turned out.  Ask anyone in Poland.

Trump To Planet: F*** YOU!

Okay, everybody, resist this!

Donald Trump took his biggest swing yet at stopping environmental progress last week, reversing Barack Obama's clean-power plan to reduce carbon emissions from coal-powered electricity-generating plants, regulations on curbs of emissions from oil production, restrictions on hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking"), and a ban on coal leasing on federal lands.  "We're going to go in a different direction," a senior White House official told reporters ahead of last Tuesday's order. "The previous administration devalued workers with their policies. We can protect the environment while providing people with work."

Ah yes, work in the energy sector . . . opportunities for work in every part of it - oil, coal, gas - except solar, wind and other renewables.

I feel like a cannibal who's overeaten - I want to throw up my hands.  Although the Paris agreement, which Trump wants to cancel, was not mentioned, this policy reversal means that the U.S. Government won't be doing its part to curb greenhouse-gas emissions at least for the next four years - and by 2021, it may be too late.   I sure would like to know how we can protect the environment and provide all of these jobs in a fossil-fuel economy.  Maybe Trump has a secret plan, like the one Nixon had to end the war in Vietnam (which the North Vietnamese did by winning it).

The good news in this - and I know I'm grasping at straws here - is that environmental groups are already planning to sue to prevent this rollback from taking place, and there are all sorts of legal hurdles to keep Trump's actions from taking effect immediately.  Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson - a former oilman, no less - supports the Paris agreement, meaning we still need to find a a way to honor it it if Trump takes Tillerson's advice and stays in.  Several businesses that use a lot of energy - including General Electric and Wal-Mart! - are going ahead with their own plans to reduce fossil-fuel dependency.  Also, several states, like California, are pursuing their own environmental agendas and pushing for greenhouse-gas reductions.

State-level action.  And isn't that what EPA chief Scott Pruitt wants? ;-)

Oh yeah, where I live, we've had a couple of inches of rain in the past week, and we may get a couple more this week.  I know this is a rainy time of year, but that much rain in under two weeks?  The line is, "April showers bring May flowers," not "April downpours bring May flowers!"  Climate change is making weather more extreme.

Did I happen to mention that my area is under a flood watch as I type this?

P.S.  Don't start acting smug about all this, Hill-bots; Hillary Clinton promoted fracking in other countries as Secretary of State and said that anti-fracking activists should "get a life." 

Status Rex

Donald Trump made his choice for Secretary of State official by naming Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, for the post.  Tillerson has no diplomatic experience but has done business in various countries and thus has had to practice corporate diplomacy, which I assume his is biggest qualification for the job. He interestingly accepts, despite heading an oil company, that climate change is a reality, in contrast to the man who appointed him.  That would be a good thing when you remember that the Paris Agreement on climate change is a diplomatic pact, so that would be one of two good reasons to hope he gets confirmed.  That and he's not John Bolton.

The only problem is that he has close ties to Vladimir Putin, and that has caused concern among Senate Democrats and even some Senate Republicans who would have to vote to confirm him.  The fear is that he'd be happy to give Putin a pass on bilateral disagreements that the U.S. ought to stand firm on.  In light of revelations that the Russians may have been responsible for  hacking in to the Democratic National Committee's e-mails and given them to WikiLeaks, that's a legitimate concern.   On the other hand . . . the CIA charge into Russian hacking in to the DNC's computer has produced skepticism among those who note that the CIA has produced no hard evidence that it was indeed the Russians who hacked the DNC e-mails, and there is also the FBI's disagreement on the motive behind the hacking.  (The FBI doesn't think it was done to help Trump, apparently.)  One of my friends, an online columnist, says that the charges against the Russians are just another effort to stoke anti-Russian paranoia among Americans and start a new cold war to keep Americans too afraid to reject this country's political status quo.  My friend is not a Trump supporter, by the way.

Things are going to get more interesting than I thought . . ..