Round 1: Impeachment Inquiry

Well, all it took was Trump to make a dumb phone call to the President of the Ukraine, and finally we're at the start of something big.

For weeks I've been complaining about Nancy Pelosi and her so-called "long game", which I saw not so much as brilliant planning but more like cowardice. I'm still not convinced she had that much of a plan going when Trump made it impossible for her to delay any longer by pretty much indicting himself with his stupid "explanation".

Just wait until he starts throwing his closest advisers under the bus, like Bill Barr and Ol' Man 9/11 (Rudy, obviously). When they finally realize Trump is serving them up to take the fall, watch how fast they cut a deal to avoid jail and spill the REAL beans on our sociopathic president.

This is the very first step in a long, arduous process. Remember Watergate took over two years to take Nixon down. During that time he easily cruised to a landslide win for a second term. But things are very different now. Nixon only had five months from the arrests at the Watergate until election day, and that simply wasn't enough time to build a case against him that would do any damage to his reelection.

Trump, on the other hand, has been vigorously investigated for well over a year now. Keep in mind that Congress STILL hasn't seen the fully unredacted Mueller report. I'm sure that will change in the near future. And now that the House is moving forward with the inquiry, they have the power of subpoena to get documents and compel people of interest to testify under oath.

Yes, things are looking up just slightly for our democracy. We won't be fully out of the woods until after next year's election, and only if we win both the White House and the Senate, while keeping the House of Representatives.

So, there is hope. To be continued...

The Ultimate Nightmare

I know it's been over six months since I've posted anything here.

Part of that is the fact that Facebook and Twitter have a much more immediate response.

Another part of that is outrage fatigue, which is a real thing and definitely a problem.

And finally, a small bit is sheer, unadulterated laziness. I will cop to that.

What finally got me to sit down and write something is a nagging feeling that we are witnessing the end of American Democracy as we know it.

Today's Trumpian outrage is indicative of what we can expect in the future, where he basically informed foreign governments that there will be NO penalty for them to interfere in our free elections, and in fact he is encouraging them to attack his opponents.

The way this is going, with it still 17 months to the election, we can assume that unless the GOP steps up and challenges Trump's legitimacy, we will likely have him around forever.

Here's how it will happen: Mitch McConnell will do nothing to prevent foreign interference in voting, as he has repeatedly refused to act on measures to ensure our voting machines are safe. He welcomes foreign hacking into the machine to ensure a Trump victory. And the foreign powers will be delighted at our leader being easily swayed by some cheap compliments and empty promises.

Unless the Democrats win BOTH Houses by overwhelming numbers, Trump will not be removed. Forget the presidential election for a minute; if he loses, he'll use his remaining four months in office to challenge the legitimacy of the results, and will refuse to leave office. If we don't have 2/3 of the Senate, we can't impeach him.

Regardless, he'll invoke an emergency order to suppress the results of the election, and when Congress challenges it, when it ends up before the Supreme Court he'll win with a 5-4 majority.

That's when we'll see "President-for-Life Donald Trump".

And the death of our democracy.

The infuriating thing about all of this is that it'll only take a few dozen men in the Senate brave enough to go against their party. But judging by their fearful actions so far, it looks like a very remote possibility.

I do know that the longer Nancy Pelosi balks at starting impeachment hearings, the more Trump is consolidating his power. If she waits too long, which will be not much later than the end of this summer, it'll be too late to stop him.

We need to hear Trump associates on the stand, under penalty of perjury, answering questions about the President and his family. The more people who testify, the more likely we'll see Trump's support in the Senate start to crumble. Especially when those witnesses realize that Trump will not be around to pardon them.

We are rapidly approaching a tipping point in our nation. I can see a time when the nightmarish fictional nation of Gilead will have a real-world metaphor right here in the USA.

I used to wonder how average people in Germany could sit and do nothing while their nation was taken over by a dictator.

Now, I can see how it happens. It simply takes good men to do nothing for evil to succeed.