December 21, 2017, Happy Solstice
Well, I've been remiss in blogging all month, but on the occasion on the darkest night of the year in this, the darkest year in the history of our republic, what the hell, right?
A Democratic Congresswoman from California suggests that the President will fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller tomorrow or over the weekend, taking advantage of the Christmas media lull (and Congress leaving town) to do so. Of course, another analyst says that the President might avoid the potential firestorm of firing Mueller and instead fire Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, the man who appointed Mueller. Meanwhile, the President himself expressly denied the rumor about firing Mueller.
In other extra-constitutional news, a jury convicted acquitted six people who were on trial for protesting the inauguration who were charged with "guilt by association" because others (almost certainly right-wing agents provacateurs) broke some windows and inflicted other property damage; they were facing decades of potential prison time, in a deliberate DELIBERATE effort to flush the First Amendment down the toilet and criminalize protests against this Government and this President, Vladimir Putin style. The authoritarians now running Washington, however, plan to try again with the next batch of protesters.
Meanwhile (via Candace) Sec Def Mattis went down to GTMO to give a pep talk to the troops holding America's most famous gulag.
We won't even talk about a tax bill that will be used as an excuse to gut what's left of the welfare state where 83% of the benefits goes to the top 1% passed on purely partisan lines where Republican members of Congress and the President himself stand to personally benefit to the tune of millions and millions of dollars.) Or that a court just threw out a suit challenging the President's blatant abuse of the Emoluments clause, insisting that Congress had to do this, as if the feckless Ryan and McConnell were remotely interested in attacking a President of their own party.
And if these assaults on the rule of law weren't enough (and this is just a tiny fraction of what's going on), the President has been furious in the pace at which he has nominated right-wing maniacs go the bench and to U.S. Attorney posts.
When democracy has been allowed to play out in state-wide (as opposed to GOP gerrymandered) elections, the Democratic candidates have recently prevailed in really blue NJ, newly blue VA, and deep red AL; this is some cause for optimism, even as the Democrats do what Democrats do and take great relish and delight in shivving one of their own and force Al Franken to resign for nothing. Even as he noted, the President, with numerous allegations of sexual harassment and worse against him (including a famous video confession) remains in office, unscathed. Which, given everything else, really is a wonderful load of crap and fabulous diversion from a dismantling of many of the values of our republic (or what we thought of as the values of our republic).
Don't know. Maybe I'm just in a dark mood, it being the darkest day (and longest night) of the year. I don't know. I should feel a little better. Loquacious Pup is home from college for a time. I've tried to step up my own personal volunteer work this year (particularly with respect to new immigrants), and I've been spending a lot of time with my good friend Donald J. Putin on twitter. And hey, Festivus, followed by Christmas, are coming up fast. So... yeah.
Happy Solstice. I guess. Try to make this a better world. The world itself seems to need the help right now.