Posted by Rude One
Let's get rid of one part of this in short order: Democrats in Congress
should be resisting Trump every step of the way. That includes pushing
hearings to crisis levels of antagonism, voting against every
unqualified candidate, and, of course, filibustering his Supreme Court
picks. It shouldn't even be up for discussion. They will lose and lose,
but Democratic House and Senate members would be fundamentally
misreading their marching, chanting, raging voters if they fail. As for
the fear that Republicans in the Senate will get rid of the filibuster
for Supreme Court nominations, you can be sure that the moment that
Democrats do refuse to allow a vote on whatever right-wing nutzoid Trump
tries to shove down America's throat, skeevy powermonger Mitch
McConnell is gonna change the rules with his disturbing semi-grin that's
a middle finger to his opponents. It's a question of when, not "if" on
the filibuster.
Democrats can spin this easily. They could say they won't vote on things
until the Muslim ban is halted. They could say that they won't vote for
Trump's Supreme Court picks because a majority of Americans don't think
he should be able to do so. They could stand up for the judiciary as
Trump keeps ignoring court orders.
Democratic voters are already fighting. They are mightily insulted and
want active rejection of all things Trump. These are flames that should
be fanned by Democrats in Congress until Republicans start to feel the
residual heat and are afraid of getting burned.
That's because, on some level, many Republicans realize that they own
this presidency and its actions. Oh, sure, sure, they're fine going
along with a great deal of dirt that Trump does. Except for the
pathetic, neutered goat bleatings of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and a handful
of others, Republicans are either conspicuously silent or hee-hawing in
support of the Muslim ban, and they're drooling at the prospect of
getting Scalia II on the court. But we're now just two weeks into the
Trump administration (insert your own retching sound), and we've got a Benghazi and multiple foreign crises. There's only so long that you can keep your head in the sand until you just suffocate.
Actually, it's unfair to compare the disastrous raid on al-Qaeda in
Yemen to Benghazi. What happened at the consulate in Libya was an
unexpected event. The Yemen raid was an American plan that had been
rejected by the Obama administration and then approved by Trump despite
the lack of intelligence that might have prevented all the deaths that occurred,
including a Navy SEAL and several children. In other words, Trump's
first military test was a clusterfuck of fail. And not a single hearing
has been scheduled nor have you heard a peep from Republicans.
And you might not, ever. You might not hear them say how utterly absurd
it is that Trump is treating the president of Mexico like he's a
gardener who cut a shrub at Mar-a-Lago too short. You might not hear
them even whisper that agitating China is just dumb. You might not hear
them wonder why the hell Trump is pissing on our relationship with
Australia, one of our most reliable allies in the world. You might hear
them cheering on another useless war, this time with Iran, because
that'd just fulfill a dream they've had since 1979. You will hear them
crapping themselves over any threat that's Muslimish while clamming up
over domestic terrorists like white supremacists and Breitbart's staff.
Still, we know that not only are Republicans cowards, but they're liars
and hypocrites who would dance on the corpses of dead children rather
than admit their ideology has failed. They'd rather learn to breathe
sand than lift their heads and walk upright because they're gonna get to
kick sick people off health insurance, discriminate against LGBT
Americans, and force women into back alley abortions, the trifecta of
quotidian cruelty they're begging to inflict.
So how do we get through to them? Because, see, we don't have two years
to wait for the congressional midterms. Hell, all we need is one
terrorist event in the United States, and Trump will declare martial law
because he's too dumb and deranged to know any other way to handle it.
Two plans: the first is already happening. Inundate the offices and
phone lines, especially of GOP representatives. Make their lives
miserable with people registering how angry they are. The reps, even in
gerrymandered districts, are more vulnerable than most senators. We gotta get people running against them. Put these assholes out on the curb. And make the rest beg for mercy.
And our activism has to target people who voted for Trump. Yeah, I know,
I know, they're loathsome racists or racist-adjacent. But there are a
hell of a lot of them who are regretting
their votes - the wayward Bernie voters, the "take him seriously, but
not literally" idiots, and the ones who realized that maybe getting into
a war with Mexico is a little worse than Hillary's emails.
Mostly, it all depends on the constant action of Democrats and
non-aligned progressives. Make sure Republicans know that they will be
held to account for what they do, not just Democrats. This is on the
GOP. Make them pay.
As
the Guardian points out, this has an important and likely not
accidental effect: it leaves the State Department entirely unstaffed
during these critical first weeks, when orders like the Muslim ban
(which they would normally resist) are coming down.
The
article points out another point worth highlighting: “In the past, the
state department has been asked to set up early foreign contacts for an
incoming administration. This time however it has been bypassed, and
Trump’s immediate circle of Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, son-in-law
Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus are making their own calls.”
(5) On Inauguration Day, Trump apparently filed his candidacy
for 2020. Beyond being unusual, this opens up the ability for him to
start accepting “campaign contributions” right away. Given that a
sizable fraction of the campaign funds from the previous cycle were paid
directly to the Trump organization in exchange for building leases,
etc., at inflated rates, you can assume that those campaign coffers are a
mechanism by which US nationals can easily give cash bribes directly to
Trump. Non-US nationals can, of course, continue to use Trump’s hotels
and other businesses as a way to funnel money to him.
(6)
Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft,
Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown.
This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the
most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for
it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the
government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if
anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been
traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.
Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier
(the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that
Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and
removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier
said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And
19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”
Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.
What does this all mean?
I
see a few key patterns here. First, the decision to first block, and
then allow, green card holders was meant to create chaos and pull out
opposition; they never intended to hold it for too long. It wouldn’t
surprise me if the goal is to create “resistance fatigue,” to get
Americans to the point where they’re more likely to say “Oh, another protest? Don’t you guys ever stop?” relatively quickly.
However, the conspicuous absence of provisions preventing them from executing any of the “next steps” I outlined yesterday,
such as bulk revocation of visas (including green cards) from nationals
of various countries, and then pursuing them using mechanisms being set
up for Latinos, highlights that this does not mean any sort of backing down on the part of the regime.
Note
also the most frightening escalation last night was that the DHS made
it fairly clear that they did not feel bound to obey any court orders. CBP continued to deny
all access to counsel, detain people, and deport them in direct
contravention to the court’s order, citing “upper management,” and the
DHS made a formal (but confusing) statement that they would continue to
follow the President’s orders. (See my updates from yesterday,
and the various links there, for details) Significant in today’s
updates is any lack of suggestion that the courts’ authority played a
role in the decision.
That
is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS
(and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other
branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all
of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean
nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts
are being ignored.
Yesterday was the trial balloon for a coup d’état against the United States. It gave them useful information.
