Like a good Fascist

I will say one thing about Trump, he has kept his campaign promises. But that's only a virtue if the pledge you make isn't wicked.

Nothing that's happening with the separation of children from parents surprises me in the least. During the campaign, Trump was adamant on detaining immigrants at the border, with expelling illegals and refusing "frivolous" asylum requests.

I heard him say he would do it humanely. Nobody asked him how his policy could be performed benevolently. A reporter taking him seriously might have asked if he planned to put more money into building more detention centers, more vehicles, more supplies and hiring (qualified) guards? Or was he going to wait until Walmart closes a few stores? (Trump really should go easier on Amazon.) All of this might cost more than his wall. He should have been pressed on this during the election campaign.

Instead, as we're seeing, Trump would rather eat corn nuts for every meal every day of his remaining life than send one more buck toward making detention and processing somehow humane. He despises Hispanics so much that details aren't worth his effort, and definitely aren't worth any money, as hurricane Maria showed.

So, Trump will alter his plans under pressure. The government might allow parents to stay with their children, and that would be somewhat more humane at the beginning.

But it won't stay so that humane. What Trump will be refugee camps and ghettos, depending on whether it's an urban or rural environment. My bet is on the camps. How badly will they deteriorate? It could become a major atrocity because he has shown an uninterest in details that require it. He approaches his work as an authoritarian, and he presumes anything he trusts to be there will there.

He stepped up arrests at the border, for that he needs more police, then more trucks to transport immigrants, then detentionaries to keep them warehoused. These will require guards, then energy for heat in the winter. (I'm supposing AC would be a luxury.) Then food and water. Update: Since he has already separated 20,000 children from families, it has multiplied the number of facilities by at least two. Children are going to require care, somebody's going to have to change the diapers. Trump doesn't even think about all this, but to perform the stepped-up seizure and imprisonment without committing an atrocity, he needs far more resources than he started out with. He needs infrastructure he doesn't have.

Instead of assuming all Hispanic immigrants to be potential criminals, it would be far easier to arrest only the ones that ARE criminals. It would certainly be easier to house and feed only those that break real laws, the way the Founders meant it.

I say "real" laws because there is nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to regulate immigration. Though, to be clear, it does put the fed in charge of naturalizing immigrants. However, not until a hundred years after Independence were the first immigration laws passed. The only way the laws have stood up since is that immigration courts are not real courts. They're like hearing rooms of the executive branch. The "judges" are really civil servants working for the president, not judges appointed for life. So, if an immigrant wanted to challenge immigration laws, it would be in immigration court. The case would not be a judicial; the appeal would go to the AG, not to a real judge. If a non-immigrant wanted to challenge them, then the "real" court would say they have no standing to make the challenge. They're not a party with interest in the outcome. So, the immigration system has stood balanced on loopholes.

I expect my government to arrest criminals. I don't expect it to make America whiter. Purification of the American pedigree is not its cause. Such a thing has never existed. For Trump supporters, lashing out at other races is not only foolish and futile, but it makes everybody more miserable, including the Trumpers. They aim for a purer race, and the only thing they'll learn is it will solve nothing and make life a lot worse as it fails.

Unfortunately, I expect conditions for the growing number of detained immigrants to continue to worsen. As heinous as it is, the breaking of families is not what underlies this problem. If Trump stops breaking families, we'll get refugee camps and ghettos, and conditions in them will deteriorate because Trump and his henchmen in Congress will never provide funds to make the places inhabitable.

No, Trump's immigration policy is the real problem, and racism is the wickedness at its root. The camps and the detention centers are symptoms, the growing sores on the land.

Collusion not illegal? Try Subversion

While I agree that legal definitions must be precise. Public opinion doesn't turn on legal arguments.

Take the word collusion. Republicans are fond of pointing out, "That ain't no crime."

Neither is copying unless it's plagiarism or counterfeiting.

Neither is fibbing, except when it's defamation.

Neither is a traffic accident, except when it's a hit-and-run.
 
Neither is sex unless it's rape. 

Collusion is a general term for actions that might have been illegal. The press likes the word because they don't have to say "alleged."

However, the actions being discussed are not that innocuous. I can suggest a much better word than collusion to describe what happened between the Trump administration, the Russians, our election system, and our government:

SUBVERSION.

Now, when I put it like that, it sounds illegal and threating. Maybe it's because the Cold War wore it out that it hasn't been used. However, since "collusion" is being scoffed at, we might now have a good reason to dust off the word "subversion." Also, ask them what might happened in the Cold War if Russia did to us then what it did in 2016 and whether the Conservatives would be so obdurate about whether it was a crime.

Ironic Republicans, so guarded against subversion for generations, are now welcoming it in the person of Smugly the Clown and the Smugly family.

I suggest that "subversion" is the only term we ought to use to describe the crimes against our country.

Only Trump could have spurned Canada

Speaking on CNN, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said Trump's retailatory Tweet to Trudeau was Trump's effort to look tough before the big Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader.

No, Trump's implosion at the "G6+1 Clown" and explosion afterward was not a strategy. It's what Trump always does. A strategy implies some kind of change in behavior for the needs of the moment.

I'm not worried about the Korean meeting. Kim and Trump are like Hitler and Stalin. They like each other. Authoritarians often do. Kim's not going to give up his nukes (which were finished under Trump, BTW.) Trump's not going to stop US-South Korea war games. He's got too much of a hard on for hard power. Though he might step them back a little: pretend the forces are invading the Philippines instead of Kim's feifdom.

The worst that could happen is Kim might give Trump some good advice on how to run a prison state. I'm not too worried about that. Trump's not capable of learning anything. He's all 'tude.

Money: In my brash opinion (IMBO)

People don't understand money. I think if they did they would never allow people to amass millions and billions of dollars.

Here's my declaration: money is power. If you define power in a human social structure as the ability to get other people to follow your wishes, money definitely does that. Money is power that you can count. If a person has enough money, their power cuts through other considerations by subordinates like charisma or expertise. In fact, people will follow somebody with money to get money of their own, so they then get other people to do something for them.

If you question the premise of what power is, a good example I might give you is Josef Stalin. Why was he so feared? He was just a person. If he had been isolated from everyone else, he would have been no more dangerous than a single man. Yet, he was formidable because of how many people would follow his orders or even his wishes. According to history, everyone was happy when he died. Yet, nobody would kill him, nor even imprison him. A fear that everyone else would defend to the death, and would destroy not just turncoat, but all of the person's family and friends. With the purges, where Stalin's accomplices would kill anybody who might have been thinking about betrayal, people became even afraid of thinking about overthrowing the leader.

That was a power structure held together by terror. Money, however, is as sufficient, and it's more humane. Yet, we ought to notice just how much power we're delegating to the wealthy by letting them make money without limit. This raises a question: can we do anything? That I will have to leave for another posting.     

Why Trump pardoning accomplices could backfire

Trump apparently can't pardon himself. The Constitution says pardons are "granted." Legally speaking, you need two people for that. He might try, I don't think the courts will let him.
You can only pardon somebody after a crime's been committed. I'm not even sure there's been any fact-finding in Manaforte's case, and he's the one most loaded down with charges. There has to be  some fact-finding before the crime has been proved. Is  Mueller holding off cases until he either indicts or recommends impeachment for Trump? He might be. 

Also, pardons will be a double-edged sword. If Trump pardons somebody, they can still testify against him. And there's no Fifth Amendment for them and no way they can be prosecuted.

If Trump takes this direction, he better stay on the good side of the people he pardons. Like, if he pardons Manafort, he better also be ready to him hire him, and for a lot of money, because Manafort still owes the Russian mob big-time. There's a bond of guilt between accomplices. Take away that bond, and they could say anything. 

So, what might Trump be guilty of? I sat down and came up with an incomplete list: 


Money Laundering, (hiding the funds that bought off Stormy Daniels), conspiracy to commit money laundering (with Cohen), profiteering (Mar-a-Lago), espionage (holding secret meetings with Russian officials, and giving them secrets), receiving stolen goods (Democratic emails), conspiracy to commit cybercrime (agreeing to knowingly receive and use stolen emails), obstruction of justice (attempts to strongarm Comey, the Firing of Comey, the threats of Firing Mueller, the firing of FBI officials who helped Comey. There are many counts here), fraud (the bailout of ZTE, done for a bribe), violating campaign finances laws (Stormy Daniels again), insider trading (revealing the unemployment levels before it was officially released) . . .

I feel sorry for Mueller. It's a feast of riches. How's he ever going to narrow that down. We have a President who breaks laws constantly. But he'll stay in office for as long as Republicans in Congress continue to protect him, or until they're replaced.

Trump the Pardoner?

It now looks like Trump is going to use the pardon as his own personal samurai sword (I back away from calling it his "trump card," which from now on I'll call the "asshole card.") Rachel Maddow last night had a discussion about the pardon power, which is practically unchecked with the President. The only symantical limit is the president can't pardon himself, and he can't pardon ahead of time. There definitely has to ba a crime to pardon anybody. Her guest (sorry, didn't get the name) said that a pardon in an ongoing investigation against the President would probably (depends on the judge) lead to another charge of Obstruction of Justice.

However, Politifact doesn't mention this possibility, so I don't think it's very likely.


The only way to eject Trump is to impeach him, and that's not going to happen with Republicans running Congress.  Remember, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Congress can remove a president for no crime whatsoever.  

I'm back! Right on time . . .

Yes, I'm back finally, blogging again. I'm happy to see Missouri has shed itself of Eric Greitens. If we can get rid of Greitens, how much harder can it be to get rid of Trump? My nickname for Trump, BTW, is Smugly the Clown. He pissed me off when he said the Nazis at Charlottesville were good people. That's when I began to call him Smugly (I think it was then).

Really, I've never liked Trump. Going back to the 80s, my feelings were that he hand no redeeming qualities. So, you can imagine how depressed I was when the Electoral College selected him. I consider that people who didn't like Obama inflicted that misery on themselves. Obama's domestic policies were really nothing too different from any liberal Democrat. Except then there was the racism that always made it tolerable to lie about him.

I might call Trump names (or one name), but I won't lie about him.