Miriam,
Yes, I agree with your characterization of Hillary. And Bernie didn't help her
either. I was just so pleased to see her in such a better way than she
presented herself during her campaign. And yes, she blames everyone for her
loss expect herself.
As for her personality, I think as a college woman from Scranton Pa she was
focused, an idealist, driven, and determined to save the world. She was also
practical and hooked her star to a man she knew would raise but also could be
influenced strongly by her. But as a woman of her times she found she had to
develop a thick shell and an abrasive personality. I absolutely hated the pics
set up of her and Bill dancing in their bathing suits during the Monica affair.
Sell out. But it got her all the way to the presidential nomination. But was
now just the exact model of a corporate, greedy, immoral, illegal, good old
boy. Wonder if her daughter will fare better. Ivanka isn't.
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2017 9:36 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Why the 25th Amendment Won't Save Us
Mary,
I suspect that Trump would resent any advice given to him by his staff about
his behavior. They probably reserve advice giving to issues that they think are
vital because remember, this man functions like a spoiled two year old. He’s
easily insulted, is vengeful, and has tantrums. You really don’t want to get in
his way if you can help it. He also doesn’t believe that the rules apply to
him. He’s so focused on himself and his own needs. As for Hillary, I supposed
that her controlled, logical persona is a relief in comparison to Trump. But
she had too much working against her. There are the people who wouldn’t vote
for a woman for president and the people who didn’t like her personality. There
is her history of elitism which has been evident for years. The less than
honest financial dealings in which she and Bill have been involved. Her hawkish
behavior as senator and then secretary of state, her courting of big donors and
her ignoring of the swing states during her campaign. Her tone deafness to what
the base of the Democratic Party was saying, her superior attitude, and her
unshakeable belief that it was her turn to be President. I remember how
incredibly nasty she was during the primaries with Obama. It was then that I
felt that she is a thoroughly unpleasant person. I haven’t read her books, and
I’m not planning to read the new one, although I’ve certainly read a lot about
it. I gather that much of the book is used to blame other people and other
circumstances for her loss. I did read Shattered, the book about her campaign,
written by two reporters. That book describes John Podesta’s decision to blame
Russian interference for her failure. She and her supporters have been doing
so with a vengeance, ever since. As far as I’m concerned, if the Democratic
Party were truly concerned about our country, they would have chosen a
different presidential candidate.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of MARY CONVY
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2017 8:59 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Why the 25th Amendment Won't Save Us
Miriam,
I didn't have my morning tea yet and this has certainly put a damper on my day.
I'm still hoping, with so many more GOP coming out against Trump, that his
cabinet WILL make use of the 25th amendment, especially if a couple of his
advisors are talking about physically tackling him if he asks for the nuclear
codes. And remember, the cabinet alone can do this which would get him out at
time of a crisis and then will give time if needed to make a case to Congress.
It is his staff who should have prepared him to understand protocol when
Retreat is played. It was not part of what he was doing and if any of us just
hear it in the background I wonder how many of us would have stopped a live
interview and knew we should stand. I wouldn't. But Karma is a bitch.
I heard Hillary interviewed yesterday about her book. She was controlled,
logical, intellectual, not sarcastic, looked strong and focused and even a bit
honest. If she had campaigned like that she might have won.
________________________________
From:
blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
on behalf of Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 6:35 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Why the 25th Amendment Won't Save Us
Why the 25th Amendment Won't Save Us
Sunday, October 15, 2017
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed
President Donald Trump leaves the podium after making a statement on Iran,
in the Diplomatic Reception Room in the White House, October 13, 2017 in
Washington, DC. (Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
Well I don't know, but I been told
If the horse don't pull you got to carry the load
I don't know who's back's that strong
Maybe find out before too long
One way or another
One way or another
One way or another
This darkness got to give .
-- Robert Hunter
This may only be a minor accent in the vast symphony of outrage we are
confronted with on a daily basis, but it is worthy of note. You are aware,
I'm sure, of the ongoing shouting match Donald Trump is having with the NFL
over players standing for the national anthem. Well, Trump found himself
last week at the Air National Guard Base in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with
Fox fiend Sean Hannity. By tradition, "Retreat" was bugled on the base as
the flag was lowered for the day.
The same tradition requires all military personnel and civilian leadership
to stand at attention out of respect for the flag. Neither Trump nor Hannity
stood, flouting that tradition. Laughing as the bugle call filled the air,
Trump asked Hannity, "Are they playing that for you or for me?" Referring to
Hannity's show, Trump then addressed the crowd with, "They're playing that
in honor of his ratings."
Remember when President Obama once saluted a member of his Marine guard with
a coffee cup in his hand, and people like Sean Hannity reacted as if Obama
had just offered the Sixth Fleet to Kim Jong-un as a birthday present? I do,
and once upon a time, such brazen, televised hypocrisy would have captured
my full attention. You're going on and on about the football players and the
flag but just insulted your own armed forces, and on a base no less?
Once upon a time, yeah.
Those days are over. When the president of the United States of America
tells all the residents of Puerto Rico he's basically sick of hearing about
them being wet, hungry and in the dark all the time, when he threatens to
cut them off completely despite the fact that the island was thoroughly
scourged by a massive hurricane, and oh, by the way, they are also US
citizens, it's hard to get worked up over "Retreat-gate" in the proper
fashion.
This is what he said in a string of tweets before dawn on Thursday morning:
"Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely
of their own making." says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of accountability
say the Governor. Electric and all infrastructure was disaster before
hurricanes. Congress to decide how much to spend. We cannot keep FEMA, the
Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most
difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!
Got that, everyone? The storm was Puerto Rico's fault. This US territory
with no voting power in Congress seems to have quite the influence over
earth, wind and fire these days, not to mention infrastructure and debt. The
president sure thinks so, anyway.
This from the guy who was throwing rolls of paper towels at storm victims
last week while lowballing the death toll as he talked about "a real
disaster like Katrina." For the record, the current official number stands
at 36, but the people running Puerto Rico's funeral homes know different.
The people who buried their parents days after the storm passed because
there was no power for their life support machines know different. The
uncounted dead know different.
From the Guardian last Wednesday: "Officials at the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) say that the government and its partners are only
providing 200,000 meals a day to meet the needs of more than 2 million
people. That is a daily shortfall of between 1.8 million and 5.8 million
meals. 'We are 1.8 million meals short,' said one senior FEMA official.
'That is why we need the urgency. And it's not going away. We're doing this
much today, but it has to be sustained over several months.'"
Not if the president has his way about it. Sure, the US government enjoys
Puerto Rico when the Navy needs to test its ship-to-shore firepower and
showers Vieques with artillery, the remnants of which are likely to blame
for the region having the highest disease rates in the Caribbean. What's a
little depleted uranium, cardiovascular disease and cancer between fellow
citizens, right?
But, you see, Puerto Rico has debt. A "financial crisis looms largely of
their own making," Trump said. He is so adamant about Puerto Rico's debt
that Congress, at his request, has made $5 billion of the aid package it's
crafting a loan to Puerto Rico, which will also have to be paid back. Why?
Because Puerto Rico's debt is owned by Wall Street, and Wall Street is
Trump's people.
Sarah Jaffe recently spoke with Jonathan Westin, director of New York
Communities for Change, who provided some truly revelatory information on
who actually owns Puerto Rico's debt:
[Seth] Klarman is the hedge fund manager . [Klarman] is generally seen as
kind of a 'progressive' Wall Street guy, but has hid himself in very
intentional ways from being discovered as one of the biggest bond-holders of
Puerto Rican debt. The way the debt was acquired by many of these hedge fund
managers was they bought it for cents on the dollar when they took over debt
from Puerto Rico, and are now trying to extract as much as possible out of
the island to pay that debt back, even though they bought it for cents on
the dollar.
There is a reason they are called vulture funds; it is because they prey on
very downtrodden folks. They buy up debt from places that most people
believe they won't be able to recover [their money], but then they do
everything in their power to extract blood from a stone. Puerto Rico is not
the only instance where hedge fund managers have gobbled up debt. They have
done it in Argentina. They have done it in Greece. They have done it in many
other places.
So here's Trump helping hedge fund managers like Klarman squeeze Puerto Rico
for all the coppers they can wring, even though Klarman has made it
abundantly clear that he believes Trump to be one of the horseman for the
looming apocalypse. No matter. Puerto Rico is seen as a pigeon to be
plucked, and the hedge fund managers must be fed.
Hardly a surprise, I suppose, coming from the humanitarian who wants so many
more nuclear weapons that his own secretary of state reportedly called him a
"fucking moron." There is a rumor going around that Kelly and Mattis have
agreed to bodily tackle Trump if he ever lunges for the political
"football." It sounds farfetched, but I believe it.
You see, the president of the United States is a vacant hole posing as a
person, and there has been a lot of talk about the 25th Amendment because of
it. Unless Trump leaves office voluntarily, the only mechanism for his
lawful removal is found in section 4 of that amendment. It's a doozy.
To make use of it, the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet must
tell Congress the president is unable to perform the duties of his office.
The president can challenge this and immediately retain his powers, but if
the vice president and the Cabinet reaffirm their claim of presidential
incapacity, the matter goes to Congress for what amounts to a trial. For
removal, both the House and the Senate have to agree with the vice president
and the Cabinet by a two-thirds majority in each chamber. Otherwise, the
president stays put.
In short, the 25th isn't coming to rescue us any time soon. It makes for a
fine hashtag to deploy whenever the monster behaves monstrously, but that's
about as far as it goes. Leaving aside the pan-dimensional improbability of
Mike Pence and the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari actually turning on Trump for any
reason, there is the simple, sorrowful fact of Congress itself.
Let me tell you a little something about these people. Last week, the House
passed legislation banning abortions after 20 weeks. They did so, according
to a GOP caucus blog post, because the massacre in Las Vegas combined with
the summertime shooting of GOP Rep. Steve Scalise reminded them "just how
precious life is." Got that? Don't figure out what to do about the
manufacture and distribution of the military-grade guns that killed all
those actual people. Cough up a Senate-doomed sop to the GOP base to
commemorate the sanctity of "life."
One of the GOP representatives who voted for this was Tim Murphy of
Pennsylvania. A real bear for the sanctity of life is Tim, who enjoys a
spotless "pro-life" voting record that was ever so slightly marred early
this month when it came to light that he had urged his mistress to get an
abortion. Rep. Murphy will be retiring at the end of his term.
Even Scalise, who (please pardon the all-caps) GOT SHOT this summer and
almost died, is still dutifully hauling water for the NRA. We need more guns
to keep us safe from all those guns. Seemingly in defense of his pro-gun
stance, Scalise told Fox News last Tuesday, "When there was a shooter,
luckily we had Capitol Police there with their own guns." Right, Steve, that
would be the (pardon again) WELL-REGULATED MILITIA we read about in that 2nd
Amendment you love so much.
Two-thirds of these people are not going to vote to remove Trump from office
even if he lights the Capitol dome on fire. He is the last, best hope they
have for making their proto-fascist Biblical nation fantasies a reality. A
great many of these people are human vacancies just like the president, and
they share a characteristic with him that happens to be their greatest
collective strength: They are incapable of shame.
And so much for the 25th. For now.
"There comes a time," said free-speech activist Mario Savio, "when the
operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that
you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to
put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus,
and you've got to make it stop."
That is where we're at, I believe. This is not normal, this is not healthy,
this is not safe, this is not right. It has to be stopped before Carl
Sagan's pale blue dot becomes just another puff of dust in the long dark.
The corporate "news" media won't help us. They love this stuff; hell, the
country hasn't turned off the television since November. Our so-called
leaders in Congress may as well be cardboard cutouts of themselves for all
the good they do.
No, this falls to us, to as many of us as can be summoned, and there are a
great, great many of us. Something simple. Everyone takes the same day off
from work and idles the nation. Everyone participates in a tightly focused
boycott until the entity in question ceases to exist. Then do it again.
Everyone goes to Washington, DC, sits down in front of the White House, and
waits. A flexing of muscles too many of us have forgotten we have,
indicating to those in power during this ongoing calamity that it's sure
been a laff riot, you guys, but enough is too much. We are stopping the
machine until this is fixed.
If we're down to dreams, it's a good one. See what you can do.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
William Rivers Pitt
William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is
also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books:
War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition
Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's
Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is
Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with Dahr Jamail, is available
now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.
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