Jeremiah of the 21st Century

In the United States of America, there is no reward for being right- and apparently, no penalty for being wrong.
I know. Because I've been right on some of the biggest issues of the day- the War In Iraq (before it started and after the hot war wrapped up in April of 2003); on Barack Obama's unique opportunity in January of 2009 and what would happen if he squandered it; and, most recently (and this story hasn't been fully realized yet, but the end result is inevitable), on the impeachment of Donald John Trump.

Don't believe me? Read on:

IRAQ: 2002-2009

When my son was part of the original Marine division which invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003 (he was a staff sergeant), this is what I wrote a month later in an e-mail to the family members of my son's unit:

April 19, 2003, e-mail to one of the family members of a Marine in my son’s unit:

“Why the UN should take over is simple- whether or not they do a better job, the perception among the people in the region will be hugely different regarding a UN sponsored trusteeship of the country. It simply is in our national interest to have a respected international organization take over the rebuilding of Iraq. The sooner American and British soldiers are out of there, the less likely that terrorists or suicide bombers will attack our loved ones there or here. And a quick exit will defeat the absurd arguments that we are a colonialist country seeking to exploit Iraq's oil.”

Of course, I was right. I predicted suicide bombers long before the insurgency ever got started, before the first IED or suicide bomb exploded in Iraq. In the Fall of 2002, before the elections here, when Bush sought an authorization to use force in Iraq, when Democrats- and Tom Daschle- controlled the Senate- I knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction before the invasion, and I knew the lies that were a pretext for the invasion. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that every Democrat- Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards- in the Senate who voted for war was doing so becuase she or he foresaw a presidential run in 2004 and did not want to look weak, not because any of them thought that Iraq and Hussein was any possible danger to the U.S.

I had no expertise, no special knowledge. Just a general knowledge of history, and I kept up on current events. Was that because I was some precocious, precognizant, genius? Nope. I just paid attention to what was publicly reported. And I knew history. Before the war started I knew that we had no fly zones over southern and northern Iraq and thousands of troops poised in southern Turkey and in Kuwait on Iraq's borders. With a hostile nation to the east in Iran with which it had fought an eight year long war in the 1980's when Saddam Hussein tried- and failed- to invade southern Iran and seize its oil fields on the Persian Gulf. I knew that if there was any country in the world that was not a military threat to the U.S., it was Iraq. I also knew that Iraq was secular- not religious. That men were clean shaven, women could appear in public without modest dress, that alcohol was openly sold, that women held positions in the Iraqi government. In short, that it had nothing to do with the religious extremists of Al Qaida and nothing to do with the 9-11-01 attacks, something that the Bush Administration tried to conflate with a possible Iraq threat to the U.S. in the buildup to the invasion. (Some members of my son's Marine Corps unit apparently mistakenly thought that Iraq had something to do with the 9-11 attacks and that this invasion was "payback.")

Also, after the brief two months it took for us to invade, depose Hussein, and take over the country, I had just paid attention to and studied history over the centuries and knew what a local populace would start to think of the "liberators" once they outwore their welcome. So instead of getting out quickly and having U.N. troops come in to keep the peace, over the ensuing years, as the local population grew to resent us, after we had dismantled the Iraqi army and left a vacuum that was filled by Al Qaida and other insurgents, we had thousands of Americans dying (almost 5,000), and tens of thousands wounded, many with traumatic brain injuries from improvised explosive devices (IED's) and suicide bombers. I was right- and the result of the powers that be being dead wrong- tragically wrong, caused thousands of unnecessary deaths and tens of thousands injured. (Donald Rumsfeld famously called the insurgents "a few dead enders" and Dick Cheney said- in 2005- that the insurgency was "in its last throes." How wrong they were.)

BARACK OBAMA: 2009-2017

Six years later: In 2009, shortly after Barack Obama had been inaugurated after he managed to hugely outraise his opponent, John McCain, in the 2008 election, to the point that he refused Federal matching funds, I wrote that this was the time to introduce legislation in Congress- in which Democrats controlled the House and had a 59 vote presence in the Senate- to require public financing of all federal elections and to prohibit all private contributions or solicitations of contributions:

Here is what I wrote on January 17, 2009 (it's on my blog, BuildaBetterMousetrap.Blogspot.com) https://buildabettermousetrap.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-wont-be-change-president-unless.html

"President-elect Barack Obama is coming into office facing the greatest crises since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, who dealt with both the Great Depression and World War II during his tenure. By the same token, Mr. Obama has the same rare opportunity that President Roosevelt did to effect real, positive, lasting changes in the American government, economy, and foreign policy- but his window of opportunity will be a short one, only a matter of months after he is sworn in. If Mr. Obama acts quickly and decisively, he can take steps which will end the costly and counterproductive "war on drugs," insure every American against the expenses of a catastrophic illness while providing preventive care that will greatly reduce the trillion dollar outlay for medical expenses, cut our defense budget by hundreds of billions of dollars without sacrificing one iota of national security, restore the freedoms provided by the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, provide the nation with an uncluttered, more efficient, and vastly less costly tax system, and put the nation on the road to energy independence.

None of that will happen-- unless Mr. Obama does one essential thing first: take advantage of his unique opportunity provided by the rout of the Republicans in the last election coupled with his incredible fund raising ability that allowed him to forego public funds and outspend John McCain by hundreds of millions of dollars. If Mr. Obama proposes a total ban on private campaign contributions, replacing them with full public financing of all federal elections, then all other things become possible. Meaningful, comprehensive campaign finance reform will free candidates for federal office from the continuous campaign cycle of raising money for the next election before the winners of the last election have even taken their oaths of office. Changing the ground rules for television and radio advertising will mean that legislators will be able to vote on controversial proposals to decriminalize drugs or cut defense spending without having to worry about the 30 second attack ad in the next election that will distort reality and hammer them with accusations of supporting drug dealers or leaving the nation open to a new terrorist attack."

Obama didn't take my advice. Had he done so, Citizens United could never have happened, and if it had, would have had no effect on elections. As for "dark money" and "super PAC's" they would have been defanged and rendered meaningless had my suggestions been adopted into law:

"Effective campaign reform can be accomplished without doing any damage to the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech while being politically palatable to both major political parties. Simply put: declare every private contribution to any candidate for federal office as a bribe and every request for funds, goods, or services from a candidate as a solicitation of a bribe. After all, a massive bribe is exactly what occurs when a trade group hosts a thousand dollar a plate fund raising event for a Senator or a Congressman. When a president can rent out the Lincoln bedroom for hundreds of thousand in campaign contributions, that's not democracy at work- it's bribe-ocracy. Public financing can and must replace every private contribution, freeing up those elected to do the public's business to actually do the public's business without fear of losing millions with a vote that might offend special interests like big oil, hospital corporations, banks, or insurance companies.

As for toxic television attack ads- the First Amendment won't let us curtail them, but we can make them virtually useless to those who have paid for them by delaying their airing until public interest groups and the opposing candidate have had a chance to preview them, and allowing the attackee to tape a response that will be twice as long, free of charge, which will run immediately following the first ad. Doing this does no damage to the First Amendment; it simply means that a vicious lie like the attack ad on Mr. Cleland could be immediately followed by an outraged response by a Vietnam Veterans group and Mr. Cleland which would reveal that Mr. Chambliss ducked military service in Vietnam, claiming a knee injury, while showing Mr. Chambliss during his morning jog along the Potomac. Devastating responses like that would quickly end the baseless attacks and allow elections to be decided on real issues like how best to insure 40 million uninsured Americans or what programs to cut to reduce trillion dollar deficits."

Imagine for one moment that Barack Obama had taken this advice. Lawmakers and candidates for any federal office would not be spending one moment soliciting bribes, er, campaign contributions. Lobbyists would have little impact, as none of their principals could spend money that would affect a campaign if these laws were in place. And if we ever achieve public financing and a law requiring all attack ads to be previewed with a free response from the attackee, we'll never go back to the way things are now.

When I ran into my Congressman, Sanford Bishop, after the grotesque Rube Goldbergesque Affordable Care Act was passed, after Obama had nixed the idea of a public option or using the power of the federal government to keep drug prices down or purchase generics from Canada- which he did before the first committee hearing was held- I had three words for him. Sad words. "Medicare for All." Not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren type of grandiose, all at once, the Feds pay for everything national health insurance. Just a public option to let anyone under 65 buy into Medicare at cost. And then build up to national health insurance slowly, step by step. It could have been done then, back in 2009.

2020 IMPEACHMENT

Last December the New York Times published a letter I wrote on how the House should have handled impeachment. I suggested a wide ranging investigation, patient, slow, and thorough, lasting months, all the way up to the Republican convention, when the articles would be delivered to the Senate. Since there's not a hope in Hell of a conviction, the best we can hope for is a thorough exposition of all of the President's crimes. Here was the full letter, before editing:

"Dear Editor:

The House Democrats are, as usual, about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by wrapping up a narrow impeachment inquiry, impeaching the President on only a scintilla of the crimes he has committed- omitting emoluments violations, campaign finance felonies, ties to the Russian Mafia and money laundering, fraud felonies by Trump University and the Trump Foundation charity, and sex crimes including felonies up to and including rape. Sadly, they will send the Senate impeachment articles based solely on the Ukraine scandal, but possibly including obstruction of justice from the Mueller investigation, where the trial will end quickly and be long forgotten by next November, just as the month long government shut down, the children in cages at the border, and the mass murders committed in the name of anti-immigration hate inspired by Trump, are all distant memories.

Instead, Democrats in the House should take advantage of the spotlight, hold evidentiary hearings lasting months, understanding full well- as Trump did when he sought an announcement of a corruption investigation of Biden, not an actual investigation (which would have revealed no criminal activity or corruption)- that it will be the allegations, not the conviction, that will do in Trump. If there was a month long hearing of just the emoluments violations, followed by another month of woman after woman who was sexually assaulted by Trump- also including those who were illegally paid off with hush money in violation of federal campaign finance laws, Trump will continue to lose his grip, and his re-election campaign will be stymied by his inability to focus on anything other than the impeachment hearings.

Instead of wrapping hearings up quickly before the New Year, Democrats should patiently build a case for impeachment that will include every crime committed by Trump, both before he took office and after, and continue building that case all the way to the Republican convention next August.

Then, send it to a trial in the Senate after the Republicans have made him their nominee. And instead of campaigning for President, as the Democratic nominee will be doing, he'll be defending himself in a trial that will last months, as every single item of evidence is presented to the Senate. Because there is not a chance in hell of getting a conviction in the Senate. But that doesn't mean that Democrats can't get every one of his crimes in the public spotlight during the election campaign."

This story is still being written in the Senate trial. But here is my prediction on the outcome. No witnesses. No evidence. No more than 46 votes to remove Trump on Article 1 (Abuse of Power). Joe Manchin of West Virginia will vote no on both. No more than 45 on Article 2 (Obstruction of Congress). Doug Jones of Alabama (and possibly a couple of others) will vote no on this one. And in six months, only the Republicans and Trump will be talking about impeachment- about how it was all a sham starting before Trump was inaugurated in 2017 (!) because of Democrats' mindless hate, there was nothing to it, it was a "perfect phone call," and how he was "totally exonerated." Just as he was (cough) "totally exonerated" in the Mueller investigation of collusion/conspiracy with the Russians to affect the 2016 election.

I can hope I'm wrong. But I know I'm right. So let's beat him to a pulp on November 3, 2020. And win the elecoral college to boot. (This is written January 26, 2020. So we'll quickly know how wrong- or right- I am on the impeachment trial predictions.)

When the Criminal in Chief is also a Moron...

President Donald Trump doesn't know what happened at Pearl Harbor, and blames Rob Porter's ex-wife for her own black eye, according to new book 'A Very Stable Genius.'



One of the defenses of the White House lawyers appears to be that Donald Trump did a really bad job of extorting Ukraine because he forgot to tell Ukraine that their military aid was being held up until they announced an investigation of the Bidens.

Of course, when your client is a moron, that defense isn't much of a defense. For instance:

"Trump is quoted as telling Prime Minister if India Narendra Modi, “It’s not like you’ve got China on your border.” [Yes, they share a border- of over two thousand five hundred miles, longer than our border with Mexico. And once upon a time, they fought a war there..]

"The 1962 Sino-Indian War was fought in both of these areas. An agreement to resolve the dispute was concluded in 1996, including "confidence-building measures" and a mutually agreed Line of Actual Control. In 2006, the Chinese ambassador to India claimed that all of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory[2] amidst a military buildup.[3] At the time, both countries claimed incursions as much as a kilometre at the northern tip of Sikkim.[4] In 2009, India announced it would deploy additional military forces along the border.[5] In 2014, India proposed China should acknowledge a "One India" policy to resolve the border dispute."

Closer to home, Trump had no idea why he was touring the U.S.S. Arizona in Pearl Harbor with his then chief of staff, former Marine General John Kelly:

"“Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Trump asks his then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, as the men prepare to take a private tour of the USS Arizona Memorial, which commemorates the December 1941 Japanese surprise attack in the Pacific that pulled the United States into World War II.

“Trump had heard the phrase ‘Pearl Harbor’ and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else,” write the authors, later quoting a former senior White House adviser who concludes: “He was at times dangerously uninformed.”

So, here's where we are: the President is not only a criminal. He's a moron. He's ignorant as a piece of rock. He's a self centered, malignant narcissistic misogynistic racist bully. He's a coward who was so afraid to go to war that he had a doctor concoct imaginary bone spurs in his heels. (how magnificently he has recovered). He's everything that no one should ever want in the White House. And he managed to win election to the presidency in 2016 (while losing the popular vote by 3 million) and he might do it again.

Well, that sucks.

Impeachment for Dummies

As for "executive privilege:" there is no such thing as "executive privilege." It's a made up legal fiction that exists nowhere in the Constitution or statutory law. And think for just one moment: privilege only exists in a court or the body hearing the evidence. That body decides if there is a privilege. If you are trying a case in Dougherty Superior Court, you have to rely on the statutory privileges in the Georgia code. If you are trying a criminal case in federal court, you can't rely on a privilege created by Georgia's legislature- you have to use the privileges allowed or created in the federal evidence code (which may, in fact, recognize privileges created by a State's laws, i.e.: husband-wife, priest-penitent, lawyer-client).

Well, guess what: in this case, the Senate is a court. If 51 senators say that there is no such thing as "executive privilege" in their "court," then bingo, it ceases to exist. And no president can claim it. Also, even lawyer- client privilege is pierced when the lawyer and client are conspiring to commit a crime. Same holds true when Trump is conspiring to commit crimes with his advisers as Nixon did with Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

For those who have read this far: the United States Supreme Court, which basically created the concept of "executive privilege," has admitted that it made it up- that it created the idea because, in the Court's view, it was somehow "implicit" in the United States Constitution (I'm sure this would have been news to Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Adams):

"There are many other constitutional doctrines that are not spelled out in the Constitution but are nevertheless implicit in its structure and supported by historical practice—including, for example, judicial review, Marbury v. Madison , 1 Cranch 137, 176–180, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803) ; intergovernmental tax immunity,

[139 S.Ct. 1499]

McCulloch , 4 Wheat. at 435–436 ; executive privilege, United States v. Nixon , 418 U.S. 683, 705–706, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974) ; executive immunity, Nixon v. Fitzgerald , 457 U.S. 731, 755–758, 102 S.Ct. 2690, 73 L.Ed.2d 349 (1982) ; and the President’s removal power, Myers v. United States , 272 U.S. 52, 163–164, 47 S.Ct. 21, 71 L.Ed. 160 (1926)."

That quote above is from the Supreme Court case of Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Hyatt, 139 S.Ct. 1485, 1498-99 (2019)

My Pet Goat- how to lose an election that nobody can lose....

Democrats have an unerring ability- except in the 2018 midterm House elections- to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Given a set of circumstances that, were the situation reversed, the Republicans would pounce on and use to their great political advantage, the Democrats inexplicably drop the ball. Case in point: in 2001, under a Republican President, George W. Bush, we suffered the greatest terrorist attack in the country's history. During the month leading up to that attack, the President of the United States took a vacation on his "ranch" in Crawford, Texas. During that time he received a Presidential Daily Intelligence Brief that specifically warned him that Osama Bin Laden was determined to attack inside the United States. The President blew off the briefer and did nothing. During the attack itself, the President was filmed sitting on a chair in a first grade classroom in Florida, reading a book, "My Pet Goat," after- AFTER- he had been told by his chief of staff, Andrew Card, that the nation was under attack after the first tower fell in New York City. Did he jump up, leave the room, go meet with his staff, take any action at all? Nope. He sat there for seven minutes, frozen like a deer in headlights. Listening to "My Pet Goat." Doing nothing. It's all highlighted in Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9-11.

Bush, as it turned out, had been a war dodger during Vietnam, securing a stateside gig in the Texas Air National Guard and avoiding being put in harm's way in Vietnam. Then he got a transfer to the Alabama Air National Guard, from which he promptly went AWOL and was never seen at a drill for a year.

Running against Bush in the next election was John Kerry, an American who had not ducked service. Who had gone to Vietnam. Who was wounded there.

So here you had it: a cowardly man who went AWOL from his unit in Vietnam, who blew off a CIA briefer warning of an attack within the United States by Osama Bin Ladin, who spent a month cutting brush in Crawford, Texas while the final plans for the 9-11 hijackers were being taken to fruition, who froze, paralyzed with fear into inaction after being informed that the nation was under attack. And his opponent was a respected United States Senator who had actually served in Vietnam and been wounded there.

So who won the election- rather handily? The AWOL, war dodging, ineffectual coward who abdicated his most important responsibility- looking after the nation's security- and who allowed the country to suffer the worst terrorist attack in history, forever changing the course of this country. Who took a surplus national budget and turned it into the greatest annual deficits in the nation's history.

Why? Because Democrats can't stand winning. They can't take advantage of the opportunity handed to them on a platter. They can't even muster the ability to use truth- facts- instead of the incredible lies that the Republicans must rely on to win election and re-election.

The lie in 2004? Dick Cheney said it: you must re-elect us because we kept you safe, and we don't want to suffer another awful terrorist attack, which can happen if you vote for the other guy.

Seriously: they ran against Kerry's war record- wearing Purple Heart bandaids to mock Kerry during the Republican convention, as they praised the coward who had gone AWOL and who had let the nation down in 2001 when it needed an active, competent, brave leader the most.
And they won. Because Kerry never ran the first campaign ad decrying Bush going AWOL, first, during Vietnam, and second, during the terrorist attacks on 9-11-01. Not. One. Single. Ad. Had the situation been reversed, the Republicans would have run every ad on that subject, 24 hours a day. And their candidate would have won all 50 states.

And here we are, in 2020, about to do it again. The worst human being in history is happily ensconced in the White House, eating cheeseburgers and french fries while watching Fox and Friends. Who takes his intelligence briefings from Sean Hannity, and not the CIA or FBI. Who, while being impeached, can't stop talking to campaign rallies about imaginary water regulations that require flushing toilets 10 or 15 times (who? who does that?) and pushing buttons repeatedly to run a dishwasher 10 or 15 times to get the dishes clean (again, who? who does that?) while his brain damaged cult followers somehow manage to cheer the absurd, as this man devolves before their eyes. The man so scared of Joe Biden that he abused the power of his office to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to an ally to get an announcement- not an investigation- an "announcement" of an investigation into his most feared political opponent.

Someone who has repeatedly abused the people who voted for him. By trying- and failing by one vote in the Senate- to take away their health insurance. By wrecking their family owned farms with absurd tariffs. A man who has managed to take a wrecking ball to virtually every part of the federal government, who has appointed some of the most ignorant, incompetent, and venal cabinet members and agency heads in history. A man who took a nominee to the Supreme Court credibly accused of attempted rape and turned him into a cause celebre among his right wing supporters, warning them that their sons and brothers could be accused of sexual assault if they didn't support this disgusting, temperamental, privileged, narcissistic, misogynistic nominee.

And if we fucking lose to this guy- again- we will deserve the country we will get. Our children and grandchildren who are under the age of 18 won't. But the rest of us will.