Lewandowski lies; so does Trump, in California
Didn’t you just want to smack Lewandowski yesterday? All that self-righteous, pompous white supremacist bullshit and evasion. I don’t understand why Nadler later “threatened” him with a contempt of Congress citation. Why not just issue it on the spot and have the Capital Marshalls haul his lying ass off to the Capital Prison?
It’s coming down to the wire, friends. I’m reading Bruce Catton’s marvelous history of the American Civil War, and what’s happening right now, vis a vis Trump and the Democrats, is woefully similar to the deteriorating political situation prior to the outbreak of hostilities at Fort Sumter. Both sides dug in. Communication ceased. The North was convinced it was right. The South was convinced it was right. Finally, nothing more could be done except to fight it out.
At first, Catton explains, no one on either side expected the “war” to amount to much. Someone would win, quickly. Casualties would be light. Something would happen to resolve the situation.
Of course, there was no easy resolution, except victory. The War dragged on for four years and in the meanwhile 600,000 Americans died, most of them young soldiers.We wouldn’t have to go through this again if the Republicans weren’t so stubborn. To a man and woman—trust me on this—they know that Trump is a total shithead. They don’t like him, especially the ones in Congress. Privately, they cringe, nearly every day, at his crudeness, at the lies, at the fatuous stupidity with which he governs.
But the dumbbells who voted for him refuse to turn against him, and so the elected Republicans are like dogs on a leash: there’s only so far they can go before the collar tightens and chokes them. And their freedom of motion lessens with each passing day.
This explains the near-treasonous behavior of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. Not a single one of them made a valid point. Their anger was ersatz—manufactured to make their base happy. Someday, clips of them will be shown and Americans will groan to think that, once upon a time, elected members of Congress could be so willfully vapid.
We Democrats keep waiting for something, anything to be the tipping point—when 5% or 10% of Trump’s base finally rebels. It looks more and more like it will never happen. Trump was prescient and correct when he said, before the election, that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and start shooting, and his followers wouldn’t care. Hell, not only would they not care, they’d celebrate it—even if among the dead were their mothers, fathers, children, sisters, brothers. “If President Trump did it,” they’d reason, “he must have had a good reason.”
It was also yesterday that Trump insulted San Francisco and Los Angeles by blaming them for the housing crisis and homelessness. I doubt that he has any real knowledge of the causes of homelessness, beyond a few talking points designed by the RNC to try and peel off a few Democratic voters next year. Trump is offering nothing to our cities (including mine, Oakland)—not a penny, not a new housing voucher, nothing at all except his usual smears and finger-pointing. The causes of homelessness clearly are complex. But to the extent the solutions are financial—and to a large extent they are—obviously the player with the most resources to contribute is the federal government. Oakland can do only so much; ditto San Francisco and Los Angeles. Until Trump offers real money, say $1 billion or more, then it’s best to see his rhetoric as more meaningless bullshit. He doesn’t give a damn about the homeless; he only wants to make enough people angry enough so that he can win re-election.
Please, people, let’s not let that happen. Vote. Tell everyone you know to vote. And vote Democratic!
