Author: Mark Alexander

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What Needs to Happen

This perfectly sums up what I think a LOT of us are feeling today after yesterday’s seditious storming of the Capitol.

From Greg Fallis:

First, invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump’s power and authority. Second, impeach him again, and this time do it right. Third, appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Trump specifically in regard to yesterday’s insurrection.

That first step, invoking the 25th, is critically important. I don’t think we can afford to wait two more weeks for Trump to be removed. I don’t think he’s emotionally stable enough to trust for…hell, for another day. So yeah, I think it’s necessary for Vice President Pence to get together with Trump’s cabinet and invoke the 25th Amendment in order to remove Trump’s control of the nuclear arsenal, to take him out of the chain of military command, and to remove his power to issue pardons. I think we have to neuter his presidential authority, because yesterday he demonstrated more clearly than ever that he simply can’t be trusted to wield that power responsibly.

Then we need to impeach him again. The House needs to draft and pass articles of impeachment based only on his abuse of power yesterday. Keep it simple and specific. He incited a riot that resulted in an assault on a federal building, the destruction of federal property, and four deaths. The Senate needs to try him on that charge and Republicans need to find the balls to convict him and remove him from office.

At that point — before Biden assumes office — appoint a non-partisan Special Counsel with a very narrow mandate: investigate Trump to determine his level of responsibility in the January 6 riot and breach of the Capitol.

That’s not everything that should be done, of course. It’s not everything I’d like to be done. I’d like to see Trump hauled out of the White House in handcuffs. I’d like to see him in an orange jumpsuit. Hell, I’d like to see Cruz and Hawley and the rest of the Sedition Caucus removed from office. I’d like to see them dipped in shit and rolled in the sand. But what the nation needs right now is stability and maturity.

Right now — and I mean right now, starting this day — we need to take a few strong but essentially simple steps to settle the nation. We can sort out the rest later. But the shit that took place yesterday simply cannot be allowed to stand.

I’m ashamed to say it, but I don’t think any of this will happen. I don’t think there are enough Republicans with integrity to do any of this, and it can’t be done without them.

I have a LOT more thoughts on what happened yesterday, but I’m still too angry and sad and ashamed and disgusted to put them in any sort of order.

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18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or Insurrection

Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C

18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or insurrection

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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Regarding Our New Abode

The irony is not lost upon me that we are now just around the corner from one of my favorite Phoenix clubs in the 80s and about a mile away from my favorite neighborhood bar in the late 70s. Sadly, both venues are long gone now, but oh, the memories…

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The Imbecility of dRUMPf

Nicetightgag: dRUMPf is his base. He is a man who is regularly spoon fed, and over-fed at that, the thin, bitter gruel of bullshit Reichwing TV “news” and who willingly ingests and then regurgitates it to other similarly inclined subhumans.

He angrily sounds off at all hours about random, nonsensical shite that dehydrated haunted apples like Lou Dobbs and blocks of Spam like Sean Hannity tell him to be angry about but which they realise they cannot actually come to any firm conclusions about both because if they do it gives the story falsifiability and because it puts them at serious risk of legal action. dRUMPf, like the rest of their audience, doesn’t understand this, and so bathes luxuriously in the fetid diarrhea that makes up these ‘programs,’, engaging with them as they are meant to be engaged with- not as conveyors of actual facts, but as impressionist representations of moods. Deeply angry, suspicious, paranoid, hate-filled, bitter, and sociopathic moods.

dRUMPf was never able to explain what “Obamagate” was. He was never able to explain what, exactly, was on “the server” that was in Ukraine. He cannot explain how the election was “rigged”. He cannot tell you how Obama faked his entire life as a naturally born US citizen. Logic is nonexistent. Solid conclusions can be disproved by hysteria. The important thing is the feeling of resentment and anger, the outrage that somehow, someone is cheating you out of something that you think not only that you *want* but that you are *owed*. The sense of persecution, the utter conviction that somehow you are being wronged, the phony victim-posturing is addictive for a man so utterly bereft of any positive emotions. It’s intoxicating, and dRUMPf is perpetually drunk on it- and sounds very much like he’s just ordinarily drunk.

This isn’t a man with a plan. This isn’t a strategic thinker who talks in riddles and subtly conveys messages through the placement of an accessory in his otherwise flawless choice of dress. This isn’t a man given to the intricacies of a Symbolist painting, with everything chosen to display a meaning about the artist and their subject. This is a man who tries to hide his baldness by having what little hair he still has spun into a bizarre confection and piled on his head, then dyed cat-piss yellow with a candy-corn-orange chaser. This is a man who so FEARS being thought of as short he wears lifts that are too high to allow him to fit his feet in his shoes. This is not a man capable of subtlety. This is a man with a button on his desk to summon a servant to bring him Diet Coke.