Cabinet Can Fire President

“The cabinet has the constitutional power to remove a president by majority vote under the 25th Amendment (if the president protests, this must be confirmed by two-thirds of each chamber of Congress). Such a vote is unlikely, but in the event of a crisis like the one Schlesinger envisioned, it would be essential.”

Of course, if possible Trump has appointed people to Cabinet offices that are bigger bozos than he is.

Trump has a dangerous disability – George Will Washington Post Editorial

There are very few issues that I agree with George Will on.  However, he is spot on this time.  The opening sentences sums it up perfectly :

“It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump’s inability to do either.”

I have so many issues with Effingham Trump that the list begins to become infinite.  Three significant ones are his inarticulateness, his shallow intellectual depth (I once commented he had the intellectual depth of a sewer lagoon), and total lack of a sense of history and what truly means to lead a democratic nation of free citizens.

Another thing that has bothered me about Trump is how he seems to have embraced Andrew Jackson  Jackson was wildly popular in his time, but in retrospect he was not a good man.  He practiced genocide on the native population, he was a huge slave owner and racist, and a proponent of expansion of the country by  military means.

Mr. Will has the my  same concerns about Effingham Trump.  Below is a link to his editorial in the Washington Post:

Trump has a dangerous disability – George Will Washington Post Editorial

We Need Woody Guthrie and Jimmy LaFave

Last weekend Robin and I made a pilgrimage to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  The reason for this pilgrimage was because Jimmy LaFave was going to be playing there. Jimmy is at the top of my list of favorite musicians.  I have been listening to him for 20 years, and if I do not have all of his CDs, I have the vast majority. His music speaks to me on so many levels.  The fact that he is not more famous than he is, says more about the music industry Continue reading “We Need Woody Guthrie and Jimmy LaFave”

Checks and Balances, Nukes – A Radiolab Podcast

The best way to tease you to listen to this podcast is their tease:

“President Richard Nixon once boasted that at any moment he could pick up a telephone and – in 20 minutes – kill 60 million people.  Such is the power of the US President over the nation’s nuclear arsenal.  But what if you were the military officer on the receiving end of that phone call? Could you refuse the order?

This episode, we profile one Air Force Major who asked that question back in the 1970s and learn how the very act of asking it was so dangerous it derailed his career.”

The officer profiled in this story was going through the Air Force training to be a Continue reading “Checks and Balances, Nukes – A Radiolab Podcast”

Why Police Shoot – Tampa Bay Times article

This is a very sad, and a very disturbing article.  There were two things in the story that really surprised me.  First, is that there are no real stats kept on police shootings!

“The Florida Department of Law Enforcement can say how many purse snatchings there were in any given year, but not how many times officers fired on citizens. The FBI’s statistics on police shootings aren’t much better. No one keeps accurate count.

“Embarrassing and ridiculous,” FBI director James B. Comey called the lack of data.

“Unacceptable,” former Attorney General Eric Holder called it.

For the past three years, shootings of unarmed black men caught on video have sparked outrage. But they are anecdotes. Without data, there’s no scope.

“How can we fix what we can’t measure?” asked Vanita Gupta, who headed the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division…”

The second thing that really surprised is the extent of police forfeiture and Continue reading “Why Police Shoot – Tampa Bay Times article”

EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

Apparently anything that gets in the way of immediate profit is to verboten , no matter the future consequences.  Almost every time I look at a news site my stomach does a flip-flop over some new piece of idiocy.   Trump and his administration’s world view is totally incomprehensible to me.  The best I can figure these people have absolute no social conscience and probably no conscience at all…sick, sick, sick.

EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades

Trump executive order aims to allow Arctic drilling

Donald Trump has ‘dangerous mental illness’, say psychiatry experts at Yale conference

What a strange pass we have come to in this country. I’m just a lay person in this field, and it has looked to me for a while that being in touch with reality is not  one of effingham Trump’s traits.

From the article on http://www.independent.co.uk/us:

“Donald Trump has a “dangerous mental illness” and is not fit to lead the US, a group of psychiatrists has warned during a conference at Yale University.

Mental health experts claimed the President was “paranoid and delusional”, and said it was their “ethical responsibility” to warn the American public about the “dangers” Mr Trump’s psychological state poses to the country.”

Here is the link to the article: Donald Trump has ‘dangerous mental illness’, say psychiatry experts at Yale conference

BBC article – How Western Civilization Could Collapse

Here is an article I found worth my time to read.  An excerpt from the article is chilling.

“That economic stratification may lead to collapse on its own… Under this scenario, elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources, and leaving little or none for commoners who vastly outnumber them yet support them with labour. Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour.”

Enjoy!  http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse

The sad part to me is that this is a story that has repeated itself multiples in our history, yet we are not smart enough to learn from it. Or perhaps we do not have the gumption to push against the greedy hoarders and those more interested in the current profit.