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Election Day Countdown: 5 Days

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There are five days left until Election Day.

More than 228,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 to date. Most of these deaths were wholly preventable had the Trump administration responded appropriately to the pandemic back in January-February.

But there is an additional excess of deaths — persons who didn’t die of COVID-19 but who would not have died had there not been such a lousy national response to the pandemic.

My sibling may have been one of those excess deaths eight weeks ago.

Please, no condolences are necessary. I’d rather not chew up comment space with them and my sibling would be annoyed.

What I would much rather see is a discussion about the additional burdens on Americans the Trump administration has placed on them because Trump didn’t want to spook the market ahead of the election.

And because the Trump administration thanks to Trump’s monstrous hack of a son-in-law Jared Kushner decided that issuing federal aid to blue states wouldn’t help Trump’s re-election odds.

~ ~ ~

I wrote in August about the additional hassle the pandemic and Trump’s governance failures have caused my family because every health care activity requires more effort, more resources.

My father’s situation took nearly a month longer to resolve than necessary and with increased risks from complications. We were lucky his condition resolved with very little intervention after months of therapy and monitoring.

He had insurance to cover the majority of expenses and adequate savings to handle out-of-pocket expenses. But this is not the case for far too many Americans who’ve lost their jobs because of the uncontrolled pandemic. They will be digging themselves out of financial holes for too long if they happen to need health care this year or next.

All because Trump couldn’t be the president this country needed.

All because Trump is a malignant narcissist who is only worried about his own skin and his enablers are only worried about their own.

~ ~ ~

The insult added to injury is that COVID patients die alone. Their families can’t be with them in COVID ICU.

The Lincoln Project made a short effective ad which comes close to conveying the heartbreak of not being able to be with a loved one during their health crisis, but surprisingly the otherwise aggressive team pulled their punches by not making it absolutely clear death comes without the solace of familial touch.

And again, it’s not just COVID patients affected. My sibling died without their family around them because they couldn’t have visitors who may bring COVID into the ICU.

One family member per day could go in during limited visiting hours. One family member could tell them what we felt for them and tell them it was okay to go.

They died alone because of goddamned Donald fucking Trump.

~ ~ ~

My sibling was one of the excess deaths we don’t talk enough about as unnecessary collateral damage.

They had a health condition which under normal circumstances was and had been manageable.

But because of COVID they were extremely worried about contracting the virus in public spaces. They didn’t seek their regular health care as they would have had there not been an uncontrolled pandemic. Living in a red state which adopted Trumpian COVID denialism exacerbated the situation.

They died for lack of adequate health care about twenty years too soon.

All because of useless and corrupt Donald fucking Trump.

~ ~ ~

Listening with gritted teeth to yet another of Trump’s wretched displays of poor temperament for the office of the presidency, I thought of a Biblical quote. It’s been popularized in Spider-Man comics as the Peter Parker principle; the character is cautioned by his Uncle Ben with a paraphrase of Luke 12:48:

To whomever much is given, of him will much be required; and to whom much was entrusted, of him more will be asked.

Donald Trump has had so much opportunity given to him because of his privilege as a white man of European descent with accumulated family wealth, even if ill-gotten. He pissed it all away. Even if it was merely converted through laundering from immediate wealth to untouchable wealth, it was turned from treasure to trash.

He’s done the same with this country’s treasure — its relationships with other countries, its economy, its aspirations from founding to become a better country, the light of the world, a city on a hill.

He’s converted whatever he could grab with his stubby little fingers into personal wealth which has disappeared into the same corrupt ratholes more than a billion dollars of personal wealth has vanished.

He’s gathered around him a cabinet and executive staff who are just as corrupt.

In spite of all the trust they have been given, access to our blood and treasure, they have frittered it away.

If it were only economic damage they wreaked they would eventually be forgotten and their conservative enablers would find a way to forgive their wretchedness.

But they are stealing from us what cannot be measured in dollars or hours of labor.

They are stealing and destroying the most precious moments we have, the ones when nothing else on earth matters.

And while roughly a million Americans mourn loved ones lost to wholly preventable spread of COVID, Donald fucking Trump gaslighted all of us about the disease:

The body count doesn’t lie, you miserable slack-assed excuse for an executive.

~ ~ ~

I will come to terms with the loss of my sibling as will the rest of my family. This month we’ll muddle through the first awkward and painful holiday with one too many plates, a few too many beers, and one too many empty chairs.

But I will never be able to get over the anger I have over the loss of those last minutes we could have shared with my sibling saying goodbye.

I will never forgive the hundreds of thousands of farewells which American friends and families could only make by phone if at all.

Call me bitter, I don’t fucking care. But I hope when time has its inevitable way as it does with us all, that Donald fucking Trump dies alone and he’s aware enough to know it as darkness falls.

Until then I will settle for his ass being kicked to the curb at the polls.

~ ~ ~

If you’ve already voted, thank you. If can help others vote, please do so.

Three Things: Death, Death, and More Death

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks! /~Rayne]

By now most folks who pay attention to the intersection of politics and COVID-19 news have heard about Axios’ Jonathan Swan’s interview with Trump.

This is, in my opinion, the key few seconds at 7:25 minutes into the interview:

Trump just doesn’t give a damn about a thousand Americans dying each day or the total number of COVID-19 deaths to date.

“It is what it is.”

As if this wholly preventable mass death event was inevitable.

As if he was powerless to stop it after being warned in November 2019 there was a risk of pandemic due to an unknown pathogen in China.

As if he was powerless to stop it after the risk was communicated in the Presidential Daily Briefing in early January, after Chinese media published stories about an unknown pneumonia-like illness.

As if he was powerless to recover and relaunch the pandemic response team he disbanded in May 2018 after the first case of COVID-19 was identified in the U.S. on January 21.

As if he was powerless to invoke the Defense Production Act to increase production of personal protection equipment and ventilators in the U.S. at any time from January to mid-March to get ahead of the surge in cases he failed to stop.

As if he was powerless to expedite production under the DPA instead doing nothing for months as production floundered and the Federal Emergency Management Agency stole PPE from health care providers for the national stockpile.

Every step along the way Trump failed to do what was necessary to save American lives.

Every action he took when he did take any it was late — like shutting down travel to China, when COVID-19 was already here on the west coast. Or like shutting down travel from Europe in a manner which caused maximum confusion and chaos and likely accelerated an explosion of cases from Europe.

He repeatedly throttled the experts, preventing them from communicating openly what the public needed to know.

He shared bullshit happy talk — it’ll be down to zero, it’ll soon disappear, he said.

He shared dangerously erroneous medical information — like hydroxychloroquine is safe and bleach will kill the virus.

He harassed and harangued blue state governors like “that woman in Michigan” when they had the audacity to demand more from the federal government to deal with COVID-19.

He ignored the threats to these same governors from armed protesters who didn’t want to change their habits to mitigate COVID-19’s spread.

He undermined any and all messaging intended to encourage the public to act responsibly to reduce COVID-19 cases.

Because the entire point has been this non-choice, the no-plan, the void strategy.

Because no choice, no plan, no strategy is a plan. Its outcome is death.

There is no choice on Trump’s part to do anything except play golf.

There is no plan to do anything because Trump is fine with the current outcomes.

There is no strategy because that would interfere with the outcomes.

There is only death, death, and more death.

~ ~ ~

Unless you’re a Trump supporter. Then you would have received an email which said “wearing masks is patriotic.”

And if you’re a Floridian with whom Trump identifies because of his residency and his businesses, you would have read this tweet

For you exceptions Trump will exert himself because you represent something he needs, whether your vote or your campaign contribution or the narcissistic supply you’ll provide him.

Lucky you.

Not so lucky you if you’re a Nevadan because your state only has a tenth of the population of Florida, only six electoral college votes compared to Florida’s 29, only ~280,000 residents age 60 or older, and too many brown people who vote Democratic. Nope, you will not be encouraged to wear masks and voting by mail will be strongly discouraged.

~ ~ ~

And now Trump has denied that COVID-19 can be transmitted to, sicken, and even kill children. Fortunately social media platforms are beginning to wise up:

For the first time, both Facebook and Twitter acted to remove content shared by the campaign to re-elect President Donald Trump from their platforms, citing policies against spreading false claims about COVID-19.

Both the @TeamTrump campaign Twitter account and the official Donald Trump Facebook account shared a video late yesterday in which Trump claimed children are immune from the novel coronavirus. The video was a clip from an interview in which the president spoke by phone with Fox & Friends hosts about schools reopening this fall. “My view is that schools should be open,” Trump said. “If you look at children, children are almost—and I would almost say definitely—but almost immune from this disease. So few, they’ve got stronger, hard to believe, I don’t know how you feel about it, but they have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this. They don’t have a problem. They just don’t have a problem. They are virtually immune from this problem.”

COVID-19 may not result in many hospitalizations among children, but we simply do not know how the disease affects them and if the results are long term or permanent. Unlike adult cases there hasn’t been an adequate number of postmortem examinations of children who died of COVID-19, let alone comprehensive follow-up studies given the relative recency of the pandemic.

It’s grossly irresponsible to say children are immune when they do get infected, can become sick, and do spread the virus. From the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Children and COVID-19: State-Level Data Report:

Summary of Findings Reported on 7/30/20:
(Note: Data represent cumulative counts since states began reporting)

Cumulative Number of Child COVID-19 Cases*

  • 338,982 total child COVID-19 cases reported, and children represented 8.8% (338,982/3,835,573) of all cases
  • Overall rate: 447 cases per 100,000 children in the population

Change in Child COVID-19 Cases, 7/16/20 – 7/30/20

  • 97,078 new child cases reported from 7/16-7/30 (241,904 to 338,982), a 40% increase in child cases

But Trump just doesn’t care to do the right thing, keeping American children safe.

Unless that’s the point: He will do the opposite of the right thing.

By actively choosing gross negligence and malfeasance, Trump will ensure not only that American adults continue to sicken and die from COVID-19 but that children will also be increasingly exposed because it’s not the right thing.

He’s going to kill us all.

.

This is an open thread.

History’s Rhyme, Part 5: Bad Faith, Unauthorized Acts and Crimes Against Humanity

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks! /~Rayne]

It’s time to revisit the ongoing comparison of Nixon’s Articles of Impeachment with possible Articles against Donald Trump. Previous posts in this series:

History’s Rhyme: Nixon’s Articles of Impeachment — focus on Obstruction of Justice

History’s Rhyme, Part 2a: ‘Abuse of Power’ Sounds So Familiar — Abuse of Power (may include Public Corruption)

History’s Rhyme, Part 3: How Nixon’s Impeachment Unfolded — Watergate and Nixon’s near-impeachment timeline

History’s Rhyme, Part 4: Contempt Then, Contempt Now — focus on comparing charges of Contempt of Congress between Nixon and Trump.

An expansion of Part 2 into 2b addressing more abuses of power is planned in the near future. Trump continues to rack them up.

As noted in previous posts in this series, the House Judiciary Committee prepared five Articles of Impeachment against Richard M. Nixon during the course of its impeachment inquiry. Only three of the five were passed out of committee and approved by Congress. We all know Nixon resigned before the House could vote on the three approved articles.

The fourth article which was not approved pertained to Nixon’s Operation Menu — the covert bombing of Cambodia. Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, had not expressly approved this in its 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution. The bombings went unreported for four years and contributed to the destabilization of Cambodia.

A fundamental problem with this Article was that Congress bore some of the blame for the bombing; the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was written in such a way that it didn’t expressly preclude bombing of neighboring nations along the border with Vietnam. The resolution also did not constitute a declaration of war against North Vietnam, authorizing instead the use of military force to meet its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty. The legality of the military action in Vietnam was on thin ground, making action on any neighboring country even more questionable.

~ ~ ~

It’s not impossible this very same challenges will form the basis for another Article of Impeachment against Trump should he pursue military action against Iran without adequate approval from Congress.

But we already have seen Trump take action without Congressional approval and without the support of existing legislation behind him, beginning with his first week in office. His Executive Order 13769 to begin a Muslim travel ban was illegal; he persisted in pushing a ban focusing on Muslims with subsequent Executive Order 13780 and Presidential Proclamation 9645 until his Departments of Justice and Homeland Security arrived at restrictions which met the letter of existing law according to a now-stacked and partisan Supreme Court after several lawsuits. This is not a faithful execution of the law — 8 U.S. Code § 1158.Asylum — it’s whack-a-mole with innocent humans as collateral damage for no constructive reason or benefit to this country.

The sole benefit of the persecution of asylum seekers has been to curry favor with Trump’s voting base with campaign promises to stop them — and that’s corrupt.

When acting Attorney General Sally Yates announced the Department of Justice would not enforce the Muslim travel ban three days after Trump signed Executive Order 13769, she explained that the ban was not lawful. Trump rejected this opinion and fired her instead of relying on her expert opinion. He had to be told repeatedly by federal judges his executive order was not enforceable because it was unlawful.

People were detained unlawfully. People were unable to travel freely. The primary reason for their restriction was their religious identity — a violation of the First Amendment and its protections of religious freedom. It was a fundamental human rights violation under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which the U.S. is a signatory.

Trump’s introduction of a “zero tolerance” policy implemented during the first months of his term in office has also denied freedom of movement to persons seeking asylum at the border. The policy’s implementation resulted in systematic crimes against humanity including enslavement; deportation; imprisonment; torture; sexual assault including rape; persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds; other inhumane acts.

None of this was authorized by Congress; none of this is in 8 U.S. Code § 1158. These acts also violate numerous U.S. laws as well as treaties. While there is not currently a treaty on crimes against humanity, Trump’s bad faith execution of U.S. law and existing treaties like the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the U.N. Convention Against Torture spell out many of these crimes.

Again, Congress did not authorize acts like:

— separating children from parents or guardians;

— holding children in cages;

— trafficking separated children into unauthorized adoptions without parental or guardian consent;

— deportation of minors without parent or guardian;

— failure to track minors so they can be reunited with parents and/or guardians;

— failing to provide reasonable care including adequate food and water, bedding, hygiene, heat and cooling, health care;

— transporting detained persons without notification to parents, guardians, family members;

— refoulement – deporting asylum seekers back to the place they fled;

— forced labor.

Nothing in U.S. law or treaties to which the U.S. has been a party or signatory authorizes this kind of treatment.

Further, Trump’s bad faith execution exacerbates a long-term problem with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — too many U.S. citizens have been denied their rights, stopped, interrogated, detained, and treated like aliens simply because they were not white.

Trump also systematically defies a court order issued in June 2018 prohibiting further separations of minors from their families at the border and instructing the Department of Homeland security to return minors to their families. The Trump administration weaseled around the court order, detaining entire families at military facilities — new concentration camps — while DHS continued to separate families on an irregular basis.

We’ve seen evidence of this systematic lawlessness based on inspections by Congressional tours of detention facilities — concentration camps in which asylum seeking minors were denied reasonable “safe and sanitary” conditions.

The number of illnesses and deaths attributable to Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy may never be fully known because the administration has done so much to avoid monitoring and oversight.

~ ~ ~

Other deaths which can be wholly attributed to Trump’s bad faith in executing his office are those of 2,975 Americans who lived in Puerto Rico (pdf) when Hurricane Maria hit the island in 2017.

He had to be shamed into dispatching a U.S. Navy hospital ship to provide emergency health care even though the vessel had been waiting well in advance of the hurricane’s strike. It took nearly six weeks after it was dispatched for the vessel to berth and begin delivering care, though the Navy knew in advance of the hurricane that Puerto Rico might need medical support.

The manner in which the emergency aid was provided to the island was grossly negligent when not outright malignant — like the bottles of water left to sit on a tarmac for a year after the storm, or the recall of the hospital vessel U.S.S. Comfort long before its services were no longer needed, or the lack of effort on the White House’s part to work with Congress to assure aid money would be allocated and distributed in a timely basis.

Puerto Ricans were denied their right to equal protection under the law; they were not accorded the same access to federal aid as mainland citizens, in contrast to the assistance received by other Americans after Hurricane Harvey, Irma, and Michael in 2017-2018.

And none of this had the imprimatur of Congress.

~ ~ ~

Unlike Nixon’s Operation Menu which only lasted 14 months, Trump’s derogation of Congress’s authority through his bad faith execution of laws is now into its 33 month. His malign acts increase in depth and breadth, now including the wretched refusal of Bahamians fleeing their hurricane devastated country, continued separation of families including Bahamian children.

And now an even more evil effort has begun: Trump wants to round up homeless people regardless of their citizenship and house them in unused Federal Aviation Administration facilities (read: place them in concentration camps).

There are homeless who work in Silicon Valley, homeless only because there isn’t affordable housing. Will he stop at them? Is he doing this to line his pockets in some way or as a campaign promise not shared with the public?

How has his effort combined with that of his cabinet secretary Ben Carson done anything to improve access to affordable housing when they are undermining civil rights protections for marginalized groups?

None of this effort targeting California’s homeless has been adequately debated by Congress let alone codified by law.

Will Congress do nothing at all to stop this creeping and inhuman fascism, these sustained attacks on human rights of citizens and non-citizens alike?

The 93rd Congress may not have passed the fourth Article of Impeachment against Nixon, but at least they understood and grasped the executive could and must be removed with the three articles they passed. It’d be nice if the 116th Congress was less supine.

History’s Rhyme, Part 2a: ‘Abuse of Power’ Sounds So Familiar

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks! /~Rayne]

In a previous post I looked at the first of three Articles of Impeachment passed by Congress in 1974 against then-president Richard Nixon and suggested a parallel between Trump’s presidential acts and Nixon’s.

There had been five articles drafted; only the first three were approved by the 93rd Congress. Of them one article focused on Abuse of Power — acts which may be malfeasance and/or unlawful, as well as acts which may not have been strictly unlawful/illegal but were unethical and a breach of the trust the public places in the executive and a violation of the executive’s oath of office to take care the laws are faithfully executed.

You can read the second article at this link; now compare it to a theoretical article of impeachment which could be drafted against Trump today.

Article 2: Abuse of Power

Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impeding the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposes of these agencies.

This conduct has included one or more of the following:

1. He has violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution which provides that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Donald J. Trump, has a financial interest in vast business holdings around the world that engage in dealings with foreign governments and receive benefits from those governments. He has refused to divest himself of those interests and inherent conflicts of interest. He has accepted “Emolument[s]” from “foreign State[s]” while holding the office of President of the United States. He has accepted numerous benefits from foreign states without first seeking or obtaining congressional approval as specified by the Emoluments Clause, and further maintains that no Congressional approval is required. He has rejected Congress’s Article I authority by refusing to seek its consent.

2. He misused the Secret Service by interfering in their ability to perform their duties with regard to protecting the presidency, refusing them necessary access to public and private facilities where foreign nationals visit frequently. He has interfered with the Secret Service’s ability to operate, draining their budget by deploying them excessively at his private business facilities when not executing his presidential duties.

3. He has, acting personally and or through his subordinates and agents, in violation or disregard of the Presidential Records Act of 1978 (PRA), concealed or destroyed presidential records, or prevented presidential records from being made appropriate to the execution of his office. He has terminated the practice of publishing public summaries of presidential phone calls with world leaders thereby evading creation of presidential records. He has ignored warnings of the National Archives to comply with the PRA.

4. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens and the human rights of visiting foreign nationals, unilaterally drafted, issued without adequate prior legal review, and permitted to be maintained Executive Orders 13769 and 13780, violating the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection, Substantive Due Process, and Procedural Due Process clauses, the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and violating in both substance and procedure the Administrative Procedure Act in the process of discriminating against persons both citizens and foreign nationals on the basis of religion and national origin by illegal detention and refusal of their admittance to this country.

5. In disregard of the rule of law: he knowingly misused the executive power by interfering with agencies of the executive branch, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, in violation of his duty to take care that the laws by faithfully executed. He rejected the expert advice of then Deputy Attorney General as to the unlawfulness of his Executive Order 13769. He has authorized Department of Homeland Security personnel to commit illegal acts against asylum seekers and refugees. He interfered with the Department of Justice in its investigation into interference with the 2016 election by repeated disparagement.

6. He has retaliated against federal employees, including but not limited to the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Director of Secret Service, and National Archives personnel, disparaging, harassing, and or firing them without adequate legal cause for conducting their lawful duties. He has ordered other federal personnel to disparage and fire federal personnel without adequate legal cause for conducting their lawful duties. He has maliciously attempted to interfere with federal employees’ ability to draw their rightful benefits.

7. He misused the Department of Justice, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, by tacitly directing or implicitly authorizing the Attorney General to conduct or continue investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office. He has expressed repeatedly his intent to use the Department of Justice and U.S. intelligence agencies for the purposes of punishing political opponents. He has failed to take care that the laws were faithfully executed by failing to act when he knew or had reason to know that his close subordinates endeavored to investigate political opponents.

8. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of press under the First Amendment and of citizens under the Fifth Amendment, authorized and permitted the indefinite revocation of White House press credentials for arbitrary and non-compelling reasons, including punishment for and suppression of perceived criticism. He has frequently undermined the First Amendment rights of the press by calling them “the enemy of the people.”

9. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, in violation or disregard of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), allowed the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PACEI) to meet without public notice; without making PACEI meetings open to the public; and without timely notice in the Federal Register. He has failed to ensure PACEI operated so that any of its “records, reports, transcripts, minutes, appendixes, working papers, drafts, studies, agenda, or other documents which were made available to or prepared for or by” the PACEI were “available for public inspection.” He has further failed to ensure that the PACEI was fairly balanced and free of inappropriate influence as required under the FACA to ensure public accountability.  Based on spurious claims of voter fraud and without adequate data security in place, he has ordered the PACEI to obtain private voter data from the fifty states for the purposes of a voter roll purge using questionable and opaque methods.

[ — TO BE CONTINUED — ]

In all of this, Donald J. Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore Donald J. Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Article 2 against Nixon only contained five subjects. How quaint; it’s like Tricky Dick wasn’t even trying.

In contrast Trump might have racked up a new subject every other month in office to add to this list. I have at least six more subjects to add in a followup post.

After I finish the Abuses of Power I plan to look at Article 3: Contempt of Congress — which is very nearly writing itself — and an Article 4: Violation of Treaties including those covering refugees and international human rights. There could be an Article 5 covering action in Yemen and other foreign policy and military failures.

I still don’t know if this shouldn’t include his ridiculously expensive golf. Assuming he’s not removed by the time his term is up in early January 2021, and assuming he continues his current rate of play, Trump will have burned through nearly $200,000,000 taxpayer dollars, a considerable chunk of which will go into his pocket for golf cart fees alone. What a parasite; imagine how many teachers could have received pay increases with that, or how many Pell Grant scholarships that could have funded.

Or how much of his ‘fucken wall‘ that could have bought.

This is an open thread. Be sure to let me know what other topics you think should be added under this Article 2: Abuse of Power.