My Head Hurts

(Happy Birthday, Fred...wherever you are....)

It's 2 a.m. and I can't sleep because I've been going over and over and over all of this in my mind.

Joy Reid on MSNBC finally did what I've been waiting to hear SOMEone do for months...she pressed her guest (I can't even remember who it was now) to get to the bottom line on how the administration in general and Trump specifically can be held accountable for their slow destruction of the country we have known for so many years.

With the Mueller report pointing to so many criminal activities, but stopping short of indicting anyone, because Mueller says he can't indict a sitting president where do we go from there?

The House, now that the Democrats are in the majority are going to dig deeper and get statements of their own.  But today I learned that Trump has forbidden anyone in the White House to appear before the House.

So they can take it to the courts, but Trump has been stacking the courts with people sympathetic to him and even if they get a judge who has some guts and sides with the House, they take it to the Supreme Court, where Trump's lackey will cast the deciding vote in the president's favor.

I have heard that if this or that (like Trump's tax returns) can't be obtained then they'll have to subpoena them.  Oooooo..... the dreaded subpoena.  And what happens if the subpoena is ignored?  Who will enforce the law?  The Department of Justice, now headed by Trump's personal attorney?  I think not.

I heard today a little thing that has been pretty much ignored because it's a little thing compared to the destruction of our constitution, but they've relaxed the emoluments clause and now it's OK for the president to receive gifts from foreign dignitaries. 

From Esquire:

The so-called foreign emoluments clause was intended to curb presidents and other government officials from accepting gifts and benefits from foreign governments unless Congress consents. But in a forthcoming article in the Indiana Law Journal, the Washington University Law professor Kathleen Clark reveals justice department filings have recently changed tack. The new interpretation, Clark says, is contained in justice filings responding to recent lawsuits lodged by attorneys generals and members of Congress.

Clark’s article notes that in more than 50 legal opinions over some 150 years justice department lawyers have interpreted the clause in a way that barred any foreign payments or gifts except for ones Congress approved. But filings by the department since June 2017 reveal a new interpretation that “… would permit the president – and all federal officials – to accept unlimited amounts of money from foreign governments, as long as the money comes through commercial transactions with an entity owned by the federal official,” the professor writes.

With Trump's barrage of tweets against "fake news" and taking on Fox News as the only true news source (the same Fox news where, as I saw on a clip yesterday, one of the commentators said, following the Notre Dame fire and the rescue of the crown of thorns, that Mary Magdalene had brought the crown to Paris after Jesus death.  Huh?  Not fake news???) the news is so filtered that some people don't hear anything negative against the president.

I remember having a discussion with someone from Facebook when we first learned of the separation of children from their parents.  I was so incensed about that (still am) that even though we have diametrically opposed views on the president, I simply had to explode about what was going on.  Her response was that she thought it was hyped by the media and she hadn't really heard much about it.  There are still thousands of children separated from their parents and now the administration says it may take "years" (!!!) to reunite them.  What do those little children think about their parents?  And where are they?  Surely not in thousands of loving foster homes.

There are so many terrible things going on, or discussed, that it's hard to keep track of which is supposed to help deflect from which bigger thing.  I guess they have decided not to truck immigrants seeking asylum to sanctuary cities now, but who knows...maybe they still plan to do that.  This seems to be an administration that acts first and thinks later (if at all).

I guess at least they reversed the attempt to take away funding for special needs children, after the outcry that caused.  But as a general rule appealing to the administration's softer side is useless, because as a Sociopath, he doesn't have one.  Send him all the pathetic photos of crying children and mothers and it doesn't move him.

You don't hear a lot about the wall these days, except at the Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn this week, there was a clip of Trump sitting and coloring with a bunch of kids and telling them about the big wall he was going to build and how beautiful it was going to be.

And what is happening to prevent Russia from hacking the 2020 elections?  Despite every single intelligence agency in this country proving that Russia helped to get Trump elected, Trump says his buddy Putin says they didn't do it and he believes him.  

These must be glory days for Putin, who is paying Trump for all he can get out of him, and Trump doesn't even realize that he's being manipulated by a guy who actually knows what he is doing, unlike our president.

I don't know how coherent these thoughts are, but they are what is keeping me awake tonight.