Expendables: Illegal and Unconstitutional
I believe the sentiments of most American people towards Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi are that their firings are no great loss.
To give credit where credit is due, before becoming national public figures, both women had achieved notoriety in their own states. Like it or not, they are accomplished women, women achieving competently in the world of politics, Noem as governor and Bondi as attorney general.
Both are transactional types. Again, like it or not, each did her bounden duty to serve the will of the President, even when his demands were illegal and unconstitutional. Each, I believe, hoped for higher offices to come, in reward for executing acts and processes to eliminate the leaders “enemies,” whether enemy aliens or political opponents. Each stretched constitutional and societal mores beyond their limits in efforts to appease the endless greed of their leader, failing only because they wouldn’t go far enough. They broke laws. It wasn’t enough. They lied for the leader, they served his means.
I’m glad they are gone, and I feel sorry for them. They did everything the leader asked. They sacrificed personal integrity. They lied. They issued unconstitutional orders.
It didn’t pay. In the end, they took attention away from the man of endless genius they served. He found them to be expendable. They did what he wanted, but were not successful and exposed his means to public scorn. That was unforgivable. They’re pretty enough (and that matters to the leader) but just women.
“Off with their heads!” exclaims the Red Queen.
The one good thing, for them, that may come out of all this is to have escaped a morality-impaired regime before it collapses in ruins. This is just the beginning. Those who will not accept accountability must have scapegoats to carry the blame.
Slight of Hand and Wires and Mirrors; No Accountability
Our leader announced a speech to the nation, which turned out to be nothing but repeats of “Truth” social posts and comments previously made. A boring, disjointed 19 minutes of nothing credible. Credibility is stating a mission and following through. Chaos is changing the mission and its achievements every ten minutes or so. If you don’t believe me, watch the stock market.
Meanwhile, behind the curtain, The Great Oz and his handlers are changing how our democracy operates. The failed military officer, Pete Hegseth is examining and removing African Americans, females, and especially African American Females from promotion lists. He is firing the top general who questions his judgement in toying with a time honored system where the military chooses its leaders based on performance and leadership abilities, not their gender nor their color.
Does Hegseth understand demographics? Does he understand that military recruitment is problematic these days days, that the pool of recruits has shrunk dramatically? Does he understand that brawn no longer wins wars, but fighter planes, drones, new ideas and weapon development are fighting a new kind of war, where every gender and color contributes the the nuances of creative strategies available to a commander in chief who genuinely understands how to function in the fog of war?
Today Heather Cox Richardson alerts us to another slight of hand, the kind of small change the controllers hope will go unnoticed: The challenge of ACCOUNTABILITY and how it impedes a sitting President. She quotes the following, and it quite takes my breath away:
Yesterday Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, of the Office of Legal Counsel, published an opinion for the White House that claims the Presidential Records Act, which requires that presidents keep records of their official business and turn them over at the end of their term, is unconstitutional. Gaiser clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
“The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II. The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose,” the memo reads. “For these reasons, the PRA is unconstitutional, and the President need not further comply with its dictates.”
(taking a moment to catch my breath)
We burden our elected president with the requirement that we know what he does and why he is doing it?
How can anyone believe this lunacy? Any person in a position of responsibility has to answer to his polity! Elected politicians all the more. He answers to us, the voters.
Our leader has a lot to answer for. We can’t trust anything he says, from minute to minute. Our treasury has been declared insolvent. He is sending our children off to war with unclear orders and insufficient leadership.
He has hired a confederacy of ignorant, greedy sycophants. He has gutted our diplomatic service. He has gutted Consumer Oversight. He has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency. He has corrupted the Department of Education.
He is terrified he cannot win and is attempting to take over national elections. Meanwhile, he is bankrupting our country with garish monuments and wars we never agreed to fight.
He is subjecting women to outdated standards and taken away their rights to make decisions for their own bodies.
He is corrupting our social system, taking medical care away from those who need it most, and callously neglecting the veterans who have served our country so loyally.
He has made agreements with other countries that we only learn about by accidental comments.
This can’t go on. Give us Accountability. Oversight. Congressional Approval. Fair and Free Elections. Constitutional Restraints!
Hope is Not a Strategy
Our leader has said other nations will come to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump last week first raised the idea of naval escorts for tankers in the strait “if necessary,” but on Monday, he hoped they wouldn’t be needed.
“When the time comes the U.S. Navy and its partners will escort tankers through the strait if needed. I hope it’s not going to be needed, but if it’s needed, we’ll escort them right through,” he said.
But even with Naval escorts, an expensive and time-consuming mission, it’s “not necessarily a guaranteed success,” according to Kirby.
“Drones can fly low and slow, they can fly fast and low, and they can do a lot of damage even to one ship with the Navy not being able to knock it out of the sky,” he said. (From TheHill.com)
And then this, from Associated Press:
“Many Countries, especially those who are affected by Iran’s attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe,” Trump wrote on Saturday, later adding, “this should have always been a team effort.”
It was not clear if that multi-nation push was set to begin or if Trump only hoped it might, however. That’s because he also wrote: “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected” will “send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer” be threatened by Iran.
The normal route for declaring war is to communicate your intentions to your allies before you attack. It is to prepare and coordinate with your own national institutes before you attack. And, when you are going to seek assistance, it is a really good thing if you have not insulted your allies in numerous ways before asking for their help, especially when it involves great risking expensive ships, aircraft and lives.
“Hope” and “Hopefully” are not good substitutes for steady, consistent diplomatic relations and providing reliable, honorable leadership on the international level. This would-be war eagle has soiled his nest.
What Country am I Living In?
As an American, I’ve lived in a lot of countries, often countries that controlled news coverage and punished those who reported news the leaders found embarrassing.
Many experienced people found ways around it. They phrased their reports carefully, leaving the reader to read behind the lines.
It’s not what you expect in a Democratic Republic. It’s not what I expect in the United States of America, where the very first amendment to our Constitution verified our right to have our own opinions and our freedom to state them (given that they were not, of course, a threat against someone else, or shouting “Fire” in a crowded theatre.)
And now the elected leader of the United States is trying to control any negative reporting about his War, a war that surprised his own country, his own people. A War which has not been supported by Congress, which has the right to declare War. As billions go up, literally, in smoke, or down in flames, Trump and Hegseth want the FCC to pull the broadcasting license of anyone reporting the events that are really happening. Trump has a long history of calling reality “false news” and claiming his big fat lies are truth. Like his endless whining about the election he lost to Joe Biden by more than 8 million votes. And he claims it was a fraudulent loss, a rigged election.
How on earth could that ever be a secret if it were to have happened? Crazy, delusional, whoppers!
And now he wants people whose reputations are on the line, newsmakers, journalists, photographers, soldiers, sailors – people who can see what is happening with their own eyes, hear the blasts and report the damages, and hold those accountable for their actions – he wants them to toe the party line? He wants the TRUTH to be what he pretends it is?
George Orwell got it right, he just got the year wrong. With this administration, we no longer have guarantees of personal privacy. We no longer have guarantees guaranteed by our Constitution. The Police are no longer our friends.
The president believes the truth is what he says it is and that the rights of the people are those he says they have. How have we allowed this to happen?
He CREATES situations, or makes them up, and then creates an oppressive measure to deal with it – look at what ICE, once respectable, has become. An entity protecting our entry points has become a gang of thugs who operate outside the law. When courts rule against them, they ignore the rulings.
When Trump looks at the polls and sees that he cannot win an election, he creates the “SAVE” act to deter, discourage and delete voter’s rights. Both ICE and “SAVE” address problems which do not exist, other than as avenues to giving this monster greater and greater power to feed his endless greed.
Do not listen to this man. Do not believe a word he says. Look, instead, at his actions. He fires the watchdogs. He fires those who would limit his power. He is what he always has been, a fraud, a con man, a liar, and altogether a very flawed man. He piles up wealth by making agreements that fill his pockets, his family’s pockets, and his cronies’. He bullies those who stand up to him. This is not a man of strong character; this is a human wrecking ball.
Another Brick in the Wall
Do you believe this man really has your best interest at heart? Don’t look at what he says; look at what he does. He has an agenda – self-enrichment. He has a strategy, and that strategy is outlined in Project 2025. Take a look. See how quickly and radically our democratic system and values are disappearing.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Treasury Department has terminated its collective bargaining agreement with unionized workers employed at the Internal Revenue Service, the agency said Friday, in an escalation of President Donald Trump ’s push to exert more control over the federal workforce.
The union contract for the Bureau of the Fiscal Service was also terminated this week, according to two people familiar with the decision. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.
Workers at the IRS and the fiscal service bureau, which processes payments for the government, are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union. They were informed by agency leadership that Treasury terminated their collective bargaining agreements, using an executive order President Donald Trump signed last March as the authority for the terminations.
In a letter to IRS workers Friday, viewed by The Associated Press, IRS Chief Human Capital Officer Alex Kweskin told employees the move “deepens our commitment of operating as one IRS, a collaborative team focused on serving American taxpayers.”
The contract terminations come after Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, issued a memo this month to agency heads calling on them to comply with Trump’s March order and notify labor unions “that they are terminating any applicable CBAs (collective bargaining agreements), whether represented by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) or another labor union.”
The union had sued the federal government last year over Trump’s executive order.
And while a D.C. court issued a preliminary injunction against the government, that was stayed pending an appeal. Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a decision in a separate case Thursday that cleared the way for the implementation of Trump’s executive order.
Doreen Greenwald, president of the Treasury employees union, said in a statement Friday that the IRS “cannot unilaterally end” its contract with the labor union. She said the federal sector labor statute requires the IRS to have a collective bargaining agreement “with the exclusive representative of its bargaining unit employees,” she said.
The National Treasury Employees Union represents roughly 150,000 employees in 37 departments and agencies.
A Ray of Hope for Free and Fair Elections
This, just in from NPR News:
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will not patrol polling locations during this year’s midterm elections, a Department of Homeland Security official said yesterday on a call with top state voting officials. Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams confirmed the promise in a social media post. The declaration comes as the president has continued to push false claims of noncitizen voter fraud, as recently as in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. “
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