*
And so the desperation escalates, still further.
Sunday, January 8, 1:56 p.m.: “Before I, or anyone, saw the classified and/or highly confidential hacking intelligence report, it was leaked out to @NBC News. So serious!”
The hacking itself? We ought to move on with our lives. It’s only being discussed because he beat the Democrats.
The possible leak about the hacking? “So serious.”
And then Meryl Streep changes the topic for him on Sunday night at the Golden Globes—and the last of his campaign managers changes it right back, because . . . he . . . cannot . . . leave it . . . alone.
“The fact is,” Conway said Monday, dismissing the need for a Russian hack investigation and suggesting that Trump may roll back both President Obama’s punishments of them and U.S. sanctions against Russia, “the Democrats became super-duper interested in this entire issue after the election did not go the way they, quote, wanted and the way they expected.”
Trump . . . himself, or his mouthpieces . . . cannot . . . leave it . . . alone.
Neither can he alter his personal connection to WikiLeaks.
Again, the Saturday morning tweet: “Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results . . .”
But even without the Russian element—the hacking . . . is WikiLeaks.
And as a review of his speeches by ThinkProgress.org showed, in the last thirty days of the campaign, Trump invoked WikiLeaks at least once . . . every day . . . for a total of at least . . . 164 times in one month.
October 10, 2016, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania: “WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks. And I said, ‘Write a couple of them down.’ Let’s see. During a speech, crooked Hillary Clinton . . . Oh, she’s crooked, folks. She’s crooked as a three-dollar bill. Okay, here’s one. Just came out . . .”
Trump is interrupted by a chant of “Lock her up” . . .
“‘Lock her up’ is right,” he says.
He brought up WikiLeaks in a debate.
He claimed that the WikiLeaks product meant Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be “allowed” to run for president.
He complained—in speeches and on Twitter, and it still sits there on his feed—that there wasn’t enough coverage of WikiLeaks.
October 12, 9:46 a.m.: “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”
But now Trump says . . . the hacking that produced WikiLeaks . . . had no effect on the election.
And of course, there’s no way an American leader could ever compromise himself and suddenly be at Russia’s beck and call.
September 6, 2013, 9:02 a.m.:
“I wonder how much our ‘leaders’ have promised, or given, Russia in order for them to behave and not make the U.S. look even worse?”
How do we resist this monster?
Just keep quoting him.
Just keep mentioning it.
Just keep remembering: he cannot . . . leave it . . . alone.
WikiLeaks is the hacking.
The hacking . . . is Russia . . .
And Trump . . . is . . . WikiLeaks.
GUNS AND TRUMP
Post date • THURSDAY, JANUARY 12
In the wake of last Friday’s terrorist attack, by another American against Americans at an American airport. At least five dead. At least six wounded. Guns. Gun terrorism.
And a reminder of all the things getting worse in this country that Trump will not even think of, let alone act against, in defense of the American people.
His question would not be: How on earth have we let our country deteriorate to the point that the last three high-profile mass public shootings in this country—San Bernardino, the Orlando nightclub, the Fort Lauderdale airport—have been accomplished with legal weapons, with legal transportation of those weapons, with impunity?
His question would not be: How do we have a system by which anybody—international terrorist or nondenominational psychotic—who wants to kill a lot of people at an airport can have the airline essentially deliver the guns and the ammunition to them as if they were ordering a pizza?
His first question would be—in office, his first question will be—Is it Muslims?
His second question would be—in office, his second question will be—How can he exploit it to increase his power?
His last question would be—in office, his last question will be—How can we make sure this latest nightmare doesn’t infringe upon the holy Second Amendment?
*
The Constitution, with all the amendments, is a patriotic 7,676 words long. 76-76. Two of its clauses mention an exact value in cash and merchandise. And the word “money” appears six times in the Constitution. And “coin” five times. There are ten references to taxes. Eight times you read “duty” or “duties.” The word “debt” appears seven times. Four uses of the word “compensation.” Two “imports.” Two “exports.”
And the rest of it, with the non-ownership parts stripped away—the rest of the United States Constitution and its amendments reads: Profit, paid, Treasury, Emoluments, Revenue, Imposts, Excises, Imposts, Excises, credit, Commerce, Bankruptcies, Securities, Exclusive Right, purchased, Capitation, Commerce, Revenue, Treasury, Appropriations, Receipts, Expenditures, Profit, Emolument, Credit, gold, silver.
Tender, Payment, Imposts, Imposts, Treasury, Profit, Emolument, Bribery, Lands, Grants, Forfeiture, fines, equity, payment, pensions, bounties, pay, obligation, obligations, incomes, manufacture, sale, pay, value, owner, Property, property . . . Private property.
*
Our Constitution . . . is a property document.
Our Constitution is about ownership. Those references just to dollars, money, coin, taxes, duties, debt, compensation, and other ownership? One hundred three of them, all told. In the Constitution, the words “vote,” “votes,” and “voting” appear only . . . thirty-seven times. The words “right” and “rights” . . . fifteen times.
Money and ownership: 103 times.
Our Constitution is, first and foremost, a property contract. What the government can own and must own and pay for; what the people can own and must own and pay for.
*
It is noble, and most of it has held up flawlessly since 1787, and in some places it is sublime. But it does not read like the Declaration of Independence. Its closest relative is the contract you sign when you buy a car.
So isn’t it funny that in the Second Amendment, the second of all of them ever passed, the one about guns, it doesn’t say anything . . . about owning guns?
Dollars, money, coin, taxes, duties, debt, compensation, import, export, pay, value, owner, Property, property, Private property. A Constitution with as much fine print as a mortgage—a Constitution that mentions ten dollars, and twenty dollars—and yet there isn’t one of those ownership or property or value words in the part about guns.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Which one of those words means “own”?
None of them.
Which words in the part stating that the Second Amendment is about the well-regulated militia in a free state—are unclear?
None of them.
The Second Amendment is there to keep state militias legal.
It does this by keeping legal the rights of private citizens to bear arms. For use in a militia. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to your state National Guard. Doesn’t say a thing about prohibiting gun control.
The Second Amendment is gun control. It may say you can bear one. It may even say you can keep one, in your own home—if you’re using it as part of a well-regulated militia. But it does not say you can own one, and if you don’t
own that gun you’re keeping and bearing, necessarily somebody else does own it, and that somebody has got to be the government, and therefore the Constitution starts with the idea that the government controls the guns. All the guns.
And, by the way, the “arms” in the Second Amendment? Those are muskets. Not repeating rifles. Not machine guns. Not automatic killing devices. Saying that the Founding Fathers wanted to protect your right to own an assault rifle is as stupid as saying that they wanted to protect your right to own nuclear weapons.
And we have a history of government gun control that stretches back to the nineteenth century, back to when the musket began the process of evolving into an Uzi. The so-called Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881—the epitome of the Wild West—was about . . . gun control. To prevent gun terrorism, it was illegal to carry a gun in Tombstone. And the Clantons and the McLaurys were ignoring gun control, and the town marshals, the Earp brothers, were enforcing it.
*
But of course, what does that matter?
A man elected president dog-whistled throughout his campaign to the “Second Amendment people.” He claims to carry a gun at all times. He is fighting to keep a private bodyguard instead of relying on the Secret Service.
His son, as reported last weekend in The Washington Post, is advocating for legislation to end the nine-month waiting period . . . for silencers on guns and rifles.
Oh, and the Second Amendment? This is settled law. The Supreme Court ruled in the Heller case, in 2008, that it doesn’t matter if the words used are “keep and bear Arms” rather than “keep and own Arms” or “own and bear Arms.”
Supreme Court!
“The Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being . . . While some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and surrender to the false god of judicial supremacy, I refuse to light a match to our Constitution. We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat.”
Former Arkansas governor and frequent presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee wrote that.
“We’ve had too many examples in recent years of courts and judges legislating. They’re not interpreting what the law says and whether someone has violated it or not. In too many instances, they have been actually legislating by legal decree what they think the law should be, and that I don’t go for.”
Speaking? The fortieth president of the United States, Ronald Reagan.
They said it. I didn’t.
*
Oh, and one more quote about the Supreme Court and the Second Amendment, this one from Parade magazine in January 1990:
“The Gun Lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies—the militia—would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.”
The writer added, “The Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee the right to have firearms at all.”
Who wrote that?
Warren Burger, chief justice of the United States from 1969 until 1986. Appointed by Richard Nixon. Believed that homosexual behavior could be prohibited by law. Thought that sending a man to prison for life for writing a bad hundred-dollar check was just fine. Believed in a strict constructionist reading of the Constitution.
“The Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee the right to have firearms at all,” he said.
*
The excuses are: hunting, protection against governmental tyranny, and the rights of responsible gun owners.
Bluntly, if you need thirteen guns, or an automatic weapon of some kind, to kill any animal smaller than a kraken, you’re no good at hunting. Take up another pastime.
And about protection against governmental tyranny. Ask the interned Japanese Americans of World War II how well that worked.
And “responsible gun owners.” I’m sorry for them. But at this point, too many gun terrorists have committed too many gun massacres in this country. And these figures do not include the nearly 10 percent of all the presidents in our history who have been assassinated with guns, or the fifth who was wounded, or the sixth who was wounded while running for reelection, or seven others who survived significant assassination attempts—by guns. That’s thirteen out of forty-four presidents. Nearly a third of them.
The BBC noted that on Christmas Day of 2015, we had twenty-seven non-suicide gun deaths in this country. For the entire year of 2015, England had . . . twenty-four.
“Responsible gun ownership?” That ship sailed long ago.
*
And Trump will, actively or passively, call it back to port.
To paraphrase Professor Laurens P. Hickok, of Western Reserve College, speaking of slavery a century and a half ago: The question now before the American citizens is no longer, alone, “Can the schools and public places be made free of the risk of gun massacres?” but “Are we free, or are we slaves under gun mob law?”
Mob law—in which the man seizing the power of the government dog-whistles to that mob, “Remember to bring your guns.”
Or have the airline ship them for you.
ANSWER THE QUESTION, TRUMP
Post date • TUESDAY, JANUARY 17
“Thank you, Mr. President-elect. Can you stand here today, once and for all, and say that no one connected to you or your campaign had any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign?”
The essential question.
The world-turning question.
The impeachment question.
And then the reporter . . . kept talking. “And if you do indeed believe that Russia was behind the hacking, what is your message to Vladimir Putin right now?”
And the ball game was over.
Trump got to filibuster for 323 words about how Russia would respect America when he’s “leading” and Hillary’s reset button and the legal folder props and more of the poisoned word salad constantly being spun, tableside, in that addled mind of his.
And he never answered the question.
And his first news conference in six months . . . ended.
*
If the answer is yes, even in the slightest degree, his presidency is over before it has begun, although it will linger indefinitely as the Republicans continue to put power ahead of country or democracy or even independence as a nation.
And since Trump chose not to say whether anyone connected to him or his campaign had—as implied in the independent dossier—any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign . . . we will have to answer it for him, by circumstantial evidence.
Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Fired in 2014. Within months he was being paid to appear on a Kremlin-sponsored television network, and the next year he was paid to appear at the network’s gala in Moscow and to sit next to . . . Vladimir Putin.
The New York Times reports that Flynn spoke to Russia’s ambassador to this country this past December 28, the day before this country’s sanctions against Russia for its hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
The Washington Post says Flynn and the ambassador spoke “several times” on the twenty-ninth.
The international news agency Reuters says they spoke five times.
There is a law in this country against individuals—even individuals who are soon to be part of a government—contradicting U.S. government foreign policy or dealing directly with enemy nations, and all we know about these calls is the Trump Gang’s claim that Flynn was setting up another phone call for Trump with Vladimir Putin, and unfortunately the Trump Gang has been
handing out lies in carload lots.
In December, three veteran intelligence professionals resigned from the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, at Cambridge University in England, amid “concerns” that the seminar was funded, through intermediaries, by the Kremlin. One of its past speakers was . . . Michael Flynn.
Also that month, Bloomberg News reported that Flynn had partnered with a technology company, one of whose chiefs was “once convicted of trying to sell stolen biotech material to the Russian KGB espionage agency.”
And the head of Austria’s far-right “Freedom Party”—founded in the 1950s by former Nazis—signed what he has described as a “cooperation agreement” . . . with Vladimir Putin’s political party. The Austrian said that a few weeks earlier he had met with Michael Flynn in New York.
*
And then there’s Flynn’s boss.
Separating the United States and Germany has been an avowed policy—perhaps the foremost foreign policy—of Russia since 1945.
In a joint interview with The Times of London and the German newspaper Bild over the weekend, Trump called NATO obsolete and said that German chancellor Angela Merkel had made a catastrophic mistake by letting in “illegals,” and he threatened Germany with huge tariffs.
Meanwhile, a variety of sources report that the Israelis might not share intelligence with the Trump administration, after American intelligence said, in essence: Don’t give them anything you don’t want to see end up in the hands of Iran, via the Kremlin.
After the revelation of the Trump dossier last week, BuzzFeed News quoted two Israeli intelligence officers saying that their nation and at least one European country are separately investigating Trump’s ties to—or compromised vulnerability to—Russia.
But—wait—you’re not sure about BuzzFeed’s reporting now, right?
Because they published the full Trump dossier, mistakes and false leads included, last week?
Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Page 21