Impeachment Vote--January 4--First Order of Business

It's time.

I understand Nancy Pelosi's urging for us to be patient with the 17 different investigations concerning 45's ethics, taxes, lies and improprieties that will begin as soon as the new Congress is sworn in on January 3. It's a respect for processes.

When the House of Representatives--or a majority of it, which will be Democratic now--has gone through all the facts that it can procure after all the interviews and testimonies, then a discussion of the possibilities of impeaching the president can take place, the thinking goes. When the House has all of that on paper, without a cabal of nervous Republicans gathering around 45 to protect him, then it can pronounce its indictment, which is what impeachment actually is, and send it along to the Senate for trial.

This would be, of course, outside of whatever Robert Mueller has managed to find, which, based on what we already know and which is probably 20 percent of what he's found, is no doubt devastating in its depravity and illegality. But 45 still has time to fire Mueller, which would just be piled upon the dare-you-to-stop-me acts which have characterized his terrible tenure in office so far--and which have only accelerated in recent days.

If Mueller goes, backed by either an acting attorney general whose status, put on hold, may be drawn out by inaction (wait and see), or by a new attorney general who has already expressed his distaste for Mueller's investigations, 45's new and twisted Justice Department will seek to suppress his findings. Beyond what Mueller has already filed with federal judges (which, perhaps, may be devastating enough), that will delay knowledge of the whole story, the biggest possible picture, as long as possible--hopefully, for 45, beyond his re-election campaign.

When you're in trouble, in other words, you play for time. It worked for Bush-43's 2000 Florida election debacle. Bush's lawyers strung out the process, resulting in the Supreme Court ruling that while yes, it was a good idea to recount all the votes in the state, the state had three hours to complete it, thus rendering it moot and, by that ruling, declaring Bush the president by 537 of the votes that had been counted originally. That led us into 9-11, the war in Iraq, and the waste that No Child Left Behind created, among other mistakes. I'm sorry he lost his dad recently, but he was the wrong person to be elected president, and the attitudes that he unleashed (among other things and people) have led us directly into the hands of 45.

At least 43 knew how to act in a presidential manner, and understood the built-in safeguards so that the political and international cultures would be preserved. 45 knows and cares nothing about these. He knows, too, that all he does will be sifted through the sieves of media hand-wringing of policy wonks who will over-analyze and dissect moves as if they're part of an overall revolution in American government, or some such nonsense like that--that they are based on bold, decisive principles.

They aren't. Every single thing 45 does is about him, about maintaining support among the loud and obnoxious minority that supports him, and hoping to somehow re-create sufficient voting in 2020 to give him another four years of this disaster. Eventually, most commentators will invite someone onto their shows who will say this--but those comments come at the end of larger discussions that are simply irrelevant, and make 45 all the more dangerous because he thinks they're irrelevant, too.

45 has made a complete mess of our foreign and military policies, using troop deployments as a lollypop for his mind-numbed minions, whether to send soldiers on a fool's errand to the border or to dangerously and irresponsibly withdraw them from Syria, in an immediate and inexplicable abandonment of Kurdish allies. He reportedly did so because Turkish president Erdogan shamed him into thinking that it was more important to respect the wishes of Turkey, a NATO ally that opposes the Kurds, than to maintain the promises made to our own allies on the field of battle. Thus buffeted by no more than one other opinion, 45 is withdrawing the troops, leaving the Kurds exposed to the very ISIS forces that he said had been defeated (but haven't).

If you're from other NATO countries and watching this, can it make you more secure, or less? Are you going to believe 45's promises, or not? Will it mean that you're more likely to make a military buildup, or less? Will that stabilize the region, or not?

He is also withdrawing 5,000 of the 14,000 troops assigned to Afghanistan. If this was such a good idea, why didn't he do it six months or a year ago? It's because it constitutes a campaign promise, which he is determined to accomplish whether or not it has been determined to be an effective move or not. If I promise to do something objectionable and then go ahead and do it, does that make me a better person who considers the objections and hesitates? Does it make me stronger? Does it make me more responsibly thoughtful?

These moves are so awful that his most trusted and respected member of his cabinet, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, got right in his face in the Oval Office yesterday and dropped his resignation letter--unique in that a direct explanation of his disdain for 45's policies were actually noted within it; those who resign from the cabinet just don't do that--in his lap and walked out. Nobody does that with such consummate disrespect--but until now we have never had a president who deserves it.

45 has embarrassed the country in countless ways with his terrible, completely personally-based judgment. He reads nothing, listens to no one, and does what he feels like doing when he feels like doing it. With Mattis' departure, he has one less brake upon his seat-of-the-pants policymaking, in which actual governing is something completely foreign to him because it would mean balancing interests and considering the whole country.

Which brings us to the impending shutdown, now hours away as this is being written. This blatant political stunt, in which he thinks people will forget that he's on videotape taking complete responsibility for it during a meeting with Speaker-Designate Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, so he can successfully blame the Democrats for holding back on the border wall that a majority of Americans don't want, will be used as an attempted torture chamber to squeeze screaming Americans into capitulation. It's no crueler than what he's doing to the children of immigrants at the border--which is an abomination that, ironically, might become more exposed because of this gambit.

It will be the last straw, I believe. Let's not wait any longer. On January 4, the day after smiles, genuine or otherwise, will be exchanged among members of the new House of Representatives, let's get on with the business of accountability. Instead of waiting to accumulate the additional facts that will obviously and inevitably result in impeachment, let's impeach 45 first, and use the investigations, interviews and testimonies as piling onto the clear and obvious facts that have already emerged in preparation for the trial which will continue to expose them. The facts will come out one way or another, but waiting for the several months to "officially" gather all of them up will just allow 45 to sow more chaos and make the United States of America far more vulnerable to diminishment, which is what we're experiencing day by day.

Instead of making America great again--a dubious necessity; we weren't that bad to begin with--he has embarrassed us. The only way a weak person like him can continue to govern us is to make us weaker still: to bring us under his wild, increasingly unleashed control. Let's put the pressure where it belongs--on the Republican Party, which has stood by him mindlessly to this point. Let's accumulate what we already have on him, impeach 45 now and then reveal even more reasons as we go, making Republicans face the country and explain how in creation they can keep backing such a monster, step-by-step.

Normally, I would think that jumping this shark would be difficult to maintain and perhaps even suicidal to the hopes of its success. But this situation is highly unusual. We cannot allow process to hide these gangsters while the clock ticks, allowing everything to eventually morph into an election campaign and become woven into a disgusting quilt, the unraveling of which becomes more difficult as we lean into the new campaigns. They'll do it and they're good at it. Remember: They're the party which has chosen to disrupt the normal processes of electoral succession in Wisconsin and Michigan. To believe that they won't try to do so on the national level without a previous calling-out is naive.

Let me ask you this: Since the investigations will take months to run their course, do you honestly think we have those months at our disposal before 45 does even more damage to our reputation, our rule of law, and our very existence? Do you think that, while these efforts reveal far more awful activities, he won't keep trying to distract us with even more outrageous gestures? Or do you think he's just going to sit there and watch without tweeting preposterous non-facts? The ticking of the clock works both ways.

To those concerned about following the rule of law, which means accumulating facts before passing down an indictment: We already have enough of them to justify impeachment. Compile them and make the Senate move. If the vote fails, there is always time to do it again--but then the House will be on record as pursuing it. The stamp of intent, much like the endless attempts of the ex-Republican-controlled House to repeal Obamacare--will have already been made. Members unsure of the move at the particular time can always vote "present," which will bring it perhaps under the majority necessary to pass the bill of impeachment, but allow them to avoid the specter of having committed one way or another until they believe sufficient evidence has been revealed.

One more thing: Do you think the stock market will remain stable? It's already lost ten percent of its value this month. When investors panic, it's already too late. Let the capitalist-addicted Republicans explain that to their constituents back home.

I'm guessing these conversations are happening already. We need to do this right now. It's time. I call for an impeachment vote in the House of Representatives on January 4. Call your Representative or Representative-To-Be.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark