The War on Truth Continues- Trump log #23

I am not sure if it is worth reporting what Trump says anymore. Does he just say whatever he thinks sounds good? Whatever is off the top of his head? The aircraft carrier that he said was heading to North Korea is heading towards Australia now. Or does he think having a veil of confusion surrounding his administration will keep the world on its toes and give him the upper hand?

I told myself that I would stop writing these Trump logs if I could go one day without finding something to include on my weekly list of daily Trump anxieties.  I assumed I would have been done by now. I don't go looking for them. I just read the news and they fall on my lap.

4/12/17 - Trump is using the health care of millions of Americans as a bargaining chip. (Source: Politico)

4/13/17 - Trump's Secretary of Education, DeVos, is backing away from rules designed to assist students with their loan debt. (Source: New York Times)

4/14/17 - Trump's EPA is refusing to ban chlorpyrifos, a dangerous chemical. When asked Pruitt, his EPA head, cites business concerns. (Source: New York Times)

4/15/17 - In 2013 President Obama launched the National Commission on Forensic Science to bolster the validity of the forensic science. Anyone in law enforcement or who has been accused of a crime, should be concerned about the validity of forensic science in its pursuit of the truth. Trump's Attorney General, Jeff Sessions is cancelling the Commission. The assault on science and truth itself continues. (Source: New York Times)

4/16/17 - Trump says he can't be sued for inciting violence at one of his campaign rallies because he won the election.  Um ... that's not how it works. (Source: Washington Post)

4/17/17 - Trump's administration is perhaps the most secretive since Nixon's. (Source: Washington Post)

4/18/17 - Democrats in Congress and about a dozen Republicans have united in their demanding of Trump releasing his tax returns. They are refusing to consider any of Trump's tax reforms until the returns are made public. Looks like we have another campaign promise that he won't be able to fill. (Source: New York Times)

Prior Trump Logs:
Issue # 1 - posted November 15th, 2016
Issue # 2 - posted November 22nd, 2016
Issue # 3 - posted November 29th, 2016
Issue # 4 - posted December 6, 2016
Issue # 5 - posted December 12, 2016
Issue # 6 - posted December 19, 2016
Issue # 7 - posted December 26, 2016
Issue # 8 - posted January 3, 2017
Issue # 9 - posted January 10, 2017
Issue #10 - posted January 17, 2017
Issue #11 - posted January 24, 2017
Issue #12 - posted January 31, 2017
Issue #13 - posted February 7, 2017
Issue #14 - posted February 14, 2017
Issue #15 - posted February 21, 2017
Issue #16 - posted February 28, 2017
Issue #17 - posted March 7, 2017
Issue #18 - posted March 14, 2017
Issue #19 - posted March 21, 2017
Issue #20 - posted March 28, 2017
Issue #21 - posted April 5, 2017
Issue #22 - posted April 12, 2017

This Year's Election Is Just a Pre-Impeachment Ceremony

I know you have all been there. You are at a wedding and as the bride heads down the aisle you think, this marriage will not last. At one of my friend's weddings, my friends and I were placing bets as to how long it was going to last. It is not a wedding but a pre-divorce ceremony. This year's presidential election is like that wedding, it is a pre-impeachment ceremony.

Negativity: Like most Americans I will not be voting for someone this November, but against someone. I will be voting against Trump, not for Hillary Clinton. Both candidates have the highest negativity numbers ever of any candidate running for president. Trump is the highest at 59.1 % of the electorate having a negative opinion of him, while Hillary has 55.9% which isn't much better. Passion for a candidate will not drive voters to the polls this fall, but dislike for their opponent. The election will be won by whomever gets the most people to show up. This means that it will be close, like in 2000, and it is going to be messy. Whoever wins will not have a mandate and will have difficulty leading.

Impeachment is difficult: It is not easy to impeach a president and that is as it should be. The US has only done it twice in our history, Andrew Johnson after our Civil War and Bill Clinton, who was impeached in the House of Representatives but acquitted in the Senate. Nixon would have been impeached if he hadn't resigned preemptively. At the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, it was Benjamin Franklin that first proposed the idea of impeachment. Usually, states removed "obnoxious" leaders by assassination. Since we were a country ruled by law, a legal way to remove such a leader was needed. Basically, the House is the jury and the Senate is the judge. A majority vote in the House is required to bring impeachment charges (Article I, Section 2, Clause 5), which are then tried before the Senate (Article I, Section 3, Clause 6). Two-thirds of the Senate must vote to convict before a president can be removed. The current make-up of the 114th Congress has a Republican majority in both houses. Of the 435 Representatives, 234 are Republican and 211 are Democrats. The Senate has 54 Republicans, 45 Democrats and 1 Independent. This obviously will change. Every seat in the House is up for re-election along with one third of the Senate.  Again, this election will be about who shows up. If all those young people, who loved Bernie Sanders, decide to stay home and not vote against Trump, we'll not only have our first orange president but Congress will probably not change either.

Popularity: Impeachment is more a game of popularity, than logic or law. Regardless of how bad of a president you are, if you are popular, you are not going to get impeached. In 1834, the House considered impeaching our 7th president Andrew Jackson who basically said "fuck you" to the Supreme Court in relation to the native people of this continent. He had a banking crisis and the nullification crisis which were included in the charges in the attempts to impeach him. Jackson was extremely popular and so were his actions against the natives. Impeaching him would have been near impossible. Like Bill Clinton he was censured instead (aka a hand slap). The case of Andrew Johnson's impeachment, our 17th president, is obvious, regardless of how bad of a president he was, he was a Southern in charge of the federal government after the Civil War. He was the only southern Senator to maintain his loyalty to the North after his state seceded.  He was unpopular in the North and the South. Impeaching him was easy.

Both Trump and Hillary Clinton are extremely unpopular. Any screw-up they have, either perceived or real, will fuel the creep towards impeachment. Trump is even unpopular in his own party. Even a Republican majority could remove him from office. With this in mind, their Vice Presidential picks are key. When voting, think closely about who you'd like for not only our 45th President, but our 46th as well ...  President Pence or President Kaine.

If You Call Yourself a Christian and You Are Against Planned Parenthood, Then You Are a Hypocrite

As an atheist, I really shouldn't say too much about Christ, other than he did exist and he seems to have been a great person. Some of the ideas he taught were revolutionary for his time.  For this he has my respect as an historical figure in the same way that I respect Aristotle and Homer. Cognitive disconnect happens to me when I interact with some people who call themselves Christians but don't don't seem to act at all like Christ. He taught (in Matthew 19:24) that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!"and yet, you see millionaire barkers, with thousands of "Christian" followers, on television pontificating for cash. Not very Christ-like! I get the same feeling when I see people who consider themselves Christians bashing Planned Parenthood on social media. 

In 1970, our Republican President, Richard Nixon, signed into a law the Family Planning and Population Research Act which amended the Public Health Service Act. Title X of that law funded Planned Parenthood to provide family planning and contraceptive services. This passed with bi-partisan support. This was back when our Republican Party was actually conservative and assisting in family planning was a good fiscal idea. A good way to keep people off of welfare is to assist them in not being parents until they are ready. President Nixon stated "no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition." Much has changed in American politics. You would be hard pressed to find a Republican who would say anything close to this now.

Even though the Republican Party has been going backwards on this subject, America, in general, has come a long way. When Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood in Brooklyn, as a birth control clinic, in 1916, she was thrown in jail for distributing obscene material under the Comstock Act. Contraceptives and literature about birth control was put in the same category as pornography and sex toys. This legal case became nationally famous and the attention it brought to the cause led to changes in legislation in birth control and sex education. Probably the biggest thing it did was lighten us up on a subject that we were so uptight about. We wouldn't even talk about it.

When you hear the term Planned Parenthood, you immediately think of abortion. This is a victory for the right wing in America. This is extremely unfortunate because only 3% of what they do is abortion related. Even though abortion is a legal medical procedure, for over 40 years, some people still have a bug up their ass about it. In 2013, PP provided services to 2.7 million patients most of whom are poor women, 16% of whom are under the age of 20. They had over a million patient cancer related visits, over 4 million visits related to sexually related diseases and over 3 million contraception related visits.

With the Hyde Amendment as of 1976 (only three years after abortions were declared legal nationally), only 97% of what Planned Parenthood does is still federally funded. The 3%, aka the abortions, are not unless they are a result of rape, incest or the health of the mother is threatened. This article in the Washington Post documents it well with some good visuals. About a quarter of their overall funding comes from private funding from such funds as the Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation and Buffett Foundation. The Hyde Amendment was named after Henry Hyde a Republican congressman from Illinois. His name is almost synonymous with hypocrite.  He was one of the congressman who lead the charge to impeach President Clinton for his extramarital affair. During the hearing it was discovered that Hyde also had an affair.

Why is opposing Planned Parenthood hypocrisy if you are a Christian? Because if PP closed, it would hurt the poor the most. If we cut all federal funding to PP, they would still perform abortions because the funds are coming to them from private sources. It is the other services they provide that would be cut: the STD testing and treatment, contraceptive and cancer screening etc. Many of their patients are on Medicaid who service the very poor. A lot of health care providers don't take Medicaid because of the amount of administrative work it requires and the poor reimbursement rates. Planned Parenthood is one of their only options for care. I could be wrong about this, but what I know about Christ, is that he would want to help out the teenage girl, who has no money, with her chlamydia. 

I've Been Complaining About Cops For Years, It Is About Time You Admit I Am Right

Think back to when you were high school. If you are high school now, you can do this also, look around you. Think of the dumbest person in your class. He/She was sitting in the back of the room, perhaps carving something into the desk, maybe sleeping. What is this person doing now as an adult? It is possible they made something of themselves. Perhaps they went into the military or pulled their act together somehow. I hope so, but they could be in jail.  Also, there is a good chance that they are a cop. 

For me I think of this one guy that I used to walk to school with in middle school and for the first few years of high school. He was someone that I was very good friends with in elementary school, from my neighborhood, but as I matured, we went our own different ways. He couldn't read while I was buried in books. He used to torture bugs. A few times he dropped acid on the way into school. I stopped walking to school with him after a while. I was hanging with a different crowd. What is he doing now? He is the chief of police in my home state not too far from where I grew up. I assume and hope he turned his life around, but from my experience with cops, this is not necessarily true. This isn't exactly a profession that attracts the most intelligent and for some it may attract the most sadistic among us.

I have not lead a life of crime. My life has been quite boring, but I did speed a lot when I was younger and I did get a lot of speeding tickets. I was a nervous driver. But after awhile, I started to get pulled over and told I was speeding when obviously I was not. When cars were passing me. I was an easy target for cops who had quotas. I'd challenge them in court and lose. Who was the judge going to believe, the college kids with long hair or the cops which she knew. Of course, I lost. I was once given a ticket on Cape Cod for driving 70 MPH up a hill from a stop with my K car. For those who don't remember K cars, they were a crappy four cylinder car that could barely get to 70 MPH on a flat surface, never climbing an incline. Again, I was an easy target, an out-of-stater with a bad driving record. I just payed the fine rather than challenging the ticket because it was less expensive than taking a day out of work and school to go to court ... and then to probably lose. I ended up getting an attitude of "why not speed," I am going to get a ticket anyway.

That was a long time ago, but my attitude hasn't changed.  Not about speeding, no, I don't speed much anymore especially since I bought a Prius. My Prius doesn't use gas if I drive around 35 MPH so I chug along these dirt roads going real slow. My attitude about cops hasn't changed. They are dicks, power-seeking douche bags out to financially-rape the tax payers. Cops are not a source for good in the world. Cops are there to maintain the status quo ... to keep the poor down and keep the wealthy ... wealthy. They are not there to keep our roads safe, but to raise revenue. I don't call a cop unless I absolutely have to. It is my experience that having a cop present usually makes any experience worse.

I say all this as a white guy in Vermont. Since I moved to Vermont, I have noticed that the cops are a lot nicer and seem to harass the tax payers much less than a lot of other places in this country. Occasionally, I do get pulled over for bullshit like my headlight is burnt out or my license plate is obstructed. While Vermont's meth and heroin problem is still out of control, you can rest assured, our headlights are just fine.

I know plenty of people from around this country and some of them are not white. I hear their complaints about cops, I usually believe them but I know most white people don't. But now that we have had so much coming out these days from dash board cams to iPhone videos, can anyone really not believe me or them when we say that cops are dicks? I know the immediate response we get is that "my brother is a cop and he is a good cop" but let's face it, the dick cops have relatives that think they are good cops too. Do you really know that the cop you know is one of the good ones? Isn't it about time to admit that we don't have have a crime problem, but a cop problem?

How much more evidence do you need than this?

Exhibit A: A Staten Island man, Eric Garner, being choked to death by the NYPD. Mr. Garner's crime: selling cigarettes.

Exhibit B; When a bunch of black kids show up at a pool party in a white suburb in Texas, this what happens:



Exhibit C: Here is what happens when you run from a cop in Charleston, South Carolina.

Exhibit D: Here is what happens to you when you peacefully protest at UC Davis. That's right, that is pepper spray.

I could go on, it is very easy to do here from my back porch in Vermont.  Just type "police brutality" in your search engine. It is fun!

I could imagine that being a police officer is a difficult job. I could also imagine that it can take a toll on you psychologically. I am not sure what the solution is to this problem. I think we might want to start the solution by stop the recruiting cops from the bottom of the pile. If we simply picking the best of the sadists and sociopaths that we can find, I can see why we are where we are.

Repeal the 2nd Amendment

If Thomas Jefferson wasn't in Paris from 1784 to 1789, we probably wouldn't be having the discussions we are having now about the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.  James Madison, the author of the Bills of Rights, had a great legal mind, but was not the writer that Jefferson was.  The original intent would be clearer. We deal the consequences today and still battle over its meaning.  

It is difficult to understand what was originally meant by the 2nd Amendment.  More than one version of the text exists, Congress approved one version, while the states approved another one. The image of the text that the Library of Congress has on file has only one comma.  

"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."

This version implies that the individuals have a right to bear arms for their own use. This is the version that the states ratified.  But if you look at the amendment now, with the comma that was added by Congress (upon federal government ratification), it could have a different meaning.  

"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."

As an English major, I have a problem with the interpretation of this as protecting the rights of  individuals as opposed to that of a militia.  The comma between "Militia" and "being" makes "Militia" the subject of the sentence.  With "Militia" being the subject, this makes "shall not be infringed" the verb. The simple structure of the sentence is this:  "a militia shall not be infringed." This is a moot point, of course, the Supreme Court has ruled a number of times on this.

The problem with this discussion is that the original intent of the founding fathers is irrelevant. When the Bill of Rights was written, the most powerful weapon available was a musket. It had one shot, it was difficult to aim and took about a minute to reload. They feared a tyrannical government so the ability to defend yourself against that government was important.  But once your government has nuclear weapons and drones, shouldn't the idea of arming yourself against the government be shelved. The Constitution is a living document. Jefferson believed that we should throw it out every twenty years.  You don't have to delve deep to know what he thought on this subject. You just need to look at this quote written in stone on the Jefferson Memorial:

But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

The original intent argument is the nonsense that the right wing likes to cling because progress scares them.  We are a new age wearing the tattered rags of an old paranoia that is no longer relevant.  

Oddly enough, gun ownership in America is down ... that is, less people and households own guns. With more and more of our society becoming urban, less people hunt. This is the scary stat:  we have more guns than ever.  What that means is that those who own guns, own a lot of them. People are stockpiling them. I am not suggesting that everyone that owns guns is a raving mad lunatic ranting about the Federal Reserve or Socialism, but I am saying that there is sufficient evidence that some of them are. Enough so that taking political action is not unreasonable.  

We need to repeal the Second Amendment and rewrite it to be more clear and modern. We can protect people's right to own a rifle for hunting and/or a handgun for personal protection while  also protecting us from more dangerous weapons. I used to think that we could live with the Second Amendment the way it is now, but when you see that first graders are being shot in their schools and firemen are being shot from rooftops, then I think that it is time to stop being so timid about this. Being reasonable and polite isn't working, it is time to be unreasonable and rude. Like most progress, the lack of political will stands in the way. The horror of Newtown is waning.  We need to keep talking about it.  If we cannot do this after these events, then we are doomed. I don't want to have to arm myself to go to the mall, a movie theater or when I go into work.  None of us should.  It is time we wrapped this old man into a well fit coat.

Lawrence v the State of Texas

The Internet have been abuzz about the Supreme Court since the Affordable Care Act was deemed constitutional... also, gay rights has been a hot topic for the past ten years. Why has gay rights made so much progress in recent years?  Are we more progressive? It seems this is the perfect time to bring up John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner vs. Texas.  


Sodomy laws have existed in American states since the 18th century. All states have had them in one form or another. The earliest is from the state of Virginia where in 1778 Thomas Jefferson tried to ease the punishment from death to a mere castration. Until very recently, in many parts of America  gay men could lose their right to vote and go to jail just for being gay. Because of the private nature of sodomy, these laws were almost never prosecuted. Laws that not prosecuted are difficult to challenge because they never come to trial. No big deal right? Since no one was getting hurt, the laws were harmless. Right?  ... Not exactly. Because being gay was illegal, discriminating against them was legal. They could lose their jobs and/or lose housing as a result of being outed. You could basically deny gays service on pretty much anything you chose. The problem activists had for decades was that they couldn't challenge a law if the laws at the root of the problem were not being executed. No one was going to jail for sodomy, so the law couldn't be challenged because they weren't going to trial.


In researching this blog post, I pulled out my dusty copy of the Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions.  I was disappointed that Lawrence vs. Texas is not listed.  My book was printed 1999 and this decision is too recent (in 2003).  I need a more recent copy, apparently. It does list its predecessor Bowers vs. Hardwick (1986).  This is the case that Lawrence vs. Texas overturned. In Bowers vs. Hardwick the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy only applied to "family, marriage or procreation." Since sodomy doesn't fall into this these categories, the majority decision was that gay couples should not have the expectation of the privacy.  In 1986, 24 states and DC still had laws against sodomy.  


In the Houston area, in 1998, four police officers responded to a bogus call regarding weapons fire.  They entered an apartment via an unlocked door with his weapons drawn.  No weapons were found but apparently two men were having sex, John Lawrence and Tyron Garner.  They were arrested and went to trial.  Thanks to some very hard working rights advocates, it eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court.  The Texas law was deemed unconstitutional by a 6 to 3 vote, so 13 other similar state statutes were overturned.  As you probably guessed, the three minority judges were Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas.  


As a straight man, I understand how gay sex can make people uncomfortable, but this is something that most of us get over. We grow up. I don't think I will ever understand why social conservatives, like Rick Santorum and the like, are so against gay rights. Conservatives are supposed to be against "big government," yet they advocate for a government that is big enough to take away the rights of free tax-paying citizens to love and/or have sex with whomever they want. I guess we just add this to the long list of things-I-don't-get.