Trump Impeachment Joke

Presidents Zelensky and Trump

At the end of my last post I engaged in a little conspiracy theorizing of my own. I admitted that I had been naive in hoping, after President Trump's inauguration over two and a half years ago, that people would look at the deeds of his administration and "not his words, or past behavior." Although opposition politicians and liberal commentators were claiming that the Trump Presidency would not last more than a few weeks, or that the country would go down the drain, I thought it best to wait and see. But now, 

  I have come to believe that the whole Russia collusion issue was just a smoke screen designed by the President’s opponents to drive any Trump achievements off the headlines. Now that the Mueller investigation has turned up nothing, the opposition has come up with other headline grabbing issues like Insanity, White Supremacy, and even Impeachment.

Sure enough, Impeachment has reared its head as a result of the leaking of a document from a whistleblower in the intelligence community about President Trump's conversation with the President of the Ukraine, himself a former popular comedian. Even though Progressives in the Democratic party have been clamoring for President Trump's impeachment from day one, Nancy Pelosi, their leader in the House of Representatives, had held out against impeachment. 

Apparently, she finally had to bow to the pressure. Immediately, the media had to jump on board. My local newspaper threw all caution to the winds with a long lead editorial supporting impeachment. I read the editorial and could not find among the verbiage any real grounds for impeachment. I wrote the following to the newspaper.

In a lengthy editorial the CT Post strongly supported the impeachment of President Trump. It claimed that since his inauguration the President has engaged in self-enrichment and obstruction of justice. I am a longtime subscriber but do not recall reading anything in the past two and a half years in the paper that details these charges.

Please provide the evidence for self-aggrandizement and obstruction of justice that amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors” especially since the exhaustive Mueller report found none. 

The paper printed the letter today under another lengthy editorial that included some of the President’s misdeeds. Although the paper did not mention “high crimes and misdemeanors,” it did claim “there is already a mountain of evidence implicating President Donald Trump with conduct far outside the accepted norms of a democratic leader.”

Here is the mountain of evidence. 

For instance, the U.S. Constitution forbids federal officeholders from receiving any gifts or payments from foreign entities, but in the same phone call with the Ukrainian President we see evidence that Trump is in violation. “I stayed in the Trump Tower,” President Volodyrmyr Zelensky says of his last trip to the U.S. Since Trump never divested himself from his business and continues to profit from it, he is in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, according to many legal scholars, and it’s just one of countless examples on that score.”

Of course, not one of the countless examples is listed. Next, the editorial states that the Mueller report found “multiple occasions when the President apparently obstructed justice” but also fails to point out any of the occasions.

The mountain of evidence seems more like the proverbial molehill. A visiting dignitary checks into the Trump Tower and that represents a violation of the Constitution. I wonder if any foreign dignitaries put Heinz Ketchup on their hamburgers when visiting the country when John Kerry was Secretary of State. Would it have been a violation of the Constitution if President Trump had accepted an invitation from President Zelensky to watch him perform at a comedy club in Kiev?  

If the Democrats want to find self-aggrandizement in office holders, they just have to look in the mirror.  How did ex-President Obama, a former community organizer, manage to buy a $14 Million vacation home in trendy Martha’s Vineyard? How did former Vice-President Biden’s son manage to get a $50000 monthly salary from a Ukrainian gas company with no qualifications whatsoever? If President Zelensky ever returns to comedy, he probably has found plenty of material in American politics.

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President Trump's Brand of War

President Trump has just parted ways with John Bolton, his National Security Advisor. It is difficult to determine what particular bit of advice led to the rupture. Was it the recent last minute cancellation of the President’s planned Camp David meeting with representatives of the government of Afghanistan, and the Taliban? Perhaps, it was a difference of opinion on the importance of the recent exchange of prisoners (hostages) between Russia and the Ukraine, a development that President Trump praised.

It would seem more likely that the resignation of Bolton was the result of a series of differences that stemmed from a fundamental difference of approach. Bolton was a well-known “hawk” who had even publicly discussed the merits of preventive military strikes against North Korea and Iran before taking his post in the Trump Administration.

President Trump, despite his talk of American greatness and fervent praise of the military, has consistently expressed his willingness to deal and negotiate with America’s perceived enemies. Political commentators on both the left and the right like to characterize him as a madman, a psychotic, or at least mentally unstable. But maybe, he is just crazy like a fox.

The President has consistently advocated economic rather than military confrontation. He has imposed economic sanctions on Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and even Venezuela. Moreover, he has used tariffs as a form of threat to bring enemies, as well as friends to the bargaining table without firing a shot.

Politicians and political commentators can debate the pros and cons of tariffs ad nauseum but there seems to be no doubt that they can be used as a weapon. It certainly seems clear that the autocrats in Russia and China understand. For years the government of China has imposed high tariffs on imported goods to support its own manufacturing capabilities as well as an enormous military build-up. More than a Communist country, China resembles an old-fashioned mercantilist state that seeks power through trade and currency manipulation.

In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, Peter Navarro, President Trump’s chief trade advisor, recently stated that 75000 factories had been closed in the USA under the previous two administrations and relocated abroad. Coincidentally, the paper also featured an op-ed by the President of the company that manufactures Penn tennis balls. He complained that President Trump’s tariffs on imports from China were making a serious impact on his American owned company.

At the recently completed U.S. Tennis Open, Penn’s rival manufacturer, Wilson, was the ball of choice. Although a US company, Penn’s balls are made in China. As a result, they are having difficulty competing with Wilson whose balls are made in Thailand which is so far exempt from the Trump tariffs. Moreover, Wilson, a famous American brand, has just been acquired by a Chinese company, an obvious move to circumvent the tariffs.

The Penn executive complained of unfair competition but he did not bother to explain why his company had built its manufacturing facility in China in the first place. Why, for that matter, did Wilson move its factory to Thailand? Is it so hard to make tennis balls? Obviously, both companies found it profitable to shift their plants overseas due to a combination of high corporate tax rates in America and foreign subsidies during prior administrations.

It seems to me that engaging in economic warfare is far preferable than engaging in outright military action. It would be even better if economic negotiations could be used to lessen tensions throughout the world. We should, for example, have some real collusion with Russia and help it to become a prosperous country after a century of Communist failure.

The Trump administration has forged a new trade-deal with Japan, one of the world’s largest economies. It has re-designed the trade pact with Canada and Mexico, a deal that just awaits approval by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. It has been trying to forge a workable deal with the Chinese. What is so crazy about these efforts?

After President Trump’s inaugural, I believed that time would tell. Remember that some thought he would not last more than a few weeks, and that some even plotted his overthrow. Others felt that the country would go down the drain. Did any of his critics envision a booming economy?

I hoped that people would look at the deeds of the President’s administration and not his words, or past behavior. Now, I realize that I was naïve. I have come to believe that the whole Russia collusion issue was just a smoke screen designed by the President’s opponents to drive any Trump achievements off the headlines. Now that the Mueller investigation has turned up nothing, the opposition has come up with other headline grabbing issues like Insanity, White Supremacy, and even Impeachment.

It has become increasingly clear that the Democrats do not want the President to score any points in office. They will find it hard to ratify the NAFTA replacement. They do not want a trade deal with China even if it might be beneficial to the United States. I suspect that the Democrats would even welcome a recession and stock market collapse as the 2020 election approaches.

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The Problem of Pain

Camille Paglia

The Wall Street Journal weekend edition regularly features an interview with a prominent personality on its op-ed pages. Last weekend the interview was with Camille Paglia, the well-known feminist author, lecturer, and professor. At the age of 72 Paglia has come under fire from students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia who are demanding that she be fired. Despite her feminist credentials, some of Paglia’s positions, like her praise of Capitalism, are no longer in favor. 

I do not wish to get involved in feminist debates but would just like to discuss a seemingly unrelated incident in Paglia’s life that she remembered quite vividly. In fact, she regarded it as a turning point. At the age of fifteen she was in religious education class when she had the nerve to ask the teacher, an Irish Catholic nun, a very challenging and provocative question. In those days we would have called it a smart-ass question. Naturally, the nun reacted and condemned Paglia roundly in front of the class for even asking such a question. That was it for Paglia. From that day on she would have nothing to do with Catholicism. 

Coincidentally, over the weekend a friend told me of an acquaintance who left the Church because of another seemingly trivial incident. The woman had invited a soloist to sing at her wedding but after the Mass was over, the priest chided her for taking business away from the church’s own soloist. Boom! That was it. She has never gone to church again. Reactions like these are not unusual. In my lifetime I have heard of many such incidents or personal confrontations that led people to stop attending church. It is usually not a question of belief or doctrine, nor does it mean that they become bad people.  

There are more serious reasons for losing one’s faith in God or ceasing to practice the faith of your fathers. Perhaps the greatest is the problem of pain and suffering. In an email exchange, also over this weekend, an old friend told me that he had trouble believing in God and that he no longer attended church. He wrote, “If God is so good, how do you explain little children suffering from cancer?” He also asked me to explain all the pain and suffering that will result from natural disasters like hurricane Dorian.

The problem of pain and suffering, some call it the problem of evil, has been around since the dawn of recorded history. My wife and I sat down over the weekend to watch a National Geographic documentary on great animal migrations. After ten minutes we had to shut it off. The carnage and killing were horrific.  The crocodiles, leopards, and other animals did not seem concerned with the problem of pain. Human beings are obviously just as capable of inflicting pain and suffering but I believe that we are the only animals who think or worry about it.

Philosophers, theologians, and scientists have grappled with it and no one has yet come up with a completely satisfactory answer. Certainly, I haven’t. In ancient times personal suffering and natural disasters were attributed to the gods. The gods were either punishing people for their misdeeds, or were merely malevolent, playing with humans like a cat with a mouse.

In thinking about my friend’s question, I wondered if the answer could be found by considering the example of Jesus, the founder of Christianity.  No matter what you think of Jesus, his approach to the problem of pain and suffering was revolutionary. Even a cursory reading of the gospels indicates that Jesus was a healer. When confronted with pain and suffering, he healed the pain and did not blame God or anyone else. 

He gave sight to a man who had been blind from birth. Ordinary people claimed that the blindness was the result of the sins of the man’s parents. Jesus would have none of it, and just restored his sight. When a man suffering from paralysis was brought before him, rather than blaming him for his sins, he forgave them and then cured his illness.

When he heard that people had been killed when a tower collapsed in a nearby city, he told his hearers that the people who died were no more sinful than anyone else. I’m sure he would have said the same about the victims of hurricanes and earthquakes. His response to the problem of pain and suffering was to heal and minister to the suffering. He instructed his followers to do the same.

In the teaching of Jesus, God is not the cause of suffering but the cure. Those who believe in Nature believe in a cruel god who never forgives. We speak of Mother Nature but she is not the kind of mother any of us would like to have. Scientists may tell us that many must be sacrificed to cleanse the herd in the interests of survival and progress but something inside of us tells us to deplore pain and suffering and do our best to prevent and heal. That something inside of us is as much a sign of the existence of a loving God as anything else the philosophers and theologians have ever thought of. 

Camille Paglia’s wise-ass question to the poor nun, who was giving her life to educate children like her, was: “If God is infinitely forgiving, is it possible that at some point in the future He will forgive Satan?” It is true that the nun should not have blown up, especially since she only had to turn to her catechism for the simple answer. In the catechism Catholics are told that God must forgive those who repent and ask for forgiveness, and so He certainly would forgive if Satan repents and asks for forgiveness. Unfortunately, Satan, like many wise fifteen-year-olds, will have none of it.

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