According to Plan

 

Update 1/29: I'm not going to devote an entire post to this but it should be noted that this was literally (and in both senses) a day of Chaos throughout the United States. It is when the possible extent of the White House order to stop federal spending became clear--especially when the Medicaid portal that handles all payments including pay to medical workers went down for all 50 states--that state governments and people around the country went ballistic. Every imaginable program could be affected, and the finances of individual states could collapse. No external enemy could do so much damage so quickly.

 Many news outlets noted that "confusion" resulted, and the Washington Post used the word "chaos." This is the latest in a series of blatantly illegal and unconstitutional orders, apart from the written order itself being nonsense.  A federal judge late in the day stopped it temporarily, while a number of states officially took it to court, and the White House started backing away.

The story isn't over, and this blog isn't a newspaper so I leave it to you to follow it.  But the potential of today was and is for a terminal constitutional crisis.  There are some weapons that Democrats in Congress can use to maybe frustrate the administration, but the fact is that if Chaos insists on this--or any other of his huge power grabs--he can go all the way, including defying a Supreme Court decision.  Because the only remedy the Constitution provides for this lawlessness is impeachment by the House and removal by the Senate.  And especially in these early days, how likely is that?...And by the way, who would that put into power?

Saturday:

Just after the November election, Margaret Atwood was asked what she thought of it.  "They elected him," she said, of the US.  "Now we'll see how they like it."

How do you like it so far?  Because not even a week into his term, it's all going according to plan.  Chaos freed his violent seditionist convicted felons, including leaders of national white supremacist gangs, so he's got a loyal infrastructure for a new version of brownshirt thugs that created chaos in Germany, or the blackshirts that did the same in Italy in the 1930s.  He's wiped the federal database of all information related to the insurrection crimes.  It never happened. Orwell, anyone?

He's installed a fall-down, blackout drunk and sexual predator to head the Pentagon and get rid of everyone not declaring fealty to Chaos, with the hope of a new military of white male supremacists who will just follow orders.  He's ordering active military troops to the border with a legally questionable mission.  He suddenly fired Inspector Generals of a number of agencies, while his other incompetent appointees are fanning out to spawn Chaos across the federal government, and therefore the country and the world.

He has ordered diversity programs of the federal government stopped cold, and sent home anyone engaged in them. His minions insist federal employees spy on each other and turn in anyone insufficiently zealous in their devotion to Chaos--it's back to the fifties for Washington, except it's the fifties of East Germany, and the Kremlin on the Potomac.

He's sealed the borders to any immigrants from anywhere, unless perhaps Musk wants a few.  His raids into immigrant communities were postponed when the news media found out about them in advance, because he wants them to be a viral surprise. His immigration enforcer is the guy who designed family separations the last time around.  How are those kids doing? 

He's making friends around the world by cutting off foreign aid and reneging on promised programs that these countries have planned for and allocated their own resources. He's threatened such traditional enemies as Canada, Mexico and Denmark, prompting the president of Denmark to warn him to keep his mitts off Greenland and inspiring him to be the first in international diplomacy to in these very words tell the president of the US to fuck off. 

He's promised economic Chaos on February 1 by forecasting tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China--which happen to be the three countries that supply this country with the most and most necessary goods that American industries and businesses depend on, not to mention people.  Companies that sell these things to Americans seldom have as good an excuse to raise prices than this.  If it all comes to pass, the only question is how long it will take the ripple effects to cripple the US economy, or at least cause major Chaos. Canada has already promised an immediate set of targeted reprisals if he follows through. 

He's visited the sites of recent natural disasters, after again withdrawing from the Paris Accords and otherwise deep-sixing efforts to address the very climate crisis that contributed to them, and will continue to amp up future natural disasters.  He gives the governor of California a hug and promises aid, and then goes to North Carolina to announce that California aid won't be coming unless the state changes how it runs its elections--another little precedent broken. Then he threatens to completely close down the federal agency that responds to these disasters.

Update 1/28: Chaos freezes on funds throughout the US government and abroad now include ongoing programs to monitor and address bird flu and a host of communicable diseases in other countries that have the potential of becoming pandemics.

Thanks to this domestic blitzkrieg, few have even noticed that Chaos is back in business with his son in law to build a luxury hotel in Serbia.  He's also busy promoting cryptocurrency and blockchains to make himself billions.  If his tariff and other efforts don't cause an economic depression, cryptocurrency is certainly up to the job of creating financial catastrophe overnight.

And on a completely unrelated matter, there's an article in the Atlantic detailing how Hitler dismantled democracy in Germany as elected head of the country--in 53 days. 

At Long Last

 Much of what happened Monday wasn't a surprise: The Celtics mauled a depleted Warriors, the NFL team known as Ohio State overwhelmed Notre Dame, and Chaos unleashed chaos upon the world, or at least tried to, including freeing from jail convicted violent seditionists.  

Before that, outgoing President Biden did something no President should have to do: he preemptively pardoned people he was justifiably afraid Chaos would go after, including members of the January 6 Committee who investigated Chaos and found him guilty of--what else--leading the seditious attempt to overthrow the US government by force and violence. These were people--mostly current and former Members of Congress-- who were never accused of crimes but threatened by the incoming administration with prosecution anyway.  As awful as anything else Monday, but not altogether surprising.

No--the surprise was Leonard Peltier.  After nearly 50 years in prison for murders of two FBI agents he all but certainly did not commit, Biden finally commuted the double lifetime sentence of this 1970s Native American activist. Ever since the evidence presented against him fell apart in a trial that was fatally flawed in the first place, many prominent people--including Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama, as well as several European parliaments and Amnesty International -- have advocated for his clemency.

The 60s and 70s were a violent time on Pine Ridge Reservation and other reservations, and the FBI was implicated in supporting and fomenting violence against Black and American Indian activists.  Peltier had engaged in gun violence, so he was a credible scapegoat.  But this murder case against him quickly fell apart.

 As far back as the final days of the Clinton administration, I performed my one and only act of lobbying, by contacting a college friend who happened to be the outgoing White House Chief of Staff to urge a pardon for Peltier.  But it proved too politically difficult--basically because the people he was convicted of killing were FBI agents, and the FBI was not interested in hearing anything about recanted testimony, bad evidence and a tainted trial.  They publicly pressured Clinton not to do it.

By then, the esteemed writer Peter Matthiessen had written a long book that went into great detail concerning the injustices of his trial and conviction.  After Clinton left office without pardoning him, a Native American activist told me he expected Peltier would die in prison. He was often attacked by other inmates, and had a variety of health problems.

But Peltier managed to stay alive, and since then every President has denied his petition, including President Obama, even after a senior US Attorney who prosecuted the case against Peltier wrote a letter advocating for clemency due to weaknesses in the trial evidence. 

 Since Peltier is now 80 years old, President Biden was likely his last hope.  Thirty-three members of the US Senate and House petitioned for his release.  The FBI once again vociferously opposed it--even though officials have stated that the government doesn't really know who shot the FBI agents, but they know it wasn't Peltier.

 In the hours before he left office, President Biden commuted Peltier's sentence to indefinite house arrest. After nearly 50 years in prison, Peltier may get to die in his own bed.   

Here Comes the Chaos

Many's the time I've been mistaken

 And many times confused

 Yes, and I've often felt forsaken 

And certainly misused 

Oh, but I'm alright, I'm alright

 I'm just weary to my bones

 Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant

 So far away from home, so far away from home.

 And I don't know a soul who's not been battered

 I don't have a friend who feels at ease

 I don't know a dream that's not been shattered

 Or driven to its knees

 But it's alright, it's alright

 For we lived so well so long

 Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on

 I wonder what's gone wrong

 I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong.

 And I dreamed I was dying 

I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly

 And looking back down at me

 Smiled reassuringly

 And I dreamed I was flying

 And high up above my eyes could clearly see

 The Statue of Liberty

 Sailing away to sea

 And I dreamed I was flying 

We come on the ship they call The Mayflower

 We come on the ship that sailed the moon

 We come in the age's most uncertain hours

 And sing an American tune 

Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright

 You can't be forever blessed 

Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day

 And I'm trying to get some rest

 That's all I'm trying to get some rest

--American Tune by Paul Simon