a bit more fellowship

events grind on

like nixon

" Title X of the Act, also known as the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, specifies that the president may request that Congress rescind appropriated funds. If both the Senate and the House of Representatives have not approved a rescission proposal (by passing legislation) within forty-five days of continuous session, any funds being withheld must be made available for obligation. Congress is not required to vote on the request and has ignored most presidential requests. In response, some[who?] have called for a line item veto to strengthen the rescission power and force Congress to vote on the disputed funds. The Act was passed because Congressional representatives thought that President Nixon had abused his power of impoundment by withholding funds for programs he opposed. The Act, especially after Train v. City of New York (1975), effectively removed the presidential power of impoundment."_____________________________________________________ tricky dick developed the habit of impoundng funds congress had approved for programs he did not especially like...monkey see monkey do...except, at least at the moment, it is illegal...an entitltled president pushing the boundries to see what he can get away with...or a wannabe authoritarian with no use for laws and due process

fellowship

during don's first term i struggled with a vague sense that his political style reminded me of someone who i was having difficulty placing until, towards the end of his term i concluded that it was solobodan milosevic and his use of the minority kosovar serbs as a rallying point for his campaign which don translated into letting some repressed political viewpoints crawl back into the open ( and which he is acting on as i type in a concerted campaign against cultuiral diversity )...that settled i was still puzzled ( until just recently ) about what it was that conservative fundamentalist christians could possibly see as supportable in don's character...i have been reading, anong other things, bartolome de las casas indictment of the conquistadors' ( and, by dint of that christians' ) treatment of indigenous peoples as sub-humans fit for slavery and the propensity of the conquistadors and their clerical supporters to destroy the religious temples pf those peoples, say mass, and then erect churches on their sites( a habit which goes back to the establishment of the vatican in the confines of nero's circus )...watching don engage in vengeful behaviors from the very start of his second term it struck me that both don and conservative christians share a sanctimonious vindictiveness when dealing with poeple and ideas they don't like...acolytes emulating an angry and vengful god.

round two

inauguration day has rolled around again and don and his cadre of sycophants and manipulators ( or handlers if you like...or those who see him as a pathway to realizing their agenda... ) are about to be enthroned in whoretown for what they hope will be an extended period of misery for those they do not like and one of unbridled self-aggrandizement for the venal among them...this probably will not tend to "make america great again" and while it may not be a complete catastrophy ( institutional inertia is not going to be easy for them to re-reoute...and we haven't even touched on the near impossibility of having a defacto empire [ which they want to enlarge with greenland and canada ] and a small bureaucracy to run it ) it is not going to be anything like stable...at least on the national level...we will see how far it reachess to the local level as they maintain they are going to uproot millions of individuals...one expects confusion and abrupt changes in direction and distortion of fact ( this has been a staple in the executive and legislative branches of government here since at least 1789 and isn't about to change ) as some agenda points prove impossible to carry out...as well as a discernable lack of critical thinking about possible concequences ( and there are always consequences...many unseen )...we have already been living in "interesting times" ( the political system has been broken for years ) both socially and climatically...one preceives that this will only intensify as an adminstration based in emotion and denial takes over to work its will...buckle up buttercup.

first steps

elswhere ( see the post titled "future?" ) i have discussed the utility something akin to the alien and sediton act of 1798 would have for the forthcoming second trump adminstration and looking at the news ( not my first choice for a way to spend the day, however reality and a need to be grounded in events impinges..that said i have also elsewhere delved into my deep distrust of any news media and its ability to be anything like objective...unfiltered news, like privacy, is nonexistant ) it seems to me they have gained the same insight...

libel lawsuits are the opening gambit in the approach..."if you don't shut up about our defficiencies in terms of ability to actually engage in'public service' we will sue for libel so make sure you have the resources to defend yourself"...intimidation in a word...

the n y times article goes on to say that the supreme court has set a "high bar" which holds that "plaintiffs must prove that a publisher knew a defamatroy statment was false or acted with reckless disregard for its accuracy" and that this precedent is something that "...mr. trump and some of his allies want to see weakened or overturned..." which could be accomplished by one of those specious libel suits reaching a somewhat biased ( and fairly corrupt in some cases ) supreme court...or through legislation in a republican controlled congress ( which could also easily be called biased as the outsiders and disrupters become the majority )...at least a return to a blackstone concept of "no prior restraint"...in other words, " we will not stop you from printing or airing the story but will sue the bejesus out of you after you do because libel is anything negative factual or not"...i am inclined to think they will become deeply subjective in defining "libel" if not "sedition"...british common law as a benchmark...i can see editors and news producers and journalists in the dock...the benjamin franklin baches, william duanes, and james thompson callenders of the opposition media prosecuted while the willam cobbetts at fox cackle...on 27 july 1798 john adams was passing through newark new jersey on his way to his home...blanks were being fired from cannons to salute him..."luther baldwin happened to be coming towards john burnet's dram-shop, a person that was there [brown clark] says to luther, there goes the president and they are firing at his ass, luther, a little merry, replies, that he did not care if they fired through his ass. then exclaims the dram seller that is sedition." ( crimina dissent:prosecutions under the alien and sedition acts of 1798 p.132 ) the bartender was a federalist who turned them in and both were prosecuted...baldwin was fined $150 plus court costs and clark was fined $50 and court costs...the prosecutions reached deep...and may reach as deep again.

reality

"reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play of forms, and some wretched loafer of a moralist comments: 'no! man ought to be different'. he knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig." fred nietzsche in twilight of the idols...welcome to project 2025

riven?

in the four years of donny's first term the fifteen cabinet level offices from secretary of state to secretary of homeland security saw twenty office holders and twenty-three "acting" secretaries between the offical secretaries...by comparison barak obama's two terms saw thirty-two office holders and no "acting" secretaries over the eight years...trump had four national security advisors of whom john bolton lasted longest at one year and one hundred fifty-four days while michael flynn lasted twenty-four days and sandwiched in there were two "acting" national security advisors...in two terms barak obama had three...this does not touch on white huse staff or ambassadors however it does remind me that there was considerable friction and turnover among those donny appointed and then, at times, quickly wearied of...one presumes donny's fundamental intolerance for not getting his way or for hearing what he does not want to hear has not receded in the interim...we could see project 2025 dissolve into a behavioral sump of infighting bickering backstabbing and unalloyed sycophancy...to steal one of tacitus' descriptions of the reign of tiberius..."it was a tainted meanly obsequious age"...one could hope to find a spine or two in congress...unlikely as that is....there won't be one in the white house...at least not for long.