DONALD TRUMP AND AL MARGULIES

It's true!  I said the same thing when Al Margulies was Cyber Stalking me. It wasn't him as much as it was his followers. Without one's followers co-signing their bad behavior the Bully looses power and eventually crawls back under their rock. 

SCARED TO DEATH

Something Bus Operators experience several time a day, years on end. I call it 'the surprise factor'. Something you can't plan for or prevent. You can only react. I've been told by Managers, "We don't want you to react!" But one can't control a reaction any more then they can plan for a surprise.

GASLIGHTING

Al Margulies isn't the only one who uses it against his victims:

A Dangerous Day For America

Today America’s President seized sweeping powers by declaring a National Emergency. This should ring every alarm bell in the nation and set red danger signs flashing everywhere. It is an authoritarian power grab that takes America into uncharted and dangerous waters.

What makes it so very different is that, unlike other states of emergency declared by previous presidents, there is no emergency. There is no natural catastrophe or threat to national security so grave and urgent that such an extreme measure is justified. American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero called the declaration “a clear abuse of presidential power – one that sidesteps the role of Congress in the appropriation of funds”.

Democrat leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosii said that, “The President’s unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist does great violence to our Constitution and makes America less safe, stealing from urgently needed defense funds for the security of our military and our nation,“  They added ,"This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed President, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process.The President is not above the law. The Congress cannot let the President shred the Constitution.”

Let’s be clear. There is no ‘national emergency’ at the Mexican border. That is the reality, supported by facts. The nations’s intelligence services, locally elected officials at the border, and the governments own statistics all flatly contradict Trump’s scaremongering about a ‘brown menace’ sweeping over the southern border bringing rapists, drug-dealers, human-traffickers and unchecked crime. 

He is flat-out lying and this has been proven multiple times by multiple reputable fact-checkers. The facts are not seriously in question and are so easily and widely available that even die-hard Trump supporters have no excuse for willful ignorance.

Oh and we should add to the list of people confirming there is no national emergency Donald Trump himself. Today, while he was declaring a national state of emergency to fund his wall he said “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”  Got that ? So no over-riding urgency. No immediate threat to the nation of the kind a real ‘state of emergency’ declaration is designed to deal with. Just Trump’s own wishes and convenience.

Why is he doing it ? It’s all about what’s best for Trump. Having been thoroughly schooled by Nancy Pelosi in the realities of politics during his disastrous and ill-conceived government shutdown and having been exposed as the worst ‘deal-maker’ ever, ending up with a much worse deal than was repeatedly on offer to him before, Trump is now desperate to cling onto the illusion of ‘power’ that his extremist base and Fox News agitators demand. He’s ‘saving face’.

But this time it’s more than just a silly bit of theater and misdirection like most of Trump’s nonsense. Today’s declaration of a national emergency to bypass Congress and grab funds already allocated by lawmakers represents his most serious assault yet on the system of constitutional order he is sworn to preserve, protect and defend. The constitution makes it clear the Congress holds the purse strings. Trump does not and should not.

So what does Trump hope to achieve and why is it so dangerous ? That depends. At the moment it looks like there are two possible outcomes going forward. Either the whole thing will be tied up in the courts for the rest of Trump’s presidency and no wall will be built or at some point it will end up in the Supreme Court which, with it’s Republican bias, might uphold Trump’s power-grab. 

In the first case, if his Wall ends up bogged down in the courts for the next two years, he won’t care much. It will provide him with endless ammunition to bash Democrats in his attempt to get re-elected in 2020. He will be able to tell his base and the Fox News agitators who goad him into extremism that he fought for his campaign promise of a wall and it’s not his fault it failed to materialize. He will also, since he has no policies, be happy to have ready-made and constant Reality-TV show drama to help him dominate the media and entertain his supporters over the next two years.

The second, and altogether more worrying, possibility is that legal challenges to his declaring a national state of emergency when none exists will end up in the Republican-leaning Supreme Court where it’s possible Trump’s actions may be upheld for a variety of reasons (none of them good ones). Lets hope not because that really would set a dangerous precedent for the future.

It would mean the constitution’s separation of powers, with Congress having control over the purse-strings, is set aside. Any President could declare a national state of emergency and use money appropriated for other purposes to fulfill a campaign promise or indeed do anything he chose. It would fundamentally change how American politics is supposed to work.

If you’re a Republican think about a future Democrat President deciding to follow Trump’s precedent and declare a National State of Emergency over things that Republicans oppose. Grabbing huge amounts of money appropriated for entirely different purposes to pay for a radical program to address Climate Change (actually a real emergency unlike Trump’s Wall). Or how about declaring a national emergency to justify sweeping action that tackles mass shootings and gun crime (also a real emergency unlike Trump’s Wall). Happy with that ?

And if you’re a Democrat or Independent or even a real Republican rather than a Trump toady, think of this. What if Trump takes a win over his invented national state of emergency as permission to do it again ? To go even further next time ? 

How far would he go ? After the last two years it would take a brave person to guarantee sane limits. He has made clear his disdain for the concepts of limited presidential power and democratic rule. He has praised murderous dictators. He has even hinted that he might not accept an electoral loss. He has demonstrated clearly that he is an autocrat by nature who has no time for democratic checks and balances. He does not want to serve, he only wants to rule.

it could never happen here ? I wish I had that confidence. I really do. Two years ago I thought that Trump would be just a diverting clown who could be contained by the grown-ups in politics. We know now that’s not true. He is much worse than anyone ever imagined and instead of the Republican Party controlling him, he now totally controls them. The Republican Party as it existed before has ceased to exist. There is now only the Party Of Trump.

We live in dangerous times. Around the world democracies are threatened by the rise of autocracy and nationalism. There is creeping fascism. A passionate and vocal section of the American public seem to crave authoritarian rule and will believe whatever Trump tells them, no matter how demonstrably untrue it is. Only a fool would dismiss Trump’s threat to liberal democracy.

So today was a dangerous day for America. How dangerous only time will tell.

Internet Writer

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