do your duty!

If the Democrats cannot muster enough spine to impeach the most deserving person EVER, what will it take?

Democrats, Do Your Damned Duty!

Doing what is right on impeachment should not be a mere option

by Charles Blow

What the hell is it going to take, Democrats?!

What evidence and impetus would compel you to do the job the Constitution, patriotism and morality dictate?

What is it going to take to make you initiate an impeachment inquiry?

Your slow walking of this issue and your specious arguments about political calculations are pushing you dangerously close to a tragic, historic dereliction of duty, one that could do irreparable damage to the country and the Congress.

Robert Mueller on Wednesday finally made a public statement about his damning report of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Trump’s campaign’s connection to it, and President Trump’s own attempts to obstruct the investigation.

In addition to underscoring the point that Russians interfering in the election “deserves the attention of every American,” efforts that continued unabated and have never been sufficiently addressed by Trump, he made clear again:

“And as set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.”

He made clear, contrary to Attorney General Bill Barr’s assessment, that he was prevented from making that determination based on the Justice Department’s policy against indicting a sitting president. As Mueller puts it, “the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”

Congress, that means you. Specifically, Democrats in control of the House, that means you!

There is no right time to wait to do what you know is right. There is only now.

This ridiculous windup of processing through subpoenas and court fights, scheduling testimony and hearings, are patrician formalities in the middle of a blood battle.

Stop telling the American people what Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Rolling Stone in February: “It’s a very disruptive process to put the country through, and it’s an opportunity cost in terms of time and resources. You don’t want to go down that path unless it is unavoidable.”

What the hell does that mean? Opportunity cost is an economics term referring to value of something that will be missed due to the making of another choice. It’s all calculation for the leadership, conscience be damned.

The country is already suffering through an unimaginable horror, and watching as a lawless president and a corrupt administration are being allowed to operate carte blanche due to Democrats’ squeamishness about their political prospects and compromised conservatives’ concerns about their own.

Politicians point to Trump’s stratospheric approval among Republicans and the middling approval for impeachment among the broader populations, without acknowledging that they aren’t simply laboring under those realities but helping to create them.

The fact that almost no prominent Republican politician will stand up against Trump and for right and rule of law means that in that universe, Trump’s narrative is the only narrative. Their silence is — or at least gives the appearance of — acquiescence and tacit approval.

The same goes for impeachment. The Democratic leadership in Congress simply won’t forcefully make a case for why it must begin now, for the health of the country. They want instead to have it appear that they have exhausted all options and were forced into the decision, if they ever arrive at that decision.

That is a coward’s way out. Democratic leadership, you are lying to the American people too. You are terribly disappointing all of the many people who organized and registered to vote and came out in droves in the midterms.

Republicans have their fangs bared and you have your tails tucked. You are an embarrassment. There is no polite way to fight. Fighting is nasty, instinctual and vicious. Good people don’t relish it, but goodness dies and ruin is left in its wake when good people don’t fight when fighting is required.

I am at my wits’ end with the fear. I live by a different creed: Never be afraid to do what’s right. And, I don’t believe that opening an impeachment inquiry helps Trump in 2020 and hurts Democrats.

To the contrary, I trust truth. I believe in the eternal power of truth to transform and to withstand the crucible.

Democrats need to stop worrying about how best to weaken Trump’s support among his base. It seems to me that the Democratic leadership is worrying more about Trump’s base than their own.

I want to be able to believe in equitable justice in this country. I want to believe that no person is above the law. I want to believe that wealth and power will not insulate those who possess them from a justice that would be enacted upon the poor and powerless with ruthless efficiency.

But, every time I want to believe that, America — its history and its present — asserts in booming clarity that that is not the case, that is not how or why the system was built.

Democrats have a chance, but more important, an obligation to assert in opposition that on occasion American justice can be blind. I would argue that there is an even more profound opportunity cost to not pursuing impeachment.

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Houstonification

We moved from Houston to South Padre Island in January of 2017. It was great to get away from the frequent odors, haze, and explosions from the myriad chemical plants east of Houston. It appears that the petrochemical industry now wants to spoil yet another segment of coastline. We should be moving full throttle towards renewables, but the regressive, corrupt Trump will have none of it. There is a lot of opposition here. Will it be enough?

The "Houstonification" of our coast

by Jim Chapman

Special to the Press

Unlike Port Arthur, Pasadena, Beaumont and Corpus Christi, the oil and gas industry has a light presence on our Cameron County coastline. We have been spared the heavy petrochemical industrialization that has blighted much of the Texas coast. But thanks to the “vision” of the Brownsville Navigation District (BND), that may drastically change. 

First there are the three liquified natural gas terminals, which while not permitted yet, they are still hoping to build. If built they will be far and away the largest sources of air pollution in the Rio Grande Valley, and will transform the wetlands, salt prairie and brush between Port Isabel and the Port of Brownsville into an industrial landscape instantly recognizable by anyone familiar with the upper Texas coast. Now, knocking at the door is Jupiter MLP, which if approved and built will include a “condensate” (light crude oil) refinery that will produce 170,000 barrels a day of gasoline, diesel and other hydrocarbons. Also, it will include 10 million barrels of hydrocarbon storage (27 tanks), three large marine loading berths for Panamex-sized tankers and barges, an offshore tanker terminal, a 650 mile 35 inch oil pipeline, and two 120-car oil trains passing through downtown Harlingen, San Benito and Olmito every day. 

In terms of air pollutants, Jupiter intends to emit 984 tons per year of nitric oxides, 218 tons per year of sulfur dioxide, 527 tons per year of carbon monoxide, and 91 tons per year of small (2.5 microns) particulate matter. Every April and May the Valley already has some of the highest particulate matter levels in the state, and this is the kind of air pollution that is particularly bad for people with asthma and other respiratory problems. When you add Jupiter’s proposed emissions to those of the LNG terminals, the results are staggering, dwarfing 300-fold the current largest stationary source of air pollution, the Silas Ray power plant. There will also be unmeasured and unregulated discharges of hydrogen sulfide and sulfuric acid mist. With the prevailing SSE wind, Los Fresnos will be downwind. 

Besides the air pollution, safety concerns and environmental degradation, there is an even more important reason these projects should never be built: global warming. The scientists know that even to meet the Paris Agreement goals by 2050, carbon emissions from energy and industry, which are still rising, will have to fall by half each decade. In the words of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “rapid and profound near-term decarbonization” must begin now. Over three-quarters of all the carbon humanity has put into the atmosphere has accrued since the end of WWII, a single human lifetime. For the BND to push these fossil-fuel -intensive projects forward, which will have lifespans of 30 or more years, is to push us into a higher-carbon future, when the overwhelming scientific consensus is that we must do the opposite. The total greenhouse gas emissions of the three LNG projects plus Jupiter would be 15,151,054 tons per year. 

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is holding a public meeting on Jupiter’s air pollution permit, Permit 147681, and greenhouse gas permit GHGPSDTX172, on Tuesday, May 28, 7 pm at the Amigoland Event Center, 1010 Mexico Blvd, Brownsville. This will be the public’s only opportunity to speak on behalf of the air we all breathe. Comments can be spoken or written, or submitted electronically at http://www14. tceq.texas.gov/epic/ecomment/.

from the Port Isabel-South Padre Island Press

Jesus & Mo

Why are religious people so insane when it comes to conception? Maybe they are afraid some woman might abort the next Jesus? 

Abortion isn't even mentioned in the Bible, but I guaran-damn-tee you that every Alabama legislator that voted for this stupid bill thumps the Bible. Shit, "God" even killed pregnant women in the Bible. Lots of them. 

Religious men have seemingly forever been exerting power over women. It has to stop, and women should have ultimate authority as to what goes on with their bodies. I'm sure this will happen, someday. Probably not in my lifetime. And in the year 2400, when women have absolute rights and command starships, there will probably still be men crouching in secret, reading from their fading Bibles and plotting on how to regain power over women.

It's time for an atheist

Max Boot used to be a pretty hardcore conservative Republican, but compared to this latest crop of Republican sycophants and vultures, Boot is pretty liberal. And he's not kowtowing to Trump.

It's time for us to have an unapologetic atheist in the White House

by Max Boot

Among the 21 candidates seeking the Democratic nomination, virtually every ethnic, religious and sexual identity is represented. There’s a gay man, six women, three African Americans, a Chinese American, multiple Catholics and Protestants, even a Hindu. (Hindus are 0.7 percent of the population.) But there is one conspicuous absence: Not a single candidate publicly identifies as an atheist. That’s not to say they are all religious believers. But if they aren’t, they are keeping it to themselves.

Yes, even, Bernie Sanders. Although raised Jewish, Sanders has acknowledged that he is “not actively involved in organized religion.” But asked about his faith during the 2016 campaign, he equivocated: “It’s a guiding principle in my life, absolutely. You know, everyone practices religion in a different way. To me, I would not be here tonight, I would not be running for president of the United States if I did not have very strong religious and spiritual feelings.” So a candidate who doesn’t mind calling himself a “socialist” refuses to say that he is a secular humanist — if, in fact, that’s what he is.

The reticence is understandable given that animus against atheists is one of the last prejudices still acceptable in polite society. A 2015 Gallup poll found that more respondents would refuse to vote for an atheist for president (40 percent) than for a Muslim (38 percent), gay (24 percent) or Jewish (7 percent) candidate. Other surveys have shown that Americans don’t want atheists marrying their children or teaching them. Eight state constitutions even prohibit nonbelievers from holding public office.

Yet people who profess no religious identity (“nones”) are one of the largest and fastest-growing demographic groups in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, 22.8 percent of Americans are “nones,” slightly fewer than the number of evangelical Protestants (25.4 percent) and slightly more than Catholics (20.8 percent). No other religious identification comes close. Of course, not all “nones” are atheists; Pew found that 27 percent of them believe in God. But not everyone affiliated with a religious faith believes in God. I am, for example, part of the 17 percent of American Jews who don’t believe in God. I identify with Judaism ethnically and culturally, but I’m not religiously observant.

Conventional public opinion surveys are thus misleading when they find that only 3 percent of Americans are atheists. A University of Kentucky study suggests that as many as 26 percent of Americans are actually nonbelievers.

Atheists are looked down upon because of the erroneous assumption that you can’t be good without God. An international survey showed that people are likely to assume that a serial killer is an atheist. This is despite all of the terrible acts, such as the Easter Sunday suicide bombings in Sri Lanka, carried out by religious zealots. And it’s not just Muslim extremists who are culpable. The gunman who is accused of attacking a Poway, Calif., synagogue was a conservative Presbyterian who blamed Jews for the death of Jesus. No doubt the Catholic priests who sexually abused children also considered themselves to be paragons of faith.

There are too many examples of evil committed in the name of God to assume that people act morally because they are afraid of divine punishment. More likely, people are social animals who develop moral codes so they can live at peace with their neighbors. That’s why almost all societies, whether religious or not, have similar taboos against murder, robbery, rape and other sins.

Most of China’s 1.4 billion people have no religious affiliation, and fewer than 7 percent are monotheists. Is there any reason to believe that China is a less moral place than the United States, where 70.6 percentprofess to be Christians? Or that Europeans act worse than Americans because only 27 percent of thembelieve in the God described in the Bible, compared with 56 percent of Americans? In fact, by many measures, such as crime rates and social welfare, Europe is actually a more moral place.

The outsize political role of pastors in U.S. politics has sometimes been good and sometimes bad; both segregationists and civil rights activists cited the Bible. Today, the consequences are often simply perverse. Some evangelicals condemn Pete Buttigieg, a Christian combat veteran, for being gay, yet insist that God selected Donald Trump — a thrice-married adulterer and serial liar whose life has been devoted to the pursuit of mammon — as president.

Trump shows how immorally a supposed Christian can behave. Winston Churchill is the flip side of the coin, showing how righteously a nonbeliever can act. Churchill was a nominal Anglican but he had no belief in God. “In the absence of Christian faith, therefore,” writes biographer Andrew Roberts, “the British Empire became in a sense Churchill’s creed.”

If atheism was good enough for Britain’s greatest prime minister, it should be good enough for a U.S. president. We’ve had closeted freethinkers as president but never one who was out and proud. Thomas Jefferson, a deist who rejected the divinity of Christ, bridled when he was called an atheist by his opponents. Given how many taboos we have already shattered — making it easy to imagine a female president who is of Jamaican and Indian descent — I look forward to the day when we will finally have an unapologetic atheist in the Oval Office. But probably not in 2021.

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frikkin' circus

And the suckers eat it up. 

soul eater

Comey comes pretty close to describing Trump, I think. Trump is like a cancer growing in the White House.

James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr

Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive this president.

by James Comey in the New York Times

People have been asking me hard questions. What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?

How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?

How could he write and say things about the report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, that were apparently so misleading that they prompted written protest from the special counsel himself?

How could Mr. Barr go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and downplay President Trump’s attempt to fire Mr. Mueller before he completed his work?

And how could Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report that detailed Mr. Trump’s determined efforts to obstruct justice, give a speech quoting the president on the importance of the rule of law? Or on resigning, thank a president who relentlessly attacked both him and the Department of Justice he led for “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations”?

What happened to these people?

I don’t know for sure. People are complicated, so the answer is most likely complicated. But I have some idea from four months of working close to Mr. Trump and many more months of watching him shape others.

Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.

But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.

It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence. In meetings with him, his assertions about what “everyone thinks” and what is “obviously true” wash over you, unchallenged, as they did at our private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, because he’s the president and he rarely stops talking. As a result, Mr. Trump pulls all of those present into a silent circle of assent.

Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts, or delusions. I have felt it — this president building with his words a web of alternative reality and busily wrapping it around all of us in the room.

I must have agreed that he had the largest inauguration crowd in history because I didn’t challenge that. Everyone must agree that he has been treated very unfairly. The web building never stops.

From the private circle of assent, it moves to public displays of personal fealty at places like cabinet meetings. While the entire world is watching, you do what everyone else around the table does — you talk about how amazing the leader is and what an honor it is to be associated with him.

Sure, you notice that Mr. Mattis never actually praises the president, always speaking instead of the honor of representing the men and women of our military. But he’s a special case, right? Former Marine general and all. No way the rest of us could get away with that. So you praise, while the world watches, and the web gets tighter.

Next comes Mr. Trump attacking institutions and values you hold dear — things you have always said must be protected and which you criticized past leaders for not supporting strongly enough. Yet you are silent. Because, after all, what are you supposed to say? He’s the president of the United States.

You feel this happening. It bothers you, at least to some extent. But his outrageous conduct convinces you that you simply must stay, to preserve and protect the people and institutions and values you hold dear. Along with Republican members of Congress, you tell yourself you are too important for this nation to lose, especially now.

You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.

Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values.

And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.

James Comey is the former F.B.I. director and author of “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”

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James Comey on Wiki