Should President Trump Be Impeached?

Watching C-Span’s Washington Journal this morning, I viewed an interview with Mr. Norman Sullivan, co-founder/coordinator of RootsAction.org, “a new online initiative dedicated to galvanizing millions…” i.e. an independent initiative or lobby “to defend the public interest”. Their statement is that “Our country faces a far-right Republican Party regime that is largely a subsidiary of corporate America and a Democratic Party whose leadership is enmeshed with corporate power”—an absolute fact I have been raving about for quite some time now. One of their immediate initiatives is “Impeach Trump Now”, the subject of this discussion. Other initiatives are: “Yes to Carbon Tax, But Do It Right”, “Tell NPR to Call a Lie a Lie”, and “Cancel the F-35”—listed here just for your general information.

Let’s get down to it. Should President Trump be impeached? Absolutely not! Particularly, at this point in time (he has only been in office a little over a month), we don’t dare to even try to impeach our duly elected president. As I wrote in my blog on February 17^th, in my opinion, the American people haven’t, as a nation, been this divided since the beginning of the nineteen hundreds when we were overrun with riots and rebellion.  As we speak, the most urgent and immediate problem before us today is the reunification of our people. We must come together again. Our nation is regressing; and, if we don’t come back together, we will no longer have a nation as we now know it. If we impeach President Trump now, it will be the beginning of the end. Count on it.

Listen up, folks. President Trump legally won his election for the presidency on November 7th, 2017. Everything we know about him now, we knew then. Very little, if anything, has come on the scene since.  We did our very best to convince those on “the other side” as to why they were wrong and we were right, and we lost. That’s how it works. Therefore, we owe it to President Trump and to those who voted for him to let things play out according to law—short of the occurrence of a national tragedy, of course. As is said, “Right is right, and wrong is wrong”. They won the election; we lost. It is my firm belief that if President Trump is impeached at this time, our nation will never come back together again. Those who elected him must first come to see the error of their ways; or, conversely, we come to see ours.

Let me know what you think.

In the meantime, this is Ronald Miller, www.sageobserver.blogspot.com signing off.

Leadership

Before the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President of our great nation on January
20th, I would (and did—more than once) have told you that the greatest problem confronting our nation was the loss of our democracy and our very sovereignty to the Corporatocracy and Power Elite ruling us through a Shadow Government of lobbyists, campaign contributions, bribery, etc. Be sure. That hasn’t gone away; that problem is just as great as ever. But, today, a greater, more immediate problem has jumped to the head of the line.

The division of our people, always a factor in our democracy, has literally exploded. More than ever, we are at each other’s throat. Arguably, we have not been this divided since the riots and rebellions at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, however, there is a difference—a difference absolutely terrifying. Almost everybody has a gun. We have more guns than people.

What do I have to say—what can I say—to convince you that our greatest, most urgent, most immediate priority today is the unification of our people as a nation. Our nation cannot survive as we know it if we cannot remain unified. You have heard it before, “A nation divided cannot stand”; “All for one and one for all”. We need a leader, a leader who can lead; a leader who recognizes that this is not about him; a leader who recognizes that this is not about financial gain, a leader who recognizes that this is all about our people—all our people, the very survival of our nation.

What is a leader? Is it someone who tells others what to do, where to go, and when? Maybe, but I say this. In the final analysis, a leader is one who leads and others follow—not because they have been ordered to do so, but because they wish to do so. A leader is admired (even loved), respected, has integrity, is trustworthy, and knows what he is doing. He leads based upon what he knows—not what he feels. His people are proud to follow him. Chaos, confusion, and dissension are not part of his repertoire.

This nation has some tremendous challenges ahead, not the least of which is the direction we want to follow—not only where but how to get there. To be perfectly candid, this same old crap of reversing directions every four or eight years is not only stupid and myopic, but financially prohibitive. But, whatever we choose, forward or backward, we need a leader to take us there, and all the people (not just the Corporatocracy and Power Elite) should and must be the beneficiary. And, right now? We ain’t got one.

Let me know what you think. 

In the meantime, this is Ronald Miller, www.sageobserver.blogspot.com signing off.

Slavery

There has been a lot of “water over the dam” since man secured his food by eating berries from vines, fruit from trees, and hunting animals with a spear or bow and arrow; since he made his knives and tools from stone; and since he built his houses from the limbs of trees or lived in caves. There has been a lot of “water over the dam”, indeed, since he invented money, progressed from bartering, and begun buying and trading his production with that of others. But, from that very “long ago” beginning, it took relatively little time at all for man to learn to make a living from the toil, (the blood, sweat, and tears) and productivity of others—slavery.

As men came together and developed into tribes, they warred with each other, took captives, and enslaved them. This is when man learned the art of stealing the productivity of others to fill his own needs and desires, to build his own wealth—eventually, his empires. In one way or another, he has been doing this or trying to do so ever since with impunity.

Outlawed around the world, effectively, in one way or another, slavery is all around us. When I think about this subject, my mind is always drawn first to the building of the railroads across our nation, the importation of Chinese labor, their slave labor wages, and the capitalistic Robber Barons who grew rich from their blood, sweat, and tears. I look today at globalization and the movement of our manufacturing jobs to countries around the world where labor, relative to our wages and conditions, is paid with pennies on our dollar. One can call that what they wish, but I call it slave labor. Who can compete with that? I look today at the declining standard of living of our nation’s middle class which has remained almost stagnant for the past thirty-five years while the top one percent of us grow increasingly and unashamedly wealthy.

Oppression of the weak by the strong and the wealthy has always been with us; but, although it may change its ugly face as generations come and go, it never ends. It’s called survival of the fittest, and let the Devil take the hindmost. Those on the right call it liberty. I call it inequality and oppression of those less fortunate. There are many reasons why the weak and poor among us are such as they are, not the least of which are that they were just born that way; they were just plain unlucky; or, perhaps, they made poor decisions, or didn’t work hard enough, were lazy, etc. On the other hand, there are reasons why the strong and wealthy are where they are. They, too, may have been born “that way”, i.e. intellectually, socially, gifted, etc. They, also, may have been just plain lucky, i.e. in the right place at the right time, or worked hard. I choose to believe that they were blessed by God. I also believe, as is said in the “Good Book”, “To those whom much is given, much is required”.

Right is right and wrong is wrong. To believe in “Survival of the Fittest” and “Let the Devil take the hindmost” is wrong—“Dead wrong”. In the end, we are all still God’s people.

In the meantime, this is Ronald Miller, www.sageobserver.blogspot.com signing off.

Shoe on Other Foot

When President Obama took office in 2009, the Republican Party treated him abominably—their behavior was outrageous, to the detriment of our people and our country. Not only did they leave our nation with a national debt of Ten Trillion Dollars (When President Reagan entered office in 1981, our national debt was less than a Trillion Dollars) and a budget deficit of One and One Half Trillion Dollars, they left us with a crash in the financial markets and the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. To cap that off, they publicly announced their intent to make sure President Obama would fail in his presidency and be a one-term president, the well being and success of our nation or our people notwithstanding. All this was on top of President Bush having entered office eight years earlier with a zero dollar deficit. In fact, he really didn’t inherit a budget deficit. He inherited a budget surplus—there was no deficit.

Have you ever watched a railroad train running down the track at one hundred miles per hour? Have you ever seen an ocean going ship moving full speed in the water? Have you ever thought about how long it takes to stop at those speeds? If you overspend your annual budget by twenty-five or thirty percent, how long would it take you to get back in balance again? Do you really think you could stop overspending and get back in balance all at once without completely wrecking the economy of your household; or, likewise, President Obama could eliminate our national deficit on the spot without throwing our whole economy (and maybe that of the whole world as well) into complete collapse? That’s where the additional Ten Trillion Dollars (President Obama’s portion) of the debt came from which brought us to the current status of our debt, just below Twenty Trillion Dollars. As of the end of 2016, President Obama “slowed that train and that ship”, reducing our national deficit, to less than $600 Billion. Had he followed President Clinton in office, he would have inherited a surplus instead of a deficit and, arguably, we would be looking at a completely different picture right now.

On Friday, January 20, 2017, President Donald Trump will take office as the forty-fifth President of the United States of America. One of the most unpopular presidents to ever enter office, elected in one of the most hyped up elections in recent years, he is entering office under a cloud of hatred and disdain to preside over the most divided electorate since the Civil War. The shoe is on the other foot. Accordingly, many of those who voted Democrat in this election want to treat President Trump as they were treated during the eight years they were in office. Although we should object and vote against legislation which is clearly not in the best interests of our country, I believe two wrongs don’t make a right. President Trump was duly elected by our people according to the law of the land; and we should let our democracy, the will of the people, play out. We should give President Trump a chance. We should “let our light shine before men” even if he can’t.

In the meantime, this is Ronald Miller, www.sageobserver.blogspot.com signing off.

President Trump’s Executive Order—7 Nation Ban

Any accountant will tell you, “Debits on the left. Credit’s on the right”. Write them down! On the left are Debits, i.e. Assets, Benefits, Gains. On the right are Credits, i.e. Liabilities, Losses, Negatives. President Trump’s Executive Order, a 7 nation ban, a 90 day suspension, if you will, of refugees into our country within his very first days in office has proven to be a major mistake of governance from any way you look at it—a mistake in judgement, a mistake in strategy, and a  mistake in leadership.

What did we the people lose as a result of his executive order? The answer is a whole lot. Of “the various people who have, in fact, committed terrorist acts in this country, from 9/11 on, none of them came from any of the seven countries that are the subject of the president’s executive order”—that quote coming from Jerrold Nadler, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 10^th District, in an interview with CNN on January 28^th, 2017. In effect, this means that any risk from terrorism by the individuals affected by this ban was minimal if at all (Given the friction raised by the act that may no longer be true, however).

Second, given the risk involved as evidenced by my first statement above, in light of past history, how much more security did he achieve by a suspension of only 90 days? What did he really achieve by his order? Let me tell you. He achieved division—division of the people of our country and division from our allies. Aggravation, alienation and division are not positive traits of leadership. Rather, they are traits of poor management—not good business.

To date, the score is: Gains—0; Losses—1.

In the meantime, this is Ronald Miller, www.sageobserver.blogspot.com signing off.