Three Sticks and a Wall

[Men's ablutions facilities, Belushi's Sports Bar, Paris, France.]


Comrades,

Folks have been coming up to me and asking what is going on with DJ Trump! at the minute, as I have been unusually silent on His Donaldness of late.
I can only note that he has gone through the 300 day mark since becoming the POTUS, and hasn't it been a jolly jape?
During that time, the President has had 65 certified confirmed rounds of golf, and spent 814 hours at golf courses over 79 visits to golf clubs various - all of them his [except one in Japan and one in Jersey City] - as he owns quite a few around about the traps and knows them very well, particularly his favourite, Bedminster, NJ, where Trump has instructed that he be interred in his mausoleum when he expires.
So he has spent 26% of his time as Leader of The Free World, with at least part of the day idling in a clubhouse someplace.
Somebody is counting:

http://trumpgolfcount.com/displayoutings#tablecaption

Over the year, it's become patently clear that just one, and only one, thing interests The Trumpster - seeing his brand front and centre on the TV news every day for free - and he has two sports; golf, and screwing his enemies.
The Donald, when you look at it fairly and squarely, has had a few mighty triumphs lately, most notably ramming a tax bill through Congress that shamelessly robs the poor to give to the rich in a bald-faced naked grab for cash that will send the US of A into a nose-down spiral of an out-of-control budget deficit running into the mega-trillions for generations to come.
Nice work there Don.
That'll go down super-well on the millions of Struggle Streets in The States, just as it will on Park Avenue.
Ah, but don't you worry about that, the plebeians will learn to love how amazing it really is, when gold faucets miraculously appear in every bathroom in America, so it will be much more pleasant then to clean the ol' chunder away.
So there will be nothing to see there.
And hasn't his foreign policy been on a whizz-bang revolutionary spin lately?
Wasn't the DJ Trump! Word Tour II spectacular!? Taking Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines by storm!!
Talk about red carpet a million miles long.
Woot!
By all reports the Chinese "out-Trumped Trump" in terms of dazzlingly gaudy lavishly extravagant enormously expensive entertainments while he was in Peking.
While he continues to bait Fatboy "Bomb Boy" Kim, and North Korea's PR Unit continues to dish the line in strident terms that war with the USA is inevitable, the Trumpotus then goes out on a limb and declares Jerusalem - that "pile of old rocks" - as the Capital of Israel, in "one of the finest days in the history of Zionism", according to the most influential New York Rabbi's and more than a few major-league donors to the Trump election campaign war chest.
No surprise the Palestinians are having burning the Star Spangled Banner riots.
The Donald was just fulfilling an election promise there, nothing more, nothing less.
Nothing to see there.
Still, as one much more learned commentator on the subject than me remarked "why destroy a Middle East peace process, when there was no peace process actually going on?"
Good point.
I remember going down to my local Lebanese bakery one time years ago now, and there was a group of old men smoking, with short blacks and manakish at tables on the footpath out the front arguing with each other in a most vigourous fashion to the point where they could have come to blows at any minute.
I must have had a concerned look on my face, because the bakery owner said to me over the counter "Ppff! Don't worry about them. They're just trying to solve the Middle East peace question".
Nothing to see there.
[BTW, they're still at it, Trumpy].
And now word on the street in DC has it - and this is wild rumour - that the Trumpotus is planning to sack, punt and dismiss Special Counsel, Robert "Three Sticks" Mueller the Turd, before Xmas, on account of Bobby's a crafty old bugger of a hard-bastard detective inspector who behaves like a slithering snake, worming his way into all sorts of filth-filled crevices to flush out the vermin who've been conspiring with them damn no-good Ruskies to subvert and corrupt the Miracle of Democracy.
Of course Don can fire anyone, anytime, for any or no reason, quite within his rights to do so, but Three Sticks is getting far too close to the TRUTH [which is very over-rated anyway] for comfort; he's charged two of Trump's crooked mates with felonies that would see them serving long stretches in the federal penitentiary, and he's got two of The Donald's associates to roll over on their backs and plead guilty to lying to the "worst FBI ever", and man, aren't they singing to save their bacon?
DJ! appears to be a little upset with Mr. Mueller presently, and doing his mates cold under the law has got the POTUS all "incandescent with rage".
Just get rid of Three Sticks, tho', and that's that, problem solved.
Nothing to see there.
Anymore.
I've been brushing up on the impeachment process lately; oh man, the road is long and they way is hard.
Anyone can move an impeachment motion in the House of Reps, and has, it's on the table, but getting it shuffled along the legislative line could in theory be blocked forever from going to debate, let alone a vote in a chamber controlled by the Grand Old Party.
In the highly unlikely event that the motion gets up by simple majority, the President is then tried in the Senate for his/her constitutional offence[s].
The House, who for the purpose are known as the "managers", appoint their lawyers to try the case and then the President nominates a small army of his own personal lawyers, and it is run like any other trial; the calling of witnesses, the adducement of evidence, cross-examination etc, with the Senators sitting in judgement.
The impeachee is not required to appear unless they want to give evidence, and it is for the House to prove the case.
At the completion of the trial, the Senate then usually retires behind closed doors to debate the verdict in private.
If the Article[s] of Impeachment is resolved in the affirmative, and achieves a two-thirds majority or more in favour, an impeachment takes immediate effect, cannot be appealed, and the impeachee cannot be pardoned by his successor, although can be in the event of an outcome of any subsequent criminal trial.
The Senate can also determine in a second vote, whether the impeachee be banned for life from holding public office again.
Sweet Mother of Joisus...if you have got this far, I am sorry to bore you shitless with the procedural rules in the Miracle of Democracy USA Style, but when it comes down to it, impeachment is really a pure political game, with very high hurdles.
It's much much easier under the Westminster System - an unpopular leader is simply dumped and replaced by his/her own party and put out to pasture without further ado, with no inconvenience to the Parliament or the people.
There is no reference to the words "Prime Minister" in the Australian constitution, as it's all taken care of in-house.
The only reason that impeachment is in the US Constitution in the first place is because, against considerable opposition, one of the Founding Fathers - was it Franklin? - argued that "the usual way of dealing with an 'obnoxious' Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief is by assassination - surely there must be a better way?"
The word "obnoxious" is his, not mine, I remember that much.
But in the current climate, an impeachment will have to wait until after next year's Mid-Terms anyway, and even if it gets up during the two years following, who do the Home of The Brave and the Land of Free get to run the show in the interim?
Mike Pence, an old establishment hard-right hard-arsed Republican with wacky ideas of his own who's also foolish and stoopid.
Otherwise, why would he have he accepted one of the Top Ten Shit Jobs in The World - Vice President of the United States of America?
It is difficult to believe that the righteous Free Press like the NYT and the DC Post have got themselves all a twitter about this, and are only now gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands saying in editorials "oh, for the love of God, how did we get ourselves into such a catastrophe and become the laughing stock of the world?"
They've probably never heard of the term "gullible".
Not that it matters that much in the Grand Scheme of Things, as the rest of the planet just gets on with getting on.
Many Americans would have absolutely no idea what's going on, or care less, with the latest survey finding that fully one-third of them are unable to name any of the three executive branches of Government.
The only way out for the Yanks that do care is to vote the bastard out, on Tuesday, 3rd November, 2020, if The Trumpotus doesn't lose interest before then, is committed to psychiatric care, or declines into senility.
Apart from everything going down the toilet, that's about all of note that's been happening across the other side of the shimmering Pacific as far as I can tell.
So, obviously...nothing to see there.
Oh, I forgot, I can't enlighten you about what's been shakin' with that "great big beautiful wall" because, by all accounts, there's nothing to see there...