May The Prophets Guide Your Path

Thank you, President Obama. You’ll be missed. (Photo by Jenan Steward)

“No matter who wins or loses, trouble still comes ’round.”

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He Has Shown The Way

President Barack Obama, Congressman John Lewis, and President George W. Bush on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during commemoration ceremonies on March 8, 2015.

John Lewis is a personal hero of mine, having risked (and very nearly sacrificed) his life so that other lives could be better. Esquire ran an article in which Lewis speaks on a subject he knows all too well – the dangers inherent in men like Donald Trump:

“When I see the people that react to Donald Trump’s words at those rallies, I see the same look in their eyes that I saw [in the eyes of Sheriff Clark and his posse]—a look that says, ‘you’re not a part of us, you’re not a part of the American family, you come from someplace else.’ When Trump talks about building a wall, to lock certain individuals out, people rallied. They screamed and yelled. It reminded me of some of the rallies that I saw on television for [infamous racist/segregationist Alabama governor] George Wallace during the ’60s. It makes me somewhat sad. I thought for many, many years that our country had become much more hopeful, much more optimistic, and we had come to a place where we saw unbelievable changes. I’ve said over and over again that we have witnessed what I like to call a nonviolent revolution in America during the last 50 years, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. I think the Trump campaign is trying to take us back to another place, another time, and we’ve come so far, made so much progress, I don’t think we can afford to go back…”

The entire article (which includes excerpts from Lewis’ graphic novel) is worth a read. In fact, it should be required reading for every school in America, as well as a certain incoming administration.

Call-In Day

No, it’s not about getting a day off from work, it’s an action plan to let Congress know that we are aware of PETOS’s numerous conflicts of interest, even if the Vichy Media won’t report it (h/t Balloon-Juicer O. Felix Culpa):

The League is joining with allied organizations for a Hill Call-In Day urging Congress to address President-elect Trump’s unprecedented and unconstitutional conflicts of interest. The calls will support a forthcoming bill from Senator Elizabeth Warren that will require the President to divest ownership of businesses and disclose all business dealings in order to avoid severe unconstitutional conflicts of interest…

To participate, call the below numbers to connect with your two Senators and your one Representative between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm EST [today], Wednesday, when congressional offices are open. You will be automatically connected to your appropriate congressional offices based on the zip code you provide.

Senate – 1-866-985-2543
House – 1-866-948-8977

Script:
President-elect Trump has conflicts of interest that are unprecedented for an American president. He could violate the Constitution and the law on his first day in office because of prohibited payments to him from his foreign and domestic businesses. Every other President and cabinet official before him has acted to avoid these types of conflicts of interest.

Mr. Trump has not fully disclosed how he will resolve these dangerous conflicts. Americans have been given little more than vague pledges about transferring operations and nothing about transferring ownership. Bi-partisan ethics officials from Republican and Democratic administrations agree this is completely inadequate and does not resolve his dangerous conflicts.

Congress must act to protect the interests of the American people and the integrity of the presidency. President-elect Trump must resolve his conflicts of interest and Congress must require that he disclose his finances and divest his business conflicts.

House call: Ask your Representative to call for a congressional investigation to review Mr. Trump’s business dealings in order to identify and protect against conflicts of interest.

Senate calls: Ask your Senators to call for an investigation to review Mr. Trump’s financial arrangements. Urge Senators to support Senator Warren’s new bill that will require the President-elect to divest ownership and disclose all business dealings in order to avoid serious and unconstitutional conflicts of interest

As we just saw with the aborted attempt to scuttle the Office of Congressional Ethics, we can be effective so long as we don’t just roll over like the Gushing Over Putin party expects us to do.

New Year, New Fight

Found a post that perfectly sums up what needs to happen now that the Trumpocalypse is inbound:

We can do this, we people who are horrified by the bigotry that Trump has brought flooding out into the open. The one good thing about Trump’s bile-spewing candidacy is that he’s been so generous about spreading hostility that it’s been easier than ever to see that our many little groups can form one big raft that protects the whole. We can do this. We can join together and take our turns in the water so we can buoy the others who need it most at the moment. (Straight white dudes, I know that means you’ll be spending a lot of time in the water. Your willingness to do so may be your finest hour.)

I’m particularly impressed with the directness of addressing the Trumpsters’ supposed strength as a flaw:

Those “jokes” people are making? The ones where men walk up to a woman and say har har, they can grab her pussy now? Or the jokes about people getting deported? Or the white girl who snap-chatted that she’ll be a benevolent slave owner once Trump makes it legal? Those are not fucking jokes. They are a way of asserting power by spreading fear, and they are not acceptable in a decent society.

During a conversation I had with a friend back in the before times (2008), I said that we were going to eventually be faced with having to decide what kind of country we wanted to have, or if we indeed wanted to have one at all.  Looks like the time is now. I hope everyone’s ready…