Gongol.com Archives: November 2016
November 11, 2016
A letter to America "from an old friend"
A longtime former ambassador to the United States from Singapore has exceptionally thoughtful words for Donald Trump, including: "You should avoid the trap of being held accountable for those remarks. You need not have a bad conscience about it because every US president before you did the same thing. You are just following a well-known US tradition." Decidedly worth reading for anyone who wants some perspective on what the United States should do with regard to Asia.
Should the people charged with executing the law be able to benefit themselves by it?
As the Presidential transition gets underway, it's time for everyone to move from generic campaign-style criticism into specific criticism of their opponents. And a very significant point on which criticism is justified is the apparent turnover of Donald Trump's business interests not to a blind trust, or even to an arm's-length management team, but to his own children. That puts him and his family in a very specific position of power to conduct extraordinary and abnormal abuses of political influence for personal monetary gain -- particularly as it becomes clear that those same offspring will be involved in Trump's governing style as well as his business interests. This is not normal, and it's not OK. It opens the door to abuses like the exact kind of "pay-to-play" corruption that Trump himself specifically accused Hillary Clinton of engaging in as Secretary of State while still maintaining familial contact with the Clinton Foundation.
Start the impeachment countdown clock
An American University professor who has gained a reputation for making accurate contrarian political predictions has noted that he thinks a Trump Presidency could easily be dumped rather quickly by a Republican Congress that (easily) finds legitimate grounds for an impeachment, and then acts swiftly to replace Donald Trump with his Vice President. (Might not be all that controversial if he enrages his base by reversing course on key issues.) But others predicted it before the professor.
How quickly can the Imperial Presidency be rolled back?
Don't assume powers when in office that you don't want your opponents to have when they win. That's advice we've ignored for a long, long, long time.
Gov. Chris Christie out as Trump's transition chair
One might wonder how that change came about so quickly
