Tag: Congress
Screaming into the void
As the outrages continue—as the military misadventures further destabilize the world, as the criminality rolls on mostly unchecked, as Felon47 demonstrates more and more insanity—I figured it was time for another letter to Congress.
It's not exactly a rewarding exercise. I've got the best representation in the House and pretty decent representation in the Senate, so I'm expressing my frustration to people who already share it. But what else can we do?
Anyway, here's my latest missive. If you are inclined to send one off as well, there's a link in the sidebar that makes it super easy. It might not help. But it can't hurt. Particularly if you have less principled or more malleable people representing you than those of us in WA-7.
April 6, 2026
Dear Representative Jayapal, Senator Murray, and Senator Cantwell:
You know, there’s a downside to having some of the best representation one could ask for in Congress. And that is, when there are urgent and critical actions that Congress is failing to take—as is the case today and as has been the case for over a year—we as constituents have no one to yell at, no one to implore to act on our behalf.
Because you all are already aware of the catastrophe that the Trump regime is raining down on us. You are already aware of the crimes and the corruption and the rank stupidity and the, frankly, treasonous behavior of the president, the vice-president, the majority of the cabinet, and let’s say a minimum of 45% of the Supreme Court.
So my continually writing to bring it to your attention and demand action is superfluous.
Yet, write I do because there’s little else I can do. I protest, along with millions of others; I write articles; I try to educate fellow citizens that might not be paying attention. And nothing happens.
I know why. I know that you cannot effectively accomplish much of anything in Congress when the majority party has been captured by white-nationalist authoritarian cultists that betray their oaths of office on a daily basis. I wonder and gnash my teeth over and over again over the mind-boggling reality we find ourselves in, one wherein the majority party in the Congress is just fine with one of the dumbest people to ever walk the Earth shredding the Constitution and effectively Nazifying the United States, all while upending the international order (and not in a good way).
Trump’s insane war is going to bite this country in its metaphorical ass for many, many years to come even in the best-case scenario, and Congress is, so far as we can tell, utterly silent. And that’s just the latest outrage among innumerable outrages since he lied his way back into power.
Congress could end this reign of terror right now. It could have done so at any time over the past 14 months. It chose not to. I won’t say YOU chose not to, because I know you’d be near the front of the line to impeach and remove this corrupt moron and his coterie of sycophants. But Congress has failed, choosing to be complicit in the destruction being wrought every day.
So, since I don’t need to convince you of what ultimately needs to be done, I instead ask you what you are doing to convince your colleagues of what needs to be done.
Why are the Republicans willing to betray their oaths? Why are they complicit in this un-American insanity? Some are corrupt, surely. Some are too stupid to understand what’s happening, I suppose. But most, I have to think, are simply cowards. Afraid of retribution from Trump and/or his secret militia of pardoned January 6th terrorists, afraid of blackmail material coming out, or, most pathetically, afraid of losing their reelection bids. Am I wrong?
Can some of these Republican cowards not be convinced that the United States of America as a nation of freedom and the rule of law and global leadership is worth defending? Can they not be made to see that history will not look kindly upon them when this regime inevitably falls, that they will be remembered as fascist collaborators and enablers of, at best, the diminishment of the United States as a world leader? At worst, as willing pawns in the downfall of what used to be the world’s greatest democracy? As the supporting architects of a dystopian future of secret police and environmental catastrophe and regular pandemics and economic calamity and a new dark ages?
I wish I was being hyperbolic with that, but if Trump isn’t stopped that is the logical outcome. He needs to be removed. We can worry about prosecutions and such later, but right now he needs to be stopped.
Since each Cabinet officer was chosen for his or her fealty and commitment never to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump no matter how crazy he is or how corrupt or what atrocities he commits, the only answer is Congress. Impeach him. Do it now. Seriously, where are the attempts to bring impeachment articles to the floor? Even if they won’t go anywhere, even if Mike Johnson refuses to give them the least bit of hearing, they need to be attempted. And we need to hear about it. Ideally from many Democrats, not just yourselves. I’m under no illusions that they’ll be immediately successful, but the nation and the world needs to see that there are elected leaders in the United States that comprehend the danger we’re in and that action is urgently required to remove this tyrant.
Meanwhile, I want to implore the caucus to assign various members to start drafting reform legislation. Assuming we can thwart the inevitable attempts by the Trump regime to rig the midterm elections, you will no longer be in the minority party next year and we need to hit the ground running in January. In the event Democrats gain a veto-proof majority (unlikely, I realize), having reform bills ready to pass can only help the cause of recommitting this country to its Constitutional principles.
As I said, you all are among the best representatives an American can have working on his/her behalf already. So I’m basically screaming into the void here with superfluous calls for sanity. But it’s what we’ve got.
Try. Please.
Tagged
Politics,
President VonClownstick,
Congress,
Posted on April 6, 2026 at 11:19PM | Permalink | 
| 
Domestic terrorism
Domestic terrorist
Unsurprisingly, the response of the Felon47 regime—principally the Secretary of Homeland Security and Felon47 himself—to the murder of a young mother, an American citizen, by an ICE agent in Minneapolis has been to lie their asses off and claim the incident was something entirely different than what occurred in reality.
They are attempting to spin the killing as some sort of justified self-defense action, but if you've seen the videos taken by eyewitnesses you can plainly see that such a spin is, to echo the term used by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, bullshit. Everything in the statements by the DHS secretary and Felon47 is profoundly untrue, though there is a kernel of truth in one of the lies. Secretary Noem said that ICE reacted to a case of domestic terrorism. That is a blatant lie, easily debunked by the video records. But this was a case of domestic terrorism—just not in the way Noem would have us believe. The terrorists were the ICE agents, and the ICE agent that fired his gun repeatedly into the open driver-side window of Renee Good's car at point-blank range committed murder.
ICE has become a terrorist organization. By extension, the Department of Homeland Security has become a terrorist organization. By extension, the executive branch of the United States government has become a terrorist organization.
One of the many, many reforms I think is necessary for our country to recover from this dalliance with fascist thuggery is to undo the biggest mistake of the George W. Bush administration outside of his wars. That administration crafted the new cabinet agency, the Department of Homeland Security, in the wake of 9/11, making it a sprawling cluster of bureaucracies borne of paranoia and with overreaching, careless authorities. It needs to be abolished, its constituent parts returned to their former agencies or erased from existence. ICE in particular needs to be disbanded, with customs and border control and immigration duties reorganized in ways that actually keeps them in their own lanes.
Right now ICE is just the American Gestapo, with DHS functioning as the American Schutzstaffel.
These people have to be stopped. Since the Republican party is corrupt and Republican officials are functioning as accomplices and accessories to countless crimes including murder and outright betrayal of the Constitution, we may well have to suffer for another year before a new Congress can finally take these fuckers down, assuming we can overcome the inevitable Republican attempts to subvert the midterm elections. But that doesn't mean we don't try in the meantime.
Write your Congresspeople. Write your Senators. Call their offices, shout from the rooftops, communicate however you can to those with the power to fix this—and make no mistake, Congress could end this reign of terror today if they chose to—that we are mad as hell and won't take any more.
Impeach. Convict. Remove. Do it now.
Tagged
Politics,
Republicans,
Society,
Congress,
President VonClownstick,
Posted on January 8, 2026 at 12:26AM | Permalink | |
Speak your mind
Yesterday I sent yet another letter to my Senators and my representative in the House. It's super simple to do, you just follow this link and put in your address and that links you to your three Congresspeople. Paste in your letter and send. Easy-peasy.
You, too, can speak your mind to power. I recommend it. Especially now, especially if you live in a red district or state.
Not sure what to say? Feel free to adapt mine. Here it is.
Dear Senator Murray / Senator Cantwell / Representative Jayapal,
Friday's Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian president Zelenskyy and Donald Trump & JD Vance displayed horrific, outrageous, and thoroughly unacceptable behavior from the United States government.
It was, of course, just one of many examples of horrific policy and behavior from the Trump administration. The sheer volume of lawlessness and cruelty and overt corruption present every single day from this administration is enough to warrant removal from office.
But today the president and vice-president of the United States insulted an ally fighting for his nation's very survival, lied repeatedly both to him and to the American public, bullied President Zelenskyy, and behaved like petulant children—all in the service of an attempt to extort Ukraine.
Trump is an embarrassment and profoundly dangerous. It's barely been one month since his inauguration and he's shown his contempt for the United States Constitution, his profound ignorance of international relations, and a corrupt agenda intended to cripple the government and enrich himself and his billionaire cronies. Today he destroyed the United States' standing as leader of the free world and made clear his intent to abandon Western alliances.
If this is what he's done in a month, what will he do in a year, two years, four years?
Trump is a criminal, an idiot, and a tyrant.
I realize the current state of Congress doesn't offer much hope for a successful impeachment. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying. What are you waiting for? How bad do things have to get before impeachment becomes a consideration?
I don't ask that rhetorically, I am genuinely curious as to whether or not a strategy has been discussed. Does it depend on congressional Republicans? They are not going to move on their own, they've shown themselves to be feckless toadies and/or MAGA zealots; they will only come around if they feel pressure from outside. Pressure them. Find out what's making them betray their oaths by supporting this anti-American administration. If they are bowing to terrorists, call them out.
Republican, Democrat, or other, everyone in congress is supposed to be an American. Americans, those who support our constitution and history and ideals surrounding a more perfect union, would remove this president as soon as possible, before the level of destruction at home and damage abroad becomes catastrophic.
If not the immediate introduction of articles of impeachment, then work to lobby and whip support for such must be happening right now. The longer Trump is allowed to hold office the greater the chance that this country ceases to exist as we know it.
Sincerely,
Tim Harrison,
Seattle, WA
Tagged
Politics,
President VonClownstick,
Congress,
Posted on March 1, 2025 at 8:43PM | Permalink | |
A Year of Trump
It could be worse.
A year since the election that gave us the most embarrassing and heinous man to ever hold the office of President of the United States, the orange idiot has basically failed to accomplish much of anything. Not entirely—the number of judicial appointments is concerning, of course, and a staggering number of executive orders intended to screw people and pollute the planet—but in terms of big policy, he's got bupkis to show for his efforts. (If we can call them efforts. Being ignorant of his actual job duties, he's actually done very little policymaking.) Still, everything he has done has been horrible, and the behavior of other elected Republicans is arguably more horrible as they allow him to continue to be president while pushing legislation that defies their mandate as public servants.
Last year at Thanksgiving I was asked how long I thought Trump would last in office. I said, if I recall correctly, somewhere between "until Christmas" and "early 2019," depending on how much the Republican congress would tolerate. Congress has already supported and/or turned a blind eye to more than I would have thought they would, but when the tax-reform bill fails that might tip the scales. Maybe. Who knows, with this crowd. Paul Ryan is apparently as corrupt as anyone this side of the Trump family themselves, at least in terms of betraying his duty to serve the public interest in favor of an overall agenda of enriching himself and his benefactors, so maybe nothing will tip the scales. The Mueller investigation could produce incontrovertible proof of treason and Ryan might shrug it off. The midterms may have to happen—without enough cheating to rig things—first, assuming we and our electoral system of government survive through 2018.
Meanwhile, he's still living at 1600 Penn. It could be worse, but it's plenty bad already. John Oliver lays it all out.
Tagged
Congress,
President VonClownstick,
John Oliver,
Posted on November 14, 2017 at 5:40PM | Permalink | |
Apply Pressure
If it's Monday, it must be time for another letter to Congress.
That's the way it is here in Trumpistan—every day there's a new outrage. So, gotta make our voices heard, especially since I didn't participate in the airport demonstration or the downtown rally last night. I sent the same one to all three of my reps, and by all means, feel free to crib for your own letters to Congress (though if you do, don't copy me verbatim, if it starts to look like a form letter it'll have less credence).
January 30, 2017
Dear Sen. Maria Cantwell :
Dear Sen. Patty Murray :
Dear Rep. Pramila Jayapal :
Hi. Me again. I know, this is starting to become a ritual.
Today's plea regards the upcoming votes on cabinet nominees. Please, for the sake of all humanity, oppose with vigor the confirmations of Betsy DeVos, Jeff Sessions, Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, ... you know what? Every remaining Trump cabinet appointee is horrendous. They ALL need to be denied.
Perhaps more importantly, it has become crystal clear that the president is being controlled by Steve Bannon, a man no one elected to anything. This neo-Nazi is writing presidential executive orders and directing policy, taking advantage of Mr. Trump's obvious intellectual and psychological deficiencies to pursue an agenda of bigotry and mayhem. (He has said -- out loud! -- that his goal is to "destroy the state.") Steve Bannon needs to be denied as well. I don't know offhand what authority Congress can bring to bear on someone with a "White House adviser" title, but somehow, some way, he has to be removed from his position of influence.
The Trump Administration has been in power for just a week-and-a-half and the damage has been mind-boggling. Trump and Bannon's disregard for civil norms, policy procedure, legal review, and basic decency—not to mention the Constitution—must not be allowed to continue, lest the chaos of these last few days turn into complete and utter disaster in the next few months, let alone four years. And I haven't even mentioned the brazen, naked corruption happening with the president, his staff, and his cabinet nominees! The number of outrageous things this administration represents is almost infinite.
I'd say focus on the top of the food chain and "simply" impeach Mr. Trump, but I know the Speaker and most of his fellow House Republicans aren't likely to entertain that notion, at least not yet. So until that course becomes feasible, please: Give no quarter.
Oppose these horrid cabinet nominees. Find a way to remove Steve Bannon. Support the judiciary when Trump and his people break the law, as they did with the Muslim immigration ban (and let's not mice words, that's what it's intended to be).
Protect us.
Sincerely,
Mr. Tim Harrison
Seattle, WA 98103
Tagged
Dystopia,
President VonClownstick,
Congress,
Posted on January 30, 2017 at 4:31PM | Permalink | |