Who’s not happy Trump is gone?

This was first posted on Facebook on 21st January 2021, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

In conversation with a friend on the phone the other night, I noted that even though 70 million Americans voted for Trump, this doesn’t mean he has 70 million supporters. (It’s still a dreadful number, but, even so.)

Donald Trump left the White House just after dawn yesterday for a big military send-off as he and Melanie boarded the plane for Florida (Palm Beach is likely to issue an eviction notice next month reminding the former President no one is allowed to live at his golf club – guests can stay there for a maximum of 21 days a year).

Thus the US tradition of the previous President attending the new President’s inauguration ceremony was broken. The only two Republican representatives of previous administrations to attend were Mike Pence and George W. Bush. (Barack & Michelle Obama, Bill & Hillary Clinton, and Jimmy Carter, all attended Trump’s tiny inauguration in 2016). This is the first time since 1869 a US President has refused to attend his successor’s inauguration: Andrew Johnson, who opposed giving civil rights to former slaves, stayed in the White House during Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration ceremony (Grant was the Commanding General of the US Army 1864–1869).

Cummings Goings

This was first posted on Facebook on 14th November 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

A few facts.

Trump has stopped dyeing his hair. (No, it is not a toupee, he has a massive combover with tons of product, but it came loose in a good Scottish breeze once when he was here to buy a golf course.) The Ivanka Trump version is that he dyes it himself from a DIY-box, and the reason the colour is so weird is that he’s never had the patience to leave it on the right amount of time.

Pence and Pompeo: Coup or corruption?

This was first posted on Facebook on 10th November 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, and Mike Pence, soon-to-be-ex Vice President, have both declared that as far as they are concerned, the election is not over and they could yet be having a seamless transition to Trump’s second term in office.

Okay. This is freaky. But consider these facts.

Bi Den

This was first posted on Facebook on 7th November 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

Mid-afternoon UK time, so morning EST, Donald Trump announced by tweet that his fixer Rudy Giuilani would be holding a press conference at Four Seasons in Philadelphia at 11:30am EST.

It seems Trump tweeted the announcement before his team had got the agreement of the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia at the Comcast Center, because shortly afterwards, he deleted that tweet and tweeted that the press conference would be happening at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, which is a small garden centre in Philadelphia. Next to an adult bookstore. With a crematorium across the street. I am not kidding you about any of this.

No No Really No: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Died.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Rosh Hashanah, on Friday 18th September, aged 87, of pancreatic cancer complications: she died at home surrounded by her family, and I don’t feel quite so bad knowing my first thought was “Now Trump can put a third justice on the Supreme Court”, when I found that practically, Ginsburg’s last thought was almost the same: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

When Antonin Scalia died on 15th February 2016, the next Presidential election was over eight months away.

Vote Leave Wants No Deal Brexit

The Internal Market Bill passed Second Reading last night by 77 votes.

I couldn’t listen to all of the debate – I was working yesterday, having decided to take off Wednesday and Thursday as usual – for PMQs (Keir Starmer will be absent: he is self-isolating as one of his household has shown symptoms of coronavirus) and because Wednesday is the second day of the committee of the whole House examining the bill.

But I listened to enough of the debate, including Boris Johnson’s opening statement presenting the bill (and Ed Miliband’s strong rebuttal – Starmer picked him to sub in, and I have to say, he was terrific) to see very definitely two things.

Writing About Brexit: we despair

This was first posted on Facebook on 22nd January 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

I haven’t written about Brexit since 3rd January, or even about the Labour leadership election, or Scottish independence, and I meant to do all three.

The day I planned to take as a Kofi day was Thursday 9th January, and as some of you know, instead I took a personal day for something else, and this gave me time to think and thinking was honestly depressing.

I have seen several articles by people who should know better saying hopefully that the amendments that were voted down by Boris Johnson’s bullet-proof majority in the Commons but re-instated in the Lords, where Johnson doesn’t have a majority, will make a difference.

Brexit, the four directions: nadir

EU Referendum Results Map

Last week, I wrote and posted a series about the four possible directions the UK can go from where we are.

• First, hard Brexit, which is catastrophic;
• second, soft Brexit, which is several different flavours of disaster;
• third, re-running the EU referendum, which would be expensive, time-consuming, and wouldn’t necessarily stop Brexit;
• fourth, Parliament voting to revoke the invocation of Article 50, which means an unprecedented rebellion of MPs in both Opposition and Government with unpredictable consequences.

From a worm’s-eye perspective, the fourth option is least-worst: but the people most likely to face negative consequences for carrying it out and saving the UK from catastrophe or disaster, are the same MPs who would have to vote for it.

And regardless of how bad it is for us in the lower income bands, MPs are all in the top ten percent by income just from their salary: they have a generous expenses system, heavily subsidised food and drink at work, complete job security until the next general election, and a nice golden parachute even if they lose their seats then: they will not directly suffer from the economic disaster of soft Brexit, and though the catastrophe of hard Brexit might hit them, they’re better insulated against it than most.

An avalanche of steel snowflakes

This is the speech Susan Rae, the Scottish Green Party’s candidate for the Leith Walk ward in the May 2017 council elections, gave at the WMV Sister Women’s March in Edinburgh on Saturday 20th January. Reprinted here by permission.

Hello and welcome to Edinburgh.

This is my first speaking event this year and I could not be prouder to be with you. I send solidarity from my fellow Scottish Green candidate Claire Miller who cannot be here today.

We’ve gathered here today in circumstances that in all honesty not a single woman out here, whether they are young, fresh and fiery, like Leah, or those like me who are not only pre-Google, but pre-proper feminism would have considered possible a year ago.

But we are here together – all of us – because the only way to stand up to a man who considers using his awesome sheer male money fuelled power of his voice to silence us; whose only consistent traits are inconsistency and pure misogyny is not compliance. You want to silence our voice?

Well. No.

We will not be silenced.

Women’s March in Edinburgh

For Donald Trump to be elected President by the electoral college – losing the popular vote by a margin wider than any in over a century – is grotesque in many ways, not least that enough American voters in enough states wanted a grossly-unqualified man to be their President instead of a highly-qualified woman.

Donald Trump’s most profitable venture as a “businessman” was a fraud for which he was due to appear in court on 29th November; when he was declared winner, he hastily paid a $25M settlement. Donald Trump’s businesses have gone bankrupt six times, he’s failed to pay his subcontractors, may well be massively in debt, and was in breach of the Constitution that he swore to uphold yesterday even before he put his hand on his mother’s Bible.