Yes, the Army thinks Lt Col Vindman may need protection

It's stunning, isn't it?

The U.S. Army is doing an evaluation right now to see if it may be necessary to move Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman to an Army base.

To make sure he's safe.

Lt. Col. Vindman, the guy who was also on trump's now-infamous phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine.

That call took place on April 21st.

The call where this poser, this thuggish clown tried to shake Zelensky down.

He had already put our military aid to Ukraine on hold. Something he had no authority to do, of course.

And Lt. Col. Vindman knew this was an egregious and disgusting abuse of Presidential power and something very much at odds with our long-time policy to Ukraine.

And so he knew he was duty-bound to report it.

And he did.

And he testified at length about the whole disgusting affair before the House Intelligence Committee.

And now we're not sure if we can keep him and his family safe.

It's stunning.

It's truly hard to wrap your mind around this brazen and disgusting abuse of power.

But it's the kind of thing that Adolph Twitler does on a daily basis.

Rethuglican sycophants, save me your lame explanations, rationalizations and excuses.

All of this--once again--makes it crystal-clear that Dolt 45 must be removed from office.

The health of our Republic demands it.




"Bulldog Ben" Basile

© 2019 Ben Lawrence Basile

She's not dumb, she's principled

One of the stories making a splash today in the world of politics right now is really instructive. What Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) had to say about Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) perfectly illustrates how unprincipled and very, very sick GOP pols have become in the trump era.

He says that Speaker Pelosi--who set the impeachment process in motion--is "dumb" for pursuing her Constitutional duties because the economy is doing well with trump as President.

We will leave aside, for the moment, the whole issue of whether our economy is really doing all that well these days. There are many signs that we may be heading for a serious recession in the very near future.

But Senator Kennedy quite clearly believes that the Poser Prez should be able to do anything he wants--even engage in criminal acts--if he can manage the American economy well.

It certainly calls to mind how some some Italians who were supportive of Mussolini believed--as the story goes--that living under the boot of Fascism was okay because Il Duce made the trains run on time.

The plain truth is that Donald trump is a thug of the highest order. An incompetent one at that. And he truly believes that he can do anything, literally anything whatsoever and that there should be never be any accountability for his venal, hateful, incompetent or criminal actions.

This won't fly. The American people--or I should say, I suppose--the ones who have not quaffed the Kool Aid, will have none of that.

We will hold Mango Mussolini accountable for his hateful, dishonest and incompetent behavior while he stinks up the Oval Office, the constant Republican attempts to thwart that accountability notwithstanding.

Trump will not succeed in his attempts to stave off the day of reckoning which is surely coming. And John Kennedy's belief that he should be allowed to continue tearing our Nation apart with his thuggish and insane behavior has clearly exposed how complicit and sick the Republican Party has become with trump as its leader.

#CriminalTrumpRegime



"Bulldog Ben" Basile

© 2019 Ben Lawrence Basile

Red State Embrace of Sentencing Reform?

Some good news here for anyone who cares about Justice issues and doing things about folks who have been given insanely-long sentences for relatively minor crimes.

Oklahoma is quite possibly the reddest of the red states and they just released over 400 prisoners serving long sentences who--in just about everyone's view--shouldn't have been locked up for so long.

The somewhat-worrisome thing is that it seems to have been done mostly to save money and not necessarily because those very, very long sentences should never have been handed out in the first place.

There are more details here in this story from the Associated Press.

So much more can and should be done about the plight of people serving extremely long sentences in the US.

This is not a simple issue.

A lot of this has happened because of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws which went into effect in many states back in the '80s and '90s.

A lot of it has come about because of how very, very out-of-control the so-called War On Drugs has become.

A lot of it is because of disparities in how Judges and Courts handle the sentencing of different drug-related crimes once a defendant has been convicted.

So while it most certainly is a good thing that the Sooner State has done this, many more states need to get moving on these issues.

And if--at the end of the day--the motivation is not only because the people wrongly sentenced deserve to be treated justly and fairly, then I think we can live with that--for now.

But many, many more Americans need to walk free again.

And in the meantime, we'll keep working on righting the many wrongs in our Justice system which have put so many of our fellows in these fundamentally unjust situations.



"Bulldog Ben" Basile


© 2019 Ben Lawrence Basile

Fundamental Values and Choices Made

Yesterday, an opinion piece ran in USA Today with this title: "The Republican party must choose between Donald Trump and the party's fundamental values".

But the truth is that the GOP made that choice months ago. 

There are no decisions left to make. None.

The Rethuglican party and its sycophantic elected officials are standing 100% in support of trump and his hateful, criminal policies.

The only thing that has changed is that they're appearing on news shows less often to sing his praises.

When one of them has the nerve to make an appearance, they mouth the exact talking points that come from the White House and Fox Noise.

The (very) few members of the GOP caucus who have begun to show signs of having a backbone or a conscience are not saying anything critical of trump, anything that would address his obvious, out-in-the-open criminal activity.

In most cases, they have merely stopped parroting those official, false-on-their-face talking points. Temporarily.

Mitt Romney is the only Repug I've seen who's ventured so far as to say anything the least bit critical of the Poser Prez.

It's been very mild, very half-hearted criticism and he's getting a lot of push-back now from the true believers in the cult-of-trump.

And it goes without saying that that push-back has come to the surprise of absolutely no one who's been paying the least bit of attention to what the GOP has been doing since Putin and Dolt 45 stole the Oval Office.

And so he will--I say this with zero fear of being proved wrong--he will stop saying those mildly critical things about all of Adolph Twitler's many high crimes and misdemeanors, take his seat again and then convene a new round of daily damage control sessions with his PR team until he's sure he hasn't pissed off his constituents too badly.

This will not change.

Folks, it's 2019 and to the Republicans on team trump today, standing by while Dear Leader abuses and strangles Lady Liberty is an option.

Saying nothing while he uses twitter to tell trump nation to get ready to start killing those pesky, unpatriotic journalists and democrats is just fine.

But standing up for America and for democracy and doing something--anything--to stop our Thug-in-Chief as he marches our once-great Nation closer and closer to the edge of the abyss?

No. THAT is NOT an option.

It's just NOT going to happen.

If you were thinking otherwise, you're completely, sadly mistaken.




"Bulldog Ben" Basile


© 2019 Ben Lawrence Basile


Follow this link  to read that opinion piece in USA Today for Nov 1st.

GOP Reps crash closed door Impeachment hearing

Yes, they did indeed crash that closed-door hearing yesterday, just before Pentagon official Laura Cooper was to give a deposition.

The usual suspects were in command of the White House-approved op: Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Louisiana's Steve Scalise.

There were around 25 GOP Reps taking part, all told.

When they pulled off their disruptive, obstructionist stunt, they showed the country once again that today's GOP cares nothing at all about preserving our democratic institutions, respecting our Constitution, following the rule of law or allowing Congress to actually function.

They only care about winning political battles and keeping a very tight death-grip on the power stick.

Which means, of course, covering up the many misdeeds and crimes committed by donald trump, their esteemed Thug-in-Chief.

They're really, really good at doing that.

This story from Bloomberg is a good place to start if you'd like a more detailed accounting of yesterday's events.

Here's the truth: trump supporters and enablers in the GOP Congressional Caucus have been reduced to attacking the Impeachment process now that the Country--and the whole world, for that matter--can plainly see how stupid, petty and utterly corrupt their Poser Prez is.

Sad.


"Bulldog Ben" Basile

 © 2019 Ben Lawrence Basile

Tee shirt hate speech and right-wing propaganda

This week some fine citizen boarded a United Airlines flight wearing a tee shirt with this message you can read below:

"Rope, Tree, Journalist

Some Assembly Required"

You've got to wonder how the airline could have allowed it to happen. 

How could they have heard the complaint from another passenger who correctly believed that the message on the shirt was calling for the lynching of journalists and then done nothing to stop the wearer from boarding their flight?

The reason is simple: right-wingers bitch, whine, moan and complain every time anyone demands any accountability from them about anything.

They'll scream that you're trying to muzzle them, take away their 1st amendment rights and so on. Even if you're merely calling them out on their hate speech or something like this where there can't be the slightest doubt that they're advocating violence.

And clearly targeting specific groups of people.

Because their accursed president does these things--quite literally--on a daily basis, this is even more of a problem than it was before.

And it's going to get worse. Much worse.

There are militia-types and haters of every stripe who're itching to begin "cleansing" America of people they hate.

They want to do this very badly and there's every indication that they will.

And all the while, they'll say that they're the good guys and that they're just being patriotic.

And you can bet that their propaganda outlets and web sites will echo that insanity.

I'd say it's likely to happen soon, especially if we're successful at holding Adolph Twitler accountable for all of his treachery and crimes.

I wish I could say that what I've written in this post is hyperbole, but it's not. It's the sad truth.

They say this things out loud every day.

If you're not listening, you should be.

Here's a link to The article in Forbes about this outrageous event on that United Airlines flight.

Bulldog Ben


© 2019 Ben Lawrence Basile

Trump caves to Erdogan and everyone hates it

Everybody--and I mean everybody--is rushing to condemn trump's act of treachery which came to light yesterday.

I'm talking about how he green-lighted Turkish strong man Tayyip Erdogan's impending military op in Syria to hunt down and massacre our Kurdish Allies.

Even perpetual licker of trump's boots, Lindsey Graham, finally spoke up about one of fearless leader's endless blunders.

It's not clear at this time whether this near-universal condemnation of this particular act of trump's incompetence and treachery will make any difference.

We can only hope.

But we must rid our beloved country of this cancer on the Presidency, on our Nation.

And we must do it as soon as humanly possible.



"Bulldog Ben" Basile

© 2019 Ben Lawrence Basile