Secretary of State Pompeo implied that President Trump can do whatever he wants to Venezuela — because Article II says so — and virtually no one said anything in rebuttal

06 May 2019

President Trump has been useful . . .

. . . in pulling away the camouflaging tarpaulin that previously concealed US government's string of illegalities and immoralism.

For example, yesterday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo skated out into Stalin Land and did so without even a murmur of Lamestream pushback:

"Does the president believe that he can intervene militarily without getting congressional authorization?" [ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan] Karl asked Pompeo on "This Week."

"The president has his full range of Article II authorities and I’m very confident that any action we took in Venezuela would be lawful," he said.

© 2019 Quinn Scanlon, Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro is 'ruling for the moment, but he can't govern': Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ABC News (05 May 2019) (see the 0:40 minute mark a shorter video clip, here)

Notice "any action".

Ya don't say, Mikey

The Director of our Department of Un-Bountiful Non-Diplomacy has confused the Constitution's first two Articles.

In doing so, he not insignificantly assigned the war-initiating power to the President, rather than to Congress.

I could probably live with this mistake, given the extent and variety of moron-leaning totalitarian types employed by the Trump Administration. We wouldn't want them injuring themselves by stepping out of character, now would we?

But I do find it difficult to swallow the lack of instantly correcting retort from the Lamestream and Congress itself.

We appear to have voluntarily degenerated ourselves into a country in which the President can do whatever he wants. And the Constitution has disintegrated into a rotting and irrelevant rag. It is, we can infer, suitable only for ineffectual ooze-wiping.

This 70 year decline into plutocratically controlled autocracy . . .

. . . certainly merits Chris Hedges' observations:

The destruction of the rule of law . . . began long before the arrival of the Trump administration.

The George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq and implementation of a doctrine of pre-emptive war were war crimes under international law.

The federal government’s ongoing wholesale surveillance of the citizenry, another legacy of the Bush administration, mocks our constitutional right to privacy.

Assassinating a U.S. citizen under order of the executive branch, as the Obama administration did when it murdered the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, revokes due process.

The steady nullification of constitutional rights by judicial fiat . . . that . . . enabled corporations to buy the . . . system in the name of free speech—has turned politicians . . . into amoral tools of corporate power.

Lobbyists . . . write legislation to legalize tax boycotts, destroy regulations and government oversight, pump staggering sums of money into the war machine and accelerate the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history . . . .

This decades-long disregard by the two major political parties for the rule of law and their distortion of government into a handmaiden for corporations set the stage for Donald Trump’s naked contempt for legality and accountability.

It made inevitable our kakistocracy, rule by the worst or most unscrupulous . . . .

The moral? — What'cha gonna do, when they come for Grandma Lou and Toddler Jane?

Should we chant — "USA, USA, USA" — to lull ourselves into Oblivion's Final Sleep?

PeteFree.com

Secretary of State Pompeo implied that President Trump can do whatever he wants to Venezuela — because Article II says so — and virtually no one said anything in rebuttal