Gongol.com Archives: December 2020
December 23, 2020
Angry President focuses hate on Vice President
A report from Axios says that "Trump is lashing out, and everyone is in the blast zone" -- particularly the Vice President, who has a Constitutional duty to perform in the coming days as the results of the Electoral College are handed over to Congress. This is happening at a time when the President is actively saying on his Twitter feed that he won't "accept" Joe Biden as President. ■ Vice President Pence cannot be fired by an unhinged President. He could walk up to a bank of microphones at any time and speak without losing his job. He can and should say honest and important things about the election, the pandemic, and the President's behavior. His conscience should compel him. ■ The President's choice to pardon people who willingly and knowingly undermined their country is, in the words of Sen. Ben Sasse, "rotten to the core". Vice President Pence can say so without fear of (prematurely) losing his job. And he should. As Ben Franklin wrote, "Beware, beware! He'll cheat without scruple, who can without fear." ■ The President's choice to veto the defense spending bill is nuts, daft, and bonkers. The President swears an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States", not to "preserve, protect and defend the names of Confederate generals" -- and yet the renaming of military bases bearing the names of some of those Confederate generals is the second itemized reason for the veto. Vice President Pence can call that un-American (as it is) without being fired. And he should. ■ The President's relentless attacks on the 2020 election are obscene and have damage far beyond a single election. Vice President Pence can call that behavior irresponsible and wrong, and insist that the peaceful transfer of power is beyond dispute. And he should.
Dropping the gates on the Interstates
Nebraska closed some of the entrance ramps to I-80 to keep people from driving into a blizzard. The automated gates they use can look terribly foreign to people from outside the Midwest. And yet everyone around here has a story about driving through a snowstorm when we absolutely should not have tried -- like driving when the double-wide plows were on the highways.
Podcast: On truck stops and Dr. Fauci
A 3-minute commentary
