Let Mueller Do His Job

It has been obvious for some time that Trump deserves to be removed from office, either via impeachment or the 25th amendment.  I laid out the case as succinctly as I could back in January, to no fanfare.  The #DoYourJob tag I hoped would go viral disappeared without a trace.

Since then, Trump has continued to find new and interesting forms of malfeasance, including (but not limited to):

• Waiting more than six weeks to finally impose sanctions on Russia for attacking our elections, even after his CIA Director warned him that he has 'every expectation' they will attack again in 2018.
• Firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, obviously because he made perfectly fair criticisms of Russia which Trump couldn't stand for.
• The discovery that he has made hush money payments to one or more women with whom he had extramarital affairs before becoming president.  The sex isn't the big problem; it's the fact that Trump is likely horribly, horribly compromised.
• Required White House staff to sign unconstitutional non-disclosure agreements, stifling both free speech and transparency.
• Firing Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, in a clear abuse of power and attempt to undermine Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump.
• Discussing the possibility of prosecuting Robert Mueller --- not because he's suspected of any crime, but simply to hobble his investigation.  Even discussing such a thing is a clear abuse of power.

All this is, obviously, an order of magnitude worse than anything Nixon or Clinton did.  And yet the Republicans in Congress --- the ones who spent months investigating the non-scandal of Benghazi --- actually CLOSED their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, concluding (are you sitting down?) that Trump did nothing wrong.

Nope! No scandals to investigate here!  But House Republicans aren't sitting around wasting taxpayer money, no sir.  In fact, they're investigating Hillary's emails so furiously, the FBI has had to staff up to handle all of the requests for information.  I wish I were joking.

I have learned my lesson, however.  It's absurd to ask congressional Republicans to do their jobs; they're to far into their Fox fantasyworld where Donald Trump is the saintly, unfairly maligned, humble servant who selflessly gave up the life of a billionaire to serve his country.

Apparently, it's too much even to ask a Congress still obsessed with a non-scandal from 2 years ago to look into any of the scandals Trump seems to generate daily.  So I'm going to make a more modest request.

If you're not going to #DoYourJob, could you at least make sure Mueller can do his?  Let's game this out.

If you're a House Republican, your time is running short.  There's a very good chance you'll only be in Congress for another 9 months (23 of you have already given up), and if you DO win re-election, the Democrats will be impeaching Trump in a little over a year, a fate he clearly deserves.

If you're a Senate Republican, your seat is safer, but you too will face a difficult choice in just over a year.  When Trump is impeached, you'll need to decide whether you can do the right thing and vote to remove him, or stand out as a politician who famously put party ahead of country in exonerating the most corrupt president in history.

Wouldn't it be nice to be on the RIGHT side of history?  And to do it now, when it actually means something?

You can.  Publicly support Mueller, and legislation to protect his investigation.  It's the absolute minimum you can do to uphold your oath to the Constitution.  I understand it's unreasonable to ask you to do more.

Emma Jane Gonzalez

So . . . this is a thing that's happening in the land of Trump-worshippers and gun-worshippers: some are saying some survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland Florida aren't really students at all, but are paid 'crisis actors':

The previous pics of Gonzalez from the “Eat Our Feelings” video were in 2014, some four years ago. The Emma Jane Gonzalez of 2014 had a weak chin (aka “chinless wonder”), whereas the Emma Jane Gonzalez on Now Casting has a pointy chin like Parkland Emma Gonzalez. My guess is that sometime in the past 4 years, Emma Jane Gonzalez had a cosmetic surgery on her chin.

I'm not providing a link, because this site doesn't deserve even the pitiful amount of traffic they might get from this blog.

The main argument appears to be that there IS a young actress named Emma Jane Gonzalez --- and one of the MSD survivors is also named Emma Gonzalez.  And the way we know there is an actress by this name is by searching IMDB, the internet movie database.

Of course, Emma Gonzalez is a common name.  There are a lot of Emma Gonzalez's listed:

This by itself doesn't prove anything.  There are also IMDB pages for Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, EPA Chief Scott Pruitt, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and former president George Bush --- both of them, I guess.

So obviously, the mere existence of an actor with a given name doesn't mean that John Kelly, George Bush, or Parkland shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez are actors.  If you're going to allege that someone is profiting from such a tragedy, you better damn well have some airtight proof.

Do I need to bother mentioning, that the 'proof' provided by these truthers is hardly airtight?

Probably not, but since I've come this far.

First, let's call out the obvious problems with the idea that the student Emma Gonzalez is the same young woman as the actress Emma Jane Gonzalez.  Just for starters, actors rarely act using their real name.  I mean sure, there was Jerry Seinfeld, but that's about it.  It makes no sense for the actress Emma Jane Gonzalez to pretend to be a shooting survivor named Emma Gonzalez, if for no other reason than, you know, whoever is paying her would want to make it at least a tiny bit difficult for other people to figure it out.

Next, consider the other Parkland students who have been outspoken in the media.  If you believe that Emma Gonzalez isn't really a Parkland student, then you must believe that NONE of the people posing as Parkland students really are --- otherwise, it's unlikely that they would happily go on TV with a paid actress, like we recently saw on the Ellen DeGeneres show (Emma Gonzalez is the one with the shaved head):

So if you believe the Emma Gonzalez in the clip above is Emma Jane Gonzalez the actress, that means either that ALL of the supposed Parkland survivors are paid actors, or at least that ALL of the real survivors of the shooting --- and their parents and teachers --- are willing to go along with the deceit.

At which point, we're really in tinfoil hat territory.

But of course the final straw is that we actually have video of the actress Emma Jane Gonzalez, which we can compare to the student Emma Gonzalez.  And while it's possible that if the actress were to shave her head, and wear brown contact lenses, and --- in the words of our friend above, get 'cosmetic surgery on her chin' --- there is some resemblance between them, this is hardly definitive proof.

Unless, of course, you're a right-wing conspiracy theorist, in which case the name similarity alone was probably enough.

Emma Jane Gonzalez is the dark-haired actress here.

Because this is obviously a sensitive matter, it's important that the Parkland survivors be accorded all possible respect, even if you disagree with their goals.  So I would ask that if you see someone slandering Emma Gonzalez as a 'crisis actor', you point them here.  And then ask them to correct themselves on any media platforms where they may have spread lies about her.

It's a shame that I just had to spend an hour debunking this right-wing nonsense, when there's an important discussion to be had about gun control (and many, many, many other problems facing the country right now).  Unfortunately, it seems that when it comes to this topic (and many, many, many others), fear, lies and slander are all the right has to contribute.

Update: If you haven't seen Emma Gonzalez's speech at March for Our Lives on March 24, you really should.  Watch all the way to the end; it's powerful.