WE HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS AND WE HAVE SOME BAD NEWS: The good news is Donald Trump has met every expectation we set for his presidency.
Fly In The Ointment: The bad news is those expectations were rock bottom to begin with. As we said during the campaign, Trump was a misfit as a private citizen and he was a disgrace and an embarrassment as a candidate and there was no reason to expect that President Trump would be anything more.
He hasn’t been, of course, succeeding beyond even our low expectations. It is, thankfully, beyond the scope of today’s column to detail every Trump embarrassment, but we have our faves and we’re certain you have yours, too.
Eureka! We’ve Found The Point To This Column: Today we are going to discuss whether or not President Trump will complete his term. It’s fair to ask this question now, following his dismissal of Dick Comey as FBA Director because a president firing a law enforcement official who is conducting an investigation into the president’s conduct will get concerned citizens thinking of these things.
“I Am Not A Crook.”: On the surface, this whole imbroglio stinks. As further layers are uncovered, as they will be, it may stink even more and based on what we know and love about Trump it is not completely unreasonable to come up with scenarios where Trump has committed impeachable offenses.
This would cause problems because good luck getting a GOP-controlled House of Representatives to impeach one of their own, even a president as divisive as Trump.
Unless, of course, a significant number of Republicans were prepared to ditch their party.We’ve discussed this before here. We thought a Trump defeat last November would spell the end of the GOP. Good riddance. The party of Lincoln has a lot to answer for and its demise is long overdue, but a Trump victory might end up doing the job for us.
Get Out Your History Books: Three times the House of Representatives has impeached a president. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both tried and acquitted by the United States Senate while Richard Nixon resigned before the Senate could hold a trial.
The Bottom Line: A president, of course, can fire an FBI director at his discretion, but this whole episode, of course, reminds those of a certain age, like us, of President Nixon’s firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, an event History refers to as the Saturday Night Massacre, and we all know that turned out.
GREAT MOMENTS IN WHITE MAN COLONIZING THE NEW WORLD: The first permanent settlement by the English in the New World opens for business on this date in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia.
It was not the best place to start a colony. The Indians had determined the area was unsuitable for living because it was in a marsh that was home to mosquitoes. The colonists, who lacked a knack for farming anyway, had arrived too late to plant crops and few of them had any concept of the hard work required to make a go of it and within three months 80 percent of the colony had died.
This Won’t Hurt A Bit…Well, Maybe A Little: Edward Jenner, an English doctor, administers mankind’s first vaccine on this date in 1796, injecting an eight-year-old boy with pus from a cowpox blister, to guard against smallpox. Though the boy caught a fever and some general uneasiness, he did not contract smallpox. This was not the first time someone had been inoculated, Jenner himself had been inoculated against smallpox as a boy, but Jenner’s work would lead to mankind’s first vaccine against a disease. Jenner is referred to by some as the Father of Immunology and is generally thought to have saved more lives than anyone else.
Don’t Forget To Write: The Lewis and Clark Expedition, three dozen soldiers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and 2nd Lieutenant William Clark, depart from Camp DuBois near St. Louis to explore the Missouri River on this date in 1804.
Dry, Technical Matter: The Expedition would return to Camp Dubois on September 23, 1806. They received a heroes welcome, however, most people had presumed everyone had died.
This Should Ensure Middle East Peace: Israel is declared an independent state on this date in 1948. Her Arab neighbors immediately welcome Israel to the neighborhood by attacking her, leading to the Arab-Israeli War.
Thought For The Day: The glue of rapport and trust that holds men together during difficult times was being poured and starting to set. – Dr David J Peck, Or Perish in the Attempt: Wilderness Medicine in the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: The oldest men’s track and field record is the discus record 243 feet, set by East Germany’s Jurgen Schult on June 6, 1986. The oldest women’s record is the 800 meter record of 1:53.28 set by Jarmila Kratochvilova of Czechoslovakia July 26, 1983.
Today’s Stumper: How many people died on the Lewis and Clark Expedition? – Answer next time!
