Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Mike Pence, Dominionist: The Next President of the United States?


THE DUOPOLY WATCH | Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Is Donald Trump already headed for self-destruction?  Or headed for an even more expensive Trump-branding business?  Or indeed headed for Trump-TV with an even bigger name recognition quotient?  Or impeachment by a Republican Partythat quickly gets fed up with his total incompetence as Precedent or even more importantly with certain policies of his, especially in foreign affairs, and impeaches him?  Or perhaps it’s one or more of the at least five possible criminal investigations that are going on or might be going on that could catch up with him. 

The five that I know of are: a possible RICO investigation connected with Trump University (and his settlement of the T.U. civil suits would not dis-connect him from such an investigation); Trump appears to have violated the U.S. embargo against Cuba (which would be highly ironic since he in part won Florida because of the “Cuban vote”); Trump may have violated the U.S. sanctions against Iran; and, if Russia really did interfere with the election and Trump’s communications with them during the elections in any way, even indirectly, dealt with such interference, that would likely come under the definition of treason.

Now, with Sessions in charge at would become The “Justice” Department, none of these would likely proceed, at the Federal level.  But one more states attorneys general might want to take one or more of them up, as New York Attorney General Schneiderman did with Trump University.  And of course, this list says nothing about the non-criminal conflicts-of-interest which could very well arise in the Trump Presidency, and could lead to him being forced out of it, by route or another.  So far, The Washington Post has counted 111 of them.

This brings us to Vice-President Mike Pence, who could easily become President Mike Pence by any one or more of the aforementioned routes. Despite the fact that Pence made nice about the incident at “Hamilton” while his putative boss went on one of his classic Twitter rampages about the cast’s plea that an inclusive policy should emanate from the White House, in terms of policy and his underlying philosophy of government and positon on Constitutional government, Pence would be even worse than Trump.  I have detailed much of this material in an earlier column partially on Pence, but it is certainly worth looking at again, at least in my view.  In summary, Pence, nice smile and all, is a very dangerous political figure, on many fronts, but most especially on his underlying ideology that his religious doctrines — which begin with placing “God” above the Constitution (that’s called “Dominionism”) — should dominate government policy on a wide variety of issues.

Click here for the full article. 

Source: The Greanville Post  

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