Starbucks: A Brew of America's Latent Racism, Comey vs. Trump: Choose Your Truth Teller

If I were arrested each time I scurried into a restaurant to use its bathroom without first or ever ordering any food or drink, my rap sheet would be longer than my arm. Both arms. Throw in both legs, as well. 

What many considered an oasis of progressive tolerance, Starbucks has now been transformed into a symbol of the bigotry, intolerance and double standard white America harbors toward people of color. All because an employee and his manager brought their prejudices to work and let them surface by calling the Philadelphia police to arrest two well-behaved black men, one of whom wanted to use the bathroom as they waited for a meeting with a (white) man who had not yet arrived. 

The Starbucks personnel claimed the black men were trespassing, though other patrons—white patrons—said asking to use the facilities without buying anything never provoked negative reactions, much less a call for police backup. 

It is the type of racial profiling, overt discrimination, that has alarmingly increased over the last decade and been at least tacitly condoned by the current occupant of the Oval Office. 

Starbucks has been shamed and apoplectic. Apologetic. It has reportedly reassigned the manager, though many have called for his dismissal. 

I wouldn’t fire the manager or the employee who called the police. Rather, as a condition of their continued employment by Starbucks, I would require each of them to perform 200 hours of community service in disadvantaged neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Perhaps that would educate them to the reality that people of all different colors are decent and deserve equal treatment.

Whom Do You Trust? Comey vs. Trump. A career straight shooter vs. a habitual stretcher of the truth (okay, a dyed-in-the-wool liar). 

Barring the existence of a tape recording of their conversations, the choice of truth teller very much lies with your prejudices. You can probably guess mine. 

What perplexes many observers is the stedfast support Trump receives from evangelicals of all denominations despite his less than pristine character, a character that former FBI director James B. Comey asserted Sunday night on ABC News makes Trump “morally unfit” to be president and that he doesn’t represent the values of America. 

Perhaps the linked article by David Von Drehle, a columnist for The Washington Post, will help you understand them better, why despite all his apparent flaws, Trump retains the allegiance of those in the nation’s heartland : https://wapo.st/2qfp0X0?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.2ff8098e5218

Déjà vu: The GOP House Seeks an Impeachable Offense to Stymie a Clinton Presidency

As per FBI Director James B. Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton learned this week she will not be indicted for her email indiscretions, but she may well face an impeachment process if she is elected president. If we have learned anything from Republican behavior during the Obama years and, yes, during the Bill Clinton presidency, it is that the GOP will do almost anything to obstruct a Democratic president from devoting the necessary time and energies to serving the country.

House Republicans are laying the groundwork for such a move after grilling Comey during a hearing Thursday for four hours. They are not convinced he was right in determining Clinton did not commit a prosecutable offense by handling top secret emails on her personal server. Indeed, they will seek further investigation by the FBI as to whether Clinton perjured herself during testimony before Congress. 

If she is elected president, and Republicans remain in the majority in the House, expect impeachment talk to be front and center from the start of her administration. Don’t expect Donald Trump to bring impeachment up during the campaign as it would hint he doesn’t think he would win. But if he loses, expect a fusillade of tweets and rants that Hillary should be impeached.  

The Constitution states a president may be impeached for “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Clinton’s alleged failures fall under the vaguely-worded “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Former President Gerald Ford, when he was House minority leader more than four decades ago, defined an impeachable offense as “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” (http://www.crf-usa.org/impeachment/high-crimes-and-misdemeanors.html)

A GOP majority in the House jumps that hurdle.

However, it is uncertain if actions taken before she was elected president would qualify Clinton for impeachment. Doubters need only look to Ford’s analysis to expect a positive take on that question from a Republican House.

Impeachment, though, would not kick Clinton out of the White House, as conviction would require a two-thirds vote by the Senate, a level of agreement difficult to attain in a forum expected to be almost equally divided by the parties. As more than a dozen Democrats would have to vote to convict, Hillary, like her husband, would remain in office after acquittal by the Senate.

For Republicans, however, the reward of impeachment is not necessarily in conviction as even then the presidency would remain in Democratic hands. Rather, the GOP goal is to stymie Clinton, to divert her attention from governing. 

Clinton would not be the loser. The country would, unless you believe in the Republican mantra first espoused by Ronald Reagan that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” and any reduction in government is a benefit, even if it means harming, perhaps irrevocably, our national institutions.