@The Aspie Corner
because he is too corrupt to run the DEA. As if Pres. Doomkoff didn't know before he nominated him.

So he goes back to congress where he can't do any damage. ... Oh wait. 8-(

Americans are too sick, tired and stupid to fight back. And that's how the capitalists like it:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCegj5JNq4U]

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

May I say "WOW!!!"? You've nailed a lot to the wall, right there, and it looks great!

Doesn't the mere fact that there's so much angst over this question indicate we have a problem Houston?

Yes, of course.

Zuesse called this country a "dictatorship".

He's sort of right, in that we're living under tyranny. But he's wrong in that a dictatorship usually implies one strongman who has most of the power (backed by a group, of course, but it's often difficult for the group to get rid of him if they decide he's more of a liability than an asset; Hitler is the obvious example of this). We absolutely are not a dictatorship in the traditional sense of one strongman, publicly known, being the bastard who runs everything. In fact, that's the flaw in almost all the reasoning behind the "should we impeach Trump?" argument. The argument itself implies that it would make a whole lot of difference if we did.

Of course it's not really that, we do have a Congress and Senate that prevents that, sort of.

I don't think Congress and the Senate prevent tyranny of any form. What prevents us from having a dictatorship is not the presence of the legislature, which is essentially there so that the actual powers can pretend we live in a republic and create theater for us to watch and be distracted by, but the presence of a deal between the shadow government of the CIA, NSA, NIA, and fifth-branch military like the Joint Special Operations Command, and private-sector forces like private security firms, weaponsmakers, petrochemical barons, and bankers. Any strongman in the Executive is usually vetted and hired by these forces like a CEO, or, sometimes, more of a CFO (the President is not totally without influence/power, but how much s/he wants to use that power versus how much s/he wants to just funnel money to his/her real employers depends on the person). The reason there's so much fuss over Trump is that, for the first time since 1976, the shadow government and their private-sector allies have not had complete control over who became CEO. That's one reason they've been thrashing around stoking the fires of anxiety and hostility about Trump. It certainly isn't his racism, sexism, or reckless violence. We've had those qualities in Presidents repeatedly, and there was no movement whatsoever by politicians or journalists to impeach on that basis. This tolerance for bigotry, recklessness and incompetence has happened so recently, and so gratuitously, in the person of George W. Bush and the impeachment that was "off the table" that I can't believe anybody actually thinks that the political and media establishment are objecting to Trump on an ethical basis. They don't have the capacity to have an ethical basis for their decisions, for one thing; and they clearly aren't independent actors, but employees doing what they're told, for another.

But do we really need a political system where one person has so much power, where one person has the country and the world in a twitter, pun intended, about what he will do next?

No, of course we don't. But there's another point in your comment: the importance of Twitter in all this is pernicious in multiple ways. When we were mobilizing against Bush, we were upset by his drone strikes, his reckless, murderous wars, and his illegal ascent to power (also by his destruction, with the help of Congress, of the remains of the Bill of Rights). Now, much of the time, we're upset at Trump because of what he said on Twitter. That's not good. It trivializes the whole dispute and tends to sweep more important objections to Trump out of sight. It also, as Noam Chomsky recently said, tends to take the focus off the horrible shit all the rest of the Republicans are doing. And, finally, the constant focus on what Trump said in social media enables the rest of the establishment to repair their shattered reputations and gain moral credibility by saying "Oh, how shocking!" every time Trump shoots his mouth off. They don't do anything, but because they're shocked and horrified, they get to look like the good guys. George W. Bush is the most disgusting example of this; he actually had an interview with People magazine where he objected to Trump's racism and said "I don't like the racism....Nobody likes that." He liked it just fine when he was using it to become President twice.

Where one person can sign executive orders, unilaterally and without any democratic underpinning, that literally affects the lives of millions? Where we have to worry about whether he/she will drop the bomb?

Yeah, I object to all of that. I objected to it under George W. Bush--even though it was pretty obvious it was Cheney and others calling the shots. But a puppet President kind of makes it even worse. But of course the current practice of the President being able to kill anybody s/he wants to, whenever s/he wants to, is objectionable. Even Al Gore, who is not much of a leftist, said during the first Bush term: "If the President can assassinate and torture, what can't he do?"

@dervish

Lebanon had no President at all for about two and a half years due to legislative gridlock. What they realized is that it really didn't make much difference, and nobody really minded.

That's because Lebanon is on the Westminster Parliamentary clusterfuck system, where the President's office is largely ceremonial.

For your analogy to really fit, Lebanon would have needed to have done OK for about two and a half years with no Prime Minister.

And you're right: the kind of situation which results in "no President" is typical of Parliamentary systems. The government's Executive really does need to have some independence from the Legislature. That's why anyone bearing that particular power needs to be directly elected by the nation's People, not the Legislature.

Now if we could just figure out how to accomplish that.....

due to legislative gridlock. What they realized is that it really didn't make much difference, and nobody really minded. If they could get rid of parliament and a few ministries as well, that might be real progress.