Congress needs a ‘travesty’ rule and the stones to enforce it

There’s a rule in baseball that allows an umpire to penalize any bizarre behavior not covered elsewhere in the rulebook. They call it the “travesty” rule.

Say someone does something so stupid or crazy that nobody would have thought to put it in the rules. Umpires can use their discretion to prevent the player or team from doing that stupid or crazy thing if the act would “make a travesty of the game.”

We need that kind of rule for Congress to prevent any bizarre behavior that threatens to make a travesty of the U.S. Constitution, because Alternative President Donald J. Trump is doing this on a daily basis and no one is doing anything to stop him.

In just this past week alone, these bizarre and crazy things happened in our government:

* Despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump continued to claim that he has been “wiretapped” or “surveilled” or some other word that fits between two sets of “air quotes” and that maybe the British did it. When someone supposedly apologized to Great Britain for the insult, Trump said he didn’t apologize and kept pressing the ridiculous claim.

Nothing crazy about that, right?

* Trump hosted the leader of Germany at the White House, refused to shake hands with her and then after she'd gone accused her country of welshing on its obligations to NATO.

* On St. Patrick’s Day, Trump insulted Ireland by reading an “Irish proverb” that was actually a Nigerian poem and tweeted out a misspelled Gaelic greeting that he could have gotten correct by googling it in under 20 seconds – like I did.

So he managed to piss off England, Germany and Ireland, and it only took two days.

* Then there was that whole Russia thing that continues to grow and grow and grow. According to Amy Siskind, president and co-founder of The New Agenda, members of Trump’s cabinet, advisers and friends keep popping up as foreign agents working for Russia, or they get jobs working for Ukrainian oligarchs with ties to Russia or they collaborate on financial ventures with Russian businessmen.

Russian elites have invested close to $100 million in Trump luxury towers in Southern Florida, a Russian yacht is spotted buddying up to one owned by Trump financial backer Robert Mercer and former national security adviser Mike Flynn is found to have received three formerly-undisclosed payments from Russian interests totaling $70,000, which he failed to report as required.

There’s more, but let’s move on to China.

* We’re watching as Trump’s family continues to use the White House as a profit center with China becoming a major player. Son-in-law Jared Kushner is in line to make $400 million by selling a New York office building to a dubious Chinese entity, daughter Ivanka imported 53 metric tons of Chinese goods while her father was making his “Buy American” speeches and a businesswoman with ties to Chinese Intelligence and the country’s ruling elite purchased a penthouse in a Trump property for $15.8 million.

* Trump’s wife continues to live in New York at a cost of $150,000 a day, the “president” continues to spend weekends in Florida at a cost of $3 million a trip and now I hear that his children and grandchildren took a ski vacation to Aspen with 100 of their favorite Secret Service protectors at an additional cost of who-knows-how-many-thousands more?   

Somebody stop me when we reach the “travesty” plateau.

* Meanwhile, on the domestic front, Trump’s budget director defended cutting out funds for Meals on Wheels and school lunch programs because “we’re not seeing the results” we expected for our investment. He said those words out loud. In public. With the media present. Are you kidding me?

Feeding people who desperately need food – including children and the elderly, infirm and disabled – offers no return on investment? What were you expecting from them, dividends on your stock? Ever heard of compassion? Seriously, Mr. Alternative President, where did you find this guy, Evil ‘R Us?

* The very same guy sees nothing wrong with adding $54 billion to the Pentagon budget so we can buy more tanks and missiles and submarines and ships and bulk up to fight World War II all over again.

* Vice President Mike Pence tweets that the most powerful army in the world is going to become “even more powerful,” raising the question, “Exactly how many times do you need to be able to turn the planet into cinders before you’re powerful enough to defeat a few thousand terrorists who don’t own a single airplane, submarine or boat?

Yeah, but Trump is doing a lot of things to make America great, right?

Right. He’s endorsing a health care bill that has no chance of passage, proposing a budget that legislative leaders say is dead on arrival in Congress and trying twice to institute a Muslim ban that keeps getting shot down by judges because of that pesky thing called the Constitution.

The only thing Trump has accomplished so far, as near as I can remember, is signing an order that allows coal companies to pollute our rivers and streams.

I said this week that Trump is creating a country that no decent person would want to live in. That must be true, because even Canada’s version of the Girl Scouts canceled a trip here because of concerns over the Muslim Ban. When your country isn’t good enough for the Canadian Girl Scouts, you know you’ve slithered back into the swamp.

I’m 67 years old and I have seen a lot in my lifetime. I always knew there were stupid people out there. I always knew there were people who were evil, hateful, despicable, thoughtless, ruthless, self-centered, bigoted, callous, heartless, greedy, vindictive and [add your favorite adjective here]… but I had no idea of the sheer magnitude of it until Donald Trump started running for president.

When I realized it, I admit I was shocked.

Trump started a whole new ballgame of crazy and bizarre. He is writing a whole new definition for the word “travesty.” He is giving us reason after reason why we need a travesty rule in government the way they have one in baseball, to keep him from contravening our Constitution until he can flush the whole document down a Trump Tower toilet.  

Of course, to make a “travesty rule” effective, someone in Congress would have to grow a set and actually step up to enforce it. So my question is, who is it going to be, and when are they planning to start?