Impeach bulaga, MacArthur Park

Sinadya kaya ng Lower House reps na literally last-minute nila isinampa ang Articles of Impeachment sa Senado, knowing very well that it was too late, the Senate had adjourned, but, well, the media mileage is worth it? Besides there seems to be much glee in putting Senate Prez Chiz on the spot — just about every other lawyer and pundit and rep is weighing in now on the meaning of “shall forthwith proceed” and insisting that the Senate must get moving, now na! Bumigay kaya si Chiz, o manindigan? Ano ba talaga ang rules?

Samantala, cool na cool si VP Sara, matagal na daw nilang pinaghahandaan ito, okey lang siya, “mas masakit pa maiwan ng boyfriend o girlfriend kaysa ma-impeach ka ng House of Representatives.” Hmm. I’m sure not, as in, not true. Unless it’s a measure of how little she thinks of country, and ipinapa-sa-diyos na lang niya ang kapalaran ng ‘Pinas, as in, “God save the Philippines”? Really?

Upon messaging her father daw that “Everything will be all right”, former President Duterte sent her daw a video of him singing “MacArthur’s Park”, a sixties song, boomer times, about the end of a love affair. Na medyo appropriate nga naman if we look back on the BBM-Sara hook-up. When did it start going wrong? Was it doomed from the start?

The Duterte-Marcos alliance was already there when Duterte won the presidency in 2016 (BBM lost as VP to Leni). That he immediately allowed the burial of FEM in the Libingan ng mga Bayani told us all we needed to know, that it was a bayad-utang for the Marcos-loyalist vote. Maybe he needn’t have. Maybe he would have won anyway. And maybe if he hadn’t allowed the burial, and the dictator Marcos’s right to be buried as hero continues to be questioned, maybe we wouldn’t have a Marcos back in the palace? I can imagine Dutz singing this part with gusto, and regret.

Someone left the cake out in the rain 
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it 
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh nooooo

Black Hawk, Diversity, Trump

That long night after the 9 p.m. collision and explosion of the American Airlines jet and the Black Hawk helicopter over the dark and freezing Potomac River was a very sad and long wait not just for the families of the 67 victims but for all of America and the world glued to cable TV and YouTube who waited along, praying for survivors, then for the recovery of bodies, and of the black boxes, wanting needing to know what went wrong, what brought on that horrible collision.  Impossible not to feel for, care about, the dead and the bereaved, even from far away.

The three soldiers killed in the collision were part of the 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, whose responsibilities in a national crisis include evacuating Pentagon officials….

“Some of their mission is to support the Department of Defense if something really bad happens in this area, and we need to move our senior leaders,” said Jonathan Koziol, the chief of staff of the Army’s Aviation Directorate. https://www.reuters.com/world/

President Donald Trump was quick to weigh in via social media.

Taking to Truth Social, President Trump questioned how such an incident could have occurred, posting: “The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing. Why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn? Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane? This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD.” https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/

“The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” Trump said in a Truth Social post.  https://www.reuters.com/

At the Thursday morning presscon, he asserted that the pilots had failed.

“You had a pilot problem from the standpoint of the helicopter,” he said. “I mean, because it was visual. It was a very clear night.” The helicopter, he said, “had the ability to stop. I have helicopters. You can stop a helicopter very quickly. It had the ability to go up or down. It had the ability to turn. And the turn it made was not the correct turn, obviously.” https://www.nytimes.com/

Everything’s still under investigation, of course, but Trump’s also sure it has to do with DiversityEquityInclusion policies that may have led to the hiring of not-white and therefore not-too-bright personnel, or something to that effect, which had me wondering if the Hawk’s pilot and/or co-pilot and/or crew-of-one was black or brown or other hyphenated American or female or queer or differently-abled.

Another day later we learn that all three were white — one woman (co-pilot https://edition.cnn.com/ and two men (pilot and crew) — and quite able. But also, that both the Hawk and air traffic control were understaffed.

Speaking to MSNBC, retired Army Lt. Col. Darin Gaub said video of the collision appeared to show that the helicopter did not appear to change course, speed or altitude before the crash, indicating the crew may not have known the passenger jet was in its path.

He added that the training mission had fewer crew chiefs than normal to scan the sky for potential dangers. While such missions typically have three, he said, Wednesday’s had one.

“That’s a fact,” he said. “It may have bearing in the future. It may not. But it does reduce ability of crew to identify an aircraft in flight at night.” https://www.nbcnews.com/

There was reportedly only one air traffic controller responsible for coordinating helicopter and plane traffic, The Associated Press and others reported Thursday. The work at Reagan National airport, which was coordinating the flights, is usually assigned to two people and the configuration was “not normal.” https://news3lv.com/news/

Moving on from Trump’s DEI spin, America’s back to the question of why the Hawk was flying higher than protocols allowed. Human error? Mechanical failure? https://www.yahoo.com/news/

I got to thinking that maybe we should could just be glad that there’s no hint of terrorism, or there’s no first rush to rule it out — unintentional, though deadly, violence is much easier for hearts and minds to deal with. But then a little more browsing led me to this:  “Was American Airlines plane crash a terrorist act? Trump fuels conspiracy frenzy with ‘CLEAR NIGHT’ remark”. 

Conspiracy Theories Take Flight

Trump’s comments helped ignite a storm of speculation online. Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman contributed to the theories, writing in a now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), “How does an incredibly manoeuvrable military helicopter fly into a regional aircraft by accident with all of the sensors and warning devices designed to prevent an accident like this one? It sounds more like terrorism than an accident.”

Ackman later deleted the comment but left up a repost of an air traffic control video that allegedly showed a collision alert warning for over 30 seconds before the crash.

Meanwhile, Reddit users questioned whether the helicopter had been transporting a VIP passenger, pointing out that it had a gold top—a marker often associated with aircraft used for high-ranking officials. However, a U.S. Department of Defense official confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that no senior U.S. officials were on board.

Similarly, ex-soccer player Taylor Twellman attempted to dissect the crash scene on Instagram. Uploading a clip of the tragedy, he captioned the post: “You can’t tell me this isn’t suspicious. My heart aches for those on that plane. Literally everyone’s worst nightmare.” He, too, ultimately was left with no choice but to delete the post as other social media users criticised him for fuelling conspiracy theories at a fragile time. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

A fragile time, indeed. On all fronts.

Trump’s war song, glory hallelujah!

I always thought that the Battle Hymn of the Republic was a Negro spiritual, originally composed and sung by slaves in the run-up to the Civil War of the 1860s that sought an end to slavery. So I was sort of surprised when it was sung at President Donald Trump’s inaugural. Was it originally, or also, a white song? After some browsing, I find that the answer is yes, both sides have a claim to it pala.

The original tune is that of Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us, a religious hymn borne of slave culture that was being sung in “camp meetings” in the southern states by both blacks and whites, of meeting up on “Canaan’s happy shores” and giving glory to Jesus “for glory is His own” — one of 150 hymns first collected and published in the early 1800s whose tune and variants spread across to northern states.

Fast forward to the 1860s. Around campfires, Union soldiers played around with the lyrics of Say, Brothers and came up with John Brown’s Body and the “Glory Glory Hallelujah” refrain, in tribute, lament, memory of the  anti-slavery radical John Brown whose trial and hanging for treason in 1859 heightened tensions that led to the Civil War.

Soon enough, white poet Julia Ward Howe rewrote, elevated, the lyrics, made the song “richer for a kind of educated audience” and re-named it Battle Hymn of the Republic, which quickly became a powerful anthem not just for the victorious Union forces, but also for the other side of the racial divide that persists to the present.

What we heard at the Trump inaugural is the latest white version, rendered by the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club, with “very clever changes in key and tempo.”

As the voices of the midshipmen and women echoed from the neoclassical style walls of the Capitol rotunda, the dignitaries – including former presidents, Supreme Court justices, and world leaders – were transported out of space and time into a mythological and patriotic dimension in which the majestic room beneath the Capitol dome really became the ‘symbolic and physical heart’ of the Capitol, and of America as a whole.

Before this, the Battle Hymn was mostly sang at state funerals — Robert F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter. That Trump deemed it the appropriate first musical number at his second coming had me wondering exactly what message he was sending not just to African Americans but to the world in general — this song of wrath and lightning, swords and serpents, triumphalism and vengeance, all in the name of God whose truth is marching on. So help us God.

Birgitta Johnson is quick to point out that the “Battle Hymn” is, at the end of the day, a war song.

“The kumbaya moment will not be happening across the aisles because of this song,” she says, “because it’s really about supporting whatever your perspective is — about freedom or liberation, and having God as the person who’s ordaining what we’re doing. And ‘glory, hallelujah’ about that.” https://www.npr.org/

*

That Patriotic and Awful Song: ”Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Robert Bray
https://www.hnn.us/article/that-patriotic-and-awful-song-battle-hymn-of-the-r

One Song Glory by Andrew Limbong
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/04/625351953/one-song-glory

Battle Hymn of the Republic: a musical chameleon? by David Guion
https://music.allpurposeguru.com/2019/04/battle-hymn-of-the-republic-a-musical-chameleon/

So help me God! by Amelia H. C. Ylagan
https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2025/01/27/648955/so-help-me-god/

Who’s afraid of Senate impeachment trial?

The INC & DDS were still high on that huge almost-2M-strong political rally — yey! di na mai-impeach si VP Sara, the people have spoken! — when PBBM‘s chief legal counsel proceeded to douse cold water on the very idea.

Juan Ponce Enrile:  As a nation and a state , we will incur a very detrimental precedent if we follow the logic implicit in the INC rally that they mounted. Are we prepared and ready to face the long term consequences of that INC move? https://www.facebook.com/jp.enrile

Quite persuasive, sa totoo lang. As JPE warns, should Congress refuse to act on the impeachment complaints on the say-so of INC, it would set an awful precedent for the next time an impeachable government official screws up and deserves to be impeached — the Iglesia, or some other group, only has to rear its ugly head again and say NO, and that’s that?

Thankfully PBBM has acknowledged the wisdom of Enrile’s warning, as in, yes, indeed, junking the impeachment complaints would set a “problematic” precedent, but in the next breath he says:

“Wala nang congressman, wala nang senador, dahil nangangampanya na sila. Hindi tayo makakapagbuo ng quorum. And so, as a practical matter, the timing is very poor.” https://pco.gov.ph

Susog pa ni Senate Prez Chiz, kailangan pa daw pag-aralan, kung sakaling ma-refer to the senate ang Articles of Impeachment ngayon, kung kailan malapit nang mag-break for elections, back to square one ba after elections? https://www.gmanetwork.com/

Is Chiz playing dumb?  As far as I know, the Senate is a continuous body na kahit kailan ay hindi nababakante — kaya nga staggered ang elections, only 12 of 24 seats become vacant every three years (unlike the House of Reps).  Ibig sabihin, the trial can continue, pick up where the Senate court leaves off before election-break, once the new members have been sworn in. (Naturally the newbies are expected to be capable of catching up, or they have no place in those august halls.)

Atty. Rene Bueno:  Kapag impeachment court na ang Senado, puwede magpatuloy na litisin ang complaint … puwede ring i-set aside until after elections. … Marami nang jurisprudence re the Senate as a continuous body, no one can interrupt this function, and the main purpose is to maintain the stability of the government.  https://www.youtube.com/

Prof. Antonio Contreras: The concept of the Philippine Senate as a continuing body refers to its structure, composition and functioning, which ensures that its operations continue seamlessly despite periodic changes in its membership. This principle has legal and practical implications, making the Senate distinct from the House of Representatives. https://web.archive.org/

Fr. Ranhilio Aquino:  It is instructive that the 1987 Constitution and the 1935 Constitutions of the Philippines have staggered senators’ terms—thus assuring the continuity of the chamber…. https://manilastandard.net/

So. Malinaw na initiating the impeachment trial before elections won’t be a waste of time and effort for the Senate. Of course it would annoy the INC & DDS, and surely lose them some votes in May, but, hey, di ba’t matutuwa tiyak ang mas nakararaming mga Katoliko at Muslim atbp. na pro-impeachment — from BBM peeps to Leni Kakampinks — huwag ismolin o isnabin ang mga boto nila.

Kaya rin wala akong kabilib-bilib sa hirit ng Lower House Reps na useless isampa ang kaso sa Senado dahil sigurado silang i-a-acquit ng Senado ang VP.  Parang wala pala silang kabilib-bilib sa mga ebidensiyang napalutang nila mismo sa mga hearing ng Lower and Upper Houses re confidential funds atbp. So. Kung iyan pa rin ang pakiramdam nila after elections, hindi pa rin nila aaksyunan? Never mind their mandate?

If memory serves, ganyang ganyan din noong impeachment trials nina Erap at Corona. Walang katiyakan. Pero both times, in different ways, natanggal sila. Can it be that the powers-that-be do not really want the VP impeached by the Senate, bahala na lang sa 2028?

Suddenly I’m remembering VP Sara saying back in October 2024 that she has a list of 5 impeachable offenses by PBBM. Could it be why BBM doesn’t want her impeached, so that she won’t, can’t, try to impeach him? Quid pro quo, I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine, with the INC playing gamemaster? Sana naman hindi.