Tuesday, June 30, 2020

My Comment: Sinning a great sin

White House Was Aware Of Russian Bounties In Early 2019

A blogger said: What do you expect from a guy who stole from veterans, lied about donating to veterans, pardoned someone who committed war crimes, fined for misusing funds from a veteran's charity, falsely claimed he signed Vets' Choice into law, insulted POWs, insulted Gold Star families, called Generals "dopes & babies", falsely accused US service members of stealing funds for Iraqi reconstruction, sided with Putin against all branches of military intelligence, froze pay for all federal agencies via Executive Order - federal workforce is 31% veteran, approx 623k vets, undid regulations on predatory lenders who target military members, diverted billions from the military to pay for a wall he said Mexico would pay for, trivialized troops with traumatic brain injuries from an attack, insulted troops with PTSD, forced West Point cadets to travel back for graduation to give a campaign speech ending with dozens testing positive for the coronavirus, downplayed military sexual assaults against female soldiers, invited the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11, told his wife he would disown Tiffany if she joined the military, lied to US troops in Iraq when he told them he gave them their first pay raise in 10 years, ..." or asked Russia to join the G7, took troops out of Germany leaving it open to Russia or threatening to pull the US out of NATO a supreme defender of western Europe leaving it open to Russian aggression.


My  Comment: There are no words to describe the utter incredulity one has about the headlines and links below of reputable news sources. There have been in US history malevolent, treacherous and bumbling presidencies with presidential actions that filled the electorate and historians alike with widespread disbelief at their wrongheaded consequential and even brutal actions of a commander-in-chief but never in all that I have read in my decades of life in this nation or all that I have known about American history has a president's actions and inactions alike been saturated with treasonous and narcissistic self interest especially to the detriment of those that don the uniform of this country putting their own lives at risk and their own family's future in limbo.

We accord the soldiers killed in action the utmost respect and gratitude of a grateful nation and show that respect by accompanying home their flag draped coffin never leaving its side until the destination is complete.  We accord the wounded, who will never again experience the wonders of a strong body they knew when they first signed up for service a special thanks for their service and place of honor is bestowed reflecting appreciation for their efforts which often were given above and beyond the call of duty.  

If all of these reports are true our president has just spit in the face of all those men and women who give of themselves selflessly often to never see the home they left again or never to return to the life they once knew in the same way -- their bodies plagued by disability and/or their minds haunted by the memories of war no one can appreciate who has not fought in war themselves.  The commander-in-chief, the president, owes these courageous men and women his utmost attention to keep them safe.  He owes the families of the dead an answer as to why he abandoned their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers at the time they needed his protection the most.

Donald J. Trump should answer for his action or most importantly his inaction and explain to the American people why on God's earth he owes his allegiance to a hostile power, Russia, and its authoritarian president Putin never pushing back against Russia even once wrapping his arms around Putin but turning his back singularly on the soldiers who fight for this country.  He needs to answer for why he turned his back on the country he says he loves and against the American flag with mendacity he hugs.  He needs to answer as to why he has such little interest in US security but a huge interest in himself.  Donald J. Trump has sinned a great sin either knowing or not knowing Russia was paying the Taliban money to kill US soldiers.  Perhaps, it is the greatest against our nation in all of American history.  He needs to answer for that!

Russia bounty intelligence 'may have been' in Trump brief but wasn't deemed 'actionable,' senior Republican says

Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said he's concerned that reports that Russia paid bounties for the killing of Americans may be true.

White House Was Aware Of Russian Bounties In Early 2019: Report

Top officials were aware a year earlier than previously reported that Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, according to Associated Press sources.

Sunday, June 28, 2020

Pence Cancels Campaign Events In Florida, Arizona As States’ COVID-19 Cases Soar--LIES

"The vice president drops appearances a day after boasting the U.S. is “flattening the curve” in COVID-19 cases."

Here's a man with supposedly religious conviction who lies about a life threatening issue like the COVID virus that has already taken 126,000 lives and counting saying the curve is flattening when it's increasing so dramatically in southern and some western states. Pence is taking his instructions from the always lying mendacious Trump. How can he, Pence,  live with himself? Pence, a religious man, lies to protect the world's greatest conman and fraud guilty of so much because what he is afraid of Trump's rancid mouth or that he, Pence, will lose his job, fame and money?

Again, I quote the New Testament because Pence is supposed to be the world's most observant Christian and a Fundamentalist one at that -- Matthew 4:8 "Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory." Matthew 16:26 "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Perhaps Pence along with the other hypocrites does not really believe in that which he supposedly has built his life? Take instruction from Romans 1:18: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth."
 
 

Saturday, June 27, 2020

The Great Nadir

Nadir means the lowest point. Persons of color under reconstruction were gaining many rights such as the right to vote and hold office. It was all taken away because of the close disputed election of 1877 which pitted Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican, (Party of Lincoln or the progressive party) against Samuel Tilden, the Democrat (the antebellum pro slavery Party.) Republicans struck a deal with the Democrats. Hayes offered to pull union troops out of the south. In return the Democrats would give Republicans their electoral votes installing Hayes president.

This era is called the Great Nadir because the state of black rights declined to the lowest point level since the end of slavery. That compromise returned power to whites of the south who now had full rein to begin again the brutalization, denial of rights, segregation and murder of the black man. The legacy of that compromise exists even to this day. The black man has had to fight for incremental human rights through decades of suffering and struggle.

Who knows about this period in our nation? Few perhaps only those found in the institutions of higher learning in black history classes or those well versed in American history. There is a reason for the Black Lives Matter movement. Climbing the stairs of American Democracy was for the black man an arduous and torturous journey spanning centuries. From generation to generation persons of color along with their white allies of progressive politics had to fight for every morsel of human rights taken for granted by whites. The road of American history is paved with the blood and bones of those who stood for what is fair, just and right. Each generation's struggle is predicated on those who came before. It has been a difficult road and is still very much a work in progress. NEVER GIVE UP!

From the Atlantic Magazine: "Whatever way you look at it, it is impossible to turn this history and its leading figures into a part of American heritage. Founded in an act of treason against the government its leaders had sworn to protect and serve, the Confederate States of America and its white-supremacist government waged a four-year war against the United States of America and the principles Americans value most highly."

"This is the cause that Confederate statues commemorate. This is why white supremacists arrive armed to prevent their removal, as they did in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. And it is why they are a target of Black Lives Matter protesters in their campaign for racial justice and a crucial part of the conversation about the legacy of slavery in American life."
 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/podcasts/1619-slavery-anniversary.html

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Unlucky in Birth

The Atlantic Magazine states that the Confederacy was an antidemocratic centralized state repressive in nature and dedicated to the maintenance of white supremacy. To those who lament the loss of the Civil War to the northern union states that is exactly what it was. It was a collection of states that rose up and waged treasonous war against the republic.  It was a violent insurrection, perhaps, the bloodiest war in US history that saw 650,000 and some say as many as 850,000 deaths. The exact number is not known since records were not pristinely kept.  It tore apart the country and I aver that schism is still felt to this day. 

The heritage our know nothing president refers to is bathed in racist sentiment and dedicated to the maintenance of a wholly unjust society cemented in racist thought which was, indeed, reinforced by law.  The original sin of slavery begun 419 years ago is, I fear, indelibly written into the tapestry of this nation.  Slavery was cruel, it was understatedly inhumane and it went against all that was advanced by those nation states that call themselves civilized and beneficiaries of the Enlightenment. It was antithetical to the very tenets of a democratic nation that all men are created equal for which so many American revolutionaries and Founding Fathers dedicated and many patriots gave their lives. 

The Civil War was a true conspiracy of men whose desire was to separate themselves from the republic and, most importantly to keep persons unfree solely defined by the color of skin.   There is not one thing one can say to give positive spin on the southern states' effort to separate from the union though our president today in the unrighteous might of his office tries hard to do so under the veil of "heritage."  He calls those who would take down statues of Confederate Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy and others in memory of it, law breaking anarchists whom he says he will relegate to jail.  Does one find statutes of Hitler, Goebbels or Himmler anywhere in Germany today? The answer is an emphatic no and, in fact, it is against the law to fly a swastika flag.   How easy it is for this white racist Cretan of privilege Trump to feel no empathy, to the extent that he feels empathy at all for anyone but himself, for those persons of color who are descendants of the slave master's lash sentenced to the legacy of slavery through generation after discrimination soaked generation

The sins of the Confederacy are many.  From Slavery to Jim Crow, to segregation, to separate drinking fountains, to segregated schools, and second class citizenship up through voter suppression and police brutality in our time it is the monkey on our back accompanied by a presidency now dedicated to the "very fine people" of right wing extremist sentiment and violence.  The Confederates of the Civil War and the Nazis marching with Tiki Torches saying "Jews will not replace us" are favorites of Trump and solely to those whose base he continuously appeals.   There is a reason Black Lives Matter marches are occurring all over the world.  They march because brutalizing persons of color by police or anyone else unjustly while whites are not accorded equal punishments is just plain wrong.  A democratic nation's racist populace must be cited for it and called out, in pertinent part, for the emissaries of hate they are. 

The so called stars and bars flag of the Confederacy is to persons of color what the Nazi flag would be to a Jew. It is emblematic of incalculable, monstrously of unjust suffering and murder.  What was the sole sin of a person of color? He was in that southern culture at that time and to an extent in our time unlucky to be born black. A Jew in Nazi Germany was unlucky enough at that time to be born a Jew.  He or she of an ascribed status was guilty of nothing else but to have been born.  Now we must rectify this wrong post haste.
 
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/confederacy-wasnt-what-you-think/613309/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
 

Saturday, June 20, 2020

William Barr Says U.S. Attorney In Manhattan Is Resigning. U.S. Attorney Says No, He's Not.-inquiring minds want to know




The slug president and his lackey attorney general Barr know no depths of moral depravity to which they will stoop to corrupt the entire justice system including taking the NY US Attorney Berman off the most important cases in SDNY which Berman is prosecuting.  He never even told Berman. Berman had to learn it through news accounts.

This is utterly disgusting. SDNY is investigating Trump's corruption including Deutche Bank, Trump's major lender. There is SO much slimy corruption emanating from the oval office that the staggering weight of it is sinking the White House and our nation into the ground because of it.  Every day there is another corruption outrage. When will it end? 

Why is Barr always willing to jump into the sewer to do Tump's bidding if he cares so much about this nation? Inquiring moral minds want to know. 


https://www.huffpost.com/entry/geoffrey-berman-william-barr-us-attorney-southern-district-new-york-trump_n_5eed7619c5b63562b7603756

Thursday, June 18, 2020

The Song of the Fiddle

Bolton says in the ABC interview that Putin thinks he can play Trump like a fiddle.  Who did not know that?  Each Bolton revelation about the so-called "president' is disgusting and treasonous. It is not like most with a brain did not think that all along. I think the term the old Communist state used was "useful idiot" in their assessment of Trump. Each authoritarian leader saw and still sees the 30 pieces of silver they used to cultivate Trump all dedicated to taking this nation down. Putin relishes the division sowed in this country. He could not have asked for a better outcome of his calculations.

All these authoritarian leaders, Putin, Turkey's despot Erdogan and the North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un are jumping up and down with glee. They could not have asked for a better so-called president than Trump to perfect the kind of America these despots wanted and could use to advance their cause. 

Treason by any other name is still treason. The song of Putin's fiddle is  treason.  Trump should be held accountable and other articles of impeachment should be drawn.  This time the Senate should convict.  Ah, would the outcome be so sweet?  Trump is a clear and present danger to this nation and our Congress, with haste, should act to save it before there is no nation to save.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

The Virus What Went Wrong?

If you want to play this excellent segment of Frontline click on the hyperlink below the pic or go to the Frontline site.  Recommended viewing to find out what went so drastically and desperately wrong in this nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cases and deaths continue to spike in states that get taken in by Trump's zeal to open the nation up for business by the most mendacious and cruel administration in US history.  Trump cares only about his poll numbers and that's all he cares about.  He cares nothing for you or those you love and thinks nursing home deaths are expendable.  He is a menace to our nation.  Everything he touches fails.  I believe he has stolen hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, the proof of which is his Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin's, refusal to release an accounting of the Small Business Association loans directed to those small businesses which have a desperate need to survive our epidemic related near Great Depression.  His policies are ruinous to this nation. 

Watch and you will learn why his administration's response to the pandemic is coming from a man who is unfit to hold the office!
 
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Monday, June 15, 2020

LANDMARK: SCOTUS RULES FOR LGBTQ EMPLOYEES

Supreme Court Says LGBTQ Employees Are Protected By Civil Rights Employment Statutes!! 

Big decision  Gorsuch and Roberts with the majority. Thank you Justice Gorsuch and Roberts!!  Kavenaugh, Thomas and Alito Dissent -- No surprise there.



Our Country is made greater today!! 😁

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Sunday, June 14, 2020

Recommend viewing on Amazon Prime

GREAT DOCUMENTARY TO RECOMMEND: JAMES BALDWIN'S NARRATION OF HIS DOCUMENTARY "I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO." This is a wonderful documentary depicting the history of the black man in this nation from the 1950's through the 1960's. Baldwin died in 1987.

This film surrounds the assassination of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King all three of whom were Baldwin's friends. It is a documentary that gives one especially an American an understanding as to what the black man's grievances are against this egregiously flawed nation with respect to its racist past and its most grievous actions against persons of color over the past 419 years. It gives one an understanding as to what all the protesting, screaming and destruction are all about.

The black man in this nation has been, I believe, much sinned against. I understand the rage.  I have it too.

Friday, June 12, 2020

John Bolton Says Reelection Is ‘Only Thing That Mattered’ To Trump

Nice time to tell us now, Mr. Bolton. Maybe your refusal to tell us when it really would have mattered was because you wanted to sell a book. How about telling the nation you claim to love so much when it really might have done some good? This is surely no big revelation. It seems like your calculation that you would make big bucks from your book is almost the same as Trump only wanting to be reelected. Both of you put your nation second. No surprise there either. I say birds of a feather.

Still, better late than never. It will help historians put this presidency in the dump where it belongs and maybe just maybe in November it will work its magic to defeat the worst president in the history of this nation! It's all sickening.
 
 
 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-bolton-book-trump-reelection_n_5ee3afd7c5b687e411b5112a

Thursday, June 11, 2020

My prediction: the abyss

After listening to medical experts in infectious disease and after seeing the numbers of COVID-19 again increase in some southern, some midwestern states and others I predict a second wave of the virus will hit in the fall.  The latest June 11, 2020 map of those states where COVID-19 is on the increase I print from the NYT below.  One must take into account this administration's rabid attempt at denial of science yet again in its zeal to open businesses up so Trump can see the stock market increase on his watch.  His fantasy, of course, is that he will be named the economic wonder boy for the 2020 election.  He will not.
 
A medical expert from Boston University Medical School convinced me this morning when she (and other experts too) said "You cannot have it both ways.  You cannot open up businesses with lightning speed and expect the cases of COVID-19 to go down."    What you will see is cases will go up and a second wave of COVID-19 will come to a state near you in the fall.  As Dr. Fauci and others said, deny science all you want but the virus will do what the virus will do.  It does not care about Donald Trump, it does not care about his rightwing extremist base carrying guns into the Wisconsin state house demanding their their right to open up their businesses, it does not care about you nor about me.  It cares about maintaining and increasing its own biological life. 

Yet again Donald Trump does not care about anyone but himself.  Indeed, he may not even care about his family's exposure to the virus.  He will care when in the fall the second wave will have started and will add significantly to his already weakening poll numbers. 

He said this virus was a war and he is the commander in chief of that war.  Well, Mr. Science Denying Trump, this is a war you will not win. The sad and worrisome thing is he will drag the rest of the nation down with him as we careen off into the abyss.  Crush Trump in November 2020 and install his opposite, Joe Biden to have sanity rule in the oval office again.

 Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
By The New York TimesUpdated June 11, 2020, 8:05 A.M. E.T.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

The Times They are A-Changin


A friend sent me this link of Bob Dylan's famous song below and reminded me it could be sung for our times.  Loved Dylan's song in the 1960's but change did not happen as we suspected then. Fortuitous for our time now? I surely HOPE so. It speaks to the Black Lives Matter movement and all those in the millions who support it and other efforts to perfect humanitarian change.  I pray that it will change our tortuous reality and blast into oblivion the cancer that is Trump and all those who enable this cancer to spread.
 
 
 
 
 
 


 
 
 


 



Tuesday, June 09, 2020

DEFUND, DISMANTLE, ABOLISH ARE BAD WORDS.

DEFUND, DISMANTLE, ABOLISH ARE BAD WORDS. THEY PLAY RIGHT INTO TRUMP'S HANDS. MANY WILL THINK THEY ARE FOR ERADICATING THE POLICE AND WILL CLING TO TRUMP AS A SAVIOR. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO, DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN! 

PROTESTORS HAVE A VALID ANGER BUT THEY SHOULD USE THE MORE NEUTRAL WORD OF REFORM. DO NOT ALIENATE TRUMP'S BASE ANY MORE THAN THEY ALREADY ARE SO THEY WILL COME OUT ENMASSE TO SUPPORT HIM AND WORSE ALIENATE OTHERS WHO MIGHT SUPPORT A DEMOCRAT BUT SIT IN TRUMP'S LAP BECAUSE THEY ARE SCARED NOT TO. 

DEMOCRATS WILL BE STEPPING AS USUAL ON THEIR OWN FOOT. SAY WHAT IS POSSIBLE THEN DO WHAT IS NECESSARY.

REFORM IS A BETTER WORD

"In Veto-Proof Majority, Minneapolis City Council Says It Will Dismantle Police Department"

I am a strong Democrat, progressive and always will be. Dismantling the police sounds like eradication of it. There will always be murders, rapists and thieves. To dismantle the police and invest in community led public safety seems arduous if not a pipedream. The left of which I am a part needs to deal with realities. There is violent crime among us.  Let's take what we have in the police departments, get rid of bad apples, make certain actions like chokeholds are forbidden, make the police departments transparent and make them responsible for their illegal and immoral actions!

Dismantling police departments needs a definition of just what "dismantling" means.  If it means reform I can agree with that.  Reform must be done with precision, care and discretion. To say dismantle without any assurance that it will be put back together in some better form simply scares many into opposing the needed changes.  Dismantle is not a good word to use, reform is a better one.

Friday, June 05, 2020

8 Minutes and 46 seconds -- A Memorial to George Floyd

I stood in my living room, too, as Reverend Al Sharpton asked the congregation to stand in memory of George Floyd.  It was the amount of time, 8 minutes and 46 seconds, it took for George Floyd to die at the hands of the Minneapolis police officers for the sin of allegedly passing a counterfeit 20 dollar bill he, perhaps, never knew was counterfeit.  The American people never got to find out if he knew it was counterfeit or not.  Even if he did know was his life worth merely a 20 dollar bill, for the amount of time it took Officer Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, to give a death press with his knee on the neck of George Floyd, a person of color?  As a metaphor to George Floyd it was an excruciating 8 minutes and 46 seconds but an effective way to memorialize him.  He suffered of that we can be sure.  Derek Chauvin, after 7 days of continuous massive protest of his unjust actions, was finally charged with murder 2 that charge to the previous counts of third-degree murder and manslaughter filed against Chauvin along with three other Minneapolis officers who assisted in the take down. The other three officers at the scene, are charged with unintentional aiding and abetting second-degree murder as well as aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.

I am not writing this to give a summary of the fatal police action but to say George Floyd probably knew he was going to die because he said could not breathe but never knew he would stand with with so many others in the 400 year eternity retelling the sad saga of crimes against the humanity of black people in this allegedly Constitutional republic.  He will stand with other persons of color who were killed in an unjust manner.  The situations are different but the victims are all persons of color killed by white cops before they ever got the chance to tell their story.  George Floyd will stand with Eric Garner, he will stand with Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Ahmed Arbury, Breonna Taylor, an EMT (Louisville police officers forced their way inside her apartment and "blindly fired" killing her.)  There are, of course, many other shoes in which George Floyd walked and many more stories to tell.

There are others with whom George Floyd will stand.  He will also stand in the annals of black history with Emmet Till, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, as few examples of many.  I think this will be so because if there was ever a longer period of protest in a pandemic yet and a more massive period of mourning for a more relatable person to so many I do not know of it.  The marches crossed racial lines.  It has been 8 days of marches, across fifty states, an infinite amount of speeches, and 24/7 news coverage.  It goes on and on and rightfully so.  Persons of color in this 450 year national saga have endured the humiliation of slavery, the humiliation of the Jim Crow south, the fury of voter suppression and infinite accounts of police brutality for what crime?  The crime of being black and unlucky in this nation of historical racist pathology.  If I could have met George Floyd at the pearly gates I would tell him how much his life meant.  There may even be a final answer or at least some answer to the never ending question of when will it stop? 

Moreover, the so called "president" of this nation without a doubt the most corrupt, evil, racist, villain who insultingly said blacks just love him when 83% of them say they would not vote for the disgusting slug, besmirching the oval office is an insult to so many Americans.  Nothing touches Trump not even the COVID-19 virus to which he allegedly was exposed and did not act against it in time to stop 104,100 deaths or to soften its blow.  George Floyd along with COVID-19 just may have succeeded in finally stopping the creature from the bottom of the sea from taking the last great hope for democracy down.  I surely hope so.

To the Floyd family I extend my heart felt condolences and hope they know in their hearts the heights to which their son, brother, and father soared.  To the marchers I say keep on marching staying always vigilant that neither a police department nor a corrupt president will ever be placed in positions of huge power where they can take down everything and everyone for which this nation has stood for nearly 250 years.  May George Floyd rest in peace!

Democratic Presidential Convention--On to November

  I watched the Democratic convention last evening until my body's demand for sleep overtook me around midnight.  Having followed thin...