A Grief that Will Not Heal-by Jo Salas, a writer and activist in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York + My Comment

My Comment: This prose linked below is quiet profound.  It truly is a time now that existed for many during the rise and rule of Nazism. No one knew how transitory it would be or if it would be permanent. No one knew the human cost of that madness and today living in the rule of the Beast we do not know how bad it will get as millions wear their Maga hats. Are they all stupid? Are they all insane? What are these people composed of who march to the cruel, inhumane, mendacious and savage Trumpian jackboot?

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/2/1862043/-This-is-a-grief-that-will-not-heal?detail=emaildkre

Some things are just beautiful

Enough politics. Some things are simply beautiful as is this song from the film about Jane Froman who was an entertainer for the USO during WWII. I remember watching a movie of her life. She endured a horrific plane crash, suffered one amputation of her leg, wore braces and crutches. She endured 39 surgeries. Susan Hayward played her in the movie clip above. "With a Song in my Heart" reminds me of my mother and I listening to this gorgeous song and dance routine. Some things are simply beautiful!

The America I once knew and loved.  This is a Rogers & Hart song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6N_va6FvHc

Attachments area

Preview YouTube video With a song in my heart - Jane Froman - Movie Sequence.wmv

Are these your ‘animals’, Mr Trump?

Photo of drowned father and daughter at US border illustrates ultimate human cost of president’s attitude towards families desperately seeking a better life.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/animals-mr-trump-photo-drowned-085326034.html?.tsrc=fauxdal

THIS IS ABOUT WHAT I HOPE TONIGHT'S DEBATE WILL BE.  I WANT THEM TO SKEWER TRUMP NOT ONLY FOR THIS BUT FOR THE CORRUPTNESS

OF HIS ENTIRE ADMINISTRATION, ALL THOSE FIRED OR THOSE WHO QUIT BY THEIR OWN VOLITION, ALL THOSE INCLUDING THE PRESIDENT FLOUTING THE EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION TO MAKE MONEY FOR HIMSELF ON THE TAXPAYER'S DIME WHICH IS WHY HE RAN FOR THE JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE, ALL HIS CORRUPT CRONIES WHO HAVE QUIT OR ARE NOW UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR THEIR ALLEGED CRIMES IN HIS SO CALLED CABINET.  I WANT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO SEE THE TIE BETWEEN RUSSIAN OLIGARCHS, RUSSIA'S TYRANNICAL AND CORRUPT LEADER, TRUMP'S BEST FRIEND, PUTIN AND TRUMP HIMSELF.

FOR ALL THESE THINGS AND MORE THAT THIS HEARTBREAKING PICTURE REPRESENTS MY HEART WILL NOT SIT CALM UNTIL ALL THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THE MADNESS OF TRUMP INJUSTICE BE HELD TO ACCOUNT!  FOR THE PRISONS HOLDING CHILDREN IN CAGES, FOR SLEEPING ON CONCRETE FLOORS, FOR THE SEPARATION OF CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS, FOR THE DENIAL OF THE BASIC HYGIENE OF SOAP, TOOTH BRUSHES, BLANKETS AND FOR THE PUNISHMENTS OF PERPETRATORS FOR THE MOST HEINOUS OF CRIMES YET UNKNOWN SUCH AS SEXUAL ASSAULTS AGAINST CHILDREN.

TRUMP IS THE FACE OF AMERICAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS, HE IS THE FACE OF ABOMINATIONS AND CRUELTY BEYOND ANY THIS NATION HAS EVER SEEN.  WHAT DID NUREMBERG MEAN ANYWAY?  TRUMP  SHOULD BE TRIED FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY!

"Fox News leads the major TV networks in broadcasting lies" -- chilled to the bone

A post of this sort is what frightens me to the bone. An interview conducted of a senior who was asked a question after a Republican Rep. Justin Amash town hall. She was asked her thoughts about his being the only Republican who would impeach Trump. She actually said she was surprised at his revealing the Trump obstruction of justice that Mueller enumerated. She said she had never heard that before because she listens to only "conservative" news. That means all she hears is lies and true fake news.  That means she never hears expert valid analysis of truth. Multiply the woman interviewed by thousands and one could see how this poison could actually win another four year term for the uber corrupt Trump screwing up domestic and foreign affairs news hurting all those who are not members of the 2% economic elite and those others on the planet who do not want war. God help us.

Somehow the truth must be gotten out to those who are his base or could add to his base because their fake news is what they want to hear and the only thing they do hear which is hardly the truth coming from an unfit-for-the-presidency liar president who has told according to the NYT more than 10,000 lies over a two year period and still counting. Trump lies ALL the time -- small lies, medium size lies and whoppers. The greatest challenge for the real truth tellers is to get our real news truths out to those who need it the most AND on election day GET OUT THE vote en masse.

The article does not let MSNBC and CNN off the hook either. I would oppose what they say especially about MSNBC and would want to read the particularities of how the Mint Press News Desk arrives at their truth about MSNBC and CNN.  As an avid watcher of MSNBC I disagree with their critique.  The experts MSNBC uses to defend what they say are the tellers of truth.  Naming but a few the analysis of Chuck Rosenberg, Wendy Sherman, Counter Intelligence expert Malcolm Nance, law professor Barbara McCuade, United States Attorney Joyce Vance, former Watergate prosecutor Jill Weinbanks,  Nick Ackerman Watergate prosecutor and many more tell the truth.  Their credentials are impeccable.  I believe MSNBC is nearly beyond reproach and certainly not in the category of Fox News.

The Orlando Sentinel announced an endorsement on the eve of the Trump campaign for the presidency address in Orlando Florida for whichever Democrat takes on Trump In 2020.  This paper which usually endorses a Republican cannot endorse Trump.  I post the link below so you can see why. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/orlando-sentinel-announces-endorsement-for-whichever-democrat-takes-on-trump-in-2020/ar-AAD44lL

The bastardization of our national character -- shame

"Justice Thomas urges U.S. Supreme Court to feel free to reverse precedents."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/justice-thomas-urges-us-supreme-court-to-feel-free-to-reverse-precedents/ar-AAD1ndv?fbclid=IwAR2ZGletJ4DxMvwELAjZYIoUyUsDt2Ba6imYRx3MoYizx0SxF4o-wDjJmjE

What composes a man like the right wing extremist Justice Thomas? Does he not realize that many human beings -- black and white -- put their lives on the line so that he could ultimately become a justice, so that he could vote, or love whom he chooses and even marry his white wife. Those precedent setting civil rights decisions and acts -- Roe v. Wade, Brown v. the Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, Lawrence v. Texas, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act -- ensured fairness, and that we could live the life of our choice hurting no one.  Allowing reversal of precedents could eradicate some or all of those rights so that civil rights decisions of equality, the right to vote, the right to eat at the same lunch counters, to go to the same movie theater as everyone else, to have a cake baked for one's wedding, to integrate formerly all white schools, to make one's own medical choice, to love whom one chooses will be nullified.  The law of the land if Thomas gets his way could force a woman to have a child conceived in most egregiously rape and most barbarously sickening incest.

I do not get Clarence Thomas or any like him who still support the values or rather no values of a characterless unethical man like Trump whose evil inhumanity and lies will transcend time.  Thomas and Trump's lack of character, compassion and bestowal of cruelty will live throughout the historical ages. It will be their epitaph and, to the extent they care, it will be their legacy.

Trumpian so called "conservatives" like Rudy Giuliani and William Barr rationalize their bestial politics by saying nothing will matter because they will ultimately be dead. Meanwhile the many who live suffer the promulgation and results of their dastardly decisions and their lack of compassionate decency.  That is how they rationalize their brutal decisions. That is how they rationalize putting children in cages, advocating the rounding up of millions of human beings seeking asylum who merely want a better life, letting asylum seekers even children die of thirst or languish in a dystopian limbo because nothing matters and everything dies. What a dastardly way to live a life and what misery those decisions will bestow on all children even their children, their children's children and many generations after will suffer for our nation's current political madness.  Shame on them.  Shame on them all and shame on us if we let this bastardization of our national character stand.  

"Trump Says He Would Accept Dirt On 2020 Opponent From Foreign Government" -- My comment: Do you feel safe?

"Asked by ABC News if he’d listen to information offered by another country about a rival, the president said, “I’d want to hear it.” He added he might not tell the FBI."

My Comment: Hillary Clinton and many others have said Donald Trump is unfit to become President of the United States the highest office in the land imbued with a plethora of power he can wield from Executive Orders on almost anything to the command setting off a nuclear blast just because he thought it might be a blast to do so.

My father was a small businessman for give or take 40 years.  He sold many things like paint, wallpaper and some hardware.  If someone came into his store and offered some interesting news on a competitor would he have taken it?  Of course he would it's a business after all in the business of making money for him only.  If he could have some knowledge about a competitor he probably would not have thought twice about taking it and he should have taken it.  Why?  Because it has nothing to do with the national security of a nation.  It has everything to do with a private business of no national import. 

A more compelling question around the instant issue of Trump saying it's perfectly okay for him or his campaign to get "dirt" on his political adversary is if my father were President of the United States and a foreign power during his campaign and afterwards offered some information on one of my father's personal electoral adversaries would he have taken it?  The no brainer answer is OF COURSE NOT!  There is a difference between being an average entrepreneur accepting information on a business competitor and being president of the United States, a position of monumental power over the lives --- let me say that again -- THE LIVES, 350 million of them -- of those governed.  Accepting information from another power be it an adversarial power like Russia or North Korea or Trump's example of Norway, a US friendly nation state, does not matter.  Once that information is given and accepted, that giver nation has the receiver in its power for blackmail or otherwise. It is insertion in the power dynamics of a nation state that could be of use to the nation offering it.

Trump is treating this issue in a way he has all his life as a builder of tall buildings and that is to accept any advantage one can no matter the source because he was a businessman, a builder of things that had nothing to do with his exercise of power over millions of people in this nation and around the world.  That is the critical difference.

Clearly it is against the law for a person of political office to accept information or anything of value for one's campaign from any foreign nation be it friendly or adversarial. 

See: 18 USC 912 -- Demanding Or Obtaining A Thing Of Value: "The distinguishing element of the second offense in § 912 is demanding or obtaining a thing of value. This element is not limited in its application to things having commercial value. Even something as intangible as information has been held sufficient." United States v. Sheker, 618 F.2d 607 (9th Cir. 1980).

This unfit for the presidency Trump made a statement to ABC's George Stephanopoulos that said in pertinent part: he would accept information from a foreign government on his opponents in the 2020 presidential election and suggested during his interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that he also would not need to alert the FBI. He is NOT acting as the owner of Trump Enterprises although some have said that Trump used his election as president of the United States for his own personal aggrandizement and nothing else. 

The campaign question becomes do you feel safer now then you did before the election of our civics know nothing President Donald J. Trump?  The answer to me would be a decided NO!

"Mick Mulvaney fires all 25 members of consumer watchdog’s advisory board"--- Desperate Times

This must stop.  Perhaps, I'm being too optimistic but it seems that Trump will not win a second term as his mental state is declining fast. The polls have every Democrat including Buttiege beating him. Trump will be 74.  Even the best of us with personalities basically intact suffer some decline. Some are lucky and do not but our "presidential" piece of trash pathological con man I suspect is not one.

Trump has zero administration.  He has only "acting" heads of agencies since most have quit or have been fired.  Trump cannot concentrate on anything and reads nothing but watches TV (mostly Fox.) Any personality would suffer collapse under such enormous legal stress especially a pathologically narcissistic one who is I suspect in the final analysis weak. 

Moreover, cozying up to authoritarians and leaving the democracies which cannot trust Trump in the lurch is a threat to all of us as well as to previously allied governments all over the world. Foreign policy is a delicate balance and Trump cannot even balance himself. Kim Jong-Un must be laughing when Trump says Kim sends love letters to him and that Trump would never allow the US CIA to work with Kim's brother. He actually said that.  Kim killed his older half brother with nerve gas because he was allegedly working for the CIA.  In essence this incompetent talked against our own CIA policy and sided with the brutal authoritarian murderous dictator Kim.

Something MUST stop this incompetent unfit-for-the-presidency so called "president " who is blowing up our national policy, cares about no one but himself, leaves the poor in this nation and those seeking refuge here hung out to dry and worse could blow up the world.  We live in desperate times.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/06/06/mick-mulvaney-fires-members-of-cfpb-advisory-board/?fbclid=IwAR3hCdNsL1lP8UQwbTB1Pmu43dFXMRzkj_8swDbuwpNkLCUcQHSm8JlGOuQ&utm_term=.017577851809

"Our Great Patriot Leader claims another illusory win"

By Max Boot [conservative]

Washington Post

 

 President Trump is the flim flam man.
He routinely takes credit for resolving crises that he himself created — and that, on closer examination, he has not really resolved. “If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” he said in January, even though he was the one who raised the danger level with his reckless threats of “fire and fury” and he has not succeeded in stopping North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
After offending both Mexico and Canada with his steel and aluminum tariffs and blustery ultimatums, Trump claimed credit for negotiating “the USMCA, the spectacular & very popular new Trade Deal that replaces NAFTA, the worst Trade Deal in the history of the U.S.A.” — even though, in truth, there is scant difference between the two accords.

Then, on Friday evening, just days before the tariffs he had threatened to impose on Mexico were to take effect, Trump announced an agreement “to greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico.”

You would think by now that even the president’s supporters might be slightly skeptical when he claims spectacular achievements with details to come. But like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football that Lucy always snatches away, they immediately tried to score political points off the nebulous Friday-night announcement.
“The threat of tariffs got Mexico to agree to take unprecedented steps to control illegal migration,” crowed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who once called Trump a “con artist” before joining the sycophancy caucus. That caucus’s honorary chairman, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who once tweeted that Trump  is “an opportunist” who is “not fit to be President,” chirped: “I appreciate President Trump’s bold leadership and applaud this agreement.” The New York Post — owned by News Corp., whose chairman, Rupert Murdoch, reportedly called Trump a “phony” before becoming his courtier — opined: “Trump left his Mexico critics stunned, speechless.”

Ah, if only Trump’s toadies had waited a few hours, they might have avoided an own goal. For on Saturday, the New York Times revealed that “the deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months.” And those actions — deploying Mexico’s ineffectual national guard to its border with Guatemala and allowing some asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated in the United States — are unlikely to have much of an impact on undocumented migration.

But what of Trump’s boast that “MEXICO HAS AGREED TO IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS!”? The use of ALL CAPS — a little too insistent — and the employment of a description for farmers that sounds as if it was lifted from Pravda, circa 1935, should indicate that this fanfaronade, too, wasn’t quite on the level. And, indeed, Mexican officials told Bloomberg News on Saturday they never discussed agricultural purchases in the days leading up the ballyhooed accord.
Our Great Patriot Leader was reduced to claiming that somewhere out there — perhaps in an alternative universe where he really is an “extremely stable genius” — there exists a super-duper, top-secret accord that “will be announced at the appropriate time” but that, on this planet, neither Mexican nor U.S. officials seemed to know anything about.

The striking thing is that Trump’s con-artistry continues to find so many willing marks who will remain forever convinced, notwithstanding all that is reported otherwise, that he made Mexico bow before his awesomeness. They are abetted, these Trump dupes, by cynical Republicans on Capitol Hill who know this achievement is as phony as a degree from Trump University but pretend otherwise to flatter the mercurial and egomaniacal occupant of the Oval Office. They are secretly breathing a sigh of relief that Trump’s flimflammery averted a potentially catastrophic economic showdown. If they had a little more backbone, these Republicans would see that they have more power than they realize: It was GOP opposition, not Mexican concessions, that made Trump back down from his tariff threats.

What happens next? Well, if migration at the southern border declines in the next few months for any reason, Trump will claim credit, just as he claims credit for a fortune that he inherited from his father and an economic expansion that he inherited from President Barack Obama. And if migration doesn’t decline, Trump will holler that Mexico has betrayed him and will engage in another round of brinkmanship that might not have such a happy ending. Trump’s amnesiac supporters will not hold the success or failure of this faux accord against him; their faith runs too deep to be shaken by mere facts (a.k.a. “fake news”).

But other countries will look at this episode and conclude (a) that Trump is a bad bluffer and (b) that he is quick to declare victory even when he hasn’t won anything. The United States’ credibility is eroding as rapidly as the presidency’s dignity and decorum.

Disaster

Trump's rude indictment of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Shumer with the backdrop of the dead at Normandy was an abomination. I believe It simply shows one how frightened of them Trump is. If everyone who has a disagreement with him is a "disaster" then no one is but him.   I suspect down deep he knows that. 

He believes few of the thoughts within his admirable speech at Normandy.  It was most probably written for him as he cozies up to strongmen dictators of authoritarian countries which heretofore were US adversaries.  He impugns democracies, democratic leaders and NATO but says he has received love letters from a vicious tyrant such as Kim Jong-un of Communist North Korea and of course has not one bad word to say about Russia's Putin. 

The proper response to Fox News Laura Ingraham's political question would have been to say that day was not the day to talk about politics. It was a day to honor the Allied dead of Normandy and WWII who kept us free and saved the world!

When We See Us

I saw the great Netflix docudrama "When They See Us" about the miscarriage of justice of the case of the Central Park jogger an occurrence that happened on April 19, 1986. Ava DuVernay has constructed a masterpiece. This is one of the most wonderful docudramas based on a true incident I have seen. I remember well the chilling story about the rape and bludgeoning of a white woman as she jogged in Central Park, New York. Those of us removed from the crime had no knowledge that the police, the prosecutors and the press did such a horrendous job covering it and prosecuting it. The horrific impact on those five innocent young boys because of the guilty verdict is something no amount of settlement can erase. 

As a white person in the suburbs of another state I swallowed the verdict hook, line and sinker. Now I am ashamed that I along with probably the majority of the nation did. We did not know these boys were coerced and beaten into submission by the police investigators and prosecutors.
 
When they are found innocent years later because of sheer luck that the real perpetrator of the horrific rape and assault shared the same prison milieu as one of the boys. DNA does it again as it has many times before. It finds the real perpetrator and frees five boys who have been in prison hell unjustly for years.

In the end I cried and could not stop crying. I am still crying for the miscarriage of justice, the immense suffering of the five innocent boys, for those of us who believed the press, police and the prosecution at the time and who did not question power. Power will do anything to keep that power even if it means ruining the lives of young innocent human beings. 

Shame on the prosecutor who because of the docudrama has now resigned, shame on the NYC police of that time and shame on us who think we are in post racial times as our Supreme Court has erroneously proclaimed only to deny justice to persons of color yet again and again and again. When will it stop? This taught me yet another time to, as Howard Zinn said to me years before, always question the decisions of those in power. Who do those decisions benefit and why? 

Deep apologies to those boys, and deep apologies for a Donald Trump who knows no justice nor humanity still and who wanted execution of those innocent boys paying $85,000 to the New York Daily News advocating it without knowing a thing about this miscarriage of justice. May the Trump crime family of massive hypocrisy see the inside of those cells those boys had to endure and may our nation understand the racism that still exists here embedded in the sinew of our bones. May we always know, as the crowds in Harlem proclaimed, that black lives matter and understand well that they do!

THE TRUTH

I finished the last episode of the docudrama "Chernobyl." This is a masterpiece of docudrama excellence. I urge everyone to see it not for its indictment of nuclear power but most especially its indictment of lies told by the state to assuage the guilt of a powerful few.   Lies, in the final analysis, were responsible for the massive death count of Chernobyl. 

I emphatically recommend it to Donald Trump who knows how to tell a lie. This will tell him the cost of lies. The cost is enormous. The truth no matter how difficult must be told not only because it is ethical and right but because the truth saves lives!

Siege

Michael Wolfe was on Larry last night. He has a new book out "Siege" an extension of his last book "Fire and Fury." He said among other things Trump is getting psychologically worse and worse every day. For a person with an average job okay happens all the time but for one who has the most powerful job in the world carrying the nuclear codes with him his psychological state getting worse means we are ALL world wide at risk. How on god's earth could our nation have elected such an ignoramus with a malevolent and now declining psychological status? God help us!!

Best argument for choice I have ever read

Best argument for choice I have ever read
By: Dr. David Diuguid: Biologically, life begins at conception; otherwise, none of us would be here. Having said that“life” cannot exist outside a woman’s body until at an absolute minimum, 20-24 weeks gestation, even with the current advances in modern medicine. Thus, the question, at least until that point in gestation, is (at least in my mind), does a woman have a right to choose what happens to her body during that time period? It is NOT as simple as murder, as much as the Catholic Church would like us to believe (and by the way, I was raised Catholic). I would submit that she does. In addition, it has been calculated that at least 1/3 of pregnancies end in miscarriage, mostly secondary to genetic defects caused by the complexity of getting egg and sperm to unite and form into a normal human being, or to problems with the embryo implanting into the uterine wall. That process has NEVER been considered to be murder, even though the end result is the same.
Moreover, bringing human life into the world requires not just a commitment to carry a child to delivery. It should also require a commitment to raise that child to an age where he/she can be an independent organism. Human infants are amongst the most helpless animals in the panoply of species (it’s the price we pay for having such large heads - children have to be born before they can care for themselves, because a woman’s body can’t support them for any longer period of time, and they won’t be able to get out of the uterus if they remain any longer). Most of the sociologic underpinnings that we live by in all civilizations on earth were created to allow children to be raised to adulthood, without being killed by other species. If we are going to make the commitment to bring all conceived children into the world, then it follows that we MUST make the commitment to raise those children to a point where they can be independent. We cannot, as Barney Frank once said of the Republican Party, follow the creed that “Life begins at conception and ends at birth”. I for one am not willing to commit myself personally or to commit us as a society to the monumental task of raising all of those children to adulthood, and if I’m not willing to take on that task, then the logical extension is that I have no right to tell a woman (or a man, for that matter) that she/he must do so. I find it morally far more outrageous to bring children into the world and then to not properly care for them.

RE: the question of sex, I would dare say that there would be just as much protest from women as from men if there were a call to boycott sex (look at the reaction to Alyssa Milano’s call to inaction). Sex is fun, not to mention a basic biological drive, and you will NEVER stop sex. The most that anyone has ever been able to do is to limit sex to procreation, and even that has been an utter failure in most societies.

This discussion ultimately comes down to who has the greater right - the woman carrying the child, or the unborn child. It is not as simple as saying that the child is always first priority or the woman is always first priority. The guidelines that have been set up following Roe v Wade (a case that I think was properly decided, albeit with shaky legal underpinnings) I think are appropriate given the biological and the sociological facts with which we have to deal. Having said this, there will always be a debate as to where and when to draw the lines, which will keep our legislators and judges in business until the end of time.

Finally, abortions have been performed since the earliest time of medical care, for all of the reasons noted above, and for many others. It has ALWAYS been the most common surgical procedure in any era of history that you want to look at. We can either provide access to safe abortions, or we can put the life of both mother and fetus at risk. Having seen some of the horrors of back alley abortions, I for one do not want to go back to that era."

"Republican Justin Amash fires back at GOP critics — and makes a forceful case for impeaching Trump"

Yesterday, I was going to write an opinion on the case for impeaching the worst, most cruel, most mendacious, most obstructive abuser of power and the most threatening to our constitutional democratic way of life of any president in US history, Donald J. Trump.   Instead I wrote a piece about the verbal lying lead up to war with Iran.

In truth, that opinion had everything to do with the myriad of investigations, lies, Russian interference in the homeland and a case Mueller made for impeachment in response to Trump's obstruction of justice and abuse of power laid out in Volume II of the Mueller Report.

I was going to research it all but instead Justin Amash, Libertarian Republican from Missouri did it for me by releasing a set of his tweets that said it all.  Representative Amash wrote a well written and Constitutionally sound case of the rationales for impeachment of Donald Trump.  He is the first Republican with the moral scruples to have written such.  I could not have written one as complete as he.  Donald J. Trump  surely this deserves impeachment.  If he doesn't no one does.  I paste Rep. Amash's tweets below:

Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) is firing back at critics within his own party who slammed him for arguing over the weekend that President Donald Trump has committed “impeachable” offenses.

In a tweet storm posted on Monday afternoon, Amash issued a point-by-point takedown of all the arguments Republicans have made to shield Trump from impeachment.

“People who say there were no underlying crimes and therefore the president could not have intended to illegally obstruct the investigation — and therefore cannot be impeached — are resting their argument on several falsehoods,” Amash began. “In fact, there were many crimes revealed by the investigation, some of which were charged, and some of which were not but are nonetheless described in Mueller’s report.”

Amash then ripped apart the argument that you can only obstruct justice if you are implicated in an underlying crime — and he showed how the entire legal system could fall apart if suspects could get away with obstructing justice to thwart prosecutors from determining whether crimes had been committed.

“Prosecutors might not charge a crime precisely *because* obstruction of justice denied them timely access to evidence that could lead to a prosecution,” he wrote. “If an underlying crime were required, then prosecutors could charge obstruction of justice only if it were unsuccessful in completely obstructing the investigation. This would make no sense.”

Read the entire tweet storm below.

Justin Amash ✔ @justinamash

People who say there were no underlying crimes and therefore the president could not have intended to illegally obstruct the investigation—and therefore cannot be impeached—are resting their argument on several falsehoods:

1. They say there were no underlying crimes.

In fact, there were many crimes revealed by the investigation, some of which were charged, and some of which were not but are nonetheless described in Mueller’s report

2. They say obstruction of justice requires an underlying crime.

In fact, obstruction of justice does not require the prosecution of an underlying crime, and there is a logical reason for that. Prosecutors might not charge a crime precisely *because* obstruction of justice denied them timely access to evidence that could lead to a prosecution.

If an underlying crime were required, then prosecutors could charge obstruction of justice only if it were unsuccessful in completely obstructing the investigation. This would make no sense.

3. They imply the president should be permitted to use any means to end what he claims to be a frivolous investigation, no matter how unreasonable his claim.

In fact, the president could not have known whether every single person Mueller investigated did or did not commit any crimes.

4. They imply “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” requires charges of a statutory crime or misdemeanor.

In fact, “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is not defined in the Constitution and does not require corresponding statutory charges. The context implies conduct that violates the public trust—and that view is echoed by the Framers of the Constitution and early American scholars.

If only the remainder of Congressional Republicans would be brave enough to enunciate what they know to be true as Justin Amash did.  There is no question the president obstructed justice and abused his power many times.  Read Volume II of the Mueller Report which describes how he did in plain English how he did for all to understand.

At long last

The latest trumped up rationale attempting to justify an American war-like posture regarding the Iran threat is one I could have predicted.  One wonders why the media with the reflection of the Iraq debacle in the not-too-distant background says nothing challenging the president's veracity about the threat that Iran poses.   When asked what the threat was from Iran reality show Donald says "You do not want to know."  Sounds convincing?  No it sounds like the Trump Reality Show lie speak which I admit he does very well.  The unfit for the presidency illiterate in the White House pulled the US out of a nuclear agreement with Iran that the previous administration worked so hard to create and to which Iran was adhering.  It lowered the potential of war between the US and Iran as well as lowered the nuclear threat.  Bolton and Trump pulling the US out of it knew justification for war with Iran would be easier.

Iran is a threat?  I suspect not.  Trump ought to take what Iran had to say in response to Trump's explosive rhetoric of eradicating Iran and, indeed, show some respect.  And by the way tell the truth.  Who is the real threat? Trump's ugly bellicose rhetoric and a president who kisses the authoritarian Putin's ring, a president who turns his back on the west and our separation of powers Constitutional democracy is not one I can easily believe.   Could the truth telling MSNBC, CNN and other credible networks ask how is Iran to react when Trump pulls out of a nuclear agreement that tamped down the threat of war between both nations?  Trump's threatening rhetoric toward Iran created one cog in the wheel of war so Trump can justify it.

Why does the real press not tell the truth about US war and why does it let Trump spew his lies and foment fear to justify it?  Get it right this time as war monger Bolton tries to ramp up Trump's words of war so he can get what he has always wanted regime change in Iran and at the same time Trump can turn the public's eye away from Trump's corruption, legal woes, obvious obstruction of justice and possible impeachment by wagging the dog's tail.  Howard Zinn used to say about a nation's leaders advocating war "question everything."  What does a nation have to gain and what do people in that nation have to gain the most from war? 

People die and some are maimed for life in war.  Taking the US government's justification for war needs to be scrupulously questioned.  Nearly 60,000 American lives were lost in Vietnam and a million Vietnamese deaths based on the Gulf of Tonkin lie; Nearly 5000 American deaths in Iraq along with its allies numbers, over 500,000 Iraqi deaths and countless others wounded and/or maimed for life based on the WMD lie.  American soldiers die in war.  Civilian innocents die in war and are often led into it by leaders who never spent a day in their life fighting it. President Bone Spur got out of Vietnam and could not tell you on which foot his so called bone spur was. 

Quoting Joseph Welch during the Army/McCarthy fabrications of Communists in the US government that ruined lives and careers in the 1950's:  "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"  RESIST!

NYT: "Trump May Be Preparing Pardons for Servicemen Accused of War Crimes"

As I have been saying for a long time nothing horrific about Trump ever surprises me anymore.  What would Justice Jackson say? What did Nuremberg stand for?  Our nation or part of it has gone utterly insane.  Our nation is better than that aren't we?  A question I never had to pose.

The story:  

By Dave Philipps

• May 18, 2019

"President Trump has indicated that he is considering pardons for several American military members accused or convicted of war crimes, including high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder and desecration of a corpse, according to two United States officials.

The officials said that the Trump administration had made expedited requests this week for paperwork needed to pardon the troops on or around Memorial Day.

One request is for Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of the Navy SEALs, who is scheduled to stand trial in the coming weeks on charges of shooting unarmed civilians and killing an enemy captive with a knife while deployed in Iraq.

The others are believed to include the case of a former Blackwater security contractor recently found guilty in the deadly 2007 shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis; the case of Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, the Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010; and the case of a group of Marine Corps snipers charged with urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said they had not seen a complete list, and did not know if other service members were included in the request for pardon paperwork.

The White House sent requests on Friday to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which alerted the military branches, according to one senior military official. Pardon files include background information and details on criminal charges, and in many cases include letters describing how the person in question has made amends.

The official said while assembling pardon files typically takes months, the Justice Department stressed that all files would have to be complete before Memorial Day weekend, because the President planned to pardon the men then. A second United States official confirmed the request concerning Chief Gallagher.

[Chief Gallagher’s case has been thrown into turmoil over claims of spying.]

The military branches referred questions to the Justice Department, which declined to comment on the matter.

Mr. Trump has often bypassed traditional channels in granting pardons and wielded his power freely, sometimes in politically charged cases that resonate with him personally, such as the conviction of the former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. Earlier this month, the president pardoned former Army First Lt. Michael Behenna, who had been convicted of killing an Iraqi during an interrogation in 2008.

While the requests for pardon files are a strong sign of the president’s plans, Mr. Trump has been known to change his mind and it is not clear what the impetus was for the requests. But most of the troops who are positioned for a pardon have been championed by conservative lawmakers and media organizations, such as Fox News, which have portrayed them as being unfairly punished for trying to do their job. Many have pushed for the president to intervene. The White House declined to comment.

Pardoning several accused and convicted war criminals at once, including some who have not yet gone to trial, has not been done in recent history, legal experts said. Some worried that it could erode the legitimacy of military law and undercut good order and discipline in the ranks.

Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, left, the Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010. Creditvia the office of Rep. Duncan Hunter"

Image

Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, left, the Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010.Creditvia the office of Rep. Duncan Hunter

“These are all extremely complicated cases that have gone through a careful system of consideration. A freewheeling pardon undermines that whole system,” said Gary Solis, a retired military judge and armor officer who served in Vietnam. “It raises the prospect in the minds of the troops that says, ‘Whatever we do, if we can get the folks back home behind us, maybe we can get let off.’”

Chief Gallagher’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, was surprised by the news that the president could be considering a pardon, and said ideally the chief would be acquitted at trial.

“We want the opportunity to exonerate my client,” Mr. Parlatore said in an interview. “At the same time, there is always a risk in going to trial. My primary objective is to get Chief Gallagher home to his family. To that end, Chief Gallagher would welcome any involvement by the president.”

[Navy SEALS were warned not to speak out about Chief Gallagher.]

Other than violating military law, the cases the president is said to be considering defy easy categorization.

Navy SEALs who served with Chief Gallagher told authorities he indiscriminately shot at civilians, gunning down a young woman in a flowered hijab and an unarmed old man. They also said he stabbed a teenage captive, then bragged about it in text messages. His trial is set to start at the end of this month. If convicted, he faces life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and denies all charges.

Major Golsteyn is charged with killing an Afghan man that he and other soldiers said had bomb-making materials. After an interrogation, the soldiers let the man go. Fearing that the man would return to making improvised explosives, which had already killed two Marines in the area, Major Golsteyn later said he killed the man.

Mr. Trump has singled both men out on Twitter, calling Major Golsteyn a “U.S. Military hero,” and praising Chief Gallagher for his service to the country.

The Blackwater contractor, Nicholas A. Slatten, is one of several Blackwater contractors charged in the killing of 17 Iraqis and the wounding of 20 more on a Baghdad street. After a number of mistrials and other delays, he is the only one who has been convicted.

The Marines charged in urinating on the corpse of a Taliban fighter were caught after a video of the act was found.

The fact that the requests were sent from the White House to the Justice Department, instead of the other way around, is a reversal of long-established practices, said Margaret Love, who served as the United States pardon attorney during the first Bush administration and part of the Clinton administration.

Long ago, presidents wielded clemency power directly, Ms. Love said, but that changed at the end of the Civil War when President Lincoln delegated review of clemency requests to his attorney general. Since then, cases have generally been vetted by Justice Department lawyers before being sent to the president.

President Trump has upended that practice, often issuing pardons with little or no notice to the Justice Department, she said, adding that the fact the department is requesting files on men like Chief Gallagher at all suggests that Attorney General William P. Barr is trying to re-exert some authority over the process.

Process aside, she said that pardoning the men would be an abrupt departure from the past.

“Presidents use pardons to send messages. They recognize when a process wasn’t just or when punishments were too extreme, like for some nonviolent drug cases,” she said. “If this president is planning to pardon a bunch of people charged with war crimes, he will use the pardon power to send a far darker message.”

Eric Schmitt, Maggie Haberman and Katie Benner contributed reporting.

"I’m From Alabama And Gave Birth To My Rapist’s Child Because I Couldn’t Get An Abortion"

Everyone should read this story below and think what the bestial men and one woman governor of Alabama have done. Shame on them and shame on any court that does not strike down this anti-choice draconian insane law! Keep abortion private, legal and safe. Let the woman decide her fate.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alabama-abortion-law-rape_n_5cdc3627e4b09d94af53f471

The light of Day

Doris Day died today.  She lived a long, sometimes difficult but interesting life. Her name Day was a metaphor, I think, for the cultural light she reflected. I remember her well. No matter the age those who have defined an era are particularly hard to see leave us.

Sometimes I wish I could return to that innocent era where a movie like Pillow Talk with Rock Hudson could be so popular. In our age of realism the fact that Rock Hudson was gay could never be hidden and that is a good thing, however, the innocence that has been lost to a modern era that has far too much sexual realism, physical brutality and the freedom to declare the crass speech of hate okay has done something evil to our culture and coarsened it. Steve Allen entitled his book "Vulgarians at the Gate" and wrote about it.  It allows a Donald Trump to joke about killing immigrants in the Florida panhandle with no penalty levied against him for saying it. It was, he claimed, a joke after all until some sick someone who supports Trump chooses to think that a very good idea to do.

A president colors an era.  Trump's use of incorrect as well as profane verbiage defines the ugliness of our present time. There are no limits to the filth that pours out of his mouth as well as his emblem of adultery, misogyny and harassment that has defined his behavior with women.   I am sure Doris Day had something critical to say about that.  I know I do.

How has it come to this?

My father and I had many political discussions.  His views, at least initially, had a profound impact on me.  Although Republican he did not hide his love for Franklin Roosevelt and his love of Roosevelt's proclivity for verbal eloquence.  When FDR spoke my father listened.  I was born well after Roosevelt's death but I felt like I knew him.  I visited his grave, Eleanor's grave and his dog Fala's grave at Hyde Park, New York.  I stood there and cried yearning for that moment in time when he lived to be repeated in my era.  I have never known what it would be like to love a president like my father loved Roosevelt. 

I wonder, too, what he would think of our current classless and brash 1000 lies narcissistic president who loves himself more than anyone else and because he does perpetrated the greatest con of the century upon an electorate who believed the lies he told.  He was going to give big tax breaks to everyone but did so permanently only for the top 2% wealthiest telling his friends at his Mar A Lago Estate that they were going to love him come tax time.  He told his supporters during the campaign that he was going to repeal Obamacare but that he was going to replace it with something better than before, moreover, he was not going to let insurance companies get away with not paying for preexisting conditions.  He did neither.  He told them he was going to solve illegal immigration but said nothing about a Holocaustesque separation of children from their parents made worse by failing to include a way to reunite them with the parents who brought them into this world in the first place leaving them alone and afraid stuck in cages or tents.  How did it come to this?

Trump told his fans he was extraordinarily wealthy, a fabulous businessman and smart.  They did not care he refused to show his taxes even though every other modern-day president has proclaiming ad infinitum they were under audit.  What was he hiding?   They did not care that he refused to show a copy of his grades and threatened a lawsuit if any of the institutions he attended revealed them.   When the Access Hollywood tape came out as he proudly declared because he was rich women let him do most anything to them.  Even that did not bother his so called moral Evangelical supporters.  He is the first American president to fall in love with authoritarian dictators and eschew the democracies of Europe even threatening NATO, America's premier defense of Europe.  I have read and it has been alleged that he keeps on his night table a copy of Mein Kampf, Hitler's autobiography written in Landsberg prison where he was held for an attempted overthrow of the German Weimer state.  Trump, by his own admission, has fallen in love with Kim Jong Un, the brutal executioner of the innocent of N. Korea.  Then there is always Putin, the man he loves the most; a man whom he believes did not subvert the 2016 election because Putin told him emphatically he did not and Trump believes him over the truth tellers of his own national security administration.  How did it come to this?

By far the most subversive element in which he is now engaged is threatening our nation's greatest 1789 foundational legacy -- The Constitutional separation of powers.  Our Founders formed this government so that each coequal branch of government would protect against totalitarian usurpation of power the Founders knew human flesh to be heir to.  They wanted a Republic we could keep.  Trump's hand has been caught in the cookie jar stealing all the benefits democracy has to offer, siding with dictators and denying all that our first branch of government, the legislative branch, is requesting from its second Executive branch.  Sure, Trump thinks, let it play out in the courts.  By that time he would have won a second term.  Donald J. Trump is a liar, he is a con man, he is a racist,  a self dealer, a criminal, a lousy deal maker we now know lost 1 billion bucks from from 1985 to 1994 paying zero taxes.  We now know he would be indicted, convicted and sent to jail for his myriad of crimes too numerous to mention here if only he were not president of a nation which does not indict a sitting president.  How has it come to this?

In one of my many discussions with my father I asked him about the 1933 southern Populist Governor of Louisiana, Huey Long.  My father said that he was a bad man who wanted to be a king.  Huey Long was ultimately assassinated on the steps of the Louisiana state capitol.   It reminds me of the Lord Acton quotes:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

“Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”

“Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.”

“Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.”

“Absolute power demoralizes.”  

Will our Republic stand against this would be dictator Trump or will it succumb to an authoritarian corrupt executive who in his heart wants to be a king?  We must ask ourselves how it has come to this and, if we survive it, how will we never let it happen again.

Terror on the Right

Trump Admin Disbanded Domestic Terror Unit Amid Rising Far-Right Violence

The far right is the most vicious and violent of all on the political spectrum. The far right has zero empathy and zero morality. They are exclusionary and not egalitarian or inclusive. Since their morality is zero, killing for their cause -- the white "race" is done with impunity. They do not care about those who cannot care for themselves. Their belief in a superior white race means that they want the weakest to die and government to pay nothing to help anyone. It's that simple. 

Read Mein Kampf for their road map and listen to Adolph Hitler's screaming diatribes for their inspiration.  Trump has his visions set on eradicating Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security with a rollback of corporate regulations initiated in other administrations to protect us and the planet we live on.   The only thing Trump wants to protect is his bank accounts no matter the fraudulent methods he used to accumulate his wealth.  It is time to RESIST this, and act for all of those who cannot act for themselves.

The Unsinkable Hatred of the Jew

The killing of one and the wounding of three at the Chabad Synagogue in Poway, CA, the killing of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and anti-Semitic strikes having risen 57%  in the United States forces the embers of my anger to reverberate once again in my soul, to rise up again in my consciousness and to yet again decade after torturous decade prod me to ask why. 

Shakespeare writes of Shylock the Jew in The Merchant Of Venice Act 3, scene 1, 58–68 circa 1596:

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that."
Shylock's questions are profound and yet the answers to his questions remain to this day illusive.  Why one Jew or why 6 million Jews killed beggars the imagination so we strive with dizzying thought to find rationality in the irrational.  How does a religion whose Son of God is a Jew, whose people were Jews, and whose religious practices were Jewish become the missile of world-wide vitriolic AntiSemitic hatred throws?

The answers incomplete as they are lie, of course, in two thousand years of text, bounced around over history's net in the spoken word from one generation to the next so that even utterly mendacious and insipid untruths appear as fact and are used in some ritual or another as a reason to torture and murder Jews at any time, at any place and for any reason.  Old canards are by the murder at Poway used to mix with even older accusations of deicide taken from some New Testament texts to aid in his rationale for murder.  Anti-Semitism evolves.   “You are not forgotten Simon of Trent, the horror that you and countless children have endured at the hands of the Jews will never be forgiven,” the killer wrote using the Internet as his servant.  "His thoughts reached millions around the world. But the hatred at its core could have been plucked directly from the 15th century" or even the second century to contemporary antisemitism that boasts "Jews will not replace us" as if Jews everywhere were looking to do just that. 

The longest hatred has albeit evolved over time so that it is able to neatly mix with the prevailing cultural milieu endeavoring to strike fear in the hearts of white Christian men and women everywhere that prompts them toward violence in service of it. Accusations against the Jew by white Nationalists as the polluter of whatever the white Christian race is serves up a fundamental ingredient of anti Semitism and a rationale for the murdering of all Jews. But, no, that is not enough.  Anti Semitism must rest on its initial accusation some two thousand years ago of God killer.  Who could argue with killing a people whose ancestors were guilty of committing that?  I could and you should -- all of you -- lest this Republic Franklin admonished us to keep will not be kept and this oldest of hatreds will become unsinkable.