Not many options left to save the Party of Lincoln

 

“If fascism comes [to America] … it will probably be ‘wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution’.”  - James Waterman Wise, Jr

Following November’s presidential election, GOP voters seemed to send a mixed message.  While eager to hang on to their congressional candidates - many who supported Trumpism -  they seem to be ready to show Trump himself the exit door.  Were they hoping for a return to something that would come close to reflecting traditional conservative values and allegiance to the Constitution?

If that is indeed what many GOP voters signaled for, their Party leaders failed to get the message. The conspiracy absurdities that Trump continues to promote, without any credible facts or data to support them, now reveal a political party that has detached itself from reality.  More seriously is the appearance it gives to aligning themselves with a wannabe dictator.

Failing to gain either the popular or electoral majority, Trump sycophants fell in line with him to use this country’s legal system to overturn the legitimate election that created a Biden/Harris victory.  And to the horror of many Texans along with Texas evangelical, Beth Moore, it seems that this cuckoo choo-choo is being driven by some of our own citizens.  

With Crayolas gripped angrily in his child-like fist, Texas AG Ken Paxton - who’s currently under federal indictment for securities fraud - scrawled out an absurd, unprecedented lawsuit to support the lunacy of those who signed on to this nonsense.  

Putting their name to this coup attempt was our own Michael Burgess and eleven other Texas Republican congressmen.  Senator Ted Cruz, whose wife and father were insulted in 2016 by Donald Trump, gleefully agreed to his request to represent this joke in the nation’s Supreme Court.  

To their credit, the high court firmly rebuked the laughable lawsuit, sending these infantile whiners back to face (hopefully) most of their outraged constituents.  Adding to the crazy was Texas’ GOP Party Chairman Adam West who called for acts of secession from the states whose AGs signed on to Paxton’s document.

So what’s a traditional Republican faced with as many of their members capitulate to the incompetent and power-crazed whims of a narcissistic buffoon?  

Where moderate Republicans are vying with extremists elements in their Party, progressive Independents like me could cross over in primaries to vote for such GOP moderates.  This doesn’t bind us to that candidate in the general election.  But the loss to a sensible adult Republican in the vein of a John McCain, Mitt Romney or even Susan Collins would be preferable over those Louie Gohmert types we’re getting stuck with.

Another option for that 20-30% of GOP voters who still seem to live in the real world could be to simply start voting for the Democratic candidate in traditional Republican strongholds where Trump devotees have won the GOP nomination.  Such sacrifices would hurt in the short run but should eventually reawaken the saner aspects to Lincoln’s Party - the man who championed the cause of preserving the Union. Not to do so it seems would only further drive the once mighty GOP down that rabbit hole that will forever reflect a hopeless, pathetic shadow of its former self.

A century ago Democrats, stained for decades by the actions of many in their party for their support of slavery’s brutal suppression followed by Jim Crow racism began to turn things around from this negative image.  They would lead the way in forging legislation that created the kind of equality for all men and women that many founders had originally idealized.

Is there sufficient moral clarity within the GOP to do the same today by pulling itself away from their voter suppression tactics and the autocratic abyss that Trump has led them into?

Some still riding the Trump Crazy Train

“I believe we never become our entire and honest selves until we are dead - and not then until we have been dead for years and years.  People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier” - Mark Twain

Twain’s dark humor here seems to address how cowards dwell in their own skin as they  live among those who share their unfounded fears in order to fit in.  A sort of survival instinct if you will.  The fact that humans are never fully honest is a no brainer.  It speaks to that part of us where courage is too often missing at times when it’s needed most.  

Cowardice on a grand scale can impact entire societies, threatening the stability a people need to grow and lift us past those fears that hold us back from attaining “a more perfect union”.
Though some of Trump’s supporters have begrudgingly accepted a Biden presidency, the passenger list aboard the Cuckoo Choo-choo still remains considerable.  That list consists of Rudy “Drip Dry” Giuliani, Sidney “blow up Georgia” Powell, Lindsey “two-faced” Graham, Texas’ AG Ken Paxton and a host of FOX pundits including Sean “conspiracy king” Hannity, Lou “Unhinged” Dobbs and Tucker “elitist hound” Carlson.  

Then of course there are the tens of thousands of QAnon freaks who allege “that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against” the Donald, who they divine is fighting the cabal.

Though these people can be viewed as delusional they are not necessarily cowards.  The true cowards are those who know better and yet remain silent in light of these
absurdities.  Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and most of his Republican majority lead this assault on sanity including our own John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.  They hide behind the crowds claiming Biden’s victory was illegitimate and in essence demur to the unfounded notion virulently expressed by one misguided Trump die-hard that it was the man-child who won the election by a landslide

The fraud that Trump and his lick-spittle legal team claim about debunked voter fraud conspiracies threatens our electoral process, now and in future elections, to the delight of our global adversaries, especially China and Russia.  With their operative in the White House they have to exercise little influence of their own to achieve the chaos they so desperately desire for our democratic republic.

This attack on our constitutional staples has been used previously by such brutal dictators as Spain’s Franco, Italy’s Mussolini and Germany’s Adolph Hitler who clawed power away from established democratic institutions through mob violence.  With their weakened economies and an appeal to nationalism these despots felt free to authorize monstrous behavior that resulted in millions of innocent men, women and children perishing.

Along the same lines, as this lame duck president huddles in his White House bunker, clamoring for his followers to over throw the election, his mismanagement of the pandemic crisis will contribute to as many as 400,000 plus deaths sometime this January, aided and abetted by the cowardice of GOP elected officials who stand idly by as he behaves in this unforgivable fashion.

Lincoln’s divided nation pitted pro-slavey advocates and abolitionists against each other. Today it’s those who support Trump’s autocratic maneuvers versus those of us who wish to sustain our constitutional institutions and norms.   Though the voter mail fraud conspiracy will likely become just another silly contrivance by those people who also lost touch with reality in their day, it will remain a source of division among us for years.

Edmund Burke warned civilization that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

It’s time for courage, not fear, to grip the reins of leadership in this country and lead us out of this political morass.  To those unwilling or unable to confront the ignoble, petulant loser that Trump has become I say, “grow a pair” and help move this nation forward lest what integrity you claim for yourself is massively overshadowed by your total absence of nerve.

Healing our national wounds will not be easy

 “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”   - Abraham Lincoln

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln attempted to assuage the heated emotions of a nation that had just been ripped apart by a Civil War, fought mainly over ending our national shame with slavery.  Inspiring as it was he still forfeited his life a little over a month later at the hands of a bitter opponent.  Since then, the desires for the South to rise again have echoed among white supremacists groups, emboldened early on with the release of the 1915 racist silent film, “Birth of a Nation”

The founders’ attempt at creating a united nation never really materialized fully following the ratification of our Constitution.  Race was and has been the unsettling issue that keeps us divided.  It was felt that following Obama’s election to the presidency that it would no longer be a contentious problem.  But systemic racism is perhaps as strong now as it has ever been over the last century and a half.  And there is little doubt that many of those Trump supporters chanting “make America great again” were simply anxious to remove a president they saw as an unnatural American of African-Muslim dissent.

I was recently reminded that the virtue of grace is given, not earned.  It was this attempt at promoting grace however that seemed to fall short for Lincoln.  Nonetheless, I believe grace should always be the guiding light be which we confront our adversaries.  This however doesn’t entail ignoring those people with deep-seated hates and who are bent on violence.  The specter of extremist behavior threatens stability in any society and opens the door to repressive authoritarianism.

In his recent article “A Large Portion of the Electorate Chose the Sociopath” conservative author and former Republican Tom Nichols cogently articulates what most of us have become aware of over the last four years.

“America is now a different country. Nearly half of the voters have seen Trump in all of his splendor—his infantile tirades, his disastrous and lethal policies, his contempt for democracy in all its forms—and they decided that they wanted more of it. His voters can no longer hide behind excuses about the corruption of Hillary Clinton or their willingness to take a chance on an unproven political novice. They cannot feign ignorance about how Trump would rule. They know, and they have embraced him.”

It’s not clear exactly how Trump will behave between now and January 20th when Joe Biden takes over that office but with Trump’s incompetence in handling the pandemic he claimed would disappear after the election, we’ll see it become more widespread and more detrimental to our economy.

Not wanting to be seen as a loser either, Trump will likely go out kicking and screaming much like the spoiled child being removed from the store by his parents because he didn’t get the toy he wanted.

In an interview conducted in 2014 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael D’Antonio, Trump was asked to contemplate the meaning of his life. “I don’t like to analyze myself”, he said “because I might not like what I see.”   

In her tell all book about her uncle, Mary L Trump reveals how this loser demon came to possess Donald at an early age by his father Fred’s insistence that they inherit his killer instincts and a take-no-prisoners attitude.  It was this fear of failing in the eyes of his father that would have a life long impact and lead him to lash out later at John McCain as a loser along with the American WWI dead buried at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, when he visited France in 2018

Biden will restore sanity and maturity to the oval office but Trumpism is something that will persist for decades and could become more competent.  Mutating this destructive DNA in ways that resemble civil behavior will require a resolve by all of us who plucked democracy from the ashes on November 3rd.  Hopefully through acts of grace but accompanied by a “firmness in the right as God gives us to see right”, the better angels of our nature should prevail.

American aristocrats are stealing your voting privileges

 

"The right of suffrage is certainly one of the fundamental articles of republican Government, and ought not to be left to be regulated by the Legislature. “ - James Madison

The quote above is perhaps more relevant today than when Madison wrote it back in August of 1787 as he and other commonwealth officials met in Philadelphia to form our Constitution.  The colonies had recently won their independence from the British monarchy and wanted to inscribe for posterity the rights of individuals to choose their own representatives in the newly formed republic.

There was the lingering fear back then that aristocratic powers would unduly influence our elected officials to advantage them, often to the detriment of those less powerful people who even then were negated from voting simply because they didn’t own property, were not males and were essentially not descendants of white European immigrants - conditions that wouldn’t change for nearly 150 years all totaled.

It became apparent to Thomas Jefferson as early as 1816 that the “aristocracy of our monied corporations” was already challenging our government to a trial of strength, “and [bidding] defiance to the laws of our country.”  To this day this threat is more prevalent than ever as lobbyists from various corporate interests are appointed by corporate-friendly administrations to head up those agencies that are tasked to oversee and prevent excesses that hurt all Americans, especially the poorest and least powerful amongst us.  The “swamp” that Donald Trump promised to drain is alive and thriving.

In it’s most dangerous form this monied interests has won over in almost its entirety, the Republican Party, aided in large part by a predominant news source that has violated the ethics of a free and objective press.  This arrangement now presents the gravest threat to one of the last vestiges of our representative form of government - the right of free citizens to vote.

In his Rolling Stone article, “How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich”, Tim Dickinson laid out back in 2011 how “the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.” 

It’s not that Democrats haven’t been guilty of pandering to Wall Street but they haven’t even come close to the speed and scope that the modern GOP has.  With the aid of GOP legislators, judicial appointments deliberately skirted basic rules of fairness and laws have been written to circumvent the oversight of state and federal agencies, leaving most low and middle income voters in harms way of polluting industries, paying higher tax rates than the wealthiest amongst us, and rigging elections to favor these corporate-friendly Republicans.

And if the planned chaos during the Georgia Democratic primaries earlier this year is a preview of how the Republican Party intends to steal the 2020 presidential election for Donald Trump, we can anticipate even greater social disruptions from the likes of the QAnon crowd and many white supremacist groups, opening the door for Trump to introduce “presidential emergency action documents,” or PEADs, “which are orders that authorize a broad range of mortal assaults on our civil liberties.”  An act that could find the Executive branch at odds with some military leaders.

Regardless of the outcome on November 3rd, it behooves every American to push for reinstatement of the checks and balances the framers intended for our democratic republic to survive.  If not, the autocratic maneuvers by the Trump administration and the unwilling GOP congressional leadership to stand up to this power play could well put us in line to join the ranks of Russia, China, Turkey, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

Misplaced faith

 

 

 “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled” - Mark Twain


As someone who once considered himself a born-again Christian, who for years through my church ministered to Denton County jail inmates and managed a charitable effort to provide toys to financially disadvantaged families, I have yet been unable to understand Donald Trump’s appeal to evangelical Christians.

I’m sure it had a lot to do with Jerry Falwell Jr.’s 2015 surprise endorsement of Trump over what most thought would go to Ted Cruz.  The Liberty University president’s influence over American evangelicals carries a lot of weight among orthodox Christians.

But we have recently learned what possibly led to Falwell’s endorsement then and his further encouragement in 2019 to give Trump an extra two years “as pay back for time stolen” by the Mueller investigation.

Back in May, 2019 news broke about “racy ‘personal’ photographs” of Falwell, his wife and a Florida pool boy - “the sort that would typically be kept ‘between husband and wife’,” according to Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who says he aided in helping those photos to disappear.  That original story was released in early May, 2019 giving little details as to the nature of what those “racy” photos revealed.

Thankfully we have now learned that “a business partner of Jerry Falwell Jr has come forward to say he had a years-long sexual relationship involving Falwell’s wife and the evangelical leader.

Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.”

What consenting adults do behind closed doors is their own business.  It’s the hypocrisy of Falwell’s that needs being called out.  Liberty University’s own code of ethics states: “Sexual relations outside of a biblically-ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University”

But even more seriously is how credible then and now is Falwell’s endorsement of Trump who he’s indebted to for aiding in concealing the evangelical leader’s shame?  Why would any Christian today still be willing to throw their support behind someone whose own sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, says he has “no principles.  None.”

Trump has cheated on all three of his wives, lied about his wealth, cheated people out of their money, exploited Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, has an alarming affinity for hateful white supremacists, and bald-face lied to his campaign crowds about how Democrats will bring about the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse

I am simply confounded when I see dear friends of mine who are professed Christian evangelicals plant Trump/Pence signs in their yard.  I have to wonder, what part of Trump’s nature still entices them to align themselves with a person who has no moral compass.  Surly the fact alone that he’s willing to appoint anti-abortion judges to the bench cannot be the sole reason to keep someone in office who lies prolifically and has clearly failed to serve his oath of office.

The gospels warn Christians about those who would be “ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding”.  El presidente has been deluging his Twitter followers and Republican convention audiences with baseless claims about mail-in ballot fraud and ludicrous conspiracies, especially from the QAnon crowd.

If evangelicals don’t start shaking that tree now to find out how many nuts fall, they will have allowed themselves to become duped - again - into a campaign that offers little relief from what ails our nation.  It’s the law of propaganda used by autocrats that affirms if you “repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth”.  That in a nut shell is Trump’s 2020 campaign strategy.

Before voting this year I would implore my evangelical friends to consider Mark Galli’s words in his farewell op-ed as Christianity Today’s outgoing editor-in-chief, who encouraged evangelicals to, “Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.”

One man-child’s inhumanity to mankind

When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.” ― Alexander Hamilton


For all the skeptics that refuse to wear face masks and still believed the COVID-19 virus is no worse than annual death rates from other sources, the data is beginning to debunk that notion.

New research “suggest the new coronavirus is deadlier than the seasonal flu, though not as lethal as Ebola and other infectious diseases that have emerged in recent years. The coronavirus is killing more people than the deadlier diseases, however, in part because it is more infectious.”  -

Current COVID-19 deaths are just over 140,000  with that number expected to be around 180 ,000 by Oct 1st.   with 3 months in the year remaining.   Some 32,000 lives could be saved before then  if more people wore face masks


For the doubters and skeptics who claim that more people die from auto deaths, the latest annual data (2018) shows that to be totally false. And even gun related deaths of all kinds, including suicides, pales in comparison to the mortality rates we are now seeing for the coronavirus pandemic in the States.

The false sources of information or lack of real scientific data that emanates from the White House and Trump News (formerly known as FOX News) have convinced enough people to ignore the CDC warnings that could stop the spread of this deadly virus.  A week doesn’t go by that I find myself in some businesses, especially small convenience stores, where Mr. or Mrs Bubba is mask-less, exhaling the aerosols from their lungs that may or may not include the COVID-19 bug.

Their failure to understand that that aerosol mist they’ve emitted can stay airborne for several hours and that the next poor mask-less fool that walks into it may likely become yet another COVID-19 case.

It's demoralizing to watch how this pandemic has been politicized by those whose primary goal is to preserve a failing campaign of the incompetent blowhard in the Oval office.   And now our children, teachers and medical first responders will be put at even greater risks as the new school year approaches and the Denier-in-Chief demands that we reopen schools.

How people continue to defend a man who has never demonstrated any empathy in this tragic situation leads me to conclude that what moral compass which once guided most political leaders over the last two and half centuries has been replaced by a materialistic, self-serving, power-grabbing model, setting humanity on a course that will have autocrats sacrificing their least powerful and most populous constituents to serve egomaniacal agendas. 

Recovering from this will not happen anytime soon, if at all, depending on what happens November 3rd, especially if previously complacent voters fail to show up at the polls.

Bolton’s book deserves our attention, not our money

If you haven’t already bought former National Security advisor John Bolton’s book that reveals a President caught up in his self-serving actions that jeopardizes our national security - don’t.  Save your money for necessities or at least to help fund Biden’s campaign to oust what’s likely the most incompetent person to head the Executive branch of our government.

Though the details Bolton shares show a president who calculates his every action on enhancing his own re-election outcome or improving his personal wealth, it comes as no surprise to most of us who have watched this Trump train wreck for the last three and half years.  Not because we have some special insight or personal intelligence but simply from viewing and listening to the president’s own distortion of reality via news sources and his own Twitter account.

Bolton doesn’t deserve any financial reward from holding back this pertinent information that could have served the Democrat’s impeachment hearings earlier this year.  He made everyone aware then that he had damning evidence that would have made people of conscience demand Trump’s ouster.  But as we are all aware, such conscience doesn’t exist within the souls Congressional Republicans. 

Though Bolton’s testimony during those hearings might have persuaded two or three more Senate Republicans to do the right thing, we’ll never know because Bolton chose to hold back for a more lucrative outcome with his book’s expose’.

Bolton is part of the Republican microcosm that puts monetary interests above social responsibility and dare I say, patriotism.  He is instead a profiteer of the worst kind because what he hopes to benefit from is something that comes at a cost to the American public and our democratic principles.  He may be a wacko as Trump has referred to him but that makes him dangerous, not necessarily a liar. 

Many of the Trump’s chickens like Bolton have started to come home to roost but none can be considered heroes or patriots for their procrastination.  Their willingness to save their own positions of power and economic opportunities instead of acting in a more timly manner in serving the Constitution portrays them as weak and even cowardly. 

 It the very essence of selfishness when such people choose to withhold that which can benefit society before they attempt to profit from it.

Outside of Mitt Romney's stance with Democrtas to remove Trump, the one glowing exception to this has thus far been Mary Elizabeth Taylor, the “senior State Department official who has served in the Trump administration since its first day [who resigned] over President Donald Trump's recent handling of racial tensions across the county - saying that the president's actions "cut sharply against my core values and convictions." 

It’s conceivable that no number of people exposing Trump’s threat to democracy would have prevented his election or resulted in his dismissal from office following the impeachment trial  Many did in 2016, including some of his current avid supporters like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.  So did former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Trump's former Russia expert, Fiona Hill, during the impeachment hearings

But the deniers and misinformed who make up Trump’s base turned a deaf ear then and will do so this November.  Trump won in 2016, not because he had a plurality of voters, but because  this nation still abides by the archaic electoral college system and because many who voted in 2012 for Obama simply didn’t show up at the polls in 2016.

It is the failure of procrastinators like General James Mattis and profiteers like Bolton along with those who ignore their civic duty to vote that helps put scoundrels in office and sustains them with their silence and inaction. 

We can only hope that the current outrage towards the systemic racism in this country and our awareness of this administration’s poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic will drive voters to the polls this November and effect the change in leadership that has been propped up by the Boltons and Trump sycophants over the last few years.

Greed is no substitute for competitive self-interests

“Capitalism is a social system owned by the capitalistic class, a small network of very wealthy and powerful businessmen, who compromise the health and security of the general population for corporate gain.” ― Suzy Kassem, from her book “Rise Up and Salute the Sun”

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders’ constant warning about “corporate greed” in our economy isn’t just a part of some socialist screed.  It’s a real and pervasive problem that many mainstream Democrats tend to dance around. Their reluctance to assertively confront this destructive force speaks volumes to how neo-liberals speak out of both sides of their mouths. 

From the Savings & Loan scandal in the 80’s to the housing and financial crisis that brought down our economy in 2008, the pervasive element of greed is not new to us.  Currently, greedy promoters in the fracking industry are duping investors to pour money down the oil and gas well industry rabbit hole. 

We all, I believe, have a bit of larceny in us that for most (hopefully) is balanced out with a deeper sense of right and wrong.  Doing what’s in your own self-interests must contend with higher standards that remind us that there are limits to what helps us if it hurts others in the process. 

A telling quote from Annie Proulx about her epic novel Barkskins that deals with multigenerational dynasty building sums it up pretty well. “The thing American people fear about corporations is that they might achieve too much power. We have an antipathy to power even as we admire it.” 


   Consistent public majorities over the years feel that corporations and large financial institutions posses too much political influence in this country.  Consequently, those institutions that have generally kept corporate influence in check - representative government and labor unions - have weakened. 

Many voters contribute to this shift in power with their ever enduring fascination of wannabe millionaires, allowing many investors to be duped by con artists and creating the flimsy notion that wealthy people inherently make good leaders. 

Too often, wealthy business people (if they don’t cook the books to cheat their investors) underpay their workers, ship higher wage jobs to cheaper foreign labor markets, skimp on safety standards, dump their wastes into our rivers and the air we breathe and then rely on taxpayer money to clean up their messes through tax write offs and passing their violation fees onto the consumer by raising prices.  All while keeping vast amounts of their wealth in off shore accounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Part of Trump’s success in winning the Republican Party’s nomination incorporated two ploys.  First, arrogantly telling conservative voters what they wanted to hear in such audacious terms that led many to believe he could do it.  Secondly, exaggerating his claims as a successful businessman/deal maker that apparently appealed to many who had lost faith in their government. 

Since taking office however, Trump’s business interests have profited handsomely at the taxpayers expense.  His first instinct in dealing with the current coronavirus pandemic was to view it as a foil to his re-election efforts, showing greater concern for capitalist markets rather than the public health threat it has become.  Not the kind of leadership you expect or want from the president.

Just prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus here in the U.S., unemployment rates were shrinking, bolstering claims of an expanding economy but this concealed how wages have remained stagnant for most working people. It is the wealthiest who are seeing the greatest income gains while most everyone else struggles to stay afloat.

Any business that wishes to succeed has to put it’s self-interests at the top of it’s priorities list in competitive markets.  But it also has to be a good neighbor in it’s community and an honest broker with it’s labor force and the consumer.  Greed - and the corruption it breeds - is no substitute for competitive self-interests to achieve this.

It’s what you don’t know that leaves you stuck in neutral

“Fear is incomplete knowledge” - Agatha Christie

In Wednesday night’s Democratic Debate in Nevada, perhaps the cheapest shot of any candidate was taken when billionaire Mike Bloomberg referred to Bernie Sanders position as a Democratic Socialist as communism.  “We’re not going to throw out capitalism”, Bloomberg said. “We tried that. Other countries tried that. It’s called communism, and it just didn’t work.”  It was the same message that Donald Trump has used against Sanders and in a very real since it gives credence to Elizabeth Warren’s claim that if Bloomberg gets the nomination we might be swapping “one arrogant billionaire for another.”

Sanders retaliated with a quote that in various forms has been used by Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, Gore Vidal and Joseph P. Kennedy II.  “There's socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for everyone else,” Sanders retorted, explaining how it’s the corporate welfare in this country that threatens income insecurity, not the policies Sanders proposes that will enable the lowest income earners to rise above the debt created by low wages and rising health care costs

Other wealthy individuals like JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon want  to portray Sanders as someone that undermines our freedom when the truth is that wealthy capitalist like Dimon want a form of socialism that solely benefits the wealthiest people in this country.

“Jamie Dimon wants socialism for himself”, says Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.  “[He and his wealthy friends] want to use the government through lots of different ways to create a legal framework where he is in control, his friends are in control, and we the people are not.” 

According to Stoller, Fortune 500 companies are trying to create a narrative that portrays these wealthy capitalist as a means to solve the countries social problems as opposed to government and democratic institutions.  Stoller says that this narrative “creates a soft autocracy underneath the happy rhetoric” of these wealthy corporations and private financial entities.

The other criticism by Bloomberg, Dimon and Trump on Bernie’s own millionaire status is a weak criticism that ignores how Sanders earned his wealth.  Bloomberg and Trump have yet revealed their true wealth, while Sanders’ Financial Disclosure Report is on file for all the public to view.  Unlike Trump who inherited his wealth from daddy or Dimon who helped rigged the system with other members of an elite financial sector, Sanders got “rich” by proceeds almost entirely from the sale of 3 books that raised serious concerns about how the income inequality in this country arose and how it threatens to replace our democracy with an oligarchy

The concept of a free market espoused by laissez-faire capitalist is pretty much a myth in today’s world and one that is propagandized by wealthy individuals to create that illusional American dream that leads people to believe they too can be a millionaire if they just work hard and play by the rules. It’s that starry-eyed illusion that fostered John Steinbeck’s observation back in the 1930's  that "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

Sanders and others who have exposed the income inequality in this country scare people like Jamie Dimon because as Matt Stoller notes they want to use their influence now to offset the momentum Sanders has generated “by acquiring and centralizing more power where they can take away what freedom we have left instead of letting us take away their liberty to control us.”

No Dr. Burgess. The National nightmare is not over.

“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Congressman Michael Burgess informed us that “our months long national nightmare” is over.  Apparently an observation with blinders firmly in place he suggested “America watched as House leadership forced a partisan impeachment investigation at the expense of putting the country first.”  Did Burgess not see this very thing happening when the GOP leadership in the Senate forced through a trial process without calling in any fact witnesses.  Something polls showed a strong majority of Americans wanted. 

The Democratic House managers had laid out a compelling brick by brick case demonstrating Trump’s attempt to blackmail the President of Ukraine by withholding approved security funds to an ally fighting our common enemy, Russia.  Yet Senate Republicans chose to capitulate to Trump’s dictum and denied the manager’s request for further witnesses and documents that would either solidly validate the charges brought up in the impeachment articles or, as their leader in the White House claimed, would exonerate him.

For Mr. Burgess to assert that this nightmare is over is typical of people who have their heads so far up Trump’s derriere that nothing passes through them that isn’t a part of the president’s gastrointestinal system. 

What dream like state do our GOP representatives in Congress see where they forfeit their constitutional powers as a co-equal branch of the government to an immature, self-serving autocrat?  Most of them were disparaging of this serial philanderer and an unconscionable blowhard prior to his nomination.  What changed after he blustered his way into the White House that would now have them violate their oath to the Constitution?

Burgess and his GOP cohorts are willing to disparage Speaker Pelosi’s act of tearing up Trump’s fact-challenged SOTU speech while ignoring his vindictive disrespect as he turned away from the Speaker’s hand in a gesture of civility.  They applauded and cheered Trump’s choice to receive the coveted Medal of Freedom for a hate-baiting, fear-mongering radio talk show host and drug abuser whose career vilified almost every human being who was a not a white American, conservative christian male.

They gave quiet consent the next day at the National Prayer Breakfast as Trump rebuked the Christian core value of loving your enemies, demonstrating that he’s incapable of moving forward as an adult to put this “national nightmare” behind us.  Gandhi once said, “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”

No Congressman Burgess, the nightmare has just begun and will continue until the voters reject this venal man.  His incompetence has isolated us from our allies and endangered our national security.  His affinity for white nationalists emboldens those who would use violence against people of color and non-Christian religions.

His implications of personally effecting an expanding jobs market is baseless while expanding the income inequality between the wealthiest 1% and and lower 50% of income earners with his tax cuts. 

Where are the deficit hawks Mr. Burgess you claimed to be part of?  Where is your career advocacy to “do no harm” as a physician when your Party blocks or eliminates those needed efforts to provide health care coverage for those least able to afford it?   And finally, what happened to the outrage you displayed against a Democratic president you claimed was usurping the powers of Congress with unchecked Executive orders?

Your acquiescence to this president’s shameful behavior towards the press and our governmental institutions is similar to the actions of those who elevated Hitler from Chancellor to dictator by cancelling out many civil liberties and stacking courts with obedient jurists. 

Our founders gave us a Republic, “if we could keep it,” Benjamin Franklin informed a woman who inquired about the Constitutional Convention’s outcome in 1787.  The Party of Lincoln who helped preserve that Republic a little over 7 decades later is now the Party of Trump.  A man-child who reflects the complete opposite character of the adult who passionately embraced a nation of, for and by the people.

No one is fooled but many are in denial

“Don’t confuse me with the facts.  My mind already is made up.”  Chairman George D. Aiken, of the Senate Agriculture Committee, 1954

In Federalist paper #65, Alexander Hamilton extolled the virtues of the U.S. Senate as the premier entity to address impeachment hearings over other institutions, including the Supreme Court.

“Where else, than in the Senate … would [that body] be likely to feel confidence enough in its own situation, to preserve unawed and uninfluenced the necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the representatives of the people, his accusers?”, Hamilton asserted back in 1788.

That appreciable estimation of the U.S. Senate by Hamilton has pretty much stood the test of time over most of the last two centuries.  But over the last two decades Republicans, more so than their Democratic counterparts, have allowed the so-called greatest deliberative body in the world to devolve into a chamber of ideologues bent solely on retaining political power. 

“The Republican Party laid the groundwork for dysfunction long before Donald Trump was elected president”, noted political historians E. J. Dionne, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann in their September, 2017 Atlantic Magazine article: How the GOP Prompted the Decay of Political Norms.  

“We don’t fully appreciate the power of norms until they are violated on a regular
 basis. And the breaching of norms often produces a cascading effect: As one person breaks with tradition and expectation, behavior previously considered inappropriate is normalized and taken up by others. Donald Trump is the Normless President, and his ascendancy threatens to inspire a new wave of norm-breaking.”  according to Dionne, Ornstein and Mann

The evidence of this dysfunction is on display in the Senate trial of Donald John Trump.  The compelling fact-based evidence that the Democratic managers have laid out for the world to see compels honest and objective brokers to seriously consider removing a president who repeatedly displays childish rants at anyone who exposes his incompetence to be the leader of the free world.

Because they have been unable to argue the case laid out by the Democrats, Trump’s White House lawyers have engaged in Trump’s traditional style of attacking your accusers to distract those who would judge the president’s abuse of power.  And though  these Senators are no fools, will they act as if they are when they deny the obvious motives of a President who waged a months long campaign to pressure the Ukrainians to investigate a bogus conspiracy about the Bidens and the Ukrainian efforts, not Russian, to influence our 2016 elections?

“The principal restraint on the Congress is not personal corruption or vulnerability to executive intimidation but political timidity.” - Richard N. Goodwin

Will they ignore the fact that any effort to investigate real corruption by any American citizens in foreign affairs should have gone through our Justice Department using the state of the art tools and highly skilled professionals of the FBI, not some shady back channel source headed by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani?

Will they ignore the fact that Trump, after whining about the lack of due process during the House impeachment hearings, refuses now to provide his own witnesses and documents in the Senate trial that he claims would exonerate him of any wrong doing?

Will they ignore the very high probability that the military & security funds being withheld to get Ukrainian President Zelensky to announce (not actually initiate) and investigation into the Bidens and Crowdstrike were only released after the White House became aware of a whistle blower’s complaint that the Trump administration had violated the Impoundment Control Act as stated in a recent GAO report? 

If these Republican Senators, including Texas’ own Cruz and Cornyn, deny the compelling evidence of Trump’s wrong doing in Ukraine, history will mark them as being complicit in this action that will seriously damage our fragile democracy.  Furthermore, it may well validate Trump's infamous 2016 campaign boast that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and wouldn't lose any voters.

Standing on the brink

“We have met the enemy and he is us” - Walt Kelly’s Pogo

A recent article found on the MIT Technology Review Web page informs us that the catastrophic Australian fires have pumped out more emissions than 100 nations combined, estimated to be around 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide

These massive fires are the result of extreme drought conditions that have been attributed to man-made climate change.  Climate change is driving climate change.  It’s a condition known as climate forcing.

“A climate forcing is any influence on climate that originates from outside the climate system itself. One example of external forcings is any human induced changes in greenhouse gases.”   Not only has the loss of trees and other plant life created greater CO2 emissions outside the natural climate cycle but it has removed their use as carbon sinks to absorb CO2 and convert it into oxygen.

Climate change deniers will be quick to point out the benefits of CO2 in the life process.  But this is a 3rd grade understanding that intentionally omits that excesses of CO2 are detrimental to ecosystems as they increase the amount of green house gases in the atmosphere, beyond what nature allows to sustain life on earth as we’ve known it for several millennia.

The Australian fires are just one of multiple examples of increasing extreme weather conditions that can no longer be attributed to a natural course of climate events.  Though droughts, floods, hurricanes and other climate conditions have been with us since our earliest human forms, science has sufficiently demonstrated they have not occurred with the intensity and frequency that we are now experiencing them.

As one astute observer notes, “The models and the observations match.
There is simply no other mechanism that can explain the significantly altered climate path and the changes in the radiative forcing [like the Australian fires] other than human causes.”

We have been recent witnesses here in Denton to such extreme and rapid changes.  On Friday, January 10th we experienced an abnormal high temperature of 71 degrees.  By the next morning, temperatures dropped to 30 degrees with wind chills at 19 degrees and a 2-3 hour snow storm that left at least two and half inches of snow.  The snow had significantly vanished by the end of that day and and by this Tuesday, temperatures are expected to rise once again to the low 70’s.

I’ve lived in North Texas all of my life and climate changes of this nature were rare at best.  Winters have become warmer and shorter while warming seasons are seeing record high temperatures that are lasting longer. 

The existential threat that man-made global warming poses mainly for those under fifty years of age and live at or below the poverty line supersedes all other socio-economic factors that touch our lives.  Without a sustainable ecosystem to raise our families and create jobs in, we are at risk of enduring health and safety risks that will over shadow the plagues and diseases in past eras that wiped out millions around the globe.

“a decade of GOP climate denial, fossil fuel industry obstruction, mounting climate disasters, and the cataclysmic election of Donald Trump pushed the climate fight into a much more radical and confrontational mode”   -SOURCE

We currently have elected officials in the Republican party that refuse to acknowledge the science and physical evidence we are all experiencing. If we are to have a chance for future generations to safely survive we need to put people in positions of leadership who will bi-pass partisan politics and corporate special interests to work towards those efforts that will reduce our carbon foot print.

Time is of the essence.  We have already exceeded thresholds that will effects us for decades.  Unless we make drastic changes with cleaner energy sources and away from human activities that destroy vital plant life, life as we’ve known it will be unrecognizable before the end of this century.