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.