Category Archives: Political commentary

Filosofa Writes A Letter … Again

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Economic issues, guns, Political commentary, Social commentary, voting rights

This is the letter I will be sending to my ‘representative’ in the U.S. House of Representatives, Mr. Warren Davidson, later today …

Dear Mr. Davidson,

I would like to take a few moments to let you know why you do not represent me.  Yes, I realize you won the election fair and square, but you still do not represent me.  Why?  Because your values and mine appear to be 180° apart, because you do not make legislative decisions that are in the best interest of the people of this nation, or even the people of your district.

Here are the things I consider to be most important for this country, that I think should be top priorities in the House of Representatives:

  • Equality.  Women should have the same rights as men to make their own medical decisions, to be treated as equals in the workplace, and not to be dominated by men.  LGBTQ people deserve the exact same rights as straight people.  Black people, Hispanics, and Asians all deserve the same rights and privileges as white people.  And atheists, Muslims, Hindus, and Jews all deserve the exact same civil and human rights as Christians.  There should be no differences.  These are the rights that need to be codified into law and the law enforced rigidly.
  • Guns.  I do not believe that guns belong in the hands of civilians, period.  It is a Pandora’s Box.  That said, I realize I’m fighting a losing battle, but I am a student of Constitutional Law and I can tell you that there is nothing in the 2nd Amendment that guarantees the right of every man, woman and child in the U.S. to own an AR-15 assault weapon.  A Congress with a conscience would be working diligently to pass a permanent and irrevocable assault weapon ban.  Do you realize that in Cincinnati there were 29 shootings in just 10 days?
  • Voting rights. Every person age 18 or older in this country should have access to the ballot.    Gerrymandering and voter restriction laws like the one recently passed in Ohio deprive people, typically poor people, minorities, and young people, of their constitutional right.  Last year, Congress had the opportunity to pass two very important voting rights laws that would have overridden any restrictive state laws, and you fell down on the job.  Reinstate those bills and this time pass them!
  • Economic.  I do not view money as the most important consideration, but that said, I realize that it is necessary for life.  Every working person deserves a livable income, and $7.25 per hour (or less in the cases of tipped employees) does not constitute a living wage!  The federal minimum wage has been stagnant since 2009, despite a significant rise in the cost of living during that time.  Why?  Because Congress is more interested in helping the wealthy 1% than the rest of us.  I see no reason whatsoever for anybody to have millions or billions of dollars sitting around in investment accounts while people are struggling, some putting their children to bed hungry at night or living in cardboard boxes on the streets.

Certainly there are other important priorities such as education, healthcare, the environment, the war in Ukraine, etc., but the ones I listed are, in my book, the highest priorities that Congress should be focusing on instead of revenge investigations and petty bickering that will accomplish nothing.  I believe that if you sat down, one-to-one, with everyone in your district and asked them to talk about these priorities, you would find that at least 85% of them would be in agreement with me.  But are you?  Based on your actions, your votes, and your weekly newsletters, I would say that you and I do not share the same set of values and concerns, and therefore I must conclude that you do not represent me or the majority of people, and you seem to have no desire to do so.

Thank you for taking the time to listen.  A response will be welcomed.

Sincerely,

Jill Dennison — citizen, voter, taxpayer

I’ll let you all know when/if I receive a response.  I usually do get one, but it’s typically a canned response written by an aide, or perhaps even by AI!

A Wart On The Family Name

Posted on by under Election 2024, Environmental Issues, Global Issues, History, Political commentary

Robert F. Kennedy is hoping to win the Democratic nomination next year for president.  Truth be told, I am more qualified than he is to run for president, for I am at least an honest person.  Robert Kennedy is trading on the family name and in the process is tarnishing that name.  The world thinks of the name “Kennedy” and they think of the late President Kennedy who was assassinated on November 22nd, 1963.  And they think of the late Attorney General, senator, and presidential candidate Robert (Bobby) F. Kennedy, who was assassinated on June 6th, 1968.  But if Bobby’s son has his way, he will place a permanent stain on the legacy left by those two men.

The odds of Kennedy actually beating President Biden in the primary are slim-to-none, and surely he realizes it, but for some reason he has decided to throw his hat in the ring anyway, as have so many on the Republican side of the aisle who have zero chance for success.  Robert Reich believes that when Kennedy loses the primary, he will launch a third-party candidacy, damaging President Biden in the general election.

Kennedy is a rabid anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who has claimed that the reknowned infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci was orchestrating “fascism.”  He has often invoked the Holocaust in his speech, claiming that victims of that horror had more freedom than people in the U.S. today.  He claimed that Anne Frank had more freedom for “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” He later apologized for that remark, but words once spoken are never truly erased, for they reflect the true thoughts of the speaker.

Kennedy has found kinship with none other than Twitter’s Elon Musk, who hosted a two-hour conversation with him on Twitter Spaces.  It was a mutual admiration society, from what I’m told, with Kennedy licking Musk’s boots, at one point comparing Musk to colonists who died during the American revolution in order to give “us our constitution.”

I find it concerning that Kennedy has rallied more support than I would have thought possible among Democrats.  Around 20% say they would definitely support him, and a concerning 64% say they would consider supporting him.  Granted, that is not a winning number, however with 517 days left until the election (17 months), a lot can happen.  The media and others seem to want to continually focus on President Biden’s age, and heaven forbid that he trip over a sandbag that never should have been on the stage anyway, for then he is deemed to be incapable, incompetent, and any number of other derogatory adjectives. (I tripped over my own pants leg this morning while out watering the flowers … does that make me mentally incompetent???)

Among his numerous conspiracy theories are that he claims to believe it was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that killed both his uncle and his father, not Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan.  In fact, he has advocated for Sirhan Sirhan’s release from prison.  At one point he claimed that Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had somehow paralyzed 496,000 children in India during a polio vaccine trial.  In the past 23 years, there have been exactly 17 cases of vaccine-derived polio in India … not 496,000, not even close.  And, naturally, he claims to be convinced that Bill Gates was implanting microchips into patients through the Covid vaccine … in fact, he was largely responsible for starting that falsehood.

Robert Reich has even more to say about this Kennedy in his latest piece …

Make no mistake. Junior has nothing whatever to do with his father – who stood up for economic and social justice (and for whom I worked in the late 1960s).

The younger RFK is a right-wing nut case.

He plans to travel to the Mexican border this week to “try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently.”

He wants the federal government to consider the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Russians.

He doesn’t support a ban on assault weapons and blames the rise of mass shootings in America on pharmaceutical drugs.

He attacks Biden as a warmonger. He charged on Musk’s broadcast earlier this week that Biden “has always been in favor of very bellicose, pugnacious and aggressive foreign policy, and he believes that violence is a legitimate political tool for achieving America’s objectives abroad.”

You can read the rest of Reich’s column here.

I still can’t understand why Kennedy is running as a Democrat, since his ideas align much more with the Republicans than with the Democrats.  I sincerely hope that Democratic voters are intelligent enough to stick with the tried and true and not be lured by the Kennedy name.  John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Sr. would die of shame, seeing how this man has abused their name … if they weren’t already dead, that is.

Need I Say More?

Posted on by under guns, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

Today is June 6th.  I often don’t even think to look at the local news, so caught up am I in the national politics, global events, and happenings of the day, but every so often … a couple of times a week … I hop onto the local news site to see what’s happening near me.  Last night, just before going to bed, I decided to check in on the local news and this is what I found.  The following comprised the majority of the non-sports-related headlines for the first five days in the month of June:

  • As city leaders evaluate budget, residents air concerns over 29 shootings in 10 days (05 June)
  • CPD: Officers shot at during three separate incidents over weekend (05 June)
  • CPD: Man arrested after holding wife hostage, shooting at PD in East Price Hill (04 June)
  • PD: 14-year-old charged with multiple felonies after firing shots at officer (04 June)
  • Deputies: Man shot victim with pistol that fired shotgun shells in Sycamore Twp. (04 June)
  • Shooting anxiety rises after 25 shot in eight days in Cincinnati (04 June)
  • Coroner releases ID of East Price Hill shooting victim, suspect charged (03 June)
  • Police: 7-year-old girl shot in North Avondale (03 June)
  • CPD: 3 people shot in Spring Grove Village; all are expected to survive (03 June)
  • CPD: 1 in critical condition after shooting in East Price Hill (03 June)
  • ‘He wasn’t even writing a ticket’: Parking enforcement agent shot at (02 June)
  • CPD: 21-year-old shot while driving in Westwood (02 June)
  • Police: 2 men shot in West End (02 June)
  • Residents, city leaders react after shooting that hurt 4, including 10-year-old (01 June)

Do you see a trend here?  One city … one fairly average city in midwestern USA … 29 shootings in 10 days … an average of 3 per day.

Need I say more?

A Chilling Comparison

Posted on by under education, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Re-blogs, Social commentary

Things creep up on us, often unnoticed.  For instance, we age but it happens so gradually that we don’t really notice until one day when we look in the mirror and wonder who that ol’ hag is and how she got in here.  Winter turns to spring and spring turns to summer while we gain 1-2 minutes of daylight each day, but we don’t really notice it on a day-to-day basis … just one day we realize that we’re not turning the lights on until 9:00!  How did that happen?  Other things can creep up on us too, often without us really noticing.  Blogging friend Ten Bears has written a post … mostly an excerpt from a book I read several years ago … that I really, really hope you will take a few minutes to read (the post, not necessarily the book, though I highly recommend it, too!) because every word is so spot on, so thought-provoking, and so very relevant to where we are today here in the U.S.  Here is a short excerpt, but please … his post is short, just over 500 words … do take the time to read it all.

Milton Mayer writes in his book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945 not overnight, incrementally, like the legendary slow boiling of frogs.

“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

And the rest can be found at Ten Bear’s blog, Homeless on the High Desert

And pay special attention to his final paragraph …

Thank you, Ten Bears, for this truly thought-provoking and insightful post.

🌈Then They Came For Me

Posted on by under History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

No matter how many times I read this poem, written by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, I never fail to be moved by the words.  Niemöller penned this in 1946, at the end of WWII, the end of the Holocaust that took more than 6 million lives.  It is engraved on a plaque at the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts, and is known worldwide.  The poem speaks volumes and should serve as a warning to people all around the world today.

I have shared this poem before, used it in different contexts, for it seems that “they” are always coming for someone.  But today, the fourth day in Pride Month, I am especially moved to share it for it seems many people, groups, politicians, and religious leaders are coming for the LGBTQ community.  Our friends, our neighbors, our family … are being vilified, even threatened with their very lives if they dare to be publicly proud of who they are.

In addition to coming for the LGBTQ community, “they” are coming for women, for people of colour, for Jewish people.  Apparently in “their” eyes, the only people who have a right to be proud are white, Christian, straight males.  The rest of us are the dirt beneath their feet.  If we hide in our closets, wear camouflage in hopes of not being noticed, if we do not speak out against the atrocities being committed against the LGBTQ community and others, then perhaps we will be overlooked and allowed to exist.  For now.  Until someday …

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Rethinking 2024

Posted on by under education, Election 2024, History, Political commentary, Social commentary

I’ve read and heard many a commentator say that they hope Trump wins the Republican nomination in 2024 because they believe he’s the candidate least likely to be able to beat President Biden.  Hmmmmm … I wondered.  I made the mistake in 2016 of underestimating the fools who would fall under Trump’s spell, and I’m trying hard not to make the same mistake again, but … with all Trump’s baggage — not the least of which is having the distinction of being the only president to be impeached twice — it does seem as if he would be the least likely Republican to pose a serious threat to Biden.  And then I came across Frank Bruni’s column in the New York Times from Thursday and admittedly there are some things I haven’t been considering.  Take a look … see if you agree with him …

Do not underestimate Trump’s chances — or the damage he’d do with a second term

By Frank Bruni

01 June 2023

Did we learn nothing from 2016?

That, you may recall, was when Donald Trump’s emergence as the Republican presidential nominee seemed like some cosmic joke. Some cosmic gift. Oh, how Democrats exulted and chortled.

Donald Trump?!?

Hillary Clinton could start working on her inauguration remarks early.

Or so many of us thought. We got “American carnage,” two impeachments and a deadly breach of the U.S. Capitol instead.

And yet some Democrats are again rejoicing at the prospect of Trump as his party’s pick. They reason that he was an unproven entity before but is a proven catastrophe now and that his troubles with the law, troubles with reality, egomania and megalomania make him an easier opponent for President Biden, who beat him once already, than Gov. Ron DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott or another Republican aspirant would be. Perhaps they’re right.

But if they’re wrong? The stakes of a second Trump term are much, much too high to wager on his weakness and hope for his nomination. The way I size up the situation, any Republican nominee has a decent shot at the presidency: There are enough Americans who faithfully vote Republican, lean Republican or are open to a Republican that under sufficiently favorable circumstances, the party’s candidate wins. And the circumstances in November 2024 are neither predictable nor controllable — just as they weren’t in November 2016. If Trump is in the running, Trump is in the running.

So I flinch at thoughts and remarks like those of Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat, who told Politico in late April: “Trump’s obviously an extremely dangerous person who would be very dangerous for the country. But I’m confident that President Biden could beat him.” She added that “politically, for us, it’s helpful if former President Trump is front and center.” The headline on that article, by Burgess Everett and Sarah Ferris, was “Dems Relish Trump-Biden Rematch.”

The headlines on other reports that month: “Why a Trump-Biden Rematch Is What Many Democrats Want in 2024” (The Wall Street Journal) and “Trump or DeSantis? Democrats Aren’t Sure Who They’d Rather See Biden Face in 2024” (NBC News).

Granted, those three articles appeared before the Washington Post/ABC News poll that shook the world. Published on May 7, the survey gave Trump a six-point lead over Biden in a hypothetical matchup and showed that voters regard Trump, 76, as more physically fit and mentally sharp than Biden, 80.

Over the weeks since, I’ve noticed a muting of Democrats’ confidence that Biden can roll over Trump. But I still hear some of Biden’s supporters say that they’d prefer Trump to, say, DeSantis, who can define himself afresh to many voters, or to Scott, whose optimism might be a tonic in toxic times.

And I worry that many Democrats still haven’t fully accepted and seriously grappled with what the past seven years taught us:

There is profound discontent in this country, and for all Trump’s lawlessness and ludicrousness, he has a real and enduring knack for articulating, channeling and exploiting it. “I am your retribution,” he told Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year. Those words were chilling not only for their bluntness but also for their keenness. Trump understands that in the MAGA milieu, a fist raised for him is a middle finger flipped at his critics. DeSantis, Scott, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley — none of them offer their supporters the same magnitude of wicked rebellion, the same amplitude of vengeful payback, the same red-hot fury.

Trump’s basic political orientation and the broad strokes of his priorities and policies may lump him together with his Republican competitors, but those rivals aren’t equally unappealing or equally scary because they’re not equally depraved.

He’s the one who speaks of Jan. 6, 2021, as a “beautiful day.” He’s the one who ordered Georgia’s secretary of state to find him more votes. He’s the one who commanded Pence, then his vice president, to subvert the electoral process and then vilified him for refusing to do so and was reportedly pleased or at least untroubled when a mob called for Pence’s execution. He’s the one who expends hour upon hour and rant after rant on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him — a fiction that’s a wrecking ball aimed at the very foundations of our democracy. His challengers tiptoe around all of that with shameful timidity. He’s the one who wallows happily and flamboyantly in this civic muck.

There are grave differences between the kind of threat that Trump poses and the kind that his Republican rivals do, and to theorize a strategic advantage to his nomination is to minimize those distinctions, misremember recent history and misunderstand what the American electorate might do on a given day, in a given frame of mind.

I suspect I’d be distraught during a DeSantis presidency and depressed during a Pence one. But at least I might recognize the America on the far side of it.

Wear Orange Day — A Day Late!

Posted on by under guns, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

Although I initially wrote this post in 2021, this is the 2nd year in a row that I nearly forgot until reminded by our friend Larry over at Just Drive, Will You who posted yesterday, on the actual day, reminding me — and now I’m a day late!  But, better late than never, right?   Today, I think this post, this National Day, is more relevant than ever, given that gun violence, and especially mass shootings, have become the norm, not the anomaly.

I typically make fun of all the ‘national days’ … I mean, there are some thoroughly ridiculous ones like National Lima Bean Respect Day, National Rat Catcher’s Day, and National Talk In An Elevator Day.  However, there are a few of the national days that are worthy of being honoured, and today is one such day:  National Gun Violence Awareness Day, also known as Wear Orange Day.  I’ve made no secret of the fact that I hate guns and would happily see every last one of them destroyed, so it should come as no surprise that I’m writing about this day.

Until a few days ago when a dear friend emailed me about this day, I was not even aware of it … which likely means that most people are unaware.  Raising awareness is the goal of this day, and I aim to do my part to help raise that awareness.

On January 21, 2013, Hadiya Pendleton, a high school student from the south side of Chicago, marched in President Obama’s second inaugural parade. One week later, Hadiya was shot and killed on a playground in Chicago. Soon after this tragedy, Hadiya’s childhood friends decided to commemorate her life by wearing orange, the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others.

Wear Orange originated on June 2, 2015—what would have been Hadiya’s 18th birthday. Now, it is observed nationally on the first Friday in June and the following weekend each year. In the years since, participation in Wear Orange has increased tenfold.

In 2020, #WearOrange trended nationally on Twitter with over 150,000 Americans taking part along with more than 300 corporate and nonprofit partners such as Viacom, Levi Strauss & Co., Postmates, Amalgamated Bank, the American Academy of Pediatrics, AFT, and HRC, and some of the most impactful thought and culture leaders in the country—including President Obama, President Biden, Vice President Harris, Julianne Moore, Laura Dern, Jason George, Pearl Jam, and 25 individual sports teams, including the Golden State Warriors, the Boston Bruins, and the Washington Mystics. More than 100 buildings and landmarks lit the skyline orange across 40 states + DC, including a record 11 stadiums and arenas, while grassroots volunteers hosted more than 270 virtual events in all 50 states plus DC.

According to the Everytown website:

“In 2023, the 9th National Gun Violence Awareness Day will fall on June 2, the first Friday of the month. That will kick off Wear Orange Weekend on June 3-4, which will feature virtual and in-person events across the nation. From the south side of Chicago, to community organizers in Queens, to students around the country, we will come together to wear orange and demand a change.”

Miss Goose and I were talking and we thought that neither of us owned a piece of orange clothing, but then … I remembered that we both have Hallowe’en t-shirts that are orange with jack-o-lantern pattern on the front, so if you see someone wearing a Hallowe’en shirt this weekend, don’t be surprised!

In case you don’t think that guns are a serious problem in the U.S., here are a few facts to make you stop and think …

  • The U.S. gun suicide rate is 10 times higher than that of other high-income countries.
  • The US firearm homicide rate is 24.9 times higher than in other high-income countries.
  • The US firearm suicide rate was 9.8 times higher than in other high-income countries.
  • 7% of all firearm deaths occurred in the US.
  • 7% of women and 98.1% of all children killed by firearms were in the US.
  • Firearm homicide rates in low-gun states were 13.5 times higher than other countries.
  • On average, eight youth are killed by gun violence in the U.S. every day. Another 32 are shot and injured. Mass shootings are on the rise, averaging 11 each week in 2021.

Oh yeah, my friends, this country has a serious gun problem.  Some who love their killing toys have misinterpreted what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution … NEVER did they intend for people to own weapons not even heard of back in their day that can kill hundreds of people within a minute or two.  NEVER did they intend for every person to carry a gun everywhere they go, even to the grocery store or to church.  And NEVER did the Founders intend us to use those weapons to simply randomly kill people because we did not like the colour of their skin, what they wear on their head, where they came from, or because we were having a bad day.

The United States is literally the laughingstock of the world for our gun policies, or should I say lack of gun policies.  No, wearing an orange shirt today will not change that, but it is one step in raising awareness that guns in America are one of the biggest problems we have, one of the biggest hurdles to our safety, our lives.

To the gun nuts, I say this:  NO, the Constitution does NOT give you the right to own an AR-15 or AK-47, it does NOT give you the right to own an arsenal, and it does NOT give you the right to intimidate innocent people by carrying your gun into schools, restaurants, bars, grocery stores, etc.  You do NOT have a right to leave that gun unsecured where your child may get it and cause heartbreak.  You do NOT have a right to be in my presence with that damn blasted piece of machinery.  Period.  My right to safety and life in this case supersedes your right to have that gun attached at the hip.

No one is immune to gun violence, as proven by the tragic shooting at Robb Elementary School last month that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers.   So far this year 17,965 people have lost their lives to guns, and last year a total of 44,363 people were killed by guns in the U.S.  So far, I have yet to hear of that “good guy with a gun” that the National Rifle Association claim exists, but every single day I hear of a lot of bad guys with guns … people who should never have been allowed to own a gun.

So, if you own an orange shirt, wear it this weekend to show your support for human life, to demand change in gun laws, to demand action.

Filosofa’s Snarky Snippets Are Baaaaaaack!

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, education, guns, History, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry

Now that the bill to raise the debt ceiling has passed and a potential crisis has once again been headed off in the 11th hour, it’s time to look around at what else has been happening that might have escaped our notice.

I want to start with something that impressed me, someone who has a conscience and puts life above profit.  Back in early 2021, Jon Waldman bought a gun store, Georgia Ballistics, in Duluth, Georgia.  Gun stores had been deemed “essential businesses” by the state’s lawmakers, unlike his previous business, and Mr. Waldman needed to be able to earn a living.  His store sold “high end firearms”, including such weapons as semi-automatic assault rifles like those used in numerous recent mass shootings.

This week, Jon Waldman closed his gun store forever, saying that the recent shootings at a school in Nashville and a hospital in Atlanta weighed on him so much that he could no longer keep the shop open in good faith.

Waldman decided in the spring that he would close Georgia Ballistics; 23 firearms remained in his store on Friday morning, and he plans to sell them by June 15th.

“It’s going to cost more kids their lives if I stayed open.  I don’t want to bury my own son.”

It’s not much, the closing of just one small gun store in rural Georgia, but it’s a start.  It shows that some gun people do have a conscience and can put life ahead of guns, ahead of profit.  I give a 👍 to Mr. Waldman and hope that more follow suit.

It took 105 years, but Fort Bragg in North Carolina, initially named in 1918 after Confederate General Braxton Bragg, has been renamed Fort Liberty.  About damn time, but better late than never.

The change was part of a broad Department of Defense initiative, motivated by the 2020 George Floyd protests, to rename military installations that had been named after confederate soldiers.  The other eight Army bases selected to be renamed are Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia; Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia; Fort Polk in Louisiana; Fort Rucker in Alabama; and Fort Hood in Texas.

It was almost graduation day at Marlin High School in the small town of Marlin, Texas, population 5,543.  Until, that is, District Superintendent Darryl Henson began looking through seniors’ files two weeks ago to confirm they could receive their diplomas.  Turns out that of the 33 seniors at the school who were expecting to graduate, only five were actually eligible!  Needless to say, the graduation has been postponed while students are scurrying to try to fulfill their remaining requirements.

The requirements were simple:  students needed to have passed all of their courses and attended 90 percent of their classes throughout all eight semesters.  Since Mr. Henson made the discovery that the vast majority of students did not meet the requirements, students have been making up assignments and spending extra time in classes to become eligible.  As of yesterday, 24 students have now met the requirements, and graduation is being planned for an unspecified date sometime in June.

My question, though, is … have other schools had the same situation but not discovered it until after students had received their diplomas?  And how does this happen?  Don’t teachers and guidance counsellors coordinate to ensure that each student will meet the requirements by graduation day?  Is this, then, what education in the U.S. has come to?   Or is it just in places like Texas and Florida where school administrators and politicians are more concerned with making sure students are shielded from the realities of life than they are concerned with actually educating young minds?

And finally, listen to what Brian Tyler Cohen has to say about Kevin McCarthy and the Republican Party, their actual intent vs their stated intent …

Thoughts On The ‘F-Word’

Posted on by under Election 2024, Free Press Issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

It is only in the last month or two that I have discovered Joyce Vance and her writings.  Ms. Vance was a United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. She was one of the first five U.S. Attorneys, and the first female U.S. Attorney, nominated by President Barack Obama.  She is intelligent, knowledgeable, and her writing is clear and concise.  She writes on Substack, which is where I first discovered her, and her latest piece is … chilling.

Can We Call It Fascism Yet?

Joyce Vance

02 June 2023

“Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers,” George Orwell wrote in 1944, “almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.” Although political scientists have crafted more precise definitions in the ensuing years, the enduring image of fascism is that of the hate-fueled bully.

In a September 2020 interview, Joe Biden called his then-opponent, Donald Trump, “sort of like [Joseph] Goebbels,” a reference to Hitler’s propaganda chief during the Nazi regime. “You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge,” Biden explained. One aspect of fascism is repeating the lie until your followers come to believe it, accepting it as an obvious truth, something Trump is the master of.

In 2018, Madeleine Albright said in an interview: “We can’t have a leader that feels that he is above the law. The law and the rule of law is the most essential part of a democratic system.” Trump subsequently advocated for his supporters to use violence but sent federal forces to curb Black Lives Matter protests in American cities. He used the nationalistic slogan “Make America Great Again” and aligned himself with Christian nationalist groups that have little to do with Christianity.

Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in advance of the 2020 election and tried to overthrow it after he lost, claiming it was rife with fraud—it wasn’t—while trying to install fake slates of electors to preempt duly elected ones and running an intimidation campaign against his own vice president to try and secure his cooperation. With the dismissal of his court cases and all his other plans coming apart, Trump tried to subvert DOJ and came close to installing as attorney general an unqualified environmental lawyer whose only credential was his willingness to throw the might of DOJ behind Trump’s claims of election fraud. It was a putsch attempt and Trump sulked like a child when it failed. Instead of ensuring a smooth transition to the new rightful president, he balked and obstructed and, apparently, took classified documents with him on the way out of the White House. He has continued ever since to act as a divisive force, motivated only by self-interest.

So reporting this week that Trump intends to target prosecutors and agents involved in the special counsel’s investigation of him if he regains the White House, identifying and firing them, comes as no surprise. But it seems to have mostly gotten lost in the shuffle of news about developments in the Mar-a-Lago case, despite the fact that it is equally deserving of our attention. Rolling Stone reported, “In recent months, the former president has asked close advisers, including at least one of his personal attorneys, if ‘we know’ all the names of senior FBI agents and Justice Department personnel who have worked on the federal probes into him. That’s according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter and another person briefed on it.” There you have it, the party of law and order, preparing to exact revenge on people pledged to work for law and order.

If law enforcement officials who are upholding their oaths to the Constitution and doing their job won’t be safe in a new Trump regime, then really, who will be? No one. Because in a country overtaken by a cult of personality, you never know on any given day when you’re going to run afoul of the leader’s whims. You could be the shop assistant who doesn’t have the right size shirt in stock or the chef whose meal Trump doesn’t like. You could be a grandchild’s teacher who gives an accurate but low grade. Really, you could be anyone. It doesn’t matter because once we install a leader who rejects a rule of law system of government in favor of one where all that matters are the momentary desires of the head of the cult, we are beyond the protections the law has traditionally offered people in this country from overreaching leaders. Trump has made abundantly clear his intent to dismantle that system if he gets another opportunity.

More from Rolling Stone’s reporting: “Trump has…privately discussed that should he return to the White House, it is imperative his new Department of Justice ‘quickly’ and ‘immediately’ purge the FBI and DOJ’s ranks of these officials and agents who’ve led the Trump-related criminal investigations, the sources recount. The ex-president has of course dubbed all such probes as illegitimate ‘witch hunts,’ and is now campaigning for the White House on a platform of ‘retribution’ and cleaning house.” Trump is the quintessential bully who doesn’t believe in the rule of law.

Trump has leveled specific criticism against FBI Director Chris Wray, his 2017 appointee, objecting to Wray’s failure to engage in a wholesale purge of people who are not loyal to Trump and threatening to fire him on his first day back in the White House if he wins in 2024. But Trump’s sights aren’t set exclusively on DOJ. He has gone beyond that, promising that top of the list for his revenge and retribution campaign against federal employees whose loyalty is to the Constitution, not Trump, is reinstituting “Schedule F.” Schedule F is an executive order that would make it much easier for him to fire federal employees across the executive branch, while also offering the ability to replace them with Trump loyalists (despite longstanding protections for civil servants against just this type of action).

From his earliest moments in office, Trump targeted employees whom he thought were insufficiently loyal to him, personally. The first one was then–FBI Director Jim Comey, who declined to give Trump the personal loyalty oath he sought, saying that his loyalty was to the Constitution. Comey was, of course, fired. The bookend at the conclusion of Trump’s presidency was his top cybersecurity official, Chris Krebs, who issued a statement calling the 2020 election “the most secure in American history” despite his boss’s claims of pervasive fraud. Trump fired Krebs on Twitter for contradicting The Big Lie.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s attention appears to have turned toward the Krebs firing, but it may have more to do with establishing Trump’s state of mind—proof he knew he’d lost in a fair election—than any new substantive lean in the direction of that investigation. It is nonetheless another significant marker on the path toward the possibility of an authoritarian America.

Personal loyalty oaths to the president aren’t how our country is supposed to work. Career federal employee jobs aren’t spoils of war for a president to hand out like party favors. There are political appointments like judgeships and executive agency leadership, but the folks who move the ship of state forward from administration to administration are career professionals. Like the prosecutors and agents temporarily detailed to special counsel investigations into Trump, they are supposed to have civil service protections. In a normal world, Trump would be unable to walk in and fire them. His plans to do so are sinister. Trump is threatening to fundamentally change the structure of our country so that it runs in a way that serves him and not the people. That, of course, describes Trump in a nutshell.

What’s still more sinister is that little, if any, attention is being paid to Trump’s clear intentions to lead us away from democracy if he gets another shot at the White House. Is it fascism yet? Even asking the question can draw criticism these days. But we have on our hand a bully who repeats his lies until they become accepted as fact, at least by his followers, and who eschews the rule of law in favor of personal loyalty to him. It’s a frightening picture for the future, a future it’s critical that we prevent.

We’re in this together,

Obstructionist, Not Conservative!

Posted on by under Political commentary, Rants, Racism & Bigotry, Law and justice, History, Election 2024, Economic issues

On the first day the members of the 118th Congress walked into the Capitol to vote on a Speaker of the House, there was no doubt that it would end up being Kevin McCarthy.  Oh sure … they made him beg and sweat for it, forced concessions knowing that his fragile ego would not allow him to accept defeat at any cost, but there was no viable competition within the Republican House members for the job.  It’s a sad statement that Kevin McCarthy is actually the best they had to offer, for on a scale of 1-to-10, I’d give him a 2.

Now, I want to talk a bit about the House Freedom Caucus, for they are the worst of what the Republican Party has to offer.

The House Freedom Caucus (HFC) got its start in mid-January, 2015, when the most radical right-wing members of the Party joined forces with the sole goal of pushing the Party further to the right.  I will always believe that two things prompted this:  the election not once, but twice, of a Black man to the presidency, and the passage of the Affordable Care Act that, at least in theory, would enable all people in this country to have healthcare when they need it.

The HFC was founded by nine right-wing men calling themselves ultra-conservatives, including Jim (Gym) Jordan, Mick Mulvaney, Mark Meadows, and Ron DeSantis … yes, THAT Ron DeSantis!  They call themselves ‘conservatives’ but by definition they are obstructionists.  Their interest has absolutely nothing to do with the best interests of the nation or of its people and they will use any means at their disposal to obstruct good governance and throw the nation into turmoil.  Why?  Because they crave power, because they do not adhere to democratic principles but would much prefer an autocracy, and at the moment, their goal is to set the stage for President Biden’s defeat in 2024.  There is no Republican – not Trump or DeSantis, not Haley or Pence, and certainly not Hutchinson or Ramaswamy, who can win the general election as things stand now.  But, if the HFC can destroy the economy, destroy the trust of our allies abroad, then blame it all on Joe Biden, they might just stand a chance … at least that’s what they’re banking on.

The HFC has only 46 seats in the House of Representatives, but if you think about it, that’s more than 10% of the full House, so while they don’t hold a majority, they do make a difference … and certainly not one that is positive for the nation.  Historically they have been against anything and everything that promotes equality or helps people, such as the aforementioned Affordable Care Act, the Respect for Marriage Act that codified the right of same-sex couples to marry, and they almost unanimously voted to overturn President Biden’s electoral win in January 2021.  I sense they would relish a civil war of sorts in this nation.

Why are they on my radar today?  Because they are making empty threats right and left, saying they will refuse to vote for the deal worked out between the President and McCarthy to avoid a default on our debt that would send shockwaves around the globe, not to mention crash the economy here in the U.S.  They are threatening McCarthy with an ouster from his seat as Speaker of the House.  Now, with only 46 members, their threats can be passed off as idle … except they are screeching at the top of their lungs from their highest perches.  Except that we PAY these bastards and in exchange we expect them to put our interests ahead of their egos, yet they are unwilling to do so.  You could lose your job tomorrow, become homeless next month, and die of starvation by August and not a single member of the HFC would give a royal damn!  Only one thing matters to them:  next year’s election.

Here is a list of the members of the HFC.  Is your representative listed?  If so, call him/her, write him/her, and tell them that they are NOT doing the job you pay them to do and to either work for the people, else get the hell out of Congress!

118th Congress House Freedom Caucus members and allies

State District Representative
AZ 5 Andy Biggs
NC 8 Dan Bishop
CO 3 Lauren Boebert
OK 2 Josh Brecheen
CO 4 Ken Buck
MO 7 Eric Burlison
VA 6 Ben Cline
TX 27 Michael Cloud
GA 9 Andrew Clyde
GA 10 Mike Collins
AZ 2 Eli Crane
OH 8 Warren Davidson
TN 4 Scott DesJarlais
FL 19 Byron Donalds
SC 3 Jeff Duncan
ID 1 Russ Fulcher
FL 1 Matt Gaetz
VA 5 Bob Good
AZ 9 Paul Gosar
TN 7 Mark Green
GA 14 Marjorie Taylor Greene
VA 9 Morgan Griffith
WY At large Harriet Hageman
MD 1 Andy Harris
TN 1 Diana Harshbarger
LA 3 Clay Higgins
TX 13 Ronny Jackson
LA 4 Mike Johnson
OH 4 Jim Jordan
AZ 8 Debbie Lesko
FL 13 Anna Paulina Luna
IL 15 Mary Miller
OH 7 Max Miller
WV 2 Alex Mooney
AL 2 Barry Moore
NC 3 Greg Murphy
TX 22 Troy Nehls
SC 5 Ralph Norman
TN 5 Andy Ogles
AL 6 Gary Palmer
PA 10 Scott Perry
FL 8 Bill Posey
MT 2 Matt Rosendale
TX 21 Chip Roy
AZ 1 David Schweikert
TX 3 Keith Self
FL 17 Greg Steube
WI 7 Tom Tiffany
TX 14 Randy Weber