Time for the renewal of America's goodness

Please vote and end this dark descent into the dystopia of the last four years.  Please stand up for decency, for the rule of law, for science, and for American leadership in the world.

It’s important.

Time for the renewal of American leadership in the world

It is time to renew America.  It is time to renew America’s leadership in the world.  This president and his isolationist and anti-science, anti-diplomacy, anti-Federal Government Republican cult have tried too destroy America and destroy the world order put together by America and its allies after WWII.

He refused to lead a national, Federal response to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic in America, and was totally missing in action in the need to lead a worldwide response to the disease.  Why?

He withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership which America had put together with the purpose of having America rather than China have the main influence in trade and business in the Far East.  We left.  China stepped in.  Why? 

He withdrew from NAFTA and reinstated some Trump copy of it for trade in the Americas.  Why?

He withdrew from the Iran Nuclear treaty that joined with Western allies to control Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  Why?

He attacked and weakened NATO, our alliance with Europe in defense against the Soviet Union and now against Russia.  Why?

Why? Three reasons by my reckoning.

First, these things were done by Obama and like an 8 year old child he just wants to undo everything that Obama touched because he is mad at Obama. Plus, of course he thinks he is much better than Obama because he is white and Obama is black.

Second, he is just a stupid and ignorant man who knows nothing of history, nothing of government, nothing of foreign relations, and nothing of American values and ideals.  And he egotistically actually thinks he doesn’t need to learn and that he knows more than anyone who tries to educate him.

But most importantly, he has clearly been doing the work that his Russian master, Vladimir Putin, demanded of him – to destroy American democracy and destroy American leadership in the world.  Putin has been trying to destroy American world leadership and American democracy ever since he took over Russia.  He sees the collapse of the Soviet Union as a world shattering catastrophe, and in Trump he found someone he could blackmail, or just fool, into destroying America.  It is pretty likely that Putin and his Russian Oligarchy used Trump to money launder huge sums of money for many years, and it is clear that Putin can present the proof that will have Trump die in prison.  Pretty strong blackmail stuff.  He is Putin’s puppet.

And, by the way, he waged a trade war with China, which hurt American farming and business.  This one is pretty clear as to why – this ignoramus actually thinks trade deficits hurt America, and no amount of education and reasoning will get him to listen. He is just a bullheaded and stupid man.  He didn’t need Putin to tell him to do this one, he did this one on his own ignorance.

Time for the renewal of science

It is time to renew America.  It is time to renew relying on and promoting science in America.  This president has assaulted Science all of his life.  He is an ignorant, uneducated in science person.  Science, frankly, is just too complicated for him.  He doesn’t have the ability to focus and understand complex things, and science is complex.

We first saw this in his administration when he got rid of the scientists in the Department of Energy (nuclear scientists) and the Department of Agrictulture (weather and climate scientists) – for an excellent read about this please read Michael Lewis’s “The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy”

The two most disastrous results of this science ignorance and denial are the ridiculously clueless and incompetent handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ridiculously clueless and destructive response to Climate Change.

The pandemic is real.  It is not going away on its own.  It needs a national response – tests that produce results in 15 minutes, treatments that keep people alive and unscarred for life in their hearts, organs, and brains, and vaccines that can be widely distributed with very high effectiveness with minimal side effects.  It needs a national response, indeed a worldwide response led by and coordinated by America. But we don’t. We have a science denier in charge of the Federal Government, supported by a science denying Republican Party, and about three to four to five times as many Americans have gotten ill and died from this pandemic than would have if we had had an actual federally led response (including clear, science based advice)

Climate Change is real.  For many years I thought the environmentalists were just socialists in scientific clothing trying to destroy American industry. Well, that was nonsense.  The oceans are dying, the coral is dying, the forests are burning, the hurricanes and blizzard and storms are increasing.  Agribusiness is turning soil that pulls carbon out of the atmosphere when covered with diverse and varied crops into dirt that is depleted and killed when sprayed with soil killing pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers. 

It is too late to ignore science.  A worldwide pandemic and climate change are just two results of a human race that ignores its impact on nature and ignores science. Our youth understand this, and they will take over pretty soon, by the way.

It is time to renew America.  It is time to renew relying on and promoting science.

 

Time for the renewal of the rule of law

It is time to renew America.  It is time to renew the rule of law in America.  This president has assaulted the rule of law since day one of his presidency. This is a continuation of a lifetime as a wealthy man doing what he pleases and getting away with it by flooding those abused by him with lawyers and lawsuits and making recourse to his abuses too expensive to pursue.  He has a lifetime of being above the law because of his wealth and lawyers.

He was confirmed in his notion that he is above the law when his Republican Senators refused to impeach him after he blatantly abused his power as president by blackmailing the new President of Ukraine to announce an investigation into his political opponent, Biden.  And after he blatantly obstructed justice into the investigation of his ties to Russia in the 2016 campaign.  So he got away with both, and sails on his merry little criminal way.

He hired an Attorney General, William Barr, who accepted the job on the condition that his primary focus would be to be the president’s primary defense and prosecution lawyer. The rule of law is meaningless to this president, and is mostly meaningless to his chief henchman, the Attorney General. He has proven to himself, incorrectly, that he is above the law.

He’s not above the law. 

When he is out of the White House he will spend the rest of his life fighting legitimate prosecutions of money laundering, bank fraud, tax evasion, etc. etc. etc.

I think he will likely flee the country, but who will accept him?  Putin?  Why would Putin want him? Putin has used him for his purposes (to destroy America and American influence in the world), and Putin will likely toss him in the ash can of history.  Putin is not Donald’s friend.  Putin has no friends. 

It is time to renew the rule of law in America.

Time for the renewal of decency

It is time to renew America.  It is time to renew decency in America.  It is not just the president who has assaulted decency in America, although his levels of indecency are beyond my darkest imaginings just a few short years ago. 

It is the indecency of the Republican Party that has decided it can’t actually win elections so they have to do all that they can to keep people from voting or having their votes counted.  Indecent.

It is the indecency of the recent Supreme Court Justice, Amy Coney Barret, who could have had the decency to say that she would decline to be nominated until after the election and then gladly receive the nomination if offered to her. Indecent.

It is the indecency of the Republican Party in Wisconsin who gerrymandered the state so they can’t lose control regardless of the actual vote count for their legislature.  Indecent.

It is the indecency of Red State governors sacrificing lives do COVID-19 so they can have businesses open and pretend that everything is back to normal when things are becoming worse now than at any time in the course of this terrible pandemic.  Indecent.

It is the indecency of the Republican Senate that voted almost unanimously not to impeach the Republican President despite clear and overwhelming evidence that he obstructed justice and blackmailed an ally to produce dirt on a political opponent.  Indecent.

It is the indecency of the president who dismantled the pandemic task force and thus had no national response to the biggest pandemic in 100 years. Indecent.

It is the indecency of a Republican Party that knows - and states privately and off the record - that their president and party leader is bat shit crazy, but never cross him out of fear, so they toss the lives of Americans overboard so that the ship of their careers can sail for a few more years. Indecent.

It is the indecency of the avid Trump Cult proudly parading their racism, misogyny, anti-science, and bigotries of all kinds.  Indecent.

It is the indecency of a president withholding Federal aid to states that didn’t vote for him.  Astonishingly indecent.

It’s time for America to renew America.  It’s time for America to renew decency in America.

Time for blacks and browns to save the world

The most important event of 2020 was the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, supported by all races in protest to the endless killings of unarmed black men by police forces that are trained to kill and not trained in more advanced forms of policing.

BLM was joined by all races in protests and shocked awareness.  The levels of racism still in America was and is shocking to me and to many in our country.

Now is the time for massive voter turnout of black and brown voters to throw out the party that openly courts and favors white supremacists.

Time for blacks and browns to save our country and the world.

Time for women in America to save the world

After Trump's shocking presidential win in 2016 millions of women marched in protest in DC and around the country.  The march included men like myself.

Since then, the most important thing that happened in 2017 was the Me Too Movement where thousands, millions, of women who had been sexually assaulted, abused, harassed, raped spoke up and took down powerful sexual abusers including Harvey Weinstein, Jeffery Epstein, and Bill Cosby.

The time has now come for women of America to save America and save the world.

They can, and will, vote out this astonishingly misogynistic, chauvinistic, narcissistic, incompetent destructive president.  They can, and will, also vote out the cowering Republican elected officials too frightened to do anything other than go along with this force of destruction, and to vote out the Republican fellow travelers in authoritarian domination of all of our lives.

The time has finally arrived.

Time for the women of America to save the world.

Is it over?

Mark Shields made the point on the Shields and Brooks segment of The News Hour Friday that in 1980 incumbent Jimmy Carter debated challenger Ronald Reagan.  The country was afraid of Reagan, afraid that he was too extreme. But Reagan did just fine. And that gave the country the permission to vote against what they saw as a failed president.

I think the same thing happened in the first debate between Trump and Biden. I think people were afraid that Biden was too old and had senility problems. But Biden did just fine. And that gave the country permission To vote against the man they see as a failed president.

Prior to the debate Biden had a 7.5% lead in the presidential polls. He now has a 10.2% lead.

Perhaps the race is over. And so too is America’s nightmare. 

VOTE.

1876 was one of the worst years in Amerian history

1876 was one of the worst years in American history.  The country had lost over 600,000 people in the Civil War in order to free the slaves.  The assassination of Lincoln and the installation of his VP, Andrew Johnson delayed Reconstruction, but the two terms of U. S. Grant established Reconstruction in the former Confederate states and the rights of the freed slaves were protected by the federal government.  Blacks voted, held office, were recognized by law as citizens. 

Then, came the election of 1876 – Hayes vs Tilden.  It was a disputed.  Four states, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon, had disputed results.  After lots of bitter drama, the Democrats in the South reached The Compromise of 1877 – they would allow the Republican Hayes to be president in exchange for withdrawal of federal troops from the South.  Hayes agreed.  Reconstruction was over.  Blacks lost their constitutionally guaranteed rights. The reign of the KKK, night riders, lynchings began. Statues nobilizing Confederate generals and soldiers sprang up. Blacks were disenfranchised by poll taxes, ludicrous tests like guessing the exact number of marbles in a big jar, etc in order to vote.  The black vote was severely reduced and powerless.

The Jim Crow South was established.  Terror and humiliation reigned.  The point was to re-establish White Supremacy.  The point was black humiliation and suppression.  The point was black disenfranchisement.

Well, guess what?  The South, which had been Democrat after the Civil War and which is now Republican after the Nixon Southern Strategy to convert the white Democrats to the Republican Party, is doing all it can to re-establish Jim Crow – suppression of black votes.

As soon as the Supreme Court allowed the former Confederate states to change voting laws and procedures in 2013 by no longer enforcing the Voting Rights Act, the South closed polls in black and brown neighborhoods, instituted a new “poll tax” by requiring government issued voter IDs which were deliberately made difficult for poor black to obtain, and doing all that they can to disenfranchise black and brown voters.  We are now witnessing the horror of seeing lines that stretch for many blocks in minority communities in order to vote – and this in the midst of a deadly Pandemic.  They expose themselves to COVID19, the elderly and sickly can’t stand for hours in order to vote – it is voter suppression.  In Houston, the governor reduced from 12 to 1 the locations for drop off mail in ballots in Harris County (Houston) with 2 million residents. 

It is un-American (except that it is far too American, Confederate States American, White Supremacist American, “just win baby” American – the disgusting dark side of America American)

And, with this White Supremacist president, supported by far too many White Supremacist law makers in charge, the KKK, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boize, QAnon, and other White Supremacists hold sway over the Republican Party.

Jim Crow rides again.  It’s the Republican Party’s main tactic.

BIden gets a bump in the polls

Biden received a nice little bump after the debate. Before the debate on Tuesday he had a lead of 7.1% according to 538 – who will you vote for?  Biden 50.2% - Trump 43.2%. 

Yesterday, Thursday, just two days later, the estimate was 8.2% above – who will you vote for? Biden – 50.9% - Trump 42.7%.

Trump's performance at the debate was execrable. His only strategy is to be domineering, intimidating, frightening, aggressive, pulverizing. Someone wrote that debating Trump was like a master chess player playing a pigeon. All the pigeon does is knock over all the pieces on the board, shits on the board, and struts around like he won the match. That pretty well described the Tuesday night debate.

I think it is not possible for any Republican or conservative to drop below 34% approval in the national polls.  That is apparently the approval that Joe McCarthy got after his disgraceful fall that ended the three year assault of McCarthyism.  I don’t think that number has changed.  About 34% will vote for any Republican, will admire and applaud brutal bullying and domineering, admire and identify with the McCarthys and Trumps.

A signature moment in the debate was when Trump bragged about how his adoring Trumpsters showed up at his campaign rallies, maskless, on top of each other, breathing each other’s air.  Well, what do you know, Trump himself now has COVID-19.  Because he has led the unscientific crusade against masks and social distancing.  He himself is now the victim of his own deliberate ignorance and stupidity.  He really is not a smart man.

The Trumpsters adore Trump-the-Brute.  The rest of us are nauseated.