He knows what he’s hiding

 It almost goes without saying that the Pedo in Chief has forced everyone in his administration to redact and disappear any and all incriminating evidence of his crimes against children in the Epstein Files. That alone is a bullhorn announcement by him that he is guilty. 

But it is not going to work. He’s cooked, done, desperate, panicking.  Because although we suspect what can be revealed, he KNOWS what he has done.  And my guess is he knows what horrible evidence is there because that evidence has been and is being used to blackmail him to obey the commands of his handlers. My guess is that Russia is who is controlling him with these hidden crimes, sexual and financial corruption. 

And it is not going to go away. His coconspirators are nuts if they think they can hide and gaslight the nation until it’s all just forgotten. And they’re even nuttier if they think they can break the law for him and not go to prison. 

How far will he go to create a more monstrous world story to try to bury the Epstein story?  I’m afraid this psychopath has no bottom. Do his servants finally say no?  That is too far? And enforce the 25th amendment?  

Or does he just say this isn’t fun anymore and resign? With a full pardon from the Opus Dei Catholic fanatic who is his Vice President. 

I choose door number two. 

The real presidents

 Looks to me like Stephen Miller and Russel Vought are the real presidents of the country.  Trump can still do horrible things to try to keep from losing his office and thus face many criminal prosecutions, but Miller is clearly in charge of the astonishing Gestapo cruelty against brown immigrants, and Vought is clearly implementing his fanatical Project 2025 theocratic takeover of the country. 

I am ready for the Pedo in Chief to figure this out and get rid of them as pretenders to the throne.

The Age of Coercion - is it’s time up?

 I am enjoying the PBS Masterpiece Theater presentation of Hillary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall”, the story of Thomas Cromwell, King Henry VIII, and some of his wives. The similarity of The Orange wannabe king and Henry are pretty strong, and there is a spoken line that seems so appropriate to this time of Orangeness - “The Age of Persuasion has ended; we have entered the Age of Coercion”.

But, it looks like the Age of the Orange One is starting to fade.  The mad king is less and less connected to reality, more and more connected to unfathomable greed, incompetence, and corruption.  And Republicans are finally noticing that the Emperor Has No Clothes - that indeed, he is just an old fart who has had his moment and hasn’t figured out how to leave without ending up in prison. 

His coercion is starting to fail. And the coerced will turn away?  Or will the circle and attack like hyenas?

The Human Race is hard wired for expansion, not contraction

 There are two Americas.  It has always been so.  The America of expansion and the America of contraction.  We get to choose, and we are in the process of choosing now. Examples:

Contraction - slavery born of the mistaken idea that white European men (not women) are superior to all other forms of human beings on the planet.  

Expansion - the American Revolution - Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and John Adams - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Contraction - the Civil War where the South fought to preserve the false idea that whites are superior to blacks, and to keep African Americans enslaved.

Expansion - the Civil War where the North fought to free the slaves and renew America's commitment to equality of all humans - "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Contraction - the Jim Crow South that crushed African American power with terror and oppression

Expansion - the Civil Rights Movement led by African Americans and joined by all races to end Jim Crow and establish the Voting Rights Act allowing full democratic participation in the South

Contraction - McCarthyism and the Red Scare used legitimate fears of Soviet Russian Communist infiltration into the U.S. government to falsely strip liberals of influence and power

Expansion - Joseph Welch...As he struggled to maintain his composure, he looked at McCarthy and declared, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” It was then McCarthy’s turn to be stunned into silence, as Welch asked, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

Contraction - the John Roberts Supreme Court has overturned and continues to overturn the Voting Rights Act under the obvious false pretense that bigotry is over in America - the KKK rides again

Expansion - Americans need to, and will, reject the KKK fear based compulsion to perpetuate the false idea that white European men are superior to all other human beings

Contraction - Trump and MAGA - "Make America Great Again"  (white only again) - with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) thugs brutalizing and capturing and deporting brown people on the pretense of hunting illegal and dangerous immigrants, all for videos to show MAGA cult on Social Media and Government sanctioned TV news channels - so you can see how tough tough tough they are - and how they are fighting for the supremacy of the white race, again and again and again

But, here is the trick that history plays - the human race is hard wired for expansion, not contraction, for evolution, not devolution.  Contraction is doomed to failure because of its nature.  Its nature is to stop, to shrink, to go back.  Its nature is fear.  Its nature is in the name of fear to be cruel and punishing and domineering.  These are small energies. They are not energies that push forward and grow the human race. 

The human race is hard wired for expansion, hope, goodness truth and beauty, justice.  Martin Luther King said it beautifully: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  This isn't wishful thinking, naivete, childish lack of cynicism.  

This is the essence of the Human Species - expansion not contraction.

The fossil fuel industry owns MAGA

Trump and MAGA own the Presidency, the Congress, as much of the Courts as they have been able to take over, as much of the media that they have been able to take over.  What is one of the results?  Massive U.S. environmental backtracking because they are all owned by the fossil fuel industry.

Not only is the fossil fuel industry destroying regulations on itself, it is actively working to destroy environmentally friendly green energy - from ending windfarm and solar projects to impeding Hydrogen fuel initiatives.  This is more than an industry protecting itself, it is a very powerful political campaign to cripple clean competition.  Greedshits-r-Us.

Fortunately, the rest of the world is not necessarily owned by these polluters.  Japan, China, India, etc. are often taking the lead in developing non-fossil fuel industries.  Thank you. By the way, it will not be either-or, it will be both-and - there will long be room for fossil fuels, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, Hydrogen, and who knows what is to come...

And, contrary to what the Orange Corruption in Chief and MAGA think, they will lose power, lose the Congress, lose the presidency, lose the Courts, lose their asses.  And the urgent imperatives of Global Warming and Climate Change will reassert themselves.  And the fossil fuel industry will have created an enormous backlash against their accelerations of climate disasters around the world.

Now, I am personally grateful to my own career that included supporting refineries and power plants.  A half a century ago I was proud to be contributing to productive power generation that grew our economy.  But I eventually had to accept that the future had to go in the direction of green energies.  The transition has been ongoing, and slower than we need, but I am sure that the finest scientific and engineering young minds at MIT, Stanford, Oxford, India, China, and around the world are not dreaming of making more efficient combustion engines or gas turbines. The holy grail that I expect they are pursuing are significantly reducing the reliance of fossil fuels for energy and making astonishing breakthroughs in energy storage, Hydrogen, Solar, Wind, Geothermal, and safe quick to build Nuclear.  

America (MAGA) has chosen, temporarily, to become obtuse and blind to the future, but the future just keeps on coming.  And America will have to catch up - or, of course, we can just buy the technology that the world developed in our absence.

Trump tries to help Putin win WWIV

According to former Russian chess champion and Russian critic, Gary Kasparov, we are currently in the middle of World War IV or so says Vladimir Putin.  What we call the Cold War, Putin calls  WWIII, and he is furious that Russia lost WWIII, so he has been waging WWIV ever since he took total control of Russia.  

He has been waging WWIV in the way Russia is expert at waging war - disinformation, propaganda, blackmail, extortion, all techniques to overthrow existing democratic governments in Europe and America.  And his success in the United States is stunning.  He installed a Russian puppet, Donald J Trump, as president and gave him the mandate that he betray NATO and leave Europe to the mercies of Russian interference and invasion.  And Trump must obey because, I think, three reasons. First it is clear that they have freedom ending kompromat on Trump - tapes of sexual perversion? proof of his operating as a traitor working for Russia?  Who knows?  Second, Trump is just one of the most corrupt, greedy pigs in American history (and that is saying a lot).  So Russia is just helping him amass a vast financial fortune.  Third, anything that makes Trump the most famous person in the world is catnip to his empty soulless self.  Putin plays all three of these.

Putin’s problem is he was dumb enough to try to conquer neighboring Ukraine. And it’s not going well. So he needs his American asset to bail him out. Imagine - relying on the deluded, insane Trump for anything. 

So, what just happened?  Trump has just released a revolutionary new national security program, which gives his master, Vladimir Putin, just what he wants.  He openly declares that America will not defend Europe against his master, Russia.  

Per Jason Horowitz of the New York Times:

"The Trump administration issued a national security strategy paper this week that called for European nations to take “primary responsibility” for their own defense, indicating that the United States should no longer guarantee Europe’s security. It accused the European Union of stifling “political liberty,” warned that some NATO members risked becoming “majority non-European,” and said the U.S. should align with “patriotic European parties” — code for Europe’s far-right movements."

The trouble with all of this for Putin, and Trump, is that Putin is not winning his war against Ukraine. His ground advances are excruciatingly slow at the cost of thousands and thousands of lives and financial ruin.  Of course he doesn't care about the loss of lives, nor a collapsing economy, but perhaps before too long Russians will care - a lot.

And the Orange Pedo in Chief is at real risk of losing his magic cult pixie dust as MAGA voters more and more realize that they have been conned, their lives are worse rather than better,  and they’ve been screwed by this orange con artist, who also just happens to be one of the main sex offenders in the Epstein menagerie, and they will walk away from him, and leave him shouting that they all need to obey! obey! obey!... please?

These old delusional fools are trapped inside their own grandiose delusions of historical importance. Good grief… spare us.  

Are these the leaders of The Reactionary Revolution?

The Roberts Supreme Court may be the actual leaders of the extremist right wing, theocratic, oligarchic, white supremacist Revolution.  They declared Trump to be immune from any crimes if he claims he is acting in his presidential capacity.  Outcome?  Here is what Pakistan is doing per Farid Zakaria…

“In a conversation with a friend from Pakistan, I lamented that country’s recent decision to give the head of its army expanded powers, including lifetime immunity from legal prosecution. My friend replied, “We’re just following in America’s footsteps. Didn’t your Supreme Court rule that the president could kill his political opponent and yet be immune from prosecution?”

America inspired the world with its visionary statement that all people were created equal. The Confederacy said that was crap because white men were superior to blacks. They lost the war but never gave up that insecure and pathetic belief.  Now they are MAGA and the Roberts Supreme Court. They will lose again. 

Bigotry is not a dream, is not a vision, it’s a fear. 

MAGA America is not inspiring other nations toward freedom and equality. They are giving permission for fear and cruelty. 

 I believe the true heart and soul of America will open its eyes and brush this tiny, greedy president, and his cult, aside and renew the greatest dream in world history - it’s pretty easy to understand, all people are created equal. It worked to free the slaves, to give women the vote, to give blacks the vote, to embrace gay marriage, and it inspired country after country around the world to throw off tyrannical dictatorships and create their own democracies. 

The dream that all people are created equal will not be killed by this sad moment in American history