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.

Vote in person this year

 Although I have been voting by mail for many years, I will vote in person this year for two reasons. 

First, I want my vote to be part of the vote count of the ballots cast on Election Day.  This is because we have a president who has already screamed from the rooftops that only the count on Election Day should determine the winner. And I want Election Day to produce overwhelming numbers against this criminal in chief. It could take days or weeks to count all of the mail in ballots because so many people don’t want to risk COVID19 on voting day. 

Second, we have a president screaming from the rooftops that mail in ballots will be treated as fraudulent, and I want there to be no chance that my vote gets thrown out or not counted.

This is not a choice between a Republican and a Democrat.  It is a choice between a fascist takeover of America or keeping American democracy alive. Trump is already promising to not leave office if he loses, and is already calling out to his armed right wing extremists to violently keep him on office.  These things are not supposed to happen in America, but my conservative friends put this authoritarian in the White House.  I guess they thought he was a Republican? Odd.

Ugly Ugly Ugly

Last night I had the extreme displeasure of watching the first half of the debate between Biden and Trump.  I had to leave after an hour, it was all I could take.

The main takeaway is how ugly a man Trump is and how decent a man Biden is. 

Each did what they needed to do, I guess.  I suppose Trump pleased his adoring Trumpster base by being so ugly, because I guess that is what they like.  He pointedly refused to disavow the white supremacists and gave a shout out to the violent Proud Boys.  So, I guess he thought he had to nail down his white supremacist base.  Pretty discouraging. Trump is the ugliest American personality since Joseph McCarthy, but is much more dangerous given his job.

Biden showed up just fine.  He was clearly mentally capable and articulate, a stutter from time to time, but so what.  The main takeaway was his dignity and honor.

I see no reason for any more debates. They both expressed what needs to be expressed - Biden's decency and Trump's psychosis.

Fires - excess fuel - desertification

California is having a second major heat wave, and a fire has already broken out.  This is terrible.  

I have written during the first record setting flock of firestorms in California and the West in August that over a century of mismanaging forests by refusing to do adequate controlled burns has built up an astonishing and tragic excess fuel in California's forests, the results of which are too evident today as climate change assaults California with deadly heat waves.

Now I am thinking there is another and perhaps even more serious problem - the huge agribusiness methods of farming. I highly recommend a new documentary movie - "Kiss the Ground" on Netflix that teaches about this.

The issue is that the soil has been tilled, broken, for millennia in order to plant crops.  This releases enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, which causes Climate Change.  The soil, which in nature is rich and alive and holds the carbon that plants put into it through their roots, releases the carbon and becomes dried out and dead. So, since the soil becomes dead agribusiness has to soak crops in artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, furthering the destruction and death of the soil, which continues to release CO2 into the atmosphere which continues to cause Climate Change. This process is called desertification.

The movie is actually quite hopeful in that it proposes an easy (hard politically because of the agribusiness dollars with vested interest in the status quo) solution.  Change from killing the soil to keeping the soil alive - regenerative farming.  One of the main spokesmen in the movie called himself a Regenerative Rancher.  

Currently, most of the farming is to grow grain to feed cattle, which are fed in feed lots.  So the feed lots are deserts, the crop lands become deserts, carbon is released from the earth into the atmosphere and desertification and Climate Change are the results.

Regenerative ranching raises cattle on natural land that is planted with a variety of crops and vegetation.  The result is grass fed cattle, land with actual live soil rather than dead dirt, and CO2 is pulled down into the vegetation and put back into the live soil.

So, this is actually a system that will reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere.  We are trying to find ways to put less CO2 into the atmosphere by reducing coal plants and gas mileage on vehicles, and good for us.  But that approach leaves the CO2 in the atmosphere for centuries.  Regenerative agriculture pulls that CO2 out and reduces it.  

Time for the earth to come back into balance.  Regenerative Agriculture can be a big part of that.  I am hopeful.

Is Trump a tyrant? A simple test

A simple question - is Trump a tyrant? an Authoritarian? a fascist?  There is a simple test.  

Who does he surround himself with?

A leader knows he or she needs the smartest people supporting him, so they try to get people smarter than themselves to work for them.  Does Trump do this?  Are you kidding?  Michael Bloomburg shared that Trump called him after the election:

"Bloomberg was reflecting on a phone call between the two after Trump's election in 2016.

"We had a pleasant conversation," Bloomberg said. "He asked what he should do. I said, 'hire people smarter than you,' and he said, 'there aren't any.'"

Bloomberg added that he tried telling the president-elect that he needed people who had knowledge of areas like defense and finance, and "all of these things that he knows nothing about."

"And he said, well, he did know something about it. But I said if you could get good people and delegate to them, then you can have a decent administration. And he said, 'Well, thank you very much,' he couldn't have been more polite as I remember. He did give me his private cell phone number, which I didn't bother to write down and I've never talked to him since," Bloomberg said."

Do we have an example of a tyrant that felt threatened by powerful, smart people under him?  Yes.  Stalin.  Stalin famously purged his military of all the smart, powerful generals under him because he was afraid they would overthrow him.  The result?  When Hitler broke his promise to Stalin in WWII and invaded Russia, Russia lost 25 million people.

Trump has gotten rid of any semblance of smart experienced people, experts like Mattis and Kelly, and puts in people whose only qualification is blind loyalty to himself.

But, isn't Trump really smart?  After all, hasn't he taken over the Republican Party? Doesn't he dominate conservatives?  How can he do that if he isn't really smart?  Uh, no.  

You need to be smart to run a country.  It is complicated.  It takes focus, planning, delegation, staying on top of things, study, reading, brains.  But Trump is not running a country.  All he is doing is destroying things.  Whatever the black president did before him he is destroying.  It doesn't take brains to destroy things, it just takes heartless cruelty and hostility.

Wasn't Hitler smart?  Didn't he almost conquer the world?  He was a nitwit.  The fool was conquering Europe and he opened a second front and attacked Russia, and then he declared war on the United States for no reason other than Japan's attack on Pear Harbor.  Stupid. 

So, it is easy to see whether Trump is a tyrant - since he surrounds himself with only sycophatic toadies, he is a tyrant.  And since he only destroys rather than builds, he is a tyrant.  

I hope my conservative friends see this clearly, and are as repulsed as I am.

 

Michael Cohen’s warning that there never will be a peaceful transfer of power by Trump

I finished the Michael Cohen book, and it is like emerging from a cesspool of Trump’s loathsome corruption abetted and implemented by a man, greedy and unprincipled himself, caught in the frightening downward spiral into repeating ever more egregious falsehoods on Trump’s behalf, saying only those things that were the Trump message – a message completely divorced from any reality other than the reality that Trump wanted his cult to believe. We see today Cohen’s parade of replacements debasing themselves on TV nightly spouting transparent nonsense.

Here are Cohen’s final warnings to America and the world:

”Please remember what I testified to Congress, the second time: There is a serious danger that Donald Trump will not leave office easily, and there is a real chance of not having a peaceful transition. When he jokes about running again in 2024 and gets a crowd of thousands to chant “Trump 2024,” he’s not joking. Trump never jokes. You now have all the information you need to decide for yourself in November…..

The reason the President wanted a new head prosecutor in the Southern District, I knew better than anyone, was so that while in office, he could arrange to be federally indicted. In the event he loses the election in November, he could then pardon himself, as he’s long claimed to be his right. The reason behind that unprecedented and serpentine thinking was that Trump knows perfectly well that he is guilty of the same crimes that resulted in my conviction and incarceration. He also knows that I would be a star witness in that case, and my book a fundamental piece of evidence for his guilt.

Without the immunity from prosecution granted to the president, Trump will also almost certainly face New York State criminal charges. He would likely be convicted on both the Federal and State charges and face serious prison time. That is Donald Trump’s greatest fear in life, believe me, and if he fails to get reelected, that will be his fate—and he knows it—so silencing me was an essential part of his overall plan to evade the law and avoid that outcome.”

We need to remember that Trump is pathologically narcissistic, which means that he has only one concern – himself.  We have seen that catastrophically already as at least 100,000  of the 200,000 people have died of COVID-19 that could have been avoided if he had told the truth about the seriousness of the pandemic rather than diminishing it for the sake of avoiding negative headlines that would hurt his ratings and the stock market on any given day.

This man will do anything to stay in power.  Biden knows it as well as I do, and I expect him to be ready.

Cohen, Michael. Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump (p. 345). Skyhorse. Kindle Edition.

Thank you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died today at 87. All I can say is thank you to one of the great Supreme Court Justices of all time. A woman of great intellect and heart, she has been a major part of the rise of women in America.  Job well done, and a life of inspiration that was well lived. 

Thank you.