Afraid to admit a mistake

 I think former Republican, George Conway, may have identified the biggest threat to American Democracy, to America, and to the world - people just don't want to admit they made a mistake.  

They voted for Trump in 2016 and, and what the heck they just found some policy issue that justified voting for him again in 2020.  So, they just overlooked his mental illness, his cruelty, his stupidity, his willful ignorance, his immorality, his avaricious greed, his astonishing blundering of the COVID pandemic, his attacks on the Rule of Law and on Democracy itself.  

Rationalization is a powerful motivator.

My deep hope is that many will see that he is not who they wanted him to be, or hoped that he would be, or pretended that he would be.  

My deep hope is that they Just Say No in 2024.

The survival of the Democratically elected Republic of America depends on it - the survival of the Rule of Law depends on it - the survival of Ukraine depends on it - the survival of Pax Americana depends on it.  Etc.

I voted for Reagan and did again a second time.  It wasn't until the early '00s that I realized that was a mistake.  I wish I had admitted that in 1984.  I voted for W in 2000 and again in 2004.  I later decided that was a mistake.  I wish I had admitted it before the second election.

It is no small thing to admit a mistake. I know from personal experience.  It's hard to do….

Some of what Project 2025 and Schedule F will do

 The good news is that, temporarily, Kamala Harris has taken a small lead in the polls over Donald Trump.  And she and VP nominee, Tim Walz, are running a hope and optimism-based campaign.  That is probably a much better way to campaign than to run a fear-based campaign.  I leave campaigning to them. 

But I want to shine a light on the plans of Trump, and more importantly, his Theocratic, autocratic, white supremacist, passionately dedicated base has been planning a total takeover of the U.S. government ever since the end of the Civil War, since the end of the Jim Crow South, since the end of the Nazi led America First Movement prior to the Japanese invasion, since the collapse of the fascist Joe McCarthy attempt to capture the country.  These folks have been at it for as long as there has been an America.

Back in June, the brilliant comedian John Oliver laid out the highlights of Project 2025, and notes the critical ingredient to its success – Schedule F.  You can find it on YouTube, I expect.

Project 2025 is about a thousand-page detailed plan to establish a new “Deep State” – a theocratic autocratic state that will move more and more toward the tyrannies of other theocracies like Russia, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, etc.  Prime targets will be controlling women, gays, all sexual expressions that they are afraid of, ending environmental and financial regulations, etc.  

• Dismantle the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) – expert government weather forecasting
• Eliminate Head Start – you know, kids, screw them
• Establish a “Pro-Life” task force – monitor women’s pregnancies, menstrual cycles, out of state travel, imprison doctors
• Defund the Department of Justice – easier for the crooks and fraudsters
• Dismantle the FBI – easier for the crooks and fraudsters, and spies
• Eliminate the Department of Education – establish religious schools
• Outlaw porn and imprison pornographers – really pissed off at Stormy Daniels
• Round up over 10 million “illegal immigrants” (or random brown folks) and put them into concentration camps before putting them in boxcars to send out of the country
• Use the power of Presidential Unitary Executive Theory (unconstitutional but who cares, the Trump Supreme Court has said anything Trump does as an “official presidential act” is immune from prosecution – who decides appeals? the Trump revolutionary Supreme Court
• Impound funds from anything that Trump or the Heritage Foundation or the Theocrats or the Oligarchs want to stop – like regulation of pollution? Regulation of banking? Inspection of safe working conditions?  Inspection of drug purity?  Etc. etc. etc. 

 Schedule F is what makes all of this work.  The government doesn’t run itself.  Schedule F replaces 50,000 merit based appointees in the government agencies with political appointees, as a start – 2 million at risk.  That means that the scientist and administrators leading the weather forecasting, the scientists and administrators protecting our nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons, our administrators and inspectors of transportation, highways, railways, airways, food safety, drug safety – all of these to be replaced by political appointments.  

What would be the qualifications for these political appointees?  There are about 50,000 who are being vetted for political loyalty now.  The first question is – did Joe Biden steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump?  There is only one “correct” answer to qualify.

How bad will this become?  Venezuela has an autocrat running it, Maduro, following up the previous autocrat – Chavez.  They had one industry – oil.  They replaced the scientists, engineers, skilled leaders in their oil industry with political loyalists to the autocratic regime.  Result?  By getting rid of those who know what they were doing and replacing them with political flunkies the oil production fell from 3.8 million barrels per day to less than one billion barrels per day.  Millions have fled the poverty and corruption. Many are at the U.S. Border. And today’s Wannabe Autocrat blames Democrats for the border crisis. Of course he does. “Rapists” donchaknow?

What will happen to a MAGA-politically correct, Trump-subservient, MAGA-manned, theocracy-subservient, oligarchy-obedient merit-based government agencies?  Economic horror – sexual oppression horror – racist and sexist and misogynist horrors. We become a Trump/MAGA police state.

The revolutionaries are very clear that they hate what America is.  They have been at this for as long as there has been an American democracy thwarting their extremist white supremacist theocratic and oligarchic dictates.  

They will not stop.

But they can be stopped.

Vote.

The Prosecutor take the stage

 

Kamala Harris took the stage last night and accepted the Democratic Party president nomination with enthusiasm, hope, intelligence, and power. She is the Prosecutor and her opponent is the convicted felon (who promises many more crimes to come)

Hers is a commitment to personal freedoms in response to the theocratic threats, and existing accomplishments, by Trump’s MAGA zealots. Women’s personal freedoms have been and will continue to be assaulted by Project 2025 and Schedule F.  Blacks’ voting freedoms have been and will continue to be thwarted by the Supreme Court’s permission for racist voter suppression.  Rural America and all America will have health care denied and prohibitively costly by Big Insurance controlled MAGAs.

Hers is a commitment to growing the middle class, which is how the economy actually grows - demand side economics, not the chimera of Reagan’s supply side economics. When the middle and lower classes have money they spend it on food, shelter, clothing, transportation, vacations, savings - and the economy grows. 

Trump has no answer to Kamala. Just NxxxxR NxxxxR NxxxxR! And, of course communist! Any Democrat is always labeled a socialist, but Trump, in his crude mind doesn’t deal in half measures, he calls her a communist. Dumb shit. 

Thank you Kamala.  Go get ‘em!

The existential threat to America

 I take the Trump police state threat very, very seriously. Trump is not subtle in his threats.  Quotes from a Thomas Edsel article:

“Trump, who does not speak in metaphors, has made it plain: “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath.” This is a time for imagining the worst. Not a single loyal Republican official has objected to that statement or to similar MAGA warnings about an impending civil war....”

“Trump is in the classic dictatorial position: He needs to die in bed holding all executive power to stay out of prison. This means that he will do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power will do all that he can to never let it go. This is a basic incentive structure which underlies everything else. It is entirely inconsistent with democracy.”

Tomorrow Kamala Harris will give her acceptance speech for the presidential run. This is not one political idea against the other. This is a fight for the existence of American democracy, and the rule of law, and the Constitutional itself. The other side is an extremist authoritarian police state. 

Vote. 

Trump = Maduro

In Venezuela, Maduro lost 65% to 31%. He claimed that he won with 51% of the vote. A lie. He has arrested about 2000 pro-democracy protesters. This is how autocracy works. We must not let that happen in America. Trump praises Maduro. Of course he does. 

It’s how police states work.  Elections are meaningless shams.  Maduro, Putin, Xi, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Cuba, China, etc.  Run by tyrants, not by the rule of law, not by free elections.  There is no common ideology, only the rule of a tyrant that “does whatever the hell he wants” (to quote America’s autocrat in waiting)

There is only one issue on November’s ballot - democracy and the rule of law. 

What do you want to listen to?

 If you want to listen to someone talking about Trump, tune into any talk given by Trump.

If you want to listen to someone talking about America and the future of personal freedoms in America, tune in to any talk by Harris or Walz. 

Duh  

We’re not going back

 We’re not going back

            Say the women

We’re not going back

            Say the blacks

            Say the elderly on Social Security 

            Say the elderly on Medicare

            Say the low-income on Medicaid

            Say the librarians

            Say the gays

            Say the universities

            Say the newspapers 

            Say the environmentalists 

            Say the judges

            Say the FBI

            Say the teachers

            Say the cybersecurity agencies

            Say the fraud prosecutors 

            Say the protected civil service experts

            Say the poll workers

            Say the National Weather Service scientists 

            Say the green energy industries

We’re not going back

             Say Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

We’re not going back

             Say I 

All of these people are being targeted by Trump, Vance, and the extremist Project 2025 and Schedule F. 

We’re taking our freedoms back… We’re taking our power back… How dare anyone try to control our lives and crush our freedoms…. Vote!

Autocrat - “Just do whatever the hell he wants”

 The brilliant Anne Applebaum has been doing deep studies of authoritarian/autocratic/fascistic tyrannies for a number of years and has written " Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World'".  She reveals that the autocrats are not of any particular ideology, but are of a common nature.  Here is her definition as given on the PBS Newshour Thursday, 8/1/2024:

"The autocrat seeks to rule with no checks and balances, no checks on his authority, no judges, no media.  They want to control everything that happens in the State and make all the decisions."  

Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, are the major autocracies in the world but there are many more.

Add The Former Guy to that list of horribles if he gets reelected.  Or, as he defined it so succinctly by exhorting Putin to "Just do whatever the hell he wants".  That about sums up the "philosophy of the Orange Threat” and all of his kindred autocrats around the world.

She also reveals that the autocrats join together in a supportive network to attack and destroy democracy and the rule of law in democracies, with America being the leading target. Why?  Because if democracy exists in the world, forces for democracy and the rule of law are inspired in their own tyrannical countries and they are threatened.  So, they attack and destroy democracy wherever they can.  

American democracy and the rule of law is under attack - not just by The Former Guy and his MAGA Cult, but by Russia, China, and Iran primarily.  They provide propaganda lies and half truths to destroy our free country by attacking our ability to trust science, the news, the experts, the democratic process itself.  They are sophisticated and practiced and very good at undermining human freedoms, as they have succeeded in their own countries and are targeting the rest of us.

Vote, please, in November while your vote still has a chance of being counted.

Why not Jesus' Beatitudes instead of Moses' Ten Commandments?

With the impassioned charge of fundamental Christians trying to make America submit to their harsh and bigoted dogmas and establish an unconstitutional theocracy, I wonder why these “Christians” seem so different from the beautiful life and teachings of Jesus Christ?

Brilliant author Kurt Vonnegut had this to say about Christians wanting to put the Ten Commandments into public places:..

“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.”

So, are Christian fanatics saying they believe more in Judaism than Christ?  

In case you forgot, here are Jesus’ beatitudes:

Matthew Chapter 5

1 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

These are the teachings of Jesus Christ, which should be the foundation of Christianity.  But Christianity today seems to be more about Thou Shalt Nots... and listening to the preachings of bigots cloaking their bigotries in the bible.  

Jesus was a brilliant model of what it truly is to be a man, a real man, a spiritual man.  There is nothing in the beatitudes that justifies the bigotries against non white races, against sexual orientations or identities, against women's empowerment, against non-Christian religions.  

I pray that the life, the teachings, the inner inspiration, and love of Jesus opens the hearts of these fierce puritanical scolds to love rather than condemnation and domination. Maybe, if they allowed that, Christian churches would start to fill up rather than continue to empty out.

The five phases of fascism - we are in phase four

Some Republicans know that Trump is a nutcase, unstable, corrupt, and an asshole but they can’t bring themselves to vote for a liberal. And they tell themselves, foolishly, how bad can Trump 2025 be?  We got through Trump 2017 without disasters, so why get all excited?  I say reason to get very excited is Trump 2025 is going to use Schedule F and Project 2025 to have hard core MAGA, Theocratic, and Oligarchic fanatics in place to finish their history long fascist takeover of America. 

Historian Robert Paxton a bit ago laid out the five phases of fascist takeover of a democracy.  We are in phase four now.

1. Exploit or create discontent (Trump in 2016 was and still is about "American Carnage" - all bullshit but persuasive enough to some)
2. Become a political entity (Trump runs for president - the Heritage Foundation, Evangelical churches, White Christian Nationalists, Opus Dei Catholics, Liberty University, etc. have become big players in politics)
3. Normal right wing party partners with the new radicals (the Tea Party Republicans welcomed the theocratic and oligarchic MAGA revolutionaries)
4. Consolidate power (MAGA and Trump have taken over the Republican Party totally.  Next step is Schedule F and Project 2025 to control all levers of power)
5. Radically change the system of government - MAGA revolutionaries. Theocratic revolutionaries, Oligarchic revolutionaries are the only ones in charge - of everything, of all of our personal, private, and public lives. 

America is seeing all of this now.  America is waking up. 

Trump is just the battering ram for the decades old/centuries old revolutionary anti-democracy fascist movements in America - from the slave owners, to the Jim Crow South, to the Nazi led America First Movement prior to WWII, to the McCarthyism attempted power grab of post WWII, to the MAGA Movement/Theocratic movements of Trump and the extremist Supreme Court of today. 

We get to say no. We still get a vote.  Vote now, please, while there is at least some chance that your vote will be counted. 

The only issue on the ballot is the survival of our democratically elected republic.