I Have A Dream Too

The saying goes that if you live long enough you’ll have seen it all. Well, I guess I’ve lived long enough to see many surprising things. I don’t proclaim to have “seen it all”, but I’ve been witness to some events that one would have never predicted.

On October 14, 1964 it was announced that Dr. Martin Luther King would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the civil rights movement. Almost sixty years ago, in December of 1964 Dr. Martin Luther King traveled to Oslo, Sweden to take possession of the highest award a civilian can achieve. At age thirty-five he was the youngest ever recipient of the prize and the first ever from the state of Georgia.

If you were not aware during the sixties and seventies, it was a time of great turmoil. Thousands were marching in the streets demanding equality and an end to the war in Viet Nam. Riots were taking place in the cities and the police were enforcing “law and order” very vigorously.

In retrospect, it’s odd to think about two major movements, anti-war and civil rights, occurring at the same time. There was plenty of dissatisfaction for the way things were going from a lot of people. It’s a miracle some moron didn’t suggest storming the Capitol. Some 250,000 protesters did come to the Capitol in the “March To Washington”. Peacefully, I might add. Hmmmm.

In the midst of this turmoil, Dr. Martin Luther King was rallying his followers and pushing forward with the civil rights movement. His philosophy was one of non-violence. How one could rally people to march peacefully unarmed into police lines of truncheons and dogs and fire hoses is beyond me, but Dr. King did it. His efforts to demand equality without creating a blood bath did not go unnoticed by the world community. Unlike Ghandi, who King based his teachings on, King was honored by the Nobel committee. Dr. King was held up to the world as the example for how to achieve a goal without resorting to violence.

The excellent documentary, “Eyes On The Prize”, details the civil rights movement from 1954 through the mid 1980’s. I highly recommend watching it. There is nothing like actual footage taken from the time and place to give one a sense of what the black community was put through. Watching children bravely walking through throngs of hate-filled racists to attend school is something that should be part of every school’s curriculum. Those that have their panties in a bundle about the possibility of Critical Race Theory being taught in schools should be exposed to the footage non-stop like Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange” until they get it. It might take some people a long time to get it, but it will be worth the effort if we can get some of these white supremacists to see the light, or at least admit that there is one at the end of the tunnel.

Speaking of the people unaffected by Dr. King’s message, I’m still amazed at how bold and upfront these people are. I guess generations of prosecutorial immunity have emboldened this generation of haters to move beyond their forebears. Where Dr. King and his 200,000 followers could have easily taken the Capitol on that day in August of 1963, they didn’t. Didn’t even try. They were there to make their grievances known peacefully. As a bit of serendipity, they got to listen to the greatest speech Dr. King ever gave, his “I Have A Dream” speech. Contrast that with the January 6th insurrection and you get a sense of the quality of the men running both movements. One leader would not use violence in the pursuit of his goals. The other would use his minions to attack the police and anyone else who stood in the way of his attempted coup.

Speaking of the attempted coup, please watch “Four Hours At The Capitol”. Contrast the actions of the crowds trying to overturn the election and think about what a difference a responsible leader makes to the actions of his crowd. Dr. Martin Luther King was a true leader. He talked the talk and he walked the walk. He led by example and the world is a better place because he walked among us. He was taken far too soon.

The Season of Giving

According to Forbes magazine, the 400 richest families in America have now accumulated $4.5 trillion in wealth, a 40% rise over last year, and growing. Sadly their charitable contributions are not keeping up with their windfalls. “The number of Forbes 400 members who gave away more than 20% of their net worth since last year’s list dropped from ten to eight, while those who gave away less than 1% of their wealth rose from 127 to 156.

Business Insider reports that “the wealthiest 10% of Americans hold more than 89% of all available equity in corporations and mutual fund shares (with just the top 1% controlling more than twice as much equity as the bottom 50% of all Americans combined)”

Forbes also reports that “the top one percent alone holds more wealth than the middle class. They owned 30.4 percent—or over $34.2 trillion—of household wealth in 2021 while the bottom half of the population owned just $2.1 trillion.”

An observation can be made that investments made by the 400 families have created thousands of jobs, it’s just that those jobs are located in China, India and Malaysia. Where would China be without the Walton family (WalMart)? Even Warren Buffet, who admits that he has a lower tax-effective rate than his secretary, has invested heavily in the next generation of autos being produced in China, not the U.S.

The economies of China, India, South Korea and Singapore have all benefited from investment from American firms such as Apple, Cisco, HP, Google and Microsoft. Sadly foreign investment has created a double edged problem. In addition to the loss of American jobs to foreign workers, the multi-national companies take advantage of lower tax rates in foreign countries to avoid paying taxes in the U.S. Taxes that the U.S. desperately needs.

Microsoft had 138.5 billion dollars in profits in foreign banks in 2017, second only to Apple. The dilemma for Microsoft and others is how to get the money into U.S. banks without paying the 35% tax rate owed on the earnings. Ironically, Bill Gates Sr., father of Bill Gates, is on record as saying that he thinks the rich don’t pay enough taxes. Honor your daddy’s memory, Bill.

It is estimated that U.S. based multi-nationals have at least 2.6 trillion in profits sitting in foreign banks. The 664.9 billion brought home in 2018 through a reduced rate of tax percentage is a good start. Sadly, 15% is not the 35% that these multinational corporations should be paying. 

The taxes due to the U.S. government could fund a lot of education, re-training and investment opportunities for U.S. citizens. For those who are not proponents of reinvesting in America, the repatriated profits could be used to pay down the national debt. This flight of capital to other countries, plus the unwillingness to pay taxes due on the profits, strikes me as the height of arrogance and extraordinarily unpatriotic.

The “tax holiday” being offered to these corporations to bring home their profits at a tax rate of 15.5% clearly is a huge benefit to the “400”.

Who are these fortunate few? Are these 400 families, the “job creators” we keep hearing about? The sad truth is that many of the 400 are not actively involved in the businesses that brought them wealth. According to the Business News Daily, “over 1/3 of the 50 wealthiest billionaire families grew up in substantial privilege.” The rich get richer, we used to say.

Many of the 50 wealthiest are 5th and 6th generations of inheritance. The concept of working for a living is alien to them; they were born wealthy. They don’t build new businesses, invest in factories or develop creative new ideas. Instead, they invest in money managers, lawyers, and lobbyists. They invest in people who influence our representatives to give them a bigger share of the American dream. They invest in PR firms to re-label the inheritance tax as the “death tax”, they invest in spinmeisters that lead us all to believe that some day when we hit the lottery, we’ll want their rules in place for ourselves.

Everyone talks about “the good old days”. I grew up in the 1950s. Back in the “good old days”, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals peaked at 92% in 1952 and 1953. The Golden Era of American Capitalism occurred during the time when America taxed the rich at the highest rate.

A “good old days” phrase I remember is, “A peacock who sits on his tail is just another turkey.” Maybe high tax rates for the wealthy are what’s needed to get the peacocks off their tails.

Ignorance Is Not A Virtue

I’ve been reflecting on a couple of comments made to my Facebook page regarding a post I did on the Kyle Rittenhouse affair and the Good Samaratin’s intentions. You remember the young fellow who crossed state lines while illegally possessing a military weapon to “render aid”. One commenter writes, “You’re a sick individual. And so is the person who laughed in the comments.Hmmmmm.

As a writer one expects to sometimes tickle the emotions of a reader, but I take exception to the notion that suggesting that Kyle should have just stayed home as a determiner of my sanity. Doing a deep dive into my psyche I tried to ascertain why two “nice people” could come to such divergent conclusions based off of the same body of evidence. For some reason President Obama’s phrase, “Ignorance is not a virtue” popped into my head. I think it was the most “true” statement I’ve ever heard.

President Obama was delivering the commencement speech at Rutgers University when he informed the audience that, “Ignorance is not a virtue”. It was delivered in the perfect context, in the perfect setting. As for the setting, the President was in the heart of Trump country. As to the context, the President went on to explain that not knowing what you were talking about was not an excuse for raising your voice and presenting your point again and again and again.

The President told the twelve thousand newly minted graduates, “In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue,”  “It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about. That’s not keeping it real or telling it like it is. That’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you’re talking about. And yet we’ve become confused about this.”

I can certainly see where a lot of folks would consider having the phrase tattooed on their body in their favorite font. I might do it myself. It would be more relevant in our day to day lives than a quote from Khalil Gibran. Just have “Ignorance Is Not A Virtue” tattooed on the inside of your left arm, if the space is still available. That way you can look down at your arm when you feel like you’re about to comment on something that you have no knowledge of, like global warming, or what the Federal Reserve does.

Of course, if you have been imbued by your Creator with infinite knowledge, like The MAGAts, it probably won’t make much difference. The phrase assumes a certain self awareness that megalomaniacs like the Donald and his minions don’t possess. “Seldom right but never in doubt”, is how we refer to folks whose super egos were never developed. To that end, I’d like to offer up the Donald’s brain for scientific study to see if part of his issues are organic, or if they all stem from his upbringing. I realize the challenge will be getting to the brain through the impenetrable helmet of orange “hair” that surrounds the cranium, but science needs to be served. We need to develop a vaccine if the cause of the Donald’s wrongheadedness is organic. Billions of lives hang in the balance.

Ok, I’m having a little fun with the disgraced, former, twice-impeached ex-President’s ability to appeal to the lowest, basest emotions in his followers and have them ignore all evidence contrary to his words. I am awestruck that his minions can promote an idea as far-fetched as “Jewish Space Lasers” starting the wildfires out west, or that millions of fake ballots shipped in from China changed the results of the election. The fact that he can continue to spew his drivel and have millions suck it up like it was Gospel confounds me.

I’m reminded of the old joke about a fellow that was caught cheating by his wife in their own bed. The husband repeatedly tells the wife that she is dreaming while the paramour gathers up her things and hustles out of the room. The wife will not be dissuaded. Finally the husbands yells in outrageous indignation, “Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?”

I feel like the people that watched the Rittenhouse trial and ignored his assertions that he was an “EMT”, that watched him lone wolf his way into a potentially hostile environment away from the area he was supposedly securing and secure in, his ignoring one of the rules of self-defense, “avoidance” and then chose to kill rather than run are allowing the likes of Tucker Carlson to do their thinking for them. So who are you going to believe, Tucker or you’re lying eyes?

My dear granny Waller used to say, “Ignorance is its own reward”, which is kind of a corollary of “Ignorance is bliss”. She used to say it about people who purposefully stayed ignorant of situations that it benefited them to be ignorant about. Situations like cheating spouses, or a work practice that was harming their employees. I prefer President Obama’s phrase. It encourages me to learn and to not accept ignorance as an excuse. Most importantly, it encourages me to not spread my ignorance to others.

Chernobyl

I started thinking about all of the things that come our way as a result of the air currents. Certainly, the rain would be the top thing on our mind. Next would be the seeds and pollen that travel without borders on the back of the winds. I guess we could call the allergies that result from those pollens a, “possible side effect”, like they do in the drug commercials. We see the pollen, so we know that there is a potential for an allergic outbreak. We just don’t know if it’s the pollen that affects us the most. Should I be more concerned about putting on a mask than writing “wash me” on the trunk of my car?

Fortunately, the government tracks all that stuff for us now, and we can look at the government charts to see which pollens are affecting us the most. The question is whether you’ll already be wheezing before the government can produce the charts. Pollen is a pollutant that we can see. How about the noxious gasses that we don’t see until they get so thick they’re visible? Wearing a mask won’t help with those pollutants, and some may be so deadly we don’t have time to put on a mask anyway. I’ve long complained about Georgia Power and their coal burning plants being responsible for making the “Smokey Mountains, smokey”. There is something worse, though.

We passed the thirty-seventh anniversary of Chernobyl on April 26th. If you are unfamiliar with the disaster, here is a quote from Wikipedia: “The Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history in terms of cost and casualties. It is one of only two classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. The struggle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles. During the accident itself, 31 people died, and long-term effects such as cancers are still being investigated.”

The cleanup involved volunteers who knew they were committing suicide for the promise of the government taking care of their families, forever. Shortly after the accident, the nearby town of Pripyat was evacuated, and the 53,000 residents disbursed through Ukraine. The rest of the Soviet citizenry remained in the dark about the accident until April 28th, when radiation levels set off alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden, over 620 miles away. The Soviet government was then forced to go public with the accident. Ten days after the accident, the Soviet government expanded the evacuation area to a 20-mile radius of Chernobyl. This “dead zone” is still in place today.

How does Chernobyl play into my dissertation on shifting winds? Well, in a couple of ways. First off, it was the wind that carried the radioactive fallout to Sweden where the unsafe levels set off alarms alerting the rest of the world to the problem. Secondly, and this one is the most important, we have a propensity in the United States for building nuclear power plants to the Southwest of large population centers. The wind pattern in the United States is predominantly from the South and West.

In Georgia, our two nuclear plants are located at Baxley and Augusta. Not good for Augusta, or anywhere in South Carolina, but at least they’re not Southwest of Atlanta. We have to go to Alabama to find a nuclear power plant Southwest of Atlanta, where I live. Alabama also has a number of plants that are West and Northwest of Atlanta. As we all know, the wind shifts. Currently it’s coming from the Northwest. It is my fervent desire to avoid a “Silkwood” situation.

As we move to clean energy I’m hopeful that we’ll take a look at the French designs of nuclear power plants. They’ve had a remarkable success record and produce about 70% of their power from nuclear power. Bill Gates is also on the right track in the development of safe nuclear power plants. I’d far rather supplement his efforts than supplement the oil companies’ offshore drilling, we know their track record.

We have the opportunity to learn from the past and “Build Back Better“. Will we, or are we just marking time until our next Chernobyl?

Wrongly Accused

I read an interesting piece about an old fellow that had been released from jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Jack McCullough, who is now 78 years old, was released from prison after serving five years of a life sentence. Where all of this gets real curious is that McCullough was convicted in 2011 for a murder that occurred in 1957.

McCullough was accused of murdering a neighbor girl back when he was 18 or so. McCullough was not accused in 1957 when the crime occurred, he was accused in 2011. He was brought back to Sycamore, Illinois, his childhood home, from Seattle, Washington where he was living, to stand trial. In a trial that has now been overturned, McCullough was railroaded into a murder conviction. It seemed that the community had to have a perpetrator for what they described as their “9-11”.

To say the evidence was shaky is a vast understatement. Many people who had given police statements at the time of the crime are no longer living. To that end, McCullough was not able to face his accusers. His attorney was not able to question the accusers or offer a rebuttal to their testimony. Old eye witness accounts were read into the record that loosely described McCullough at the time. Teenage behavior being what it is, it probably described every other teenager at the time too. Testimony about wearing your hair in a ducktail is not as relevant in the ’50’s as one might think it is today.

The Innocence Project states on their website, “Eyewitness mis-identification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, playing a role in more than 70% of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide.”  There are a bunch of reasons why eyewitnesses can get it wrong, which is why it is imperative that the physical evidence is unimpeachable. In this case, most of the physical evidence was missing or destroyed. A key piece of evidence, a doll that the killer was supposed to have touched, was missing. The DNA from the doll could have excluded McCullough, but it was no where to be found when the trial came about.

Probably the most damning point in this scenario is the fact that McCullough was forced to act as his own lawyer in his appeal process. The road to McCullough’s eventual freedom was started by a petition prepared by another inmate with paralegal training. The petition was denied, but caused the current prosecutor for Dekalb County, Illinois to review the case. When asked by the judge to comment on the appeal request, State’s Attorney Richard Schmack responded that he had found, “clear and convincing evidence”, that McCullough was innocent.

Well, the wheels of justice finally started rolling, and eventually McCullough was released. Interviews with McCullough detail that he will be, “living his life at one hundred mile an hour”, since he has so much time to make up. Truthfully, it was a wonder that McCullough had survived the length of time he did in prison, and not just because of his age. Prison inmates have a particular fondness for people that are accused of crimes against children. “Baby fondlers” they call them. I speculate that many prison inmates were abused themselves as children, and can imagine that they would have had a much different life had they not been abused. The inmates consider it a privilege to help society rid itself of child predators. McCullough is very lucky to have survived vigilante justice for a crime he did not commit.

Currently, the Innocence Project has helped to free 365 wrongfully convicted people. Of those, twenty-one had spent time on death row. Just as important, the Innocence Project has found 147 actual perpetrators. Thank God there are people out there righting the wrongs of overzealous prosecutors and police. We need more of them.

 

Cognitive Dissonance

While I mull over the thought of being happy and sad about the same event, I think of politicians who must get caught up in the disconnect of taking a vow to protect the Constitution and then promoting or covering up an attempted coup. Cognitive dissonance is what it’s called.

Of course politicians have a political party to tell them how to respond to all topics so they don’t get confused by their own feelings. I’m thinking that part of the attraction for the Donald is his lack of a party filter to clean up his language before it airs to the public. I know we all are tired of hearing the same tried and true party answers. Maybe that’s why the Donald’s followers are energized by his speeches. The Donald just freestyles like a rapper searching for rhymes. What he says doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to fill his followers with a sense of entitlement and rage.

Just for grins, I was looking at some Trump quotes to prove my point. Thank you Google and Goodreads for your ease of use. Right off the top I found a doozy: “One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government.” The Donald forgot to add, “that’s why I’m throwing my hat in the ring”.

The Donald let a little bit of his dissonance slip through in this famous quote: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.”  “And some I assume are good people”, kind of explains the opposition of thoughts in Trump’s brain that he can’t reconcile, and yet, feels compelled to pontificate about.

The Donald’s actions belie his rhetoric with regard to his famous Mar A Lago club. In an investigation by The New York Times it was discovered that American citizens were repeatedly overlooked for hiring by the club in favor of immigrants. “Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired.” Building a wall to keep low price labor from entering the country while almost exclusively using legal and illegal foreign labor for his projects seems a little bit dissonant or at best, disingenuous.

The Donald will never be concerned about saying things that he doesn’t really have resolved in his brain. For example, “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That’s were the fun is.” You kind of have to let that management style marinate in your brain while you’re pondering his six bankruptcies. Of course you could try to ascertain the Donald’s owns self evaluation, “I often say that I’m a member of the lucky sperm club. But did it give me a natural talent? I don’t think so.” No, but the 400+ million the Donald got from his daddy kind of disputes his claims of being a “self-made man.” In a rare moment of consciousness, the Donald did declare, “Everything in life is luck.” I agree, he is the undisputed expert on that topic.

I’m thinking that women are going to play a large part in electing our next President. I’m not saying that because I believe that all women are going to vote for Joe and Kamala in a tsunami of gender solidarity. I’m saying that because there is such a great paper trail for women to familiarize themselves with to let them know how the candidates really feel about women. The Donald says, “Nobody respects women more than I do.” which is a great quote to match up with,“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.” Let’s all be honest here, isn’t it the height of respect being called “a young, and beautiful, piece of ass?”

I guess if the Donald doesn’t mind having his daughters evaluated by their looks and sexual proclivities, there’s no dissonance.

 

 

 

Il Duce

I kind of got focused on the Donald again while waiting for the insurrectionists to get together this weekend for fun and games in the Capitol. Sounds like they want to get the old gang back together, kind of like a high school reunion. They’ve modified the prom theme “Starry Nights” to “Turn Out The Lights” to more accurately portray their intention to leave democracy in the dark in their wake.

In an attempt to appear to look like normal folks, the organizers have asked the returnees to leave their MAGA duds at home. I’m hopeful that the organizer also requested they leave their guns, knives, bombs and other implements of torture behind. I know this puts the group at a real disadvantage of knowing who the other lemmings are, but I’m sure they’ll be able to just look for people frothing at the mouth and self identify.

As I understand it, the group is still determined to right the wrong of the majority of Americans finding Joe Biden more presidential than the Donald. They continue to foment the “big lie” that aliens from space and other countries manipulated the vote total by 8 million or so votes to throw the election away from their candidate. The Donald continues to do his part by waddling from venue to venue to separate the rubes from their money by saying anything that convinces the crowd that they alone hear the truth.  

If you are a candidate who is willing to say anything to stir up a crowd, what does that say? If you promise to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S., and use Mexican money to do it, what happens when you can’t deliver on your promise? How do you appease the people who voted for you and the wall, and then were disappointed? How do you backtrack on your promise to deport 12 million aliens?

Forget the part that the voter should be smart enough to know that the promise was a physical impossibility. What happens after four years of constant prevarication and obfuscation? Do the voters that aren’t card carrying cult members peel away and vote for the other candidate? Do the fence-sitters just become disillusioned with the whole process and stay at home? Do the “fool me once” crowd search the horizon for the next “prophet”?

Salesmen and hucksters prey on the uninformed and the “wishful thinkers” every day. That’s why the Consumer Protection Agency was formed. Seems like we’re in desperate need of  a Voter’s Protection Agency. It’s not like The Donald is masking his lies in obscure language. He’s speaking his mind right up front of everybody, and unfortunately, the feedback he’s getting is only fueling his egomania. His statement, I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”, speaks to The Donald’s mental state. He believes he is infallible. That’s not a good quality for a leader of 330 million people that are as diverse as we are in America.

The world has a very bad history with infallible leaders. Normally I would do a separated at birth caption for this, but maybe this is more an argument for reincarnation.

Would Mussolini have been drug through the streets if he had had the Donald’s hair? Hard to know. Let’s hope we don’t get that close to history repeating itself to make a comparison.

Wearing Your Sin

While I like to rant about things out of my control, like the pollen, I also feel entitled to rant about other things as well.

One of the things that should be in everyone’s control is parenthood. Whether or not to have a child should totally be up to the parents. I guess in a perfect world we would want two happy well adjusted people who really loved children and would do right by them to be parents. Failing that, at least one of the parents should meet that criteria. In my mind, you have to have the mother’s total 100 percent buy in, or it’s a nonstarter. I don’t think I’m being sexist, or old school, I think I’m being pragmatic. If the mother can’t commit to 100 percent love and devotion to a child, she should have an out.

No, I’m not talking about adoption or orphanages. The horror of state run orphanages and places like depicted in the Magdalene Sisters are well documented. The potential mother should have a choice about when to exercise her lifetime commitment to raising a child, if ever.

Obviously what got me started thinking about this again is the law in Texas making abortion vigilantes out of the anti-abortion folks. They want to punish the mother and anyone associated with a woman exercising her rights over her body. How mean, how hateful, how non-Christian, how non-conservative.

Non-conservative, you say? Yes, because, while the Repubs have created their “Big Tent” by drawing in every hateful nut job in America from bigots to misogynists under the label of “conservative values”, actually being a fiscal conservative has not come in to play. How so, you ask?

As far back as 1972, the Rockefeller Commission determined that a liberalized abortion policy superseded a reduction in crime eighteen years in the future. The statistics were further confirmed in a study done by Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and John Donohue of Yale University in 2001. Their study concludes that the states with a high abortion rate have also experienced the greater reduction in crime. You can’t argue the facts, unless you’re a Republican political candidate.

How can the Republicans, “true conservatives”, ignore the study commissioned by one of their own? The study conclusively points out that unwanted children become society’s burden in the future. It would seem that true conservatives should be in favor of molding a society where the “unwanted” children would not be disrupting classrooms, creating crimes of varying degrees of sophistication and violence before finally being moved into the prison system. The average cost to house a criminal in prison is $32,000 a year. It would seem that true conservatives would prefer these children to be taxpayers, not taxtakers.

The only rationale that I can come up with the Republicans disconnect from a demonstrable conservative issue is the “holier than thou” elements they’ve attracted over the years. These folks would like for us to turn back the clock to the “Scarlet Letter” days. Rather than a letter sown onto their dress to signify their sin of fornication, the “modern” Christians would prefer the woman have a child to carry as a constant reminder of her sin. I think all of the concern about “fetal pain” and the “beginning of life” are just red herrings designed to draw us away from their true motivation. These people want the woman to pay for her sin, and they are not content to wait for Judgement Day. They want her to pay now, and in the hereafter. They want her to wear her sin.

I’ll finish this one up by saying I’m for free, on demand birth control, whatever shape it takes. There should be a Planned Parenthood office every hundred feet if necessary to keep unwanted children born. Bob Barker used to end each show by reminding everyone to have their pet spayed or neutered. Are we more concerned about unwanted pets than we are children? God, I hope not.

Profiles In Cowardice

I was thinking about the January 6th trials and all of the protestations about unlocking iPhones and the emails of Congress critters and other officials. That’s not to mention the hubris involved in ignoring subpoenas.

As a result of losing the 2020 election, the Republican party seems to want to just tear up the Constitution and leave no “rule of law” available to the common man. I realize that there are many people in our society that are so afraid and confused all of the time that they will happily give up their freedoms for the promise of safety. I might be scared and confused but I still want the insurrectionists held accountable. All of them.

Sadly, the current Republican party is willing to make the promise of “safety” to gain total control of our society. The fact that the Republicans are actively stoking the fires of domestic terrorists to allay the fears that the Republicans created should not be ignored. Of course I suspect that the Repubs are adapting Nelson Mandela’s quote “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” to their own needs.

We all realize that no democratic government has ever been able to keep its citizens completely in the dark forever. Even in the most repressive times, the government can’t even keep its secrets safe from cyber terrorists or whistle blowers. Look at the supposed harm whistle blower Bradley Manning is alleged to have done. Millions of records of government misdeeds were released into the ether, and all of the government’s anti-terror methods in place could not prevent their release. In spite of the calls for his execution for treason, it appears that the records released were more embarrassing than damaging. The truth came out and the Republic has survived, as it will when the January 6th insurrection trials conclude.

I guess I am ruminating on the safety issue posed by the January 6th insurrection. I’m also trying to make sense of the responses that it has drawn from some of the congress people. Honestly, I can’t think of how you could be hunkered down behind a bench in the House with a mad, frothing mob trying to rip the doors off and feel comfortable that it was “ok” because “they’re our guys”. The audacity to relate the event as just “normal tourist visits“, is beyond the pale.

Did the insurrectionists have playing cards like the soldiers in Iraq did to identify the high value targets? Clearly there were targeted members of congress, but what if you bore a likeness to one of the targets? Was Mike Pence’s brother in danger because he looks like the man destined for the gallows? What a tableau that would have been, Greg Pence screaming “No, no, you want my brother” as the crowd drug him to the hangman’s noose.

Mobs are by definition uncontrolled. Have the Republicans factored that any loss of life, any collateral damage to their side is acceptable as long as they return to power? I sense that the Congressional hearings are giving us that answer. Somewhere along the way being a good American loyal to the Constitution and willing to uphold the oath taken to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution got thrown into the ashcan. Fealty to the Donald and what he represents seems to be the only consideration.

We are all aware that it’s impossible to stop a guy willing to blow himself up in the pursuit of a cause. Maybe that explains some of the Republicans reluctance to rein in the lunatic portion of their constituency. I started to say “fringe” here, but I don’t think they’re the fringe anymore. Polls indicate that lunatics or lunatic lites are running the Republican party now. Maybe some of the more reasonable Republicans have found themselves in a position of riding the tiger. Sad. Who would have ever thought that the party of Reagan would ever have to fear “God Fearing” Christians?

I’m guessing that most members of Congress feel pretty safe everyday doing their job, unless their office is near MTG. It’s the difference in the narrative of what they are willing to do, or not do for the American people to keep us safe that worries me.

I’d love to see some of these congressional pseudo-patriots stand up for what they did and tell the American people, “Yeah, I did it. I tried to overthrow the government because my guy lost. I did it and I’m glad and I’m willing to serve whatever punishment is dictated because I’m proud of what I did.” That’s where real bravery is displayed, not in some convention hall in front of frothing sycophants.

There Should Be Riots

I caught a news blurb that got stuck in the back of my brain. I kind of let it marinate there and went on about my business. My guess is that it would have died of loneliness, like most of my thoughts, but then it popped up again on CNN, and then The Daily Show. Once I saw it on The Daily Show, I knew it was legit.

As the story goes, the Donald has been telling his supporters that if he is not magically reinstalled as the rightful President (for Life) then his supporters should stop voting in the upcoming elections, “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ‘22 or ‘24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.”

Being one who was able to do a fantasy in my head that involved a backroom deal between Trump and the American oligarchs to destroy the Republican party forever and just go full scale Fascist, I’m reassessing my thoughts. In poker terms, I think the Republicans are now “pot committed”. They have too much invested in the psycho wing of the party to cut them and Trump loose. No backroom deals, no fantasies, just full on let the crazies have their way if it keeps “us” in power.

In my mind, the Republicans now have at the top of their ticket a candidate that says out loud what all of them are thinking. No more double speak, no more Newspeak, just comes right out and calls a spade a spade. The current party platform loses the “47%”, “welfare mother”, “welfare Cadillac”, references to the minorities and goes ahead and calls all non-whites murders, rapists, and welfare cheats. We all remember that the Donald got the ball rolling by calling all of the Hispanic immigrants rapists and thugs at his announcement speech.

In truth, I thought the “build a wall around the country”, ban all Muslims, etc. was so over the top that the everyday Americans would quickly see through the sham of the Trumpo-Fascist theory and it would be exposed early on. Imagine my surprise to find that the neo-Republicans had found a new savior. A savior who would say mean, hateful things at the top of his voice on a daily basis criticizing the people who were not “like us”. Blaming “them” for all of the world’s shortcomings and inciting his followers to invade the Capitol to maintain his regime.

In “Trump World”, the Donald doesn’t have the time or inclination to be politically correct, he’s too busy setting up his next scam. Besides, his followers shouldn’t be required to have to translate to get his message. For most of the Donald’s followers, thinking is real hard. Considering all arguments before making a decision requires the intellect to navigate a two-step process. It appears that there are not many intellectuals at Trump rallies. If so, they are standing off to the sidelines directing the Schutzstaffel in their next moves.

I don’t think that all actions at a Trump rally are orchestrated. I suspect that some of Trumpists get caught up in the moment and their half a wit doesn’t allow them to forecast the outcome of their actions. “l’m just too dumb to know better“, seems to be a common excuse given at the insurrectionists trials.

I don’t think the same can be said for the other Trump supporters using violence to get their message across. I think Trump is calling for violence from the lectern, and the fact that the Republicans in Congress will do nothing to put an end to it says everything. The current hierarchy of the Republican party believes in winning at any cost. Even if that cost is the “Shining City On A Hill” articulated by Ronald Reagan.

This could get ugly folks. The Chicago riots in 1968 were college kids upset about segregation and the war in Vietnam, among other things. The riots of 2024 and beyond could be because some little rich kid didn’t get his way. And let me remind everyone, even “Soccer Moms” are armed to the teeth these days.