Category: Uncategorized

Right Hand Man

Todd Blanche is the second most powerful prosecutor in the United States.  As Deputy Attorney General (DAG) in the Department of Justice, he is the “Chief Operating Officer”.  While Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, is in charge, it is Blanche who makes most of the day-to-day decisions.  Bondi sets the direction, Blanche steers the Department.  It’s a “big job” for whoever gets the role.  

Ask Rod Rosenstein, the DAG in the first Trump Administration.  While the Attorneys General changed, from Sessions, to Whittaker, to Barr; it was Rosenstein who bore the brunt of balancing a Department that was first investigating the newly elected President, then defending him, then investigating the investigators.  Whatever you think of the outcomes, Rosenstein was at the center of the storm.

Most DAG’s rise up through the Justice Department.  Some, like Rosenstein, come in as political appointments from US Attorney’s offices (Rosenstein in Baltimore).  But Mr. Blanche took a different route.  While he did serve as a line prosecutor in the Southern District of New York for nearly a decade, he left the Department to go into private practice.  It was in the course of that private work that he was hired by the client that made his career:  Donald Trump.

Blanche represented Trump in the 34 felony-count criminal indictment for falsifying business records regarding the Stormy Daniels payoff.  Trump was found guilty on all counts (as President-elect the penalties were dismissed).   Despite the loss, Blanche remained as one of Trump’s most trusted aides.  That confidence showed in Blanche’s elevation to the second highest office in the Justice Department.

Room Where it Happened

So when a similar situation from Donald Trump’s private life arose, he sent Blanche in to “put out the fire”.  Jeffrey Epstein, friend of Trump and purveyor of underage children for sexual exploitation by the rich and famous; died mysteriously in a Federal prison cell in New York.  Whatever he knew, went to the grave with him.  But Epstein’s own “chief operating officer”, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving twenty years in Federal prison.  And when the EPSTEIN FILES!! scandal broke last month, Trump needed to know what she would say.  Who else but Todd Blanche, the DAG, would talk to Maxwell for nine hours in a Tallahassee Federal Courthouse.

We don’t know what was said.  What we do know is one side of the “quid-pro-quo”.  Maxwell was soon moved from a medium security facility near Tallahassee, to a Federal prison “camp” in Bryan, Texas.  Department policy prevents convicted sex offenders from the more relaxed confinement in a “camp” type-facility, but Maxwell is there anyway.   Whatever the “other side” of the quid-pro-quo was, it must be enough to warrant a public exception for the “luxury” child sex-trafficker.

Elmendorf

President Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.  Putin is under indictment for war crimes by the World Court, and is waging a war of aggression in Ukraine.   But Trump ignored all that, and invited Putin to the United States; Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. He literally rolled out the “red carpet” for him.  Putin even was given a private ride with Mr. Trump in the Presidential limousine, and an airshow featuring America’s most advance weapons, F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers. 

Trump invited Putin so he could discuss ending the war in Ukraine.  There were elaborate plans for a closed meeting, followed by a luncheon, and then talks between the aides from both sides, in hopes of hammering out an arrangement to end the three year conflict and to bring Russia back into the world economy. 

It didn’t happen.

Room Where it Happened

We don’t know fully what the private conversation between Putin and Trump was about.  In terms of Ukraine, Putin made it clear that he would not withdraw from any of the captured territory, and would only accept a ceasefire-in-place with several conditions that the Ukrainians would clearly reject.  That was a foreseeable result:  it’s clear that Putin is still set on conquering Ukraine and making it a part of Russia (again).  The longer the war lasts, the more to Putin’s advantage.  A ceasefire doesn’t help him.

Trump said that Putin affirmed all of Trump’s biggest domestic assertions:  that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 election, and would not dare invade Ukraine if Trump were in office in 2022.  The American President also said that Putin “knew” that the election of 2020 was rigged against him.  (Trump didn’t say that Putin knew Trump’s name wasn’t in the EPSTEIN FILES!!, but that might be next).

Putin walked out of the first meeting, made a statement to the press, and went home:  no lunch, no second meeting, no talks between aides.  Putin got what he wanted:  international acknowledgment as a “leader of a powerful nation”, not an indicted war criminal.  Trump served to legitimize Putin’s authority, even as the Russian dictator launched more attacks against civilians in Ukraine.

That was the “quid”, but there seems to be no “pro quo”.  Todd Blanche managed to silence Maxwell for the moment, but what did Trump get?  In terms of Ukraine, it seems like nothing.  But, was there something else that Putin “gave” Trump in return?  

We don’t know,  No one was in “the room where it happened”.

PS: credit where credit is due: “right hand man” and “in the room where it happens (happened) are from Hamilton, The Musical – which continues to reverberate in our household as we contend with the second Trump Administration. And, of course the “Tale of Two Deals” harkens back to Charles Dickens.

You Did It

We definitely live in the age of “what-about-ism”.  Rather than debate the specifics of an issue, the answer by “the other side” is almost always, “what-about?”  Then there’s the litany of statements about when “your side” did something similar to what the “other side” is doing.  It makes for a frustrating discussion, because it never really gets down to the merits of the issues.

A quick example:  the Trump ICE “gang” is going through American cities, rounding up folks who “look like” they might be undocumented migrants.  The take those folks, deny all due process, confine them, and for some, deport them out of the country.  When opponents raise questions about clear violations of Constitutional rights; instead of arguing the Constitution, the response is usually, “what-about”.  “What-about Obama and Biden, who did the exact same thing?”  Well, the answer is, they didn’t.  

On the Border

Both Democratic Presidents did remove newly arrived undocumented migrants at the border.  They gave them a choice, detention awaiting asylum hearings, or a bus ride back across the border without “prejudice”.  That meant those migrants could still wait in line to enter the United State legally.  It wasn’t the “round-up” in Los Angeles, or Chicago, or Columbus, Ohio; and it didn’t require “detention facilities” to be built throughout the nation.  It was literally a roadside decision for the migrants.  They got picked up, they decided what to do, and they either went to detention or went back across the border.  Regardless of MAGA what-about, it’s not the same thing as the inhumane treatment by ICE today.

What’s happening with migrants today is a serious question, one that strikes directly at the heart of the United States Constitution. (For more on that, see this earlier essay, Black Letter Law).  But there’s another issue, this most recent “what-about”, that is a little less traumatic.

Burn

Democrats, and all folks who find MAGA repugnant, are enjoying the current Administration crisis over the EPSTEIN FILES!!.  It’s not about the atrocious actions of Epstein and Maxwell and their wealthy compatriots. Everyone, at least, that I know, finds child molestation abhorrent.  So when I call out the Trump “gang” on the EPSTEIN FILES!!, instead of getting a reasonable discussion about the facts, my MAGA friends immediately resort to “what-about”.  “Well, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice had the EPSTEIN FILES!!. Why didn’t they reveal them?  What-about that?”  It’s an interesting argument, one with enough truth in it to bring a pause to the discussion. 

So here, just this once, is the answer.  Then I’m done with getting in the mud about Epstein.  To everyone involved in the Epstein bacchanals, to quote Hamilton, the Musical,  “I hope you burn”.

Epstein

Jeffrey Epstein was indicted (for the second time) by the FBI in July of 2019.  That was during the first Trump Administration.  There was a large amount of evidence amassed from searches of Epstein’s homes, both in the United States and overseas.  The case was more than solid, and Epstein was likely to spend the remainder of his life in jail.  But in August, only a month after his arrest, he was found dead in his cell in the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York.  It was ruled a suicide.

All of that was under the “watch” of Trump appointed Attorney General Bill Barr.  

A year later, in July of 2020, Epstein’s co-abuser, procurer, and groomer, Ghislaine Maxwell, was arrested by the FBI.  That too, was under Trump’s Department of Justice.  Her Federal trial began in November of 2021, now under the Biden Justice Department, and she was found guilty of varying sex crimes in December of that year and sentenced to twenty years in prison.  No other criminal charges were brought in the cases around Epstein.  This was, in part, because most of the possible charges occurred almost two decades before, and Federal law carries a five to ten year statute of limitation.

Back to Normal

One of the avowed goals of the Biden Administration was to get “back to normal”.  This was particularly true when it came to the Department of Justice.  There was the huge controversy created by FBI Director James Comey’s “speech” announcing that Hillary Clinton was not going to be indicted. In it, he then blamed Clinton for actions that might have broken the law. That speech and his later letter to Congress, violated all past practice and procedure.  Some, including myself, believe that Comey’s statements were a pivotal reason that Trump won in 2016. 

So getting “back to normal” meant that Justice would either speak through indictments, or not speak at all. Since no one else around Epstein could be indicted, the Merrick Garland Justice Department had nothing more to say.

During the 2024 Presidential campaign, neither President Biden nor Vice President Harris even mentioned the EPSTEIN FILES!!  They wanted “normal”:  the Justice Department couldn’t indict, and that was all there was to say.

But one of the promises of the 2024 Trump Campaign was to “reveal” what was in the EPSTEIN FILES!!  They led many voters to believe that all sorts of “Democrats” were involved in Epstein’s sordid activities.  And they all promised: Trump, Bondi, FBI Director Patel, and most prominently, FBI Assistant Director Dan Borgino, to reveal the EPSTEIN FILES!!

Until they got in power.  Then, even after Bondi said she that the “files” were on her desk, they came back and said there was “nothing there”.   

This isn’t about Epstein or Joe Biden.  This is about lying to your own supporters.  It’s about the lack of integrity in the Trump Administration.  That’s what we should be arguing.

What about that?

(Remember that old song Feelings, by Morris Albert?)

Disruption

I guess, to some, it “felt” like a good idea.  Many Americans, fueled by the “Fake/Faux/Fox News” media onslaught, “felt” like billions of dollars were being “wasted”, or even worse, stolen.  That “feeling” helped get Donald Trump elected President, for a second time, despite thirty-four felony convictions.  Enough Americans felt, I guess, that it was time to put that “fox” in charge of the entire “chicken coop”.  

Elon Musk and his DOGE boys came in, and completely disrupted the government.  Finances were ripped from hundreds of programs that were mandated by Congress.  There were real-world consequences, programs that were life-saving, cut cold.  Real people died.  Almost every agency, from the Internal Revenue Service to the Veterans’ Administration to the National Park Service, was disrupted. And the rest of Americans, even the ones who didn’t share the “feelings” of waste and fraud, shared in that disruption, like it or not.

The end result “felt” kind of sad.  The DOGE boys (including their leader, Musk, and his lieutenant, “Big Balls”) spent a lot of money, ate a lot of pizza, and crunched an enormous amount of data.  But, in real terms (not feelings) they didn’t save much. DOGE claims to have saved $160 Billion, a big number.  But analysis shows they spent $135 Billion to do it (CBS).  $25 Billion is a “big number” too, but not so “big” in the scope of a  $5.35 Trillion annual budget.  

Big Balls’ Nose

Speaking of “Big Balls”; he intervened in a street crime in Washington, DC, and got beat up pretty badly.  The President said he was “near death”; but unless you can die from a broken nose Trump might have exaggerated a bit.  “Big Balls” may be big in the computer world, but in real world DC crime,  as the saying goes, he got his a$$ kicked.  And somehow, it “feels” like that’s generated an entire crisis in Washington.

President Trump was looking for something to do in August, besides talking about the EPSTEIN FILES.  He put massive tariffs on China (but he really didn’t), and he arranged to meet Putin in Alaska, in quest of “his” Nobel Peace Prize.  Hopefully, he doesn’t give away Ukraine, or Alaska, as part of the deal.  But when all of those things didn’t manage to change the subject from Trump’s good, deceased, child molesting friend; he decided to bring in the Federal Government to rescue “Big Balls”.

Retribution

“I am your retribution”.  That’s what Trump told the world would happen if he got elected.  And here he is, getting payback for “Big Balls’” broken nose.  He’s nationalized the police of Washington, DC, taking control from the duly elected local authorities.  Trump claimed that Washington was worse than varying war zones throughout the world, and “only he” could fix what the “Democrat” local government allowed to happen.  Just like  DOGE “fixed” the Federal Government, now Trump would “fix” Washington, DC.

So let’s get a couple of things straight, feelings aside.  Washington DC isn’t Baghdad, or some other war-torn foreign capital.  It isn’t even the “murder capital” of the United States.  That “honor” goes to Memphis, Tennessee, followed by St Louis and Baltimore.  DC is fourth on the list, which surprisingly doesn’t include Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, or any city in Ohio.  I guess “feelings” can be mistaken (USA Facts).   And while Washington’s homicide rate rose 15% in the Covid and post-Covid era, it actually fell 12% in the past year.   So while that doesn’t help “Big Balls’” nose, it is factual, versus anecdotal, evidence.  It’s not about feelings, unless we’re talking about “feeling” like talking about something other than the EPSTEIN FILES.

Real World

But there are real-world consequences.  Now the Federal Government is in-charge of the DC Metro Police, replacing the Mayor and the elected City Council.  DC is a complicated jurisdictional area.  It’s a Federal District, and many segments of the city are regulated by Federal Police anyway, including the Capitol area (the Capitol Police), the National Mall (US Park Police), the White House (US Secret Service), and, of course, ICE (they’re everywhere, everywhere)!

The Metro Police is still in action, but now, trained FBI agents are making arrests for loitering, and the Park Police are patrolling regular neighborhoods, as well as the “regular” cops.  Many will “feel” better.  But those “feelings” aren’t likely to be those of the regular folks who live in DC. More importantly, it’s another DOGE-type solution to the problem, one that disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians.  The Federal forces can go “tear up” in DC for a while, joined by the National Guard and perhaps even the regular military.  But, probably sooner rather than later, Washington will return to “regular order”, and the President’s band-aid solution will be over.  Nothing changes.  

Big Balls may feel vindicated.  And Trump will have his “retribution” on the town that stood up to him on January 6^th.  But the rest of us have to get over feelings, and look at the facts.  This is no solution to the real problems of Washington, DC.  It’s just another distraction.

And that’s too bad, for the real people who live in Washington.

Originalists

One of the most disconcerting “facts of life” in our new MAGA world, is the complete disregard for the Constitution of the United States.  For decades, even for centuries, we learned the meaning of the Constitution.  We KNEW what the authors of the Constitution and the Amendments  intended.  They were prolific writers, and felt the need in their Age of Enlightenment to explain their reasoning, and to have it examined by others.  Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and others put their thoughts to paper, and challenged others to debate and discuss.  

 The “founding fathers” of the Project 2025 playbook for the alteration of American society, all claim that they are “originalists”, following in “Black Letter” obedience the original intent of the Founding Authors.  But when that original intent somehow doesn’t “fit” their own warped interpretation of America, they go back and “alter” the original intent.  It’s historically fraudulent, an act that the Enlightened leaders would find academically abhorrent.  But that’s what’s happening.

Religious Freedom

The biggest “lie” is that the United States was founded as a “Christian Nation” under Christian principles.  Here are the facts.  The authors of the Constitution were generally Christians.  But they were also the direct descendants of those who fled Europe searching for religious freedom.  John Adams, a very religious man, had great-grandparents who were original Puritan settlers in Massachusetts.   They fled religious tyranny of the Church of England.  Religious freedom was embedded in his heritage.  

Thomas Jefferson himself, while a “standard” Anglican, wrote about his departure from Christian theology.  His concepts, shared in the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, exalted the freedom of men to make up their own mind about religion, and called for government to stay out of religious affairs.  Jefferson created the concept of a “wall” between church and state, a “wall” that has been chipped away by recent Federalist Society Judges’ opinions.

But there are a lot of even clearer MAGA precepts that disregard the “black letter” intent of the Founders. 

We The People

The Founding Fathers had a clear concept of who was “part” of the United States.  There were “free people”, those not owned by others and not under a term of contract (indentured servitude, or contractual enslavement).   Within that class of “free people” were citizens: those who could vote in the state and national elections.  For example, an emancipated Black person would be a “free person”, but not qualify as a citizen in many states.  Women  may or may not be citizens, but they were “free people”.  

Then there were enslaved people, who were owned by others.  In a purely political compromise, they were considered three-fifths of a person for counting, and for taxation purposes.  But they were not “free” nor “three-fifths of a citizen”.  They were enslaved.

And finally there were Indians. They were not citizens, and not counted as “free people”,   because they were considered members of separate nations, the Indian nations.  That’s also why the United States would make treaties with Indian tribes (almost always broken). Indians were treated as Nations;  the United States often waged war against them.  When we see Palestinians starving in Gaza, keep in mind that the avowed US strategy against the Plains Indian tribes was to destroy the buffalo and create starvation. That forced the tribes onto government reservations. (This was the strategy of Ohio’s own General Phil Sheridan).  The Israelis aren’t the first to choose such a horrific path.

Census

Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution provides for an “enumeration” of the people of the United States, for the purpose of determining the number of seats in the House of Representatives each state will get.  That enumeration (the census) is clearly defined:

…which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.

Who gets counted?  It’s a simple math equation:  free persons (including indentured servants) and three fifths of other persons (enslaved folks).  Who doesn’t count – Indians.  So when the President, or the Heritage Society, claims that only “citizens” should be counted, that’s simply not what Mr. Madison and the Constitutional Convention said, or meant. 

Free persons are simply that, free.  They may or may not be “documented persons” in our current ICE-terrified world, but they are free.  Therefore, they are subject to being enumerated, and that enumeration is used to determine representation.  Don’t like it?  As the MAGA world is fond of saying about the Second Amendment (another mis-interpreted Madisonian concept) – then change it.  Article V of the Constitution lays out two separate paths to making those changes, called Amendments.

Free Persons

Once we get the concept of free persons versus citizens, there are several other Constitutional areas that become clear.  The Fourth Amendment, protecting against governmental search and seizures, states that it applies to “the people”.  That’s the same as “free persons”, and not the same as citizens.  So undocumented migrants in the United States aren’t citizens, but they are “free people” and therefore covered.

The same is true about the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments that create protections in criminal prosecutions.  Those again guarantee that “no persons” shall be denied their rights.   When the MAGA-world rejoices at the ICE “round-ups” and “detention centers”, they are in direct contradiction of the criminal rights of the Constitution – granted to persons, (not just citizens).

And then there’s the mighty Fourteenth Amendment, which starts with the phrase: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”  We already know what the phrase “all persons” means.  

And then the Fourteenth applied Federal law to the actions of the states: “… nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”  There’s that pesky “any person” thing again.  There’s no exception for the “undocumented”; those who might have entered the United States without permission.  They still remain “a person” under Constitutional definition.

Born in the USA

This doesn’t just apply to rights, but the concept of birthright citizenship.  The authors of the Fourteenth were well aware of what “all persons” meant, and knew what “born” meant as well. Arguing that immigration status (other than diplomatic status) could determine birth citizenship is totally foreign to the “black letter law” of the Constitution, as well as the intent of those that wrote the Fourteenth.

The Black Letter Law of the US Constitution is clear. What isn’t clear is whether we allow these so-called “Originalists” to change America’s origin story to fit their own nefarious plans. 

That’s un-American, and so are they.

Selling Jeans

The American Eagle clothing company is in a tough spot.  Selling blue jeans in the United States is an incredibly competitive market.  Think about it;  every kind of “jeans” has its niche.  Levi’s is still “the king”, but if you’re “a little bit country”, you’re probably wearing Wranglers or Carhartt.  But LL Bean and, my favorite, Land’s End have the “boomer market” (they make a short/fat pair for me – Grandpa jeans I guess!!). And the incredibly competitive youth market requires pre-shredded jeans that fit skin-tight, but still are comfortable. And while American Eagle had a great run as a hands-on retailer at the shopping mall, the world (including me) buys online now.  It’s been a while for almost anyone to say: “I went to the Mall today”.

Now Amazon will send you jeans to try on, some “name brands”, some made by companies whose names are an unpronounceable series of consonants.  Amazon can dress you inside and out, developing your “style and theme”, and you can send the rest back.  So, wearing American Eagle is no longer a stand-alone fashion statement.

Ad Campaign

The corporate answer:  let’s get a young movie star to model our jeans.  Sydney Sweeney was the “answer” to American Eagle’s prayers.  She’s a “star” in the “target” age group:  twenty-seven with twenty-four films already to her credit.  But she’s best known for her roles in streaming television, including “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “White Lotus”.  To point out the obvious, it really doesn’t matter that I haven’t heard of her or any of her movies or TV shows. American Eagle isn’t trying to sell jeans to me.

And the marketing department came up with a “catch-phrase” that would summarize the whole campaign: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans!!”  And in one of the actual ads, they had Sydney use the following line:

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color.” As the camera slowly pans upward and she turns her eyes toward the viewer, and Sweeney concludes, “My jeans are blue.”

Jeans or Genes

It’s cute.  It’s genetics mixed with fashionable clothing.  And it means nothing about “racism” or “eugenics”.  (For those who only vaguely remember reading Brave New World in high school, eugenics is the science of trying to breed humans to enhance or remove certain traits).  But in our hyper-political world, some jumped on both the dialog, and the sexuality of the blonde twenty-seven year old.   It’s “promoting” Caucasian, blue eyed-blonde GENES!!  It was, believe it, about a beautiful young woman, using her beauty to sell you jeans!!  And, and, it was kind of like an ad made by Brooke Shields (when she was fifteen) back in the day – sexualizing a child!!

Look, I’m as “woke” as the next Liberal, but this seems like, what my Mother would have called “A tempest in a teapot”.   The American Eagle writers were “cute”, using genes and jeans interchangeably.  They found a grown, adult, woman to model them (not a fifteen year-old child).  And, damn straight they sexualized the product.  I buy jeans for fit and comfort. My neighbors buy jeans that they wear to the rodeo (though the TV series Yellowstone featured mostly Levi’s). But the “target” age-group, adolescent to young adult, buy jeans to “look good”. 

Who are they trying to “look good” for (That’s a trap)?   Whoever they want to attract of whatever gender they are attracted to (that’s the way out)!!

‘Merica

Look, we live in a Nation where unidentifiable men round up folks of color in the streets.  In the US today, there are “detention sites” where folks are held without charges, in horrible conditions, and without access to courts or legal assistance.  After the passage of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, millions of Americans will lose their health care.  And we are seeing the rise of Christian Nationalism mixed with Government support altering the public education systems. 

Freedom of speech is being restricted, folks are supposed to “stay small” so that they aren’t “in trouble”, and Americans are “being careful” about who they talk to about the future of our Nation.

Do you think it’s a big deal that a beautiful woman is wearing a pair of jeans in an ad?  Should we really spend time, write essays (even this one), take up pages of Google citations, simply because American Eagle was “too cute”?    

We’ve got way bigger problems than that.  We’ve got a Nation to save.  And it really doesn’t matter what pair of jeans you’re wearing to do it.

Real World Problems

There are real world problems for the Trump Administration to deal with.  Not the crazy ones they made for themselves;  like creating an American Gestapo force to terrorize folks who might be migrants.  Or other “authoritarian” stuff:  like trying to rig the 2026 Congressional elections by stealing seats in Texas and other “Red” states; or, of course, the fumbled EPSTEIN FILES!!!

No, they are really blowing it, in the area that Donald Trump supposedly has the “most” authority.  The two world leaders who supposedly were Trump’s “best buddies”, are thumbing their nose at the United States. 

No Soul

Start with Vladimir Putin.  He’s perfectly happy to have the President of the United States fly to Moscow to have a “chat”.  But there’s a reason why Heads of State don’t just “chat”.  When the President goes to talk to another leader, there’s usually months of preparation and agreements beforehand so that both look good.  There needs to be a “deal” and a “handshake” that has some meaning.  And Trump sees himself as the “Great Deal Maker”.  But there’s no agreement.

That’s why Biden wouldn’t meet with Putin.  There was no “deal on the table”, nothing to shake hands about.   Biden didn’t need to do what George Bush did:  “…I looked the man in the eye. I found him very straightforward and trustworthy – I was able to get a sense of his soul”. Biden knew Putin wasn’t straightforward or trustworthy; just a soul-less brutal dictator willing to kill his opponents and sacrifice his countrymen for his own dreams of power.

The meat grinder in Ukraine continues, with the gallant Ukrainians holding their own against the Russian machine. Hundreds of thousands have died on both sides (more Russian than Ukrainian), and Putin hasn’t demonstrated any interest in stopping.  Sham negotiations with Trump are useless, the United States needs to weigh back in on the Ukrainian side of the conflict.  Only then will Putin see the futility in his actions.  Despite George Bush’s observation, there is no “soul” in his eyes, just lust in his heart to re-build the Soviet Empire.

So Trump is going to Moscow, and Putin will use the trip to make himself looks “acceptable” to the world, and the mass killing in Ukraine will go on.  Trump will look like he did in Helsinki so many years ago:  used and abused by Putin.

Jared’s Godfather

And talk about a “buddy”.  Trump is so close to Netanyahu that the man is the godfather to his son-in-law, Jared.  Trump and Netanyahu shared the ultimate benefactor, billionaire Sheldon Adelson from Las Vegas.  And the two shared a similar problem; ongoing court actions that could put either one of them in jail.  

Netanyahu even named an illegal settlement (violating standing treaties) in the occupied Golan Heights after Trump, “Ramat Trump”.  He knows how to “schmooze” the American leader.  But he also knows how to ignore the Trump White House.  Today Israel is poised to send occupation troops back into Gaza, to ultimately take over the entire enclave.  It’s the end of the “two-state” solution, pursued by America for the past half-century, and a true “middle finger” to the United States efforts to establish a cease-fire in the region. That middle finger is going right in Trump’s eye.

Obliteration

And, of course, if thousands of Palestinians in Gaza starve to death along the way, it’s no problem for Netanyahu.  In fact, it seems like Israeli national policy, obliteration of the Palestinian state, and its people. The greatest achievement of the first Trump Administration was the vaunted Abrahamic Accords; getting the Arab states to reach full diplomatic relations with Israel.  Today, Netanyahu is obliterating that as well.  And there doesn’t seem like anything that Trump is willing to do about it.

The Trump administration is blowing it.  Sure, we dropped really, really, really big bombs on Iran.  And they certainly did some damage, though the “obliteration” standard Trump touted probably wasn’t achieved.   Those bombings probably served everyone’s interests:  the Israelis, the Saudis and the other Middle Eastern states, the United States and NATO.  But in the end, it simply put the Iranian nuclear question on the back burner for a while – nothing was finally solved.

Putin and Netanyahu will  continue to do exactly as they want  – because they don’t believe the Trump Administration will do anything about it. 

They’re both probably right.

Change

How do things normally change in our society?  We can all think of “radical changes” in politics and culture.  When Barack Obama ran and won the Presidency, it was a huge cultural shift.  Before Obama, I didn’t really see a Black President until the far future (that would have been about 2028, back then). 

Obama “called the future”, and changed America.  Many of those changes were foreseeable, and some were great.  An old coaching friend of mine was fond of quoting; “What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve”.  For every minority child in America, the election of Barack Obama allowed them to “conceive”, that they too could achieve.  The theme of the Obama 2008 campaign said it best:  hope.

That election also had some, perhaps inevitable, bad consequences.  The election of the first Black President created a backlash of American racism.  First the Tea Party, and now MAGA has a lot of its basis in that disbelief.  They thought America could NEVER elect a Black person as President (or a woman, or, for sure a Black woman!!).  Those movements are dedicated to replacing the glass ceiling where Hillary Clinton put millions of cracks with a steel storm shutter that could withstand any effort to open.  All of that isn’t Obama’s fault, but it is the reality we are facing today.

Step by Step

But most of our normal societal changes are incremental, rather than sudden.  It’s hard to even recall that “women” couldn’t get financial credit in the United States only fifty years ago, or that segregation laws existed well within my lifetime.   Even those incremental changes faced tremendous backlash.  And few foresaw the “post-truth” era we live in today.  We went from a common set of facts, with differing opinions, to completely different factual foundations.  Today, the political sides cannot argue and debate anymore, because we don’t share the same fundamental truths.

A quick example:  the “1619 Project” explained historic fact, that enslavement was an economic foundation of much of American success.  But, instead of arguing the impact of slavery, those who didn’t want to acknowledge America’s deep dependence on the “peculiar institution” decided to call the whole project a lie.  They turned the teaching of history back a half-a-century, when text books (remember them?) might talk about the contributions Black men like Booker T Washington and George Washington Carver, but said little else about Black contributions.  And, at least to date, those “alternative facts” are working. Several states have written this false narrative into mandated curriculum legislation.  It has become “fact”.

Governor Gerry

When I was learning American history for the first time, we were taught about Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts back in the early 1800’s.  He did many important things, including serving as the Vice President of the United States. But most of what we learned about him was considered “bad”.  You see, Gerry decided to redraw Congressional Districts in Massachusetts so that they favored his own political candidates.  The resulting district looked like a salamander, and the newspapers ran with the negative term:  Gerrymandering.  

For most of American history, gerrymandering was that “bad” thing.  Almost all of the political parties did it in one form or another, but it was all  “under the table”.  Everyone acknowledged that it wasn’t good for democracy.  But all continued redrawing political maps in their own favor.

It wasn’t until eighteen years ago that gerrymandering became more than just a good politician’s guess at how areas voted.  That’s when political district manipulation combined with high speed computers. It gave us the “Red Map” program sponsored by the Republican Party led by then-Chairman Michael Steele (the current MSNBC host).  They could determine voter identification of households by the street and the block, and used that information to draw narrowly defined districts with entirely predictable outcomes. 

Jordan-mandering

Ohio had its own “gerrymander” for a time, this District looked more like a duck, and was represented by Jim Jordan.  It stretched from the suburbs of Dayton, to the north towards suburban Toledo, the East to the Columbus suburbs, and even the Northeast towards Cleveland.  It carefully skirted most Democratic areas, and made sure that Chairman Jordan could face no realistic opposition in the general elections.  (Jordan’s district now looks a bit more normal, but he still wins by overwhelming margins.  Even the ongoing scandal of his Ohio State wrestlers getting molested with his knowledge, hasn’t touched his political base.)

Texas

Now in Texas, at President Trump’s direction, the Republican Governor and Legislature is “Red Mapping” (gerrymandering) on steroids.  In a state that is, at worst, 57% Republican and 43% Democrat, currently there are twenty-five Republican Congressmen and thirteen Democrats.  That’s 66% to 34%.  But, at the President’s “request”, the Texas legislature is re-drawing districts that were approved only four years ago.  Trump, Governor Abbott, and the rest of the Republicans believe that with careful computer-driven manipulation, they can “squeeze” five more Republican districts out for the 2026 election. That would make  Congressional representation in the Lone Star State 73% Republican to 27% Democrat.

Their goal:  protect the Republican Congressional majority in the House of Representatives, now with a five-seat margin of control.  

So what was a “bad thing for democracy”, Gerrymandering, that gave the old Governor a “bad name”; is now out in the open for all to see.   It’s no longer an “incremental” change.  And now with the Democratic members of the Texas legislature leaving the state to prevent a quorum from being present (to do business), Governor Abbott threatens felony charges, arrest by the Texas Rangers, and removal from office.  Trump has even mused that the FBI might be called in to drag Democratic legislators back to Texas.

From Gerry, to Steele, to Greg Abbott in Texas; incrementally the United States is headed towards something very different from the Democracy we once held so dear.   If the government, either of Texas or the United States, is allowed to dragoon the Democratic legislators back to Austin, well, we will have crossed another line on the way towards authoritarianism.    

Camp Night

Last night I drove out to the Watkins Cross Country team’s summer “camp”.  It’s a tradition, three decades old, that we started to “build a team”.  It  wasn’t just the workouts on the hilly dirt roads; it was spending time together, cut off from the rest of the distractions that day-to-day life brings.  It worked:  our teams learned about each other on the steep climbs, runs through wooded paths, playing “Marco Polo” in the pool, and cooking dinner in the dining hall.  The current coaches are carrying on the tradition.

My role now is the “ghost of cross country past”.  It’s actually kind of “deep”, to these kids I bring half-a-century (damn, we got old) of Watkins Cross Country history, lore, and stories. The kids are incredibly polite to the old man sitting in front of them, telling tales of their parents and their current coaches.  It’s good to let them see the threads that bind them to the teams of the past, the woods at Watkins, and the failures and successes of those who ran before.

It’s more than a trip down memory lane, though, as I turned into the camp road I was welcomed by a young buck deer, antlers sprouting, as if to say “Welcome back!”  It’s a chance to enjoy the ride, literally.  It was a beautiful August day, blue sky with temps in the low eighties.  The top and doors were off the Jeep – a perfect drive in the country.

Headed for Home

We ate dinner and talked; and I caught up with my old friends on the coaching staff.  The hardest part of the night is when my “bit” is over.  The kids and coaches went out to a campfire (it is a “camp” and ‘smores are involved) and I walked through the night back to the Jeep, headed for home.

The first half hour or so of the drive is on a winding two-lane highway, headlights on bright to watch for other young-bucks crossing the road.  The wind was blowing, cold enough for a sweatshirt.  But the chill I was feeling wasn’t from the breeze.  I switched on my radio to MSNBC and the “Rachel Maddow Show”.  And for the first fifteen minutes, she laid out a case for America that chilled me to the bone.

(I seriously considered just posting a transcript of her remarks.  She made the case for the reality of American Authoritarianism that was clear and damning.  But the transcriptions lag days behind the broadcast, and the emergency is now.  If you have the time, I strongly urge you to watch the first twenty minutes of  her broadcast – Rachel Maddow Show 8/4/25).

Her case was clear.  There are  more than “signs” of a democracy changing into an authoritarian regime.   It already happened.

Cartoon America

She explained, that if you imagined a “cartoon” version of an authoritarian America, it would have the following components:

1. A secret police, anonymous and unidentifiable, that could make arrest without warrants, detention without bail or counsel, and secret “black site” imprisonment.
2. A scapegoated minority which can be blamed for every wrong and failure (migrants).
3. Shows of maximum force (threat to feed migrants to alligators) made into a spectacle, “buy your Alligator Alcatraz T-shirt right here!!!”
4. Multiple prison camps to put the scapegoated “enemy” in.
5. Stripping “homegrown” Americans of their citizenship.

That’s all happening right now.

America Today

The military forces are turning inward against American citizens.  Military “zones” are being expanded beyond existing bases to put greater areas under military jurisdiction.  Plans are already in the works, to permanently integrate the military into immigration enforcement, and to put down protests against government actions.

The US in NOT building death camps.  But we are building huge “black site” concentration camps throughout the country.  The bids are already out for construction.  

• Our country has  “secret police”, prisons without rights, and scapegoats to fill those prisons.  

• The government criminalizes protest.  US leaders are intimidating or shutting down the media and universities who don’t comply or criticize (particularly the most prestigious).  

• Government departments stripped of experts, because they don’t tell leaders what they want to hear.   Generals required to pass a “personal loyalty” interview before rising to the highest ranks.

We are not in danger of becoming an authoritarian regime.  We are already living in one.

That was Rachel’s chilling message as I drove into the night.  

Dorm Wars

I turned twenty-one in 1977 during my senior year of college.  I lived at Denison University in a dorm full of guys, and the envy of the whole dorm was “Mario”, who owned the biggest, baddest, stereo system around. When he decided that the whole dorm was going to listen to “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd, we had no choice.  So, for my birthday, I gave myself the big gift I really wanted.  I bought a full scale “stereo” system, with a Pioneer turntable and receiver, a Technics amplifier and tape cassette deck, and two speakers big enough to use as end tables. 

Now the system I got couldn’t compete with Mario’s, but, if I closed the door and turned up the volume, I could at least listen to my Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) without interruption.  I later added a JVC equalizer and, when it came around, a Pioneer multi-disc CD player.  I had a great system…that today is completely out of date.

Choose My Music

Music isn’t “analog” anymore.  Sure, I still have most of the electronics, carefully stacked in the garage.  I can’t bear to get rid of them.  And there are 200 or more record albums holding down the bottom of the cabinet (even “Meet the Beatles”), underneath the new turntable (audio-technica) I bought during Covid.  But today’s music is digital.  When I want to listen to CSNY (never been a “Floyd” guy) I pull it up on Sonos, with wireless speakers spread throughout the house.  Or if I want to listen to Joni Mitchell, Jenn’s least favorite folk singer, I can dial it up on Sonos for “just” my office, and play something else in the rest of the house.

Since the 1970’s a lot has changed.  And some of the things we cherished most, like that stereo system, are obsolete.

Analog Politics

Sunday, I listened to a commentator on one of the news shows. He is a proud “independent”.  “I want the politicians I vote for to work together, regardless of their party, so I vote for the ‘person’, not the party,” was his comment.  I admire the sentiment.  But in our current era, he’s about as relevant as my stereo system, as up-to-date as my Technics dual cassette player.  He has an “analog” view of American politics, left behind by our current “digital” world.  And he’s dangerous.

Just like my nearly half-century old stereo system, he’s living in a world that doesn’t exist anymore.  We all know the old story:  arch-conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan and moderate Democrat Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil working together for the “good” of America.  And when we voted for a candidate back then, like Ohio’s John Glenn for Senate (Democrat) or Missouri’s John Danforth (Republican), we absolutely expected them to work together on a lot of issues.  We knew one thing for sure about them:  they were men of “honor”, who would stand for what they believed even if it was against their own party, and maybe their own political interests.

And they started to become obsolete about the time I bought my multi-CD player, in the 1990’s.

Mavericks

Today the “maverick” politicians are exiled from their parties, and the government.  Thom Tillis of North Carolina “chooses” not to run for re-election, because even he can’t stomach MAGA-ism.  And the two “maverick” Democrats in the Senate, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, left in 2024, rather than face defeat at the polls.  You might be “sad” that the mavericks are gone. But Joe Manchin prevented a lot of the Democratic reforms that might have stopped the second Trump Administration.  And Tillis is another in a long line of Republicans who couldn’t stand up to the MAGA world.  

So what’s left?  You can choose:  MAGA Republican, or Democrat.  And Democrats are still a “big tent” party. They include moderates like Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Social-Democrats like good old Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.  But what you can’t do anymore is “vote for the ‘man’”.  

First of all, it’s not “men only” anymore.  Some of the most effective politicians in the nation are women and minorities.  But, more importantly, there really is no such thing as “independence” in our political world.  If you vote for a Republican, you are voting for a MAGA-supporter.  If you vote for a Democrat, you are voting against MAGA.  It’s really as simple, and as important, as that.

Our Digital World

Maybe, someday, we’ll get back to a government of individuals, choosing what’s best for the nation based on their own principles and beliefs.   But right now, THE LABEL IS THE CHOICE.  Looking for an Independent is really looking for someone who will have no say in what our government will become.  

The issues of today are too important for “unicorns”.  We need to “sign-up”,  and join together to make changes.  Declaring independence is abrogating responsibility for the anti-democratic actions of our Nation. And it’s giving away the future of the Republic.

It’s like plugging the turntable into a digital sound system.  It just doesn’t work.

In the Day

“Back in the Day”; before the era of texts, messages, Facebook, and all of the other instant communications applications, we had the “phone call”.  And, in those days, one of the rules was not to call someone while under the influence of alcohol.  That is, unless you were looking for a ride, or bail because you were caught drunk driving.  

We called it “drunk calling”, and it almost always turned out badly.   To state the obvious: being drunk often led to saying things that weren’t “thought out”.  This was especially true when the “drunk caller” was calling the “sleeping receiver”.  Not only did the drunk wake the answerer up. But, he then proceeded to say something that to him sounded heartfelt and profound, but to the annoyed-awakened one, sounded just stupid. 

The outcome of “drunk calls” were inevitably bad.  The caller didn’t really remember what they said, and the answerer was well aware that it was the “booze” talking, not the caller.  All in all, one of the last vestiges of reason and common sense beyond alcohol was to NOT make THAT call.  With any luck, the drinker might think about it, then pass out.  

Got the App

Today, it’s so much easier to “drunk text”, or “drunk message”.  And it’s not just about romance.  Now, it’s about politics, or the neighbor violating “weekend rules” and cutting grass before eight, or those “damn kids” riding their bikes in the street.  We have unlimited ways to issue a “stream of consciousness”, regardless of the state of mind and lack of frontal lobe restraint of the author.  We do it with a post, or a text or a message. And once it’s out, it never comes back. 

I’ve noticed this particularly on Facebook.  There are several commentators, capable of reasoned thoughts about local politics. But once the sun goes down, they become aggressive and virulent in their posts.  It’s like a switch flips. My guess is there’s a bottle beside the keyboard, and it’s open.  They are “drunk posters”. And they have little compunction about attacking others, using epithets, and acting just like a drunk about to be tossed out of the bar.   The problem is, there are no bouncers around the keyboard, and no bartenders to make “last call”.

Presidential Announcements

All of this is a long way to go to talk about nuclear war, but here we are.  In our era of the Trump Presidency, American policy is made on Trump’s chosen social media, Truth Social.  This weekend was a great example.  

The Department of Labor’s Commissioner of Labor Statistics got fired Friday on Truth Social.  Her fatal mistake:  publishing this month’s unemployment statistics report.  It showed that job growth was not only slow for July, but, as these reports often do, revised earlier reports to show that job growth was significantly slower than earlier reported for the months before July. 

Trump wants employment to increase.  He’s attacked Federal Reserve Chairman Powell over and over again for holding firm on interest rates, rather than lowering them to stimulate the economy as Trump demands.  But what the Commissioner did was a “mortal sin” in Trump world.  She told the truth.  

I’m not accusing Trump of “drunk texting”.  What I am saying is that he wields his executive authority as if he was a drunk.  The sad part is he’s probably not.

So Chairman Powell gets burned in post after post.  Now Commissioner Erika McEntarfer  learns that she no longer has a job via social media.  And while all of these seem to lack Trump’s “frontal lobe restraint”, they are now actions we expect.   But last week, there was a more sinister set of “posts”, ones that could have a more profound impact on our Nation, and the world.

Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and Nuclear Bombs

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, messaged the following:

“Trump’s playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10… He should remember 2 things: 1. Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country…Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!”

Medvedev, like Trump, is a “midnight message-er”.  And Trump won’t be upstaged by him, even if we’re talking about nuclear war.

“Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev … I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that…Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.”

Now, before “drunk texts” start a nuclear war, there are a couple of factors to consider.  The US still has nuclear ballistic missile submarines stationed throughout the world.  They are our “second strike” capability, our “Assured Mass Destruction” no matter what attack a nuclear foe might launch.  So those Nuclear Submarines (do we have any other kind?) were probably on station within range of Russia anyway.  But for the US President to “throw down” the nuclear word in a text “contest” with the former Russian President, seems a bit inflammatory (like, nuclear missile inflammatory). 

I don’t know if Medvedev is a drinker, and while Trump acts like one (a lot) he claims to abstain.  Either way, they are both “drunk messaging” in a way that makes our world much more dangerous. We get closer to war with each “messaged” saber rattle.

It’s a dangerous way to govern, sober or not.

One Term

I knew when Donald Trump won the Presidential election in November, that things would get bad.  It just made sense:  Trump would be a one-term President, with no real concern about running for a second term. (Yes, I know there’s a worry he might try to stay on for a third term.  If he is able to do that, we don’t really have much of a democracy, or Constitutional Republic, anymore).  The poll numbers that so controlled him in his first term, no longer matter.  People love him, people hate him:  he’s the President of the United States until January 20^th, 2029.  

And any threat that Trump could legally be held responsible for his actions as President went out the window with a US Supreme Court decision, granting him absolute immunity from prosecution for any of his “official” acts.  So, as long as he can claim “officiality”, then he’s home free.  And what’s more official than an “executive order”, signed with Trump’s signature Sharpie marker.  He’s issued 176 orders so far (Federal Register), including telling college athletes how they can earn money, “ending” crime and disorder, and preventing “Woke”; those in just the last two weeks.  It’s an “order”; that’s an official act.  Thanks, Supreme Court majority toadies!!

Guardrails

And, while Trump tried the “old school Republican” hiring plan in the first administration, with folks like Reince Priebus, Jim Mattis and Jeff Sessions; they turned out to be too frustrating for him.  So this time we get those tried and true MAGA followers; Bondi and Hegseth and WWE’s Linda McMahon.  They don’t know much about running their departments, but they sure as Hell know how to follow orders.  And Trump has his “boys”, Stephen Miller and Project 2025’s Russell Vought, issue those orders firmly from the West Wing.

“Guardrails?  We don’t need stinkin’ guardrails!”

There’s nothing to keep the Trump Presidency from doing whatever comes into their little heads.  Worried about “Great Replacement Theory” (people of color taking over “good old” white America)?  Then let Miller, Tom Hohman, and Kristi Noem (the height of Fascist Fashion) terrorize “brown people”, round them up and make them disappear, either in the US or overseas.  Don’t like the environmental restrictions?  Let MAGA Lee Zeldin, the new EPA Administrator, withdraw the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases impact climate change.  

And who knows what’s going to happen in the next election.  Most of the federal protections for voting are being dismantled, by both the Executive and the Judicial branches.

Billionaire

To be honest, my great hope was that the Trump Presidency would be mostly about aggrandizing Donald Trump, and he wouldn’t worry so much about the rest.  So it wasn’t a surprise that the whole “cryptocurrency” thing became a huge Trump family investment.  Whether he was a billionaire or not before the election, he’s definitely one now.  It was a simple plan:  buy Trump Bitcoin, and “invest” in the Presidency.  There are a few of us skeptics who might call that taking a bribe, buying influence without even the courtesy of hiding the transaction.  But it’s all legal now.

So when the Emirate of Qatar offered a $400 million jet for Trump’s “new” Air Force One, of course he took it.  And, it’s now part of the deal, that he gets to keep it after his Presidency.  A House Committee just confirmed it.  Let’s think that through for just a second.  If a Senator took a luxury car, say, a Mercedes, from a foreign nation, and kept it, we might think that was “crooked”.  At least, we thought that was true when former Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey did it.  It’s part of the eleven year Federal sentence he’s serving now.  But for Trump, it’s all good.  I’m sure Menendez is being considered for a pardon:  it’s too close to home for the President.

The Worst

And what about Epstein?  Sure, Trump’s likely to be embarrassed by “the truth”, if “the truth” ever comes out.  But don’t expect more than that.  Even if we find out that Donald Trump (oh my) liked and abused young girls, don’t think the Congress will line up to impeach him.  Really, courage has never been a part of MAGA culture.  Those Republican Senators will simply claim “fake news”, or they just failed to hear about it.  

Trump has wiped out the Rose Garden, and built a gold-gilded ballroom in the East Wing of the White House. It’s all about the money, the “life of the rich and famous”, White House style.  And, of course, the Federal government, with our tax money, is paying for it, along with the weekly flights to golf courses, and the costs of his protection paying for hotel space in his hotels.

He’s the “thief in chief”. If that’s the worst of him, then the United States as we know it will survive. 

It’s the rest we need to worry about.

Common Phrase

There is an assumption that everyone “knows” the common acronyms and sayings in the world.  But, use one of those “known” sayings, the “assumes” acronym: making an “ass of you and me”.  That was me when I was twenty, and on the staff of a US Congressman in Cincinnati.  He was famous for his incredibly bad temper, a Marine who often indulged in alcohol, and abuse of his staff.  As a young Democratic “operative”, it was a Cincinnati “rite of passage” to work for him and absorb his tirades.  I got fired seven times in one summer, the second least on the Cincinnati staff.  And one of the times I got in “big trouble”, was when I ignored the letters, “ASAP” on the top of a memo from him. 

I had no clue what “ASAP” meant, so I ignored it and rotated the task to the bottom of my “to do list”.  There was a lot going.  I was responsible for scheduling minute-to-minute all of the events and duties the Congressman “had” to do while back in Cincinnati.  But, he soon roared back to me, and  taught in a profanity laced, Marine Drill Instructor form, that an “ASAP” from him meant, RIGHT NOW (not just As Soon As Possible).

Just Plain Lying

The next year I was a first-year teacher.  My principal was a guy named Pete Nix.  He seemed “old” to me, though looking back he was only forty-two.  And he was definitely intimidating, another Marine, a wrestling coach, and a “man of the South”.  He was the perfect mentor to a “long haired” twenty-one year old, fresh out of Denison University.   I don’t ever remember him yelling or being abusive; he was the kind of man who didn’t need to.  A shake of his head, drawling “I wish you hadn’t done that”, was enough to correct almost any flaw.  And of course, if you were a student, the paddle he kept behind his deck, well-worn from use on the “seats” of high school student’s bodies, was always a threat.

Pete knew all of the common “sayings” plus dozens of others from his Southern upbringing.  One he introduced me to still has validity today:  “Figures lie, and liars figure”.  In education there is a lot of “data” gathered; attendance, grades, standardized test scores, teacher recommendations.  But that “data” is all subject to manipulation, emphasizing one over the other.  Pete was a master at  cutting to the chase, and throwing out the “fluff”.  If you wanted permission to do something, you needed to make a solid, clear, and precise argument.  Otherwise, he’d tell you, “You’re just figurin’”.  And you knew what that meant – you never wanted him to think you were manipulating  either the data, or him.  That was just plain “lying”.

Today’s Headline

So one of the banners on this morning’s political news, was the results of a Wall Street Journal poll.  This headline summed it up best: “6 in 10 voters view Democrats Negatively:  WSJ Poll” (The Hill).    And various commentators bemoaned “what has become” of Democrats?  How could Trump, with all of his baggage of confusing tariffs, cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, starving Palestinians, a Defense Secretary leaking classified information, and, of course, the EPSTEIN FILES; still have more of America’s confidence than the Democrats?

What’s wrong with the Democrats?   Commentators, left and right, demand that Democrats need a “total rebuild”. And the far-right was convinced that the Democratic Party is going the way of the Whigs and the Federalists into historic oblivion.

There’s another “common phrase”, coined by 19^th century author Mark Twain:  “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”.  So too, are the reports of the “end” of the Democratic Party.  

More Figures

First of all, remember the source.  The Wall Street Journal is ultimately owned by Rupert Murdock of Fox News fame.  So an “unbiased poll” from them, is as unlikely as Pam Bondi telling you that “there’s nothing to see in the Epstein Files”.   And let’s look at some of the other results of that same poll.   Democrats led Republicans in “Generic Congressional Vote” by three percent.  So while “6 in 10 voters view Democrats Negatively”, the majority would still pick a Democratic Congress; go figure.  And that same poll also finds that the United States, with a Republican President, House, Senate, and Supreme Court; is on the “wrong track”, 55% to 39%.  

Finally, just a reality check.  Democrats lost the Presidency, and the Senate last year.  They went from the empowered party to a party with no power at all.  In addition, the leadership of the Democratic Party is in total flux, as it should be.  Joe Biden is done, Kamala Harris does not appear to be the “heir apparent” anymore, and there will be a marvelous struggle to see who can win the Democratic leadership come 2028.  But that three years away, a lifetime of political changes from today.  Meanwhile, there’s no single place for Democrats to “lead from”, at least until 2026. The Party looks helpless, because it is.

Roaring Back

It wasn’t that different back in 2017.  Democrats were in shock that Trump won (and Hillary lost) and had neither the House nor the Senate.  “The Resistance” then, seemed unable to stop all of Trump’s craziness.  But they came roaring back in 2018, with the House switching to Democratic power, and Nancy Pelosi leading to an even stronger showing in 2020.  It can all happen again.  

MAGA wants a target, to take the pressure off of themselves.  The old “Bernie and OAC” attacks don’t seem to be making headway.  So they want Democrats to look and feel “lost”.  And meanwhile, they are shooting themselves in the foot with all of the current crises, mostly of their own creation.  

Should Democrats worry about a “negative image” in a Wall Street Journal poll?  Sure, they should.  Is it time to panic, to join Elon Musk in a the new “American Party” (like the Whigs joined old Federalists in the Republican Party back in the 1850’s)?  That answer is a strong “NOPE”.  

It is time to start building. First, build momentum to gain four seats in the House and Senate in 2026 to regain the control of the Congress.  Then they can start to take back the power that the current leadership gave over to the President.  And Democrats will find a candidate, in due time, to put back in the White House. We will have remarkable choice of candidates in the 2028 primaries, and we will find a leader who can win. And then we can start rebuilding our government and Nation, with “liberty and justice, for all”.  

So, ignore the “lying and figuring”. Let’s get to work.

This is a true “Sunday Story”.  No politics today, just some “musings” about time – and it’s on a Sunday!!

Clocks

I think we all have little quirks:  the things we do that, maybe, only make sense to us.  I am a clock setter.  Is the timer on the coffee pot and the timer on the microwave out of sync? I can’t stand it.   So when the power goes out, I am quick to reset everything.  Now, in my favor I think; I don’t have to have them synchronized to the absolute second.  The “half-minute” will do.  

I am definitely the guy who resets the car clocks the first chance after the time changes.  In fact, that’s the first thing the next morning, twice a year, for every clock we have.  That includes the “ornamental” clocks that we don’t even see, “award-plaque” clocks that probably need a new battery, and the fancy watches I seldom wear.  I want the time to be accurate, everywhere I look.  Somehow, on the Jeep, the clock consistently gets five minutes too fast, which, as you probably can tell, makes me crazy.  So I reset that one every few weeks, back to  “real time”.   That way I don’t feel like I’m late for everything!!

The clock on my stopwatch is correct too.  I use it a lot during the track seasons, and I don’t want to have to check my phone during a competition to see what time it is.  Folks will think I’m “texting” in the middle of a vault or a race, not a good look. 

Look Forward

We also have a monthly calendar on the wall of our kitchen, a dry-erase board.  It has room for five weeks, and as soon as I can possibly fit the “next” month on, I put it up.  It’s one more way (besides our sync’d phone calendars) for Jenn and I to be on the “same page”.  But it also gives a visual representation of our commitments.  Sometimes, it just a way to see where the “get-to” days are:  the days when there’s nothing on the schedule, and we can chill.  

But the point for me is to get my head ready for “what’s next”.  Today was that day (I had to squeeze August 24 and 31 in the same box).  There’s all the medical stuff that comes with being old enough for Medicare, and August is the “Birthday Month” for Jenn.  And slipping in on Saturday’s are Cross Country meets, a little bit of back to work for me.  

Parking Lots

When I was a track coach, we went to a lot of track invitationals. Those are all-day affairs, arriving early on a Saturday morning and leaving just before dinner time.  The first “duty” of the team was to establish a camp, where we literally pitched our tent and put all of our equipment.  My first “on site” decision was to say where the camp would go.  And, as all of my coaches, and most of my older athletes realized, we “camped” in the same place every year.

It was usually somewhere on the backstretch of the track, with a good view of the finish line and the field event venues.  In fact, I seldom was in the “camp”.  I was out coaching, prowling the backstretch during the running events, and hanging out at the field areas for their competitions.  But we always had that central spot – our camp – in the same place.  Name a venue:  Heath, Granville, Worthington, Wheeling, Pickerington, Licking Valley, Galion.  You could always find the Watkins boys team – in the same spot.  

So it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that I park in the same area for places I always go to:  Kroger’s, Doctor’s office, Barber, the Ohio Theatre, the Jesse Owens Track at Ohio State.  That way, when I’m done with whatever errand or event, I can come right back out to the car, which, of course, is right where it’s supposed to be.

Old Age?

Some might say that’s old age.  Nothing worse than that “sad elderly man” wandering the parking lot looking for his car.  But, to be honest, I’ve been doing this since I learned how to drive.  It just seems easier, one less thing to remember.  (By the way, it drives Jenn crazy.  Her goal is to “park as close as you can”, even if it takes an extra five minutes to find the spot.  So my pulling up two rows over and fifteen cars out to an empty spot always generates a sigh.  “Are you saving the good spots for ‘old people’?  We ARE old people!!!”).

I know where my car is parked.  And I know what time it is, and, good or bad, what’s happening tomorrow.  It’s all about time – and at least I get the “correct” information.  The future is never certain, but at least the “map” for how it’s supposed to be, is.  

That’s one less thing to worry about.

The Sunday Story Series

2021

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21

2022

• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22
• Back at State – 6/5/22
• Out in the Country – 6/19/22
• Pataskala Downs – 7/4/22
• Car Stories I – 7/24/22
• Car Stories II  – 7/31/22
• Old Man Experience – 8/7/22
• Cross Country Camp – 8/14/22
• New to the Pack – 8/21/22
• Car Stories III – The Bus – 8/28/22
• A Day in the Life – 9/4/22
• Stupid Human Tricks – 9/18/22

2023

• Fair or Foul – 2/26/23
• Immigrant Story – 3/12/23
• Busy Season – 5/15/23
• Of Jeeps and Bucks – 5/28/23
• A Pole Vault Story  -6/11/23
• End of an Era – 6/25/23
• Paybacks – 7/2/23
• Graying in Pataskala – 7/17/23
• Being a Goat – 7/23/23
• Toy Truck – 8/20/23
• Medical Terms – 8/27/23
• Missing Margaritaville – 9/3/23
• The McGowan – 9/10/23
• Who’s Watching – 10/22/23
• The Saturday Before – 10/29/23
• A Tale of Turkey, and Dogs – 11/26/23
• Bruno’s Story – 12/3/23
• Out in the Country – 12/10/23
• Christmas Eve – 12/24/23

2024

• Rube Goldberg – 1/12/24
• Our Pataskala Kroger’s – 2/5/24
• A Sad, Sad, Dog – 2/11/24
• Singing in the Tornado – 3/3/24
• Your Safe Spot – 3/17/24
• Easter Dawn – 3/31/24
• Swarms – 4/14/24
• Lowest Common Denominator – 4/28/24
• Seniors – 5/12/24
• Season’s Over – 6/22/24
• Camp Morning – 6/30/24
• Jeeping – 7/7/24
• How Mondo Won the Gold and Started a Dog Fight (almost) – 8/6/24
• Fifty Years of the McGowan – 9/8/24
• A Walk in the Woods – 10/22/24
• Smokin – 12/6/24
• Coal for Christmas 12/16/24
• Provenance – 12/22/24

2025

• Lost and Found – 2/22/25
• Catching Cars – 3/2/25
• PV Mentor – 3/31/25
• Dogs, Jeeps, Fireworks and Beer Coolers 7/6/25
• It’s About Time – 7/27/25

Narcissism – excessive interest in oneself  (Mariam-Webster)

• In Gaza, over a million Palestinians are at risk of starvation.  Already, folks are dying from lack of food.  The press describes it in the most basic terms:  even their own employees working in Gaza, with jobs and incomes, cannot guarantee their own food needs.  One Palestinian puts the daily search for food bluntly:  “We might get killed, but we have to get food”. (BBC)
• At the Thailand/Cambodia border a growing dispute killed at least sixteen, and tens of thousands are “displaced”;  running from the fighting. (BBC)
• In Nairobi, Kenya, clashes between protestors demanding police be held accountable for deaths and injuries, and hired thugs, continue in the streets. (Washington Post)
• Climate changes continue, as northern Finland and Alaska both experience unprecedented heat waves.  The Finnish region of Lapland topped eighty-five degrees (Fahrenheit).  (BBC)

America First

World War I taught Americans a stark lesson:  Americans dying in foreign fields was difficult to take.  Over 53,000 Americans died in combat during the brief twenty-month period the US was involved.  Even more, over 63,000 died from non-combat causes. Many were lost  to the “Spanish Flu”, a pandemic that actually originated at Fort Riley, Kansas and spread, with the soldiers, world-wide.

The immediate lesson America learned was:  don’t be involved in world affairs.  George Washington’s farewell address was often invoked:  “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…”.  And so the America of the 1920’s avoided involvement with the rest of the world, including the League of Nations, proposed to end wars by our own President, Woodrow Wilson.  Instead, we became an insular nation, hiding behind our “impregnable” oceans, and a stiff wall of import tariffs.

Extremism

But, like the Spanish Flu, the world was still able to seep through to American life.  When the United States banned the production of alcohol for pleasurable consumption, the borders became opportunities for profit.  Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean; all became channels for high-risk, high-profit smuggling.  The first big rise of organized crime in the United States came from supplying Americans what they wanted:  bootleggers selling illegal booze.  

And when the US economy collapsed in the Great Depression, it took little time for that economic disaster to spread worldwide.  Joblessness that peaked in the United States at 25%, went as high as 33% in other industrial nations.  The existing governments failed to prevent or resolve the economic issues. That led to the growth of political extremism on both sides of the spectrum.  Communism became more popular, as did Fascism.  And the United States did little to stop extremism in the world.  In fact, those same views found popularity in the US itself. 

Pax Americana

Ultimately the world reached out across the “impregnable” oceans, and the US found itself in World War II.  The authoritarian threats came from both directions:  the Japanese military dictatorship to the West, and Nazism and Fascism to the East.  America could have led the world towards peace after World War I.  That was the intent of the much-maligned Wilson Administration.  But rising isolationism, and Wilson’s own physical infirmity, allowed the US to turn away from leadership.  

There was bipartisan belief that this should not happen again after World War II.  And so the United Nations was “born” in San Francisco, with the specific intent of keeping the world from another global conflict.  And the United States developed and led treaty organizations; NATO, CENTO, SEATO and the rest, to hold firm to the idea that strength could bring peace.  For over seventy years, world conflagration was avoided.

Narcissists

But now the United States has turned inward again.   The policy of the US Government is based once again on the principle of “America First”. The tariff wall is going up, and the President talks about the “strength” of our oceanic borders.  In addition, America, “the shining city on the hill” of Ronald Reagan, is closing its doors to the “huddled masses yearning to be free”.  The Statue of Liberty now represents the “lamp” lifted to reveal a “golden door” bolted shut.

We Americans are more worried about the “Epstein Files” and the duel between Trump and Fed Chairman Powell, or re-litigating the 2016 election; then we are about starvation in Gaza, or climate change, or potential wars throughout the world.  Our “important” issues are ones of politics, culture and religion, not the needs of those throughout the globe.  We are more worried about ourselves than the world we live in.

We are narcissists; only interested in ourselves: just like our nation’s leaders today.

Sit on the Files

I wrote an essay the other day about the Trump Administration’s efforts to distract from the Epstein “crisis” (Disturbance in the Force).  There’s not a whole lot more to say about the “meat” of the issue, other than a Wall Street Journal article that Attorney General Pam Bondi notified President Trump that his name was in the “Epstein Files”.  Soon after; Bondi, FBI Director Patel, and FBI Deputy Director and noted conspiracy theorist Dan Bongino issued a two page memo.  They said there was nothing to release.  That report lit MAGA-world on fire, a fire that has yet to be controlled.  The “Epstein Files” story, as the newspaper’s would say, “has legs”.

Everyone in MAGA-world got dragged into this.  Speaker Mike Johnson literally sent the House of Representatives home, rather than have votes on releasing the files.  And when a reporter asked Johnson if he was “afraid” of the Epstein issue, Johnson forcefully responded, and deflected.  He claimed that this was all the Biden Administration’s fault.  He said they had the information and “sat on it”, and Johnson wasn’t going to get mired in “their” mistake.

Mid-Year Exam

So let’s look at what the Department of Justice (DOJ) does, and the recent history of “controversial” cases.  The “traditional” job of Justice, is to investigate and prosecute.  For generations, the Department did NOT “talk” about cases.  As we learned through the Mueller and later Jack Smith; the traditional DOJ “speaks” through indictments and charges filed in Court. In fact, there’s a term for that:  a “speaking indictment”.  

But the current issue begins with the “great exception” to DOJ practices; made in the middle of the 2016 Presidential election campaign.  You probably remember;   the “Benghazi Hearings” revealed that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was using a private email server.  The controversy was: did the use of that server violate Federal Law, by avoiding public record laws, and risking classified information on a “home” server.

The Trump Campaign used it against Clinton:  where are the emails?  And the FBI did a comprehensive investigation into the Clinton emails, code-named “Mid-Year Exam”.  The investigation culminated in an extended interview of Clinton herself, over the Fourth of July weekend of 2016, just weeks before the Democratic Convention.

This was during the Obama Administration, and Loretta Lynch was the Attorney General.  That was an inherent conflict.  While the FBI investigates crimes, they do not make decisions about charging crimes in court.  That is the job of the prosecutors of the DOJ.  But because of obvious politics and an apparent conflict of interest (Lynch spoke with Bill Clinton when both were on the runway of an airport), there was no clear line of authority.  If the head of DOJ couldn’t make the decision to charge Clinton or not, who would?

Comey

The FBI Director, James Comey, was a former Deputy Attorney General (in the George Bush Administration), and a career prosecutor.  After looking at the investigation’s results, he determined that Clinton did not “show an intent” to violate the laws, a critical factor in bringing criminal charges.  And he took it upon himself to determine that no charges would be filed.

But he went farther than that.  DOJ policy says when an investigation is concluded, and no charges are going to be made, that any announcement is limited to saying, “no charges will be filed”.  But Comey felt the need to go into great detail to explain, that while Clinton didn’t commit a criminal offense, she was careless with classified information.  So while she wasn’t charged, she was “convicted” in the world of public opinion.

No one was satisfied with Comey’s actions.  Democrats pointed to DOJ policy.  Republicans pointed to Comey’s “careless” statement.  And, later, when further investigation was required, Comey announced that the investigation was re-opened, days before the Presidential election.  Many, including this author, believe that Comey’s announcement cost Clinton the Presidency (and the United States the Trump Presidencies).

What did the Department of Justice learn from all of that?  Mueller, Jack Smith, and even John Durham let their indictments and final reports speak for their investigations.  That continued into the Biden Administration, where Attorney General Merrick Garland required a strict adherence to DOJ policies.

Nothing to See

Back to Epstein:  he was arrested and charged (and died) under the first Trump Administration.  When Garland took charge, there were no charges to be made, Epstein was dead.  But there were charges filed, and a conviction gained, against Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein’s procurer.  She’s serving twenty years in Federal prison.  The indictments and the conviction “spoke” for the DOJ.

And that policy was used by conspiracy theorists to attack Biden and later Kamala Harris.  They “must be hiding” the Epstein “black book”: the list of all the participants in his child sex parties and tours.  (While whoever is on that list may well have committed crimes, the statute of limitations for those crimes has likely run out).  But the Garland DOJ had nothing to say: no charges, no statements.

So when Trump won the election, many conspiracy theorists were excited.  Finally the “theorists” were in charge:  Patel and Bongino at the FBI and Bondi leading the DOJ.   But now:  “There’s nothing to see here, move along, move along”.   

Unlike Star Wars, no one is moving along.

Merrick Garland followed the policy of the DOJ – no charges, no further statements.  Now Pam Bondi is trying to do the same.  The problem is – she “promised” the “Epstein Files”, over and over and over and over again.  And now, promises made, promises broken.

Friday Night Garbage

There is an old Washington tradition, called “Friday Night Garbage”.  It goes like this:  if you have something distasteful, some situation where you need to make a press statement, but you don’t want any attention paid to it; put it out on Friday after five pm.  It won’t make the Nightly News because it’s too late, and besides, no one pays attention to Friday news anyway. There’s too much else to do.  

Perhaps we should now include the entire weekend in the “Friday Night Garbage” routine, at least when it comes to the Trump Administration.  The President is clearly faced by an existential threat, one that non-MAGA Americans really don’t recognize:  the Epstein Files. (And, if you just saw Hamilton, the Musical, like we did for the sixth time, sing “Epstein Files” like the “Reynolds Pamphlet”.   Maybe we need Joe Biden in full King George regalia dancing across the stage handing out file folders).  

Political Physics

How do we know that Epstein is an “existential threat”?  Politics, like physics, has basic laws.  One of those is the law of action/reaction.  The White House “reaction” to the Epstein situation is so extreme, that the “action” of those files must be pretty serious.  So serious in fact, that Donald Trump is willing to risk the support of his most fervent MAGA followers, rather than give them what he promised:  full access to the files.

Here’s a list of “stuff” that’s “hit the fan” since Friday – mostly from the White House:

•  President Obama accused of treason
• Senator Adam Schiff accused of mortgage fraud
•  300,000 pages of Martin Luther King Jr FBI files “dumped” to public
• Hillary Clinton email investigation now reinvestigated
• Trump threatens to take away Rosie O’Donnell’s US citizenship
• NPR and PBS defunded at White House request
• Trump demands that professional sports teams in Washington and Cleveland change their names back to racial tropes
• Trump sues Wall Street Journal over Epstein related article for $10 Billion

 (thanks to MSNBC’s Morning Joe for help in categorizing this list).

And besides all of that, the First Amendment battle between the Administration and Harvard University opened up in Court, Stephen Colbert was cancelled by Paramount, and a whole bunch of tariffs were instituted (if you don’t know, check your coffee prices). 

Not Treason

Before we go forward, let’s get one thing clear.   The treason accusation against Obama is based on an “investigation” by Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.  After five previous investigations, including a bipartisan report by the US Senate intelligence committee, the Mueller investigation, the Durham investigation, and an investigation by the Justice Department Inspector General; Gabbard discovered something “new”.  She determined that the intelligence professionals didn’t agree that Russia “hacked” the US elections.

Of course, that’s not what the intelligence said.  It stated that Russia did hack the Democratic National Committee (the stolen emails on Wikileaks). And it did make a concerted effort to back the Trump candidacy on social media.  While there were attempts by Russia to hack actual voting machines, there was no proof  showing an actual impact on the election outcomes. But Gabbard took that last point, and built a “case” saying that Obama altered the intelligence analysis to go after Trump.  That’s not what the Intelligence analysis said (the famous report that Jim Comey presented to Trump in New York prior to his inauguration).  But Gabbard needed a way back into Trump’s good graces. This was her contribution to distract from Epstein. 

MAGA Universe

Let’s go back to “physics” for just a minute.  We know that far-away planetary bodies are often discovered not by being sighted, but by the reaction their gravitational pulls create on known other bodies in space.  The bigger the reaction, the bigger the “hidden” body.  Politics is often the same.  If a “story” is small, then it gets “thrown out” with Friday night “garbage”.  But if it’s bigger, it takes a lot of other distractions to create political cover.  So how big is the “Epstein Files”?

What we can surmise is that whatever involvement Trump has with Epstein is big enough that it’s worth all of this effort.  And keep in mind:  Democrats like President Bill Clinton, Ambassador Bill Richardson, and Senator George Mitchell are already implicated in Epstein’s sordid activities.  On the surface, that’s something that Trump would blast to the world. But he’s holding back.  

And the “Epstein Files” have been a pillar of the MAGA movement since 2020.  It’s all part of the “Deep State” conspiracy, as well as the connection to the QAnon “Democrat Pedophile” canon.  When Attorney General Bondi said, “There’s nothing here”, it created a “disturbance in the force” of the MAGA universe, that can’t be undone.

Two Know

We may never know.  The one other person (not Trump) with direct knowledge of Trump’s involvement is in Federal custody in Florida, serving twenty years.  Ghislane Maxwell remains silent; probably a smart move considering the uncertainty surrounding Epstein’s death in Federal custody. Attorney General Bondi is sending Trump’s trusted lawyer, Todd Blanche, to have a “talk”, soon.

And it’s not like Democrats are all lined up.  Hunter Biden is ripping off the Biden dropping out band-aid one more time.  That’s one more distraction, though probably not in concert with the White House.  But the one thing you can be sure of:  there’s a “there, there” when it comes to Trump and Epstein. 

 What other possible reason would he have to cover it up?

Corruption

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a tummy ache.  It’s so bad, his doctor ordered three days of bed rest.  You’d have a tummy ache too: the Prime Minister is supposed to appear at his own corruption trial.  Unlike the United States President, the Prime Minister of Israel can be  criminally tried while in office. 

And, much like the current US President, Netanyahu used the “immediacy” of his office to stave off the trial for years.  Certainly the ongoing “operations” in Gaza against Hamas were a solid excuse.  As a war leader, the normalcy of “routine criminal prosecution” was upended. And the Israeli government was deep in crisis management mode after the Hama’s terrorist assaults of October 7^th.   But, it’s been an ongoing question both in Israel and the United States:  is a ceasefire in Gaza based on some mutually agreed set of concessions, or are there no concessions worth the risk of Netanyahu’s conviction and imprisonment for corruption?  

Find Another War

It’s not all about the trial.  Netanyahu is also held hostage by his own coalition of far-right factions, interested in clearing all Palestinian lands for Israeli settlement.  If the coalition falls apart, then, Netanyahu would face general election.  Should he lose and fall out of power, then the corruption trial would accelerate.

Even as the reality of Hama’s demise in Gaza became clear, Israeli operations in the region continued.  The cold, hard fact was that the goal became kill every member of Hamas, even if the rest of the Palestinians in the region had to go too.  Thousands of regular Palestinians have been killed for the “crime” of waiting in a food line.

And, as things wound down in Gaza, Israel launched their attack on another terrorist group, this time in Lebanon and Syria.  The unique tactic of exploding pagers decimated Hezbollah membership, and preceded a full-on military assault.  And when that proved to be a resounding success, Israel moved onto to bombing Iran. Even the United States joined in, taking advantage of Israeli decimation of Iranian air defenses to drop the “bunker busting” bombs from B-2 Bombers on Iranian nuclear facilities.

It looked like a political “trifecta” for Netanyahu:  defeat of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.  But the trial loomed over him, a Judaic Justice, Sword of Damocles.  So now Israel is attacking the new Syrian regime, bombing Damascus ostensibly to defend the Druse Syrian minority from persecution.  

Shock in the White House

Even the Trump White House was shocked by that attack, as well as the bombing of a Roman Catholic Church in Gaza.  It took the current Administration almost six months to realize that Russia’s President Putin was “playing them” for time with Ukrainian ceasefire talks.  Now they are recognizing the Netanyahu has his own private agenda as well. 

Some Israelis are taking advantage of the situation:  “striking while the iron is hot”.  And the other major “players” in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt; have their own agendas that align with Israel’s attacks on Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.  They’ve stepped aside from those confrontations, giving Israel full clearance.  And while Israel is already on a war footing, why not take care of “all” the problems?

A Single State Solution

Israel is also busy clearing more Palestinians out of the West Bank, violating existing agreements by building more settlements.  The “two-state” solution, the US backed plan for ultimate Middle East peace that dominated discussion  for almost fifty years, is now as good as gone.  Israelis are creating a single state, Israel, and an occupied territory, the West Bank and Gaza, that will remain under Israeli control.  The US President even wants some “beachfront” in Gaza for a personal luxury hotel.  This “single-state” makes Israel an occupying nation in perpetuity, with all of the negative cultural impacts of subjugating another people.  Israel is becoming a democracy for some, and a military dictatorship for many.

But there is still one essential truth.  Netanyahu faces trial.  Attacks on Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and now Syria only delayed the inevitable.  I guess when you can’t bomb something, it’s time for a “tummy ache”.    

• I awoke last night to the sound of thunder
• How far off, I sat and wondered
• Started humming a song from 1962
• Ain’t it funny how the night moves  – Bob Seger, Night Moves

Dogs (of course)

One of the “joys” of dog ownership is companionship.  Our Yellow Lab Atticus is the extreme example of that.  He isn’t happy unless he’s close by.  Like many rescue dogs he has demons, and  Atticus’s is separation anxiety.  If you’re gone, it’s OK, but if you’re here and out of sight, that’s a different story.  He need to see you, to be around you, to be behind you when you turn around, and to make sure he’s “checked in”.

So, not surprisingly, Atticus sleeps with us.  That’s fine.  On cold nights he’s what my Mother would call a “big hot water bottle”.  On warmer nights he takes up his portion of the end of the bed.  But he usually sleeps through the night, and so do we.

So it was unusual that he was up last night, wandering the bedroom about 1:30.  I am attuned to the sound of dog paws on hardwood floors. So I was awake when he went into my office, and quietly, for him, threw-up.

Kids and dogs:  when they throw-up in the middle of the night there’s “things” to take care of.  And by the time I was done with all of that, I was wide awake.  So I did some middle-of-the-night reading.  And I came across an article/opinion on the Fox News app that completely illustrates the central problem America faces today.  

Hit Piece

In the journalism business it’s called a “hit piece”.  There was no real title, but the sub-title is:  Pearl Project investigation exposes 198 Democratic organizations orchestrating Saturday’s #NoKings demonstrations.  The opinion article  states that someone is trying to “fool” the American public, by calling the movement against the Trump Administration, a “grass roots” movement.  The author, Asra Nomani, is the Founder of the “Pearl Project”. That’s her journalism initiative named after the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by Al Qaeda in Pakistan while investigating the “shoe bomber” in 2002.  

Nomani links three pivotal progressive leaders to the “NO KINGS DAY” marches that brought millions into the streets to protest Trump:  Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, and Leah Greenberg, founder of Indivisible (the major organizing group behind NO KINGS).  She claims that while all three were triumphing the clear success of NO KINGS DAY, they failed to note the underlying political involvement of…wait for it… the Democratic Party!!!!

Tax Exempt

Here’s what she said:

“According to new research by the Pearl Project, the #NoKings protest is being organized by an estimated 198 groups, all of which are aligned with the Democratic Party and many of which claim tax-exempt, “nonpartisan” nonprofit status. Collectively, these groups take in $2.1 billion in annual revenues”.

She goes on to enumerate some of those organizations, dividing them by their tax status.  And Nomani says, over and over again, that many of them are listed as 501c3, the IRS status that allows non-profit organizations to avoid paying taxes.  They are designated “charitable”.  As part of that status,  they: 

 “…are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office” (IRS).  

The article implies that she “caught them” violating the tax code:  GOTCHA!!!

Exception

What the author fails to note, is that there is a second section to the tax statute, the “exceptions” section.  

“Certain activities or expenditures may not be prohibited depending on the facts and circumstances.  For example, certain voter education activities (including presenting public forums and publishing voter education guides) conducted in a non-partisan manner do not constitute prohibited political campaign activity.” (IRS).

So, one could argue, that the “NO KINGS” marches were “voter education”, or simply expressing their opinions.  And besides, nothing about “NO KINGS” was a political campaign.  President Trump is the President, until 2028, and will not run another campaign.  In fact, there are no candidates or opponents for 2028, to intervene in, yet.  So, for all those 501c3’s, their tax status remains safe.

Nomani also failed to mention that such familiar right-wing political action groups as the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Foundation, and Hillsdale College, all involved in Project 2025 and electing Donald Trump, are also 501c3’s.  

Radicals

But she does go on to explain all of her work to link “progressive” groups to radical Islam.

“The groups include several organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace and Sarsour’s MPower Change Action Fund, that represent the unholy alliance of Islamist sympathizers and leftists who have fueled fiery protests against the existence of the state of Israel, following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israelis. I’ve identified 1,500 groups in the anti-Semitism protest industry.”

It’s all an “unholy alliance” of radical groups, trying to upend the Trump Administration.  She even drags in the name of a “tycoon”, Neville Roy Singham, who she says funded Chinese Communist propaganda.  While she can’t find a connection to “NO KINGS” or other Resistance activities, she says: “While Singham doesn’t yet appear to have his fingerprints directly on the #NoKings protest, the ideological DNA is the same.”  Or, another way of saying it is she ain’t got a connection.  His name is just in there to say “Chinese Communist Party!!!!”

Silos

Surprise:  there were lots of organizations involved in the incredibly successful “NO KINGS” marches.  How do you think millions of Americans got the word to go to the streets and demonstrate?  Surprise again:  a lot of those groups were political.  And final surprise (shh):  some of them were Democrats!!!

What’s the point?  If all you read (or see, or listen to) is Fox News, you now have ABOSOLUTE PROOF that this is all a vast conspiracy, of unions, Democrats, Islamic radicals, Chinese Communists, to violate tax laws and overthrow the US Government!!!  No wonder you worry about how poor, poor President Trump can survive.  How can all of the foolish protestors be fooled?  Either Democrats are evil, or they are so, so, naïve.  

That’s what life looks life from the “Fox” silo of information.  By the way, the Pearl Project is a 501c3 as well.

It took quite a while to go back to sleep.  

Take A Hint

Monday, after nearly six months of stalling, President Trump finally figured it out.  All of his “pleasant and wonderful” conversations with Russia’s President Putin failed to move the needle on a Russian/Ukrainian ceasefire (earlier essay; Sir, May I Have Another).  And, despite Trump’s obvious disdain for Ukrainian President Zelenskyy (earlier essay, Stratego or Risk), even Donald Trump got it.  Every time he had his “pleasant” conversation with “dear old Vlad”, it was followed by cities in Ukraine being destroyed by missile and drone attacks.  The “nicer” the conversation, the more severe the attack. 

As the saying goes, “A girl can take a hint”.  And finally, so did Trump.  Monday the President arranged for highly advanced defensive weaponry to be quickly sent to Ukraine.  For the first time, Trump seems, at least a little bit, to be willing to treat Ukraine as an “equal” party in the war, and in his efforts to effect a ceasefire.  

Ukraine Needs

It’s a very, very, Trumpian kind of deal.  He says he isn’t sending the weapons to Ukraine, but to the other NATO nations in Europe.  And he’s not giving the weapons away, he expects full payment:  good for the American defense industry.  But everyone in this “game of telephone” knows who is on the other end.  We sell Patriot Missile Systems to Germany, and the weapons will “skip the middle-man” and go straight to Ukraine.  So the US is charging our own allies for supporting the Ukrainians against Russian aggression.  

But it’s exactly what Zelenskyy needs.  The Russian mass bombing campaign is brutal, targeting mostly civilians.  And the war on the ground is stalemated:  more of a World War I trench warfare situation (As retired Four-Star General Barry McCaffery said, another Battle of Verdun), than World War II’s more ranging tank battles.  As things currently stand; Russia is ultimately the winner in a battle of attrition.  That is, unless NATO, both the European members and the United States, continue to supply Ukraine with offensive weapons, and the means to stop Russian attacks on their cities.

Apple of Putin’s Eye

And that’s what the President of the United States is doing.  Sure, US companies will make their “blood money” in the deal.  And Trump gave Putin a fifty-day grace period to come to “the table”.  After that, Trump promises sanctions designed to wreck the Russian economy, 100% 
“tariffs” on Russian oil (one of the few things they have left to sell).  What really happens in fifty days remains to be seen; after all, there have been tariff deadlines come and go for weeks, and little changed.

But it’s a start, a far cry from February.  It seemed that Trump was negotiating FOR the Russians at that time, and with little interest in the invaded nation.  Except, of course, for Ukraine’s “rare earth” products.  Trump wanted ALL of them.

And for the rest of NATO, it’s a big sigh of relief.  Their greatest threat is an aggressive Russia, pressing borders and demanding concessions.  Trump said that Ukraine is the “apple of Putin’s eye”, but the rest of the former Soviet Union can’t be too far behind.  Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia would be next, with Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe not far behind.  If Putin is willing to start another large-scale European War, the NATO allies would much rather fight it in Ukraine, than on the beaches, streets, fields and hills of their own countries.  

Meat Grinder

Putin’s war with Ukraine just got harder.  Trump, a proven admirer of the Russian dictator, is more than willing to give him all of the “normalcy” he wants:  a place at the table in the world economy, a market for Russian oil and gas, an opportunity to take Russia out of the economic stranglehold the war with Ukraine has put them in.  And, of course, the chance to get out of the bloody meat grinder of Ukraine, already estimated to cost 250,000 dead and another 750,000 wounded Russian soldiers (CNN).

So it all comes down to what Putin really wants.  He can have a “normal” economy, with “normal” trade and a “normal” life for most regular Russians.  Or he can continue to wage this war of conquest, with the specter of World War III lurking in the background.  And his nation will remain an economic pariah, cut off from most of the normal intercourse with the rest of the world.

We will soon see if Putin is the cold decision-making KGB Colonel we all have heard about, or if he is next Czar of a Russian Empire we all fear.  Will he give up his dream of a new “Soviet Union”, for the good of the world, and the Russian people he has fed into the meat grinder of East Ukraine?  Or, now with the US grudgingly picking up its share of the fight, will Putin make the cold decision to do what’s right for his own people, and the world, and come to the table?

It’s the Colonel’s call.

Structural Scheme

So, a long time ago, I promised myself that I wouldn’t get into the Jeffrey Epstein stuff.  It’s too salacious, and too irrelevant to the real damage Trump is doing to our Nation, to spend much time on.  But, from my standpoint, you’ve got to love the imbroglio Trump’s henchmen find themselves in now.  They promised for years to reveal the “Epstein Files”.  They dangled names of Trump opponents like Bill Clinton as “click-bait” to build their careers; podcast flame-throwers like Dan Bongino, Alex Jones, and Charlie Kirk.

The “Epstein rumors” fit nicely into the “structural scheme” of the founding ideology of the far-right QAnon group.  They always “knew” there was pedophilia going on among those “elite” Democrats.  If the kids weren’t in the basement of that pizza shop in Washington, then maybe there were all on Epstein’s island.  And, “of course”, that’s where the “adrenochrome” came from, the magic elixir made from the “stolen blood harvested from youth”.  This all goes farther back then QAnon.  It’s part of the  ancient anti-Semitic tropes, pivoted to attack Democrats and liberals.  Epstein was Jewish, so that all balances out nicely. 

Promises Made

Finally we would find it all out, now that Trump was President, and Bondi Attorney General, and Patel Director of the FBI, and Bongino himself now an FBI Assistant Director.  Trump, Bondi, Patel, Bongino all promised to reveal the “the truth”.  That is — until they didn’t.  On the Saturday evening of the Fourth of July holiday (when they hoped no one was listening); The Department of Justice issued an unsigned memo, saying, essentially, “never mind”.  There is no list, there’s no coverup or conspiracy of silence.  As Obi Won Kenobi says: “There’s no droids to see here, move along, move along”.

We know that’s not true either.  There has to be a file as long as my arm on Epstein.  Interviews, tapes, evidence gathered (like the plane passenger log).  And then there’s Ghislaine Maxwell, the literal keeper of whatever list there is, still alive.  She’s a “guest” of the Federal government, the Justice Department the Trump cohort controls, for the next twenty years.   She’s even in an honors dorm in Tallahassee Federal Prison, with a near-private room (Tallahassee Democrat).  Why isn’t Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, making a “deal” with Maxwell, say a year off for every ten names.  It just seems so logical.

Known, Knowns

There is a list of names, of those who trifled with under-age women provided by Jeffrey Epstein.  The FBI had to compile one to have a case, first against him, then against Maxwell.  We even know some names on it:  like Prince Andrew the son of Queen Elizabeth, and Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Professor and attorney to Donald Trump.  Of course, Dershowitz claimed he “only” got down to his underwear.  No private parts (or under-aged parties) involved with him; just an “old Russian woman” he told us (Above the Law).

Bondi is treating all Americans, but particularly her fans in MAGA-world, like they are stupid.  Trump is letting her do it. And there’s only one logical reason that I can think of for the “Obi-Won treatment”.  Somebody’s name is on that “list”, a named participant; that Trump doesn’t want released. 

Kompromat

Now you can infer anything you want.  Is Trump on the list?  Maybe, though I think he’s smarter than to get drawn into underage kids.  But think of the great “kompromat” (compromising material) the investigative report is to whoever has control of it.  The “302’s”, those written reports by FBI agents, would rival the legendary J. Edgar Hoover files that kept him as Director of the FBI for forty-seven years.  No one knew what Hoover knew.  The inferred power of that information protected his directorship through eight different Presidencies.  Only death itself could remove him from office.

Joe Biden (or Kamala Harris) never promised us Epstein’s files, or who killed President Kennedy, or what’s going on at Area 51.  But Trump did.  And while there probably is nothing new about the assassination, and Area 51 really needs to remain secret, clearly there is stuff about Epstein.  I don’t personally care about it:  any charges against “participants” are far past the statute of limitations.  But  I do think it’s interesting that the “Trump folks” have now decided to pretend there’s nothing to see here.  

They are not very good a governing.  They seem to be even worse at covering up.