To Be The Best They Can Be......Inspiration for the New Year.

In my business, because of the kinds of programs we work on,

the greatest value I get is the total immersion into people’s lives where I can be inspired, and learn about the diversity of human experience.  Yesterday’s ‘shoot’ was a perfect example. 

We spent the day creating a video for the Founder’s Fund of SW Florida.  The Founder’s Fund awards 4 year scholarships to deserving local high school seniors who have a passion for learning and the drive to overcome what seem like impossible obstacles to go to college.  We interviewed 7 of the students who have received grants and got a glimpse of their life stories and what they have accomplished because of the scholarships they received.  We also interviewed 2 of the board members who interview these kids when they apply.

The recipients we talked to come from a variety of backgrounds, but all come from situations where parents are unable to financially support their efforts.  Some families were refugees from Cuba, Mexico or Haiti.  These kid’s parents came to seek political asylum, or were so poor in their native countries that they came to the US looking for a better life, or came from families already here with virtually nothing except their parent's desire to see their children succeed.  Their stories are truly remarkable and inspiring, and as I sat there listening to them recount their experiences for our cameras, I couldn’t help but think of how fortunate all of us are to live in this place called the USA.  Our primary education is free-what a blessing!  True, college is terribly expensive and all of these kids are dealing with the monstrous problem of student loan debt that will cripple their earning power over the forseeable future. No matter!  It is just one more obstacle they must tackle, but to see the zeal with which they pursue their dreams; to see the raw emotion that sweeps over them as they describe the sacrifices their parents have made for them is truly humbling and inspiring. 

All of them are smart.  All of them are not afraid of hard work in pursuit of success.  All of them wouldn’t be able to have any higher education without outside financing.  Think about it…..how many of you had to totally finance your own education?

They are going to be engineers, doctors, teachers, physician’s assistants, food service professionals, musicians, accountants, lawyers, social workers, politicians, health care professionals, and on and on.  Their families were migrant farmers in Immokalee, picking crops, or refugees from Castro’s Cuba where one girl’s father was a physician, but when he arrived here in the US he was forced to abandon his medical practice to be a lawn gardening contractor; or a single mother with three other kids holding down 3 jobs to put food on the table and provide just the necessities of life.  And yet all these remarkable kids have risen to be the best they can be in our nurturing free society.  How blessed we are and how important it is for all of us to remember that this is the country we must preserve above all else, where your background is not a barrier to following your dreams.  It must remain a place that is rich in it’s diversity and preserves equal opportunity for all.  For ALL!

How Embarrassing!

Yesterday Nikki Haley, our ambassador to the United Nations addressed the body with, essentially, a threat!  128 nations of the world expressed their displeasure and condemnation of the ‘decree’ by Donald Trump that as far as the US is concerned, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.  It is their sovereign right to express criticism and opinion.  After all, that is what the UN is all about, right? 

So what do Trump and Haley do?

The two of them, in the name of the United States of America, tell the world that we will remember their vote and it will help determine whether we continue to fund the UN and continue to send aid worldwide to Earth’s most vulnerable humans.  Haley said, “We’ll be taking names!”

This is not my United States.

Trump, in the name of the USA, is acting like the imperious ‘bully’ he is in real life, threatening to do nasty things if the world doesn’t show loyalty to him and his decrees.  This is not our country any more, my friends.  How crass and egotistical to present himself and our country as an autocratic ‘my way or the highway’ member of the world community.

Is there no end to this nightmare?

Roger Cohen of the New York Times perhaps says it best in his editorial today:  https://nyti.ms/2p8OMyU

If this is America, we must resist and work hard to change who is in power so we can be proud of who we are.

The Handwriting is on the Wall......

We have turned an ominous corner in our journey through the “Valley of Trump” as we try to ‘fear no evil’.  If you take a step back from the daily indignities to our democracy and survey the entire landscape there are some signs that we are headed for a very unsettling time.

1.          There seems to be a coordinated assault by Republicans on the Mueller investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, and the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation.  They are painting Mueller’s efforts as biased, corrupt, anti-Trump, etc.  Republicans are being loudly vocal, led by their propaganda arm (Fox News) they are impugning, in increasingly vitriolic terms, the effort to get to the baseline facts of what happened during the election.  The President is repeating everyday that it’s a witch-hunt and ‘there is no collusion’.  He’s right.  There was no collusion….it was an outright conspiracy!  Trump’s campaign operatives met with the Russians repeatedly all during 2015 and 2016; they took calls, emails, met with Russian intelligence operatives, Russian oligarchs and their minions, Russian bankers, Russian lawyers and Putin cronies.  They assisted with the transfer of information to Wikileaks; they knew about upcoming releases of damaging information; they solicited Russia’s help in ‘finding the elusive Clinton emails’; they travelled to Russia for conferences, meetings, introductions.  They took money from the Russians.  Can you even imagine the uproar if any of those things would have occurred during the Obama administration?

2.    All of this is in preparation for the dismissal of Robert Mueller and his staff.  We are going to be told, and in fact are being told now, that the investigation is bogus, biased, false, etc. by the President and his obsequious toadies on a daily basis.  This is a coordinated attack to repeat these assertions over and over because as we know, if you repeat lies enough times, there are those that will come to believe it as the truth.

3.    There is an ongoing corruption of the rule                    of law. The administration is attacking the courts, the FBI, the Justice Department on a daily basis.  Trump describes the FBI as ‘tattered’.  35000 employees who toil on a daily basis to protect us from all manner of evil are being generalized and categorized as a biased mass of incompetent agents.  How do you think that will affect the moments when an agent presents his credentials in pursuit of bad actors?  Will the public see them as enforcers of the law or a Gestapo like force?   Trump has nominated a huge number of questionable candidates for lifetime appointments to the courts….and the Republican Senate has confirmed them!

 4.   The administration attacks the first amendment and the Free Press daily.  We have heard threats to ‘change the libel laws’, to threaten FCC licenses of organizations that purportedly vomit forth ‘Fake News’ 24/7.  We have daily Presidential press briefings that are filled with lies, obfuscations, misstatements and are basically worthless when it comes to trying to understand and report what this administration is doing.  We learned of Trump’s meeting with Kislyak and Lefrov after the Comey firing--through the Russian press!  Our press was not  allowed in the Oval Office when they met.  We learned that Trump had a 45 minute call with Putin the other day from a Russian press release, not from our own Executive Branch information sources.

       And today we learn that the administration has banned the use by the CDC of 7 words in any report or document it releases.  Freedom of the Press  anyone?  The words are: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, science-based, and evidence-based…….are they kidding??

       Hey CDC!!!  Here are some alternatives you can use:           

            Vulnerable-- Powerless, defenseless

            Entitlement—claim, need, prerogative

                           Recompence, priviledge

            Diversity—diversification, multiplicity,

                           Variance

            Transgender—cross-gender, gender identi-

                           Fication, gender differentiation

            Fetus—embryo, developing egg, fertilized

                     Egg, blastosphere

            Science-based—empirical

            Evidence-based—factual, proven by facts

        

5.         Appointed and confirmed nominees to head the major departments of our government are selected because they are committed to dissembling the agencies they are appointed to:  Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of State, Attorney General’s office, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of the Treasury, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of the Interior.  If the nominees are not hell bent on destroying the agencies, they are completely incompetent and ignorant of what they should be doing (Think Ben Carson, Steve Mnuchin, Rick Perry)

   Last night there was a startling tweet from an unexpected source:  Mr. Walter Shaub, late of the US Office of Government Ethics.  You will recall that he resigned several months ago after the administration marginalized his ongoing efforts to point out ethics violations and infringements by the new regime.

“This weekend I’m stocking up on portable phone chargers, warm clothes, & gear needed for when we take the streets. I’m concerned the assault on the rule of law is coming over the holidays when we’re distracted. It‘ll be a defining moment for the Republic.”

There are many who are now scared about what is happening to our government.  If Trump and the Republicans shut down the Mueller probe, the Senate Intelligence probe, etc. what happens then?

Will Walter Shaub’s prediction be realized? 

How will each of you citizens interpret the oath of office that all our leaders take: “I swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America”

Should we be scared or empowered?

An Uneasy Development....

We are witnessing a change in the direction of the administration’s defense of the probes taking place into the Russia scandal.  It is not a reassuring change at all.  In fact it is a rather nefarious effort to discredit the Mueller investigation being undertaken by not only the administration, but by Republican congressmen in US Senate and House.  All you had to do was listen to Trump in Pensacola on Saturday at a rally for Roy Moore.  He repeated over and over that "the system is rigged, the system is rigged, but we are going to fix it!"  Get ready--It is Trump's new mantra!

As more and more details emerge that confirm suspicions of collusion by the Trump Campaign, and lies told to just about everyone about multiple and frequent connections and communications with Russian Intelligence as agents of Putin’s Russia, the only defense possible is to discredit the system, the investigators and the FBI.  This is a truly scurrilous development!

Frankly, from all outward appearances, the FBI and Mueller’s team have been carrying out a careful, thorough detailed investigation that seems well organized and planned.  Despite accusations from Republicans, who apparently will do anything to deny the actual truth about what is being revealed, the investigative team seems to be unbiased and scrupulously prosecutorial.

So what else can those who have drunk the Trump cool-aid do?  They are searching for a strategy that will result in the President’s ability to fire the Special Prosecutor and end the threat to Trump’s autocratic regime.  Hence the effort to discredit the thousands of loyal, patriotic employees of the FBI as ‘supporters of Hillary Clinton’ who are out to ‘get’ the President.  How absolutely ridiculous!  And of course, they claim that Mueller has hired Clinton supporters to conduct the investigation.  In fact in a rather McCarthy-esque tableau last week, Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI, was questioned by Trey Gowdy, Jim Jordan and others trying to insinuate that all the members of Mueller’s team and major staff at the FBI were anti-Trump.  Rep. Louie Gohmert read aloud from a list of FBI officials, asking Wray after each name whether that person had shown political bias in their work.  Maybe he should have asked Wray if any of them ‘were or had ever been members of the communist party!’

If Trump fires the Special Prosecutor based on fact-less accusations of bias, there is no telling where we go from there.  There is real jeopardy for our republic if we turn around that bend.  It is doubtful now that there are any Republicans who will ever put country ahead of party.  Our democracy will have fallen over the edge of a precipice I could never have imagined for America.  It will be the end of the America I was born into.