Beware Misdirection

There is a dawning awareness in the mainstream media that the midterm elections are closer than most actually realize. The importance of the consequences of what we do as a nation seem to have more definition as the clock ticks down to November.

Tom Friedman will have a column this week with a new and more robust warning about how crucial these election decisions will be.  His admonition is simple…..you must vote for Democrats.  Friedman is a conservative Democrat in many ways, but his reasoning is sound.  All the Republicans, save those who are retiring, have surrendered their moral selves to a corrupt leader who is bent on destroying our fundamental institutions regarding the rule of law.  There is no hope that those Republicans currently in Congress will stand up to the conspiracy theories being fostered by a man whose arsenal of arguments is all based on lies.

Now Trump is accusing Democrats of meddling with the midterm elections!  His modus operandi is to accuse without evidence….we’ve seen it all before.  The problem, of course, is that his base and other unengaged citizens simply listen to this mendacious drivel and accept it as fact.  Trump’s malevolent brilliance is that he understands this and is going to be ‘warning’ us from now until November that the election is rigged by the Democrats. 

In his new book, Messing With the Enemy, Clint Watts, senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University and a Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow, says Trump’s base ‘believes the impossible and overlooks the obvious’.  For those who get their news from social media or Fox News, these false conspiracies take on the mantle of truth.

Trump continues to incite his base, calling for investigations into red herrings:  Hillary Clinton, the Mueller probe, the FBI, the Justice Department, the deep state, spies in his campaign put there by Obama, etc.  He will continually distract the body politic’s attention toward these canards.  Be ready!

In the meantime there will be a constant harangue against the 'witch hunt'.   Now the arguments are changing.  According to Trump, the collusion is on the part of the Democrats and Clinton’s campaign.  If he repeats this over and over, as he most assuredly will over the next 5 months, many will simply accept these lies as truth.

How do you compete against this nefarious, dark force?

The only way is to call it out.  The Democrats must find the right voice and tactic to call attention to the lies at every turn.  The problem is that there is almost enough in the Republican ‘bin’ of things they have seemingly accomplished to persuade an uninformed voter that they have made real progress.  The only thing positive the Trump administration has achieved was the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court Justice.  Republicans will point to their recently passed tax bill; removal of regulations; great ‘trade deals’; ending engagement on the TPP, NAFTA, the Iran Nuclear deal, the Paris Accords on Climate Change, all as major accomplishments.  Rubbish!  All those actions have caused only anger and consternation with our allies and disengagement with the rest of the world; the prospect of huge new national debt projections, not to mention the reversal of regulations protecting our air and water; the emasculation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren; and the deconstruction of the State Department.  I could go on, but you get the point.

The Democrats running for office this November must take a more aggressive posture to counter the lies being told by administration and sycophantic Republicans.  The truth must be repeated over and over to dispel the blizzard of false conspiracy theories and misleading statements made by Trump and his minions.

If there is no change in the power structure this fall, then there will be no credible force to oppose the continuation of our downward slide to autocracy and destruction of the rule of law.

A Clarion Call

We have arrived at the brink of the constitutional crisis we had feared.  With Trump’s move to use the Justice Department and the FBI to discredit the Mueller Probe, we have crossed the final line separating us from the Rule of Law.  The President is demanding to investigate and discredit the investigation into his own criminal activity.  There is no precedent for that action.

In James Clapper’s newly released analysis of what happened in the 2016 election cycle, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence , Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, comes to the conclusion that Russia did successfully influence the election.  In fact it influenced it so well that Trump won the election.  Clapper is convinced that if they had not interfered with our process, Clinton would be President.  There is no ambiguity in his conclusion.

Apparently there was a joint task force formed in early 2016 by the CIA and FBI to investigate what was happening.  They saw the Russian interference unfolding and used an informer’s information to learn how it originated and was proceeding.  That informer (who was not spying as Trump falsely insists) was the early warning we had as to the onset of the attack by the Russians.

However, the Russian attack was enough to swing 88,000 votes in three states to give Trump the electoral victory.  Both the Russian effort and the coordinated Trump Campaign effort, working together, hijacked our election in 2016.  That is the consensus of all our intelligence agencies.

This interference is not a new phenomena.  In 1960, Mikhail Menshikov, the Russian ambassador, approached Adlai Stevenson offering to help him attain the nomination  for President because the Kremlin believed he would be the ‘right’ kind of President to foster peace with Nikita Krushchev.  Stevenson rejected Menshikov's offer and then turned to the Republican incumbent Dwight Eisenhower and informed him of the attempt to influence our election.  The same thing happened in 1964 when Lyndon Johnson was President and was running for re-election.  He also rejected the attempt, made by then ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to ‘assist’ with the election.  All the Russians needed was a willing collusionist, and it looks like they finally found one in Trump.  They successfully spread chaos in our politics and are seriously damaging our democracy.

In the meantime, we have a President who has done more to destroy our fundamental institutions than any past President.  He is at war with the Judiciary and the Rule of Law; he accuses the FBI and the DOJ of malfeasance and conspiracy to remove him.  He lies constantly and sows seed of doubt in the body politic by attacking anyone who criticizes him.  He calls the Press the ‘enemy of the people’.

He incessantly calls the Mueller probe a ‘witch hunt and fraud’ even though, unlike any previous investigations conducted by Republicans over the last decade or two, Mueller has had a fruitful harvest of indictments from people all around Trump who have repeatedly lied to investigators and the Press about their meetings and collusion with a foreign government. Trump’s entourage during the campaign were criminals:  Flynn, Page, Papadapolous, Manafort, Gates, Pinedo, Van der Zwaan, and 13 Russian nationals.  That is not a witch hunt!  And there are more indictments  coming: probably Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, Wikileaks, Kuschner, Trump Jr., maybe others.

Trump has now ‘demanded’ that the DOJ share confidential information about the investigation into his collusion with the Russians with him and his allies in the Congress.  That is unheard of and probably illegal.  And yet no one stands up to him.  The Republicans in Congress are mute.  They have sold their souls to the devil and are complicit in the abuse and destruction of the Constitution.

Trump has no respect or allegiance to the Rule of Law, one of the fundamental tenets of our democracy.  He is intent on persecuting and prosecuting anyone or anything that opposes him.  His legions of lackeys are sycophants to his motives and actions.

Consequently we now have a Constitutional crisis on our hands that pits the branches of our government against each other.  Led by a racist, narcissistic, mendacious, foul-mouthed excuse for a human being, the United States of America is in jeopardy of becoming an autocracy with a demagogue at the helm.  Unless we get rid of all these bums, you can look forward to more stringent immigration regulations, more relaxation of protective regulations for the common middle class citizen, and false accusations and intimidation to anyone appearing to oppose the administration.

I am doing my best to alert you to what is going on and to try to make you aware of what we are losing.

What are YOU going to do to stop this assault on our democracy?

What IS the Answer?

Day after day, we are subjected to the reports of increasing egregious violations of our moral and ethical code by those we deem ‘leaders’.  As we learn of actions by the Trump administration over the past 18-months  ranging from our foreign policy being directly related to financial deal outcomes of the Trump family in Qatar and China to the destruction of regulations that will enable poisoning our water and air in a nod to corporate greed, the sense of despair increases.

The war being waged against our fundamental institutions is gaining the upper hand, since there doesn’t seem there is any force that can stop it.  Our legislative branch is impotent—the moral compass of the Republican Party has been smashed by the search for greed and power. 

However I want to focus on the heartache in Texas, which is just the most painful of the recent consequences of the loss of conscience of America.

We are not even surprised at the new mass shooting.  We expected it.  We knew it was inevitable.  Why do you suppose that is?  There are those who say it is not the guns, it is the humans, but honestly folks, it’s the guns.  They are everywhere and anyone can get a hold of them.  The destructive power they put in the hands of unstable people will continue to haunt us as long as we do nothing to regulate them.

There is an editorial in the New York Times this morning by Nicolas Kristoff that needs to be read by everyone.  If you can open your mind to believe the statistics presented based on FACTS that Kristoff presents in his analysis, it becomes clearly apparent that we must treat this scourge the way we treated the enormously high death rate 'by automobile'.  Kristoff posits that the regulation model for gun safety already exists in our perception and treatment of what was an increasing trend in deaths on the highways.  He makes a compelling argument for us to move in that direction. (Kristoff's editorial)

In the last 5 years since Sandy Hook there have been over 1600 mass shootings in America.  Think about that for minute.  That is a mass shooting average of about one every day and a half!  The response of our ‘leaders’ has been dozens of proposed actions or regulations.  None of them passed…..none of them!  We know why, but the stark reality that more than two thirds of Americans support all manner of regulation that have never been realized is a testament to the greed and impotence of people who sit in Congress.

Last night as Stephen Colbert sat as his desk after the monologue and sadly shook his head and said, “there is not much to say because it has already been said”, he looked at the camera and implored, “Please vote in the election in November and send people to Congress who will do something.”

Frankly, that is the only answer—to many of the questions and noxious clouds hanging over the heads of rational and moral citizens.  We have the power to change things, but we must act.  You must find candidates that will change things; who support reasonable measures to regulate and make safe the use of firearms.  Ultimately it is in your hands, my friends.  It is clear we are the place where the buck ultimately stops.

Caitlin Cecilia!

She was a surprise….

But such a wonderful gift!

So full of life as a little one, that she would scream through her days with joy in her heart!

Independence was crucial, so she skittered around the house in her little infant walker—you could hear her banging against the walls in the hall!

A more beautiful sylphlike imp there could not be in the world—that infectious smile, that melodious voice.

Then she grew up!

Always so smart and always so loving.  Generous to a fault….with her time, with her love for everyone.

Smart!  Loved to make people laugh—and she still does.  She has my sense of humor, although not sure whether that is a blessing or a curse J

The apple of my eye—she loved to tell stories with pictures.  A writer/producer/director/actress extraordinaire!

Made me proud as she became a Gator.  Made us all proud as she makes her way in the world with grace, compassion, intelligence and a zest for life!

She is my treasure—my lovely daughter who has made my life rich beyond words.  Yesterday was her birthday….and we all celebrate that she is in our lives…especially me!

I love you Chweetzum!  Happy Birthday!