The naughty and the nice.

 Tis the season of holiday cheer,  and your friendly neighborhood field negro is checking his list to find out who has been naughty and who has been nice. 

Let's start with the nice.  I have a few candidates who should be on Santa's good side. 

1. Anthony Fauci: This poor guy has been branded as a pariah by the anti-science right-wingnuts from day one of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, to his credit, he did not let it deter him from fighting the good fight against the misinformation and ignorance that came from the right during what was a terrible time in our country.  Thousands of dead Americans and the poor man still had to defend himself against the onslaught of negativity and disinformation on a daily basis. 

2. Wes Moore: Becoming the first black governor of the state of Maryland was a historic achievement. Having yawdie roots and showing that he has the political chops to take his political career even further puts him in Santa's nice bag.   

3. Bennie Thompson: His job was to oversee the January 6th Commission, and he and his committee delivered the goods. Some folks will  cry that it (the committee) was too partisan, but the right had their chance to have folks added to the committee and they played games. Thompson's committee was thorough and effective. Their criminal referrals to the DOJ now puts the ball in Merrick Garland's court.  

4. The voters of Georgia: I know it was too close for comfort, but stopping Herschel Walker from becoming a United States Senator was nice.  

5. Jalen Hurts: Showing the NFL world that hard work pays off, and doing it while you are the quarterback of my birds, gets you on Santa's good side for sure. 

6. Volodymyr Zelenski: The American right hates this guy more than they do Putin. Why? Because he is everything that their de facto leader, donald trump, is not. Brave, courageous, and willing to fight side by side with his fellow countrymen.  One of their biggest beefs with him is that he wore a military sweater to address congress.  Does this faux outrage seem familiar? Think Obama's tan suit. 

7. LeBron James: Glad you didn't just "shut up and dribble" bro. 

8. The ten CNN heroes of 2022: No explanation needed. Just go to the link.   

9. Cassidy Hutchinson: Having the courage to stare down evil and corruption is nice. Being brave enough to speak to the country about it puts you in Santa's good graces.  

10. The Capitol police: These men and women defended the Capitol against that marauding group of insurrectionist on January 6th. The MAGA lunatics literally tried to seize power from the government after a legitimate and fair election. The scary thing is that they almost succeeded.   

And now the naughty. No toys for you.

1. Tucker Carlson: Night after night he spews nothing but hateful and vile rhetoric meant to divide and drive up the ratings on his popular television show. The fact that he is on a major television network tells you all you need to know about where we are as a country. 

2. Marjorie Taylor Greene: This racist and anti- Semite has been sent back to Washington by her constituents. She is now more powerful than ever, due to the right's slim majority in congress. That should scare every American with a brain. The phrase you are a product of your environment certainly holds true when it comes to Marjorie.    

3. Kari Lake:  She just lost a free and fair election, and yet she continues to push the lie that it was stolen from her. Sound familiar ?    

4. Jerry Jones: Maybe he was only fifteen when he was seen in a photo that put him on the wrong side of an ugly chapter in America's history, but he has done nothing over the years to show us that he did not co-sign with the behavior of his peers back then.   

5. Candace Owens/Kanye West: These two go together like eggnog and Christmas for their coonery and ignorance. 

6.  Matt Gaetz: This Florida man has managed to stay one step ahead of being charged as a pedophile, and yet he still maintains a high profile while doing one obnoxious and borderline treasonous thing after another.  He has definitely been naughty.  

7.  Van Jones: Van has to realize by now that the bothsideism game is getting old.     

8. Urban Terrorists: These clueless wannabe gangsters who contribute to the destruction of their communities have all been naughty this year.  Five hundred murders in my city of Philadelphia this year is not cool.  

9. Elon Musk: Long ago, before I realized what kind of man Musk is, I considered purchasing a Tesla. I wouldn't take one now if you gave it to me.  

10. Kyrsten Sinema: She went to Washington for one purpose: To make money. Sadly, it has been working for her. She switched parties not long ago because she knew she would not make it out of a democratic primary. Hopefully the people of Arizona will wise up and end her craven selfish reign as a politician.   

11. The Supreme Court majority: No explanation needed. 

That's it folks. Enjoy the rest of your holiday. Oh, and your gifts as well, because all of you FN readers have been nice. :) 

Name this movie

 

 

Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times/Pool/Getty Images)

 

Jerry's ugly world.

 

My wife, bless her Cajun heart, is from Louisiana. Unfortunately, though,  she doesn't like Mardi Gras. This is because as a young child she had a horrible experience while visiting New Orleans to witness a Mardi Grass parade. People are shaped by their life experiences, and it doesn't matter how old you are. If you are old enough to remember, it can effect on how you view the world and things around you. 

If you have been following the Jerry Jones story, you know where I am going with this.

I am going to put my cards on the table and state up front that it's easy for me to dislike Jerry Jones. He is, after all, the owner of the team that I hate most of all the professional sports teams in the world: the Dallas calfboys. But this isn't about his ownership and his handling of the team. It's about who he is as a human being, and what he has done with his life since being a fourteen year old teenager with a front row seat to one of the most ugly chapters in America's history. An event that was certainly part of the zeitgeist of the time.  

I have heard all the excuses. He was only a young teenager. It was over sixty five five years ago. Look how many black people he employees. His team has a black quarterback, and on and on. People (black and white) will continue to make excuses for Jerry Jones, because he is a billionaire with influence.  But take the time to read the Washington Post article that featured the picture, and you will see that Jerry is a man who was shaped by his upbringing, and not in a good way. 

LeBron James called out the American press yesterday for ignoring the story, and I am glad that he did. Maybe it will get us talking about it again. And maybe someone will try to ask Jerry Jones, once again, what he was thinking when he was witnessing that ugly scene in Arkansas. His canned answer about just being "curios" isn't going to cut it. He had a chance to speak about how horrible of a time that was and how ugly and and abhorrent racism is, but he chose not to. This is the guy who told his players that they better not kneel with Colin Kaepernick. And he is the same guy who has never, in his thirty three years as owner, hired a black head coach, and who has had only two (count em, two) offensive or defensive coordinators who were black. since he owned the team. 

I would like to thank LeBron for putting this story back into the limelight. It will die down again soon, but at least, for now, we can take another look at Jerry's World and see the ugliness that's lurking right below the surface. 

Go Eagles!! 

   

   

No "red wave", and MAGA is to blame.

 You voted, and the "red wave"  that all the pundits saw coming, turned out to be a little more than a puddle.  

Maybe some of you really do care about democracy.  And maybe, just maybe, you realize that paying a little more for gas --and the food you buy-- is not quite as serious as having your  freedom taken away. 

Now comes the fun part. The right-wingnuts will start to turn on each other, as we all know that the malevolent narcissist living in South Florida had his ego seriously bruised. He has started already. He is now threatening to take his cult and their red hats and totally abandon the republican party. 

I, for one, do not feel sorry for the republican establishment. This is what happens when you make a Faustian bargain; at some point you are sure to get burned. 

Anyway, I recently read an article by Mark Greene (an incredible writer whom I just discovered), and it summed up the age of MAGA, and the madness that surrounds it, perfectly. 

Here goes: 

"The MAGA movement, based on aging white boomer victimhood is a bell curve. That bell curve has peaked for the simple reason that boomers, of which I am one, are dying off. We are the MAGA movement. How we got here is a combination of our own disconnection and the vulnerability which that created to decades of carefully crafted manipulation.

Boomers were wholly unprepared for the blunt manipulations of Fox News, in bundled cable of the 90s. White boomers never faced the great depression, or a world war, yet we were particularly susceptible to the idea that we were victims of hardships. In part because of the restless disconnection of our gated community lives we bought fragile white victimhood hook, line and sinker.\

After lifetimes of leaning into consumerism and mass consumption we boomers woke up to find ourselves angry and reactive to our own disconnection. Maybe a bigger SUV would help? Maybe a third marriage? That sense of disconnection was a warning, an inflection point. Some of us self reflected. Took stock. But many more of us doubled down on our nagging sense of victimhood.

 “Whatever the fuck is wrong here, it must be someone else’s fault. Women. Immigrants. Black people.” And Fox News was there to lovingly encourage our blind entitlement. To sell us our own failed white fragility.

The MAGA bell curve peaked as we moved into retirement, staring blankly at our own mortality. Because we had bought into the decades long drumbeat of individualism sold to us by a GOP bent on eliminating social safety nets, we sought validation in class and status and so ended up without community.

Retirement is when a strange unnamed panic really set in for boomers. No longer able to rely on the stale connection of surface level workplace relationships, we were left sitting alone in our easy chairs staring at the Tucker Carlsons of the Fox News rabbit hole. Again, it was an inflection point for some of us.

Some boomers said, “Maybe this creeping anxiety is my fault. Maybe this disconnection from my kids, my community, from the world right outside my door is my fault.” Some of us went looking for basic human connection. We realized we had been tricked into choosing disconnection. But so many more of us just got angrier."  [More here] 

That sound you hear is a microphone dropping. 

Vote!

 Vote!!

Herschel's troubling run.

I think I finally figured out what it is about Herschel Walker's run for the United States Senate that bothers me so much. It's not the obvious. Not the hypocrisy when it comes to his stance on abortion. Not his obvious mental issues. Not the fact that he doesn't know the difference between NATO and NASCAR. Not the fact that he probably doesn't think that there is another Athens outside of the one in North Georgia. Or the fact that he could be the poster-boy for deadbeat dads. These are all troubling things to be sure. But to me, the most troubling thing of all is how the right is using this shell of a man in their quest for power. The fact that he happens to be a man of color makes it hurt even more. 

For the record, I have no problem with black folks who consider themselves conservatives, and who are sincere in there convictions. Particularly those who are thinkers and who put some thought into what they are espousing. Shelby Steele, bless his right leaning heart, is one of my favorite authors. And I have a lot of respect for folks like Thomas Sowell as well.  Black republican politicians are out there, and there will always be a Tim Scott or JC Watt to tickle the right's fancy, and allow them to say: See, we have a black friend, just like you do. 

But this thing with Herschel is just sad. I saw some of his debate with the democratic nominee, Ralph Warnock, and it was painful to watch. Why would someone let themselves be used this why? And who would be so cruel as to put someone out there like that just because they can? That's a rhetorical question. We all know who. And because the republican party is a glorified cult these days, everyone just got in line and said, "Herschel is our guy". The scary thing is he might win. Then what? How will  he serve the people of Georgia for six years in the "greatest deliberative body in the world"? 

“Do you know right now, I have something that [you can bring] into a building, that will clean you of Covid, as you walk through this, this dry mist?”....“As you walk through the door, it will kill any Covid on your body,” said Walker, “EPA-, FDA-approved. When you leave, it will kill the virus as you leave, this here product.” 

“They continue to try to fool you that they are helping you out. But they’re not. Because a lot of money it’s going to trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”

Lord have mercy! When is the next Race Draft? The black delegation would like to make a trade. 

*Pic from usatoday.com

? of the day.

 

With all the right- wing chatter about a Civil War coming our way, I have to ask the following question: How many of you actually believe that America is heading for a Civil War? (A real one.) And if you do, why?  

"The paradox that defines this moment."

As democracy takes its last dying breath here in America, articles like the following from author David Graham, writing for The Atlantic, must be shared whenever possible. 

Sadly, fifty percent of the people in the country could care less.  Some, because of partisan tribalism. Some, because the people putting our democracy in danger looks like them (see racism), and some, because...well...they are just typical Americans, and they can't see past the next sound bite (or the latest trend or gadget) to feed into their own selfish desires and immediate needs. 

Article: 

"The good news is that President Donald Trump’s attempts to defy the results of the election and remain in office keep falling flat. In court after court, judges have ruled against the Trump campaign and tossed out its lawsuits. Today, Georgia certified Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the state’s presidential electors, after a federal judge yesterday rejected a prominent conservative lawyer’s suit seeking to block certification.

The bad news is that as Trump’s chances grow dimmer and deadlines near, his attempts to steal the election and subvert democracy have become more dangerous. This is the paradox that defines this moment: As Trump’s odds of success decrease, the risks that his ever more extreme efforts pose are increasing.

In the first hours and days after the polls closed, the president argued that if all the legal votes were counted, he would win. Now he has moved to trying to have votes thrown out—asking state legislators or courts to just ignore the balloting altogether, flout the will of voters, and simply make him president. Incredibly, he and his aides have not even bothered to offer some other pretense. They are now openly explaining, in media accounts (albeit anonymously) and in court filings, that the point is to disregard voters’ wishes.

“President Donald Trump’s strategy for retaining power despite losing the U.S. election is focused increasingly on persuading Republican legislators to intervene on his behalf in battleground states Democrat Joe Biden won, three people familiar with the effort said,” Reuters reported Thursday. “A senior Trump campaign official told Reuters its plan is to cast enough doubt on vote-counting in big, Democratic cities that Republican lawmakers will have little choice but to intercede.”

As usual, Trump is doing all this in plain sight. He summoned the Republican leaders of the Michigan state House and Senate to the White House today for a meeting. Both men, though allies of Trump, have publicly rejected the idea of legislators throwing out the vote and selecting a slate of electors, and legal experts agree that state law precludes the move—though it will be interesting to see what the leaders say after their meeting.

Earlier this week, Republican members of a board of canvassing in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, threatened not to certify the election over minor discrepancies, then reversed themselves. Trump then reportedly called one of the two Republicans, who tried (unsuccessfully) to reverse their reversal. They insist the president did not pressure them. Meanwhile, Trump’s legal team is trying to achieve the same result by slightly different means in Pennsylvania, asking a court to throw out the vote and declare the president the winner.

A bizarre press conference yesterday at the Republican National Committee headquarters showed how chimerical the president’s legal case is. Rudy Giuliani harangued the press for not reporting that he has evidence of fraud, then refused to share the evidence with reporters. (Sidney Powell, another attorney, wouldn’t even share the supposed proof with friendly TV host Tucker Carlson, presumably because it doesn’t exist.) The lawyers offered a farrago of conspiracy theories—mysterious truckloads of votes arriving at counting centers, poll workers being instructed to ignore rules, shadowy foreign voting-machine companies futzing with the count to hand the election to Biden.

These ideas have all been comprehensively debunked, but they also make no logical sense, whether taken together or individually. Why would Democrats bother stuffing the ballot boxes with paper ballots if they could just change the totals later? Why would they bother fixing the presidential election while allowing Republicans to have a great night in House, Senate, and other down-ballot races? (The Pennsylvania suit asks that the presidential result be thrown out but has no problem with the commonwealth certifying all the other results that depend on the same ballots.) Why did Trump improve his performance relative to 2016 in the cities where fraud allegedly took place, even while losing ground in suburban counties where his campaign isn’t disputing the tallies?

In another case, Trump lawyers argued that the Michigan results are invalid because the number of votes cast exceeds the number of voters in the precinct. But as the Trump-friendly Powerline notes, the lawyers appear to have confused Michigan and Minnesota precincts.

The Trump campaign’s initial strategy this month was to contend that some votes that were cast by mail should not have legally been allowed. This argument lacked grounding in law and sought to disenfranchise citizens who had followed the rules in casting their votes, but at least it offered some consistency and logic about which votes shouldn’t be counted. Since that failed, the president is now simply insisting without evidence that there is fraud and hoping that judges or legislators will toss the results wholesale in certain counties or states.

The Trump team’s tenuous claims would be laughable were they not so dangerous. First, there is always the outside chance that some enterprising legislators might actually try to discard votes, which would be a miscarriage of democracy. Second, the flimsiness of the claims is probably irrelevant. Polling suggests that huge portions of Republicans believe the election was rigged, and no number of debunkings is likely to convince them otherwise—this is motivated partisan reasoning, not thoughtful analysis. Besides, once the president has decided to place all his chips on simply circumventing the will of the voters, the strength of his argument no longer matters. What is important is brute strength. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to have it.

Nonetheless, most Republicans remain distressingly slow to challenge Trump’s claims. Early on, GOP lawmakers contended (anonymously, of course) that there was little harm in letting Trump throw his tantrum, since it would come to naught. This was a bad argument then, and it has not improved with age. As the president’s claims get more and more far-fetched, and his attempt to steal the election grows more overt, most Republicans are still remaining on the sidelines.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to have concluded that Trump’s strategy probably won’t work, but that if it does, that’s fine. The few exceptions include the usual suspects, including Senators Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse. Other Republicans have tried to have it both ways, declining to condemn Trump or call Biden the president-elect, but also saying the administration should allow the transition to proceed, just in case. None of this rises to the challenge of the moment. Former President Barack Obama seems to have it right when he says these officials are going along with the subversion “not because they actually believe it, but because they feel intimidated by it.”

Although Trump is deeply unlikely to succeed in his attempted theft, he’s revealing weaknesses and softening up the system for a future authoritarian, who, as Zeynep Tufekci has written, is unlikely to be as bumbling as he is. Defeating Trump in an election was a straightforward enough task, and defeating him in court has proved even easier. But if he succeeds in undermining the system badly enough, it will mean that defeat at the polls just won’t matter next time." [Source]

The author is more optimistic than I am.  Yes, tfg's efforts are "falling flat" for now. But for how long? His rabid base and cult like followers are still out there. And now, thanks to being under the umbrella of a major political party, they have hijacked the halls of power. 

All we can do now is wait for the inevitable.   

Above the law?

 

The thing you have to understand about the legal system in America is this: Yes, it's fundamentally a fair system, and it probably has no equal anywhere else in the world. But sadly, we have to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge its flaws. 

We tend to selectively prosecute for certain crimes in this country. Often who gets prosecuted will depend on their wealth, level of influence, and their social connections and political clout in their community.  

I think you all know where I am going with this. 

There is a fellow down in South Florida who lives in a very large estate, and who used to have a game show on television. This fellow should probably have been indicted for some very serious crimes by now. Honestly, after all we have seen and heard over the past few weeks, most of us of sound mind are wondering why the former game show host has not been charged and arrested. 

I agree with Glenn Kirschner. 

"Ex-prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said Trump should be arrested "promptly" in light of the Mar-a-Lago search.

The FBI recovered dozens of empty folders marked confidential or containing instructions to return the contents to an aide.

"Did he sell them to America's adversaries? Did he use them to blackmail people?" Kirschner asked.

In the probe, investigators recovered nearly 100 empty folders, according to a detailed inventory unsealed and released by the Justice Department. It's unclear where the contents of each empty folder are.

Kirschner, speaking in an episode of his YouTube channel, questioned whether Trump might have sold or given away some of those classified government documents. 

'The most reasonable inference is that Donald Trump disposed of those classified documents after unlawfully taking them from the White House," Kirschner said. "To what purpose did he put them? Did he sell them to America's adversaries? Did he use them to blackmail people? Did he use them to leverage a favorable business deal in some country or another? We don't know yet.'"

True, we don't know all the details yet. But we know enough to know that the former game show host broke the law. And if he was just a another "normal" citizen like most of us, he would be talking to his lawyers about the best way to stay out of prison for a long time. 

This is what a former federal employee, James Turnage, wrote about the theft of classified docs: 

"The removal of secret documents from the protection of the United States federal government is a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment. Trump stole 15 boxes of documents when he was removed from the White House, many of which were classified. This author was a federal employee for about two years and was told that if anyone violated the oaths of office, they could receive a punishment that could include a 25,000 dollar fine and 10 years in federal prison.

This author asks Trump supporters included, “if anyone violates federal law, should he or she be allowed to run for office?” Many believe that Trump’s theft of classified documents combined with his close relationship with Vladimir Putin should be treason.

How many times will this government, most importantly the Department of Justice, allow Trump to commit acts of sedition and irrefutable treason before he is tried for the ultimate crime against this nation?

On Friday, it was confirmed that the 15 boxes of federal documents stolen by Trump, and recovered in Mar-a-Lago, contained multiple documents containing national secrets. If this had been discovered as an act by anyone other than a disgraced former president, this individual would have been charged with the highest crime against the United States of America."

No one should be above the law, but this is America, and old habits are hard to break.  

  

  

Lindsey's bold prediction.

 

Lindsey Graham did a very bad thing when he went on FOX VIEWS, and then announced to the world that if criminal charges are filed against tfg there will be riots in the streets. This might be tfg's best strategy to prevent being charged: Threaten violence from the MAGA crowd if the DOJ does their job.  And seriously,  how does one get away with saying things such as this when one is a United States Senator? Am I missing something? 

What's scary is that the main stream media will let this pass. And they won't make a thing of it because the right- wing political class in this country has gotten so over the top that this type of rhetoric just seems to be par for the course with them. 

A United States Senator threatening "riots in the street" if the Justice Department does their job is kind of  a big deal, but you would never know it by the way this story has been covered. This is a signal from Lindsey to all the "deplorable MAGA fascists out there to take to the streets in defense of their dear leader. This is happening while said leader is demanding to be be reinstated as president. And you wonder why Joe Biden is throwing the F word around when making a reference to this guy's people is such a big deal. It really shouldn't be, because he is speaking facts. 

As Americans, we don't want to hear the ugly truth about our fellow citizens. It says something about us and this experiment that we chose to buy into, and it's not good. 

‘What happens if you have state changes the law saying that the children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that is that legit under the way this decision is written?’ said Biden, before referring to Trump’s Make America Great Again group.

‘What are the next things that are going to be attack? Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history. Recent "

Stay tuned. A certain Senator from South Carolina is predicting bad things.   

*Pic from yahoonews

 

Movie caption Saturday.

 

What is the title of this movie? 

Bonus points if it features Jim Carrey. 

Donald Capone.

 

Woo chile!  tfg is a whole mess. Lord have mercy! Imagine what it would take to have the feds search the home of a former president.  Believe me when I tell you field hands, that warrant to search tfg's gaudy (and very tacky) compound was rock solid, and there was absolutely probable cause for the feds to go looking. Now we are hearing that some of those docs that tfg sticky fingered out of the White House might have had nuclear implications. Pray church! 

But let me say this to the folks in MAGA land. Imagine, for a minute, that this was a guy named Barrack Obama and not your dear leader acting like Al Capone while playing president of the United States. All of your heads would be exploding, and you would be chanting "lock him up" like you were when you had your sights set on Hillary Clinton.  Honestly folks,  you might want to start reading all the material you can find about cults. 

Of course this story is full of ironies. tfg himself signed a law increasing the penalty for mishandling classified documents when he was president. I am quite sure that he never in a million years thought that he would be in this position, because in his delusional mind he really believes that laws do not apply to him.  

Yesterday he listened to his lawyers for once and pled the Fifth numerous times while sitting for a deposition before the New York AG. (He pled the Fifth over four hundred times for crying out loud!)  It's his right to do that, but man it sure doesn't look good. This is one of at least two other probes looking into the shady practices and criminal acts of tfg. I honestly don't know how he sleeps at night with all that legal jeopardy hanging over his head. Truly mob like.

I just find it hard to believe that folks are still supporting this guy. He is raising money off of his latest legal troubles and the poor folks in MAGA land are sending him their hard earned dollars to pay his legal fees. I suppose being a white supremacist president has its privileges. 

Speaking of lawyers, I am quite sure that tfg's lawyers are in deep conversation now trying to figure out how to respond to the DOJ's request to unseal the search warrant to tfg's home. Merrick Garland is calling tfg''s bluff, and he is daring him to let the American people see the warrant. This should be fun to watch. Let's see how his minions in the political class respond to this.

Anyway, now the right- wing lunatics are calling for a civil war, and one of them decided to have his Morris Island moment today. Needless to say it didn't end well.  By all accounts he was a devoted fan of tfg, and he was outraged that the government would have the nerve to search his dear leader's home. Imagine being willing to die for tfg. A man who cares about only one thing: Himself.  

“The mob takes the Fifth Amendment,...f you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

I know, right? 

 

Say what?!

 

When I check out I want to be have my ashes spread over the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Falmouth, Jamaica.  I want a very small gathering, and very short goodbyes. 

Something about being buried in the ground just doesn't sit right with me. What if, for instance, there is some kind of life after death experience, and I wake up in a coffin six feet under? I have serious claustrophobia issues, and the thought of...lord I can't even think about it. 

So why I am I talking about how one chooses to be sent off after they say farewell to this life? Well, as you all might have heard by now, tfg's ex recently met an unfortunate end when she fell down a flight of stairs and said goodbye to this life. It was a weird way for her to go out, and needless to say some folks still have some questions. But the place her ex husband chose to bury her... Lord have mercy!    

Read what Matt Prigge had to say about the whole thing: 

"Donald Trump has a lot going on right now, but he’s somehow found the time to draw attention to one part of his empire in particular: his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The former president has drawn fire from families of 9/11 victims for hosting a (sparsely attended) Saudi golf tournament at his NYC-adjacent course. But there’s more: When he buried his late ex-wife Ivana near the course’s first hole, he may have done so for tax break purposes.2022

As caught by The Daily Mail, Dartmouth sociology professor Brooke Harrington suspected something was up when Trump buried his first wife on one of his golf courses. So she did some snooping, and she discovered that in Jersey, there is no minimum number of bodies required for a plot of land to be designated a cemetery…and therefore be exempt from all taxes, rates, and assessments.

What’s more, tax documents reveal that the Trump Family Trust recently sought to designate a property only 20 miles from the golf club, in Hackettstown, to become a non-profit cemetery company.

So, did self-professed rich guy really use his late ex-wife’s death to save some money? He of course hasn’t addressed the matter. But as per Insider, he’s tried to turn his golf club into a makeshift cemetery before:"

No words. I mean this is beyond tacky even for the tfg. I have no feelings about Ivana one way or the other, but I know she deserved more than this. I mean, who wants to be buried on the first tee of a golf course? Hell Tiger Woods won't want to be buried on a damn golf course, and he made a billion dollars off the sport. 

I will never play Bedminster, but for those of you who do, please say a little prayer for tfg's ex buried below your tee box before you launch one down the fairway. 

Pic from bing.com news. 

Feeling the heat.

With all due respect to Nelly, it's already "HOT in herr". WTF is happening to our planet? It was 114 degrees in some parts of the West. One hundred and fourteen degrees! Let that sink in for a minute. Even Denver, the Mile High City, hit 100 degrees. That is not normal, people. 

I wonder if all those right- wingnuts and climate deniers who have been screaming hoax from the mountain- top still believe that this is the hill they want to die on.  And of course they will reappear in the comments after this post to give us all the usual talking points: This is just history taking its natural course. There is no consensus among scientists that climate change is real, Plants and animals can and will adapt. And of course the kicker: Climate change is good for us.   

All I can say is thank the good lord above for air conditioning. If I had known then what I know now, I would have gone to HVAC school and gotten my HVAC certs instead of law school. The guy with one of the largest homes in my neighborhood owns his own HVAC company. God bless him. But I digress. 

Over in the UK, those poor Brits are having a time of it. They weren't built for this kind of heat, and it shows. There were fires breaking out all over London today, and the poor folks were losing their minds. Today was the hottest day recorded in their history.   The ancestors are getting their revenge for all those tropical countries they colonized. Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. 

Look, I'm no scientist, but this feels different. I wish it wasn't so, but I am afraid that it might be too late to save the planet. We should have collectively focused our energy on saving the planet years ago, but instead, we listened to the right-wingnuts and played politics with our survival. 

To my friends in Texas, I hope the power grid holds up. If it doesn't, your senator will just run away to a cooler place, and your governor will blame something [or someone else], while he continues to take  money from the big power companies down there. 

Stay cool field hands, and enjoy the planet while you can.  

Caption Sunday.

 

What's the name of this movie?  

Hold the fireworks.

 

I regret to announce that the 4th of July will be canceled this year as the American experiment has been hijacked by Christofascist forces. 

Maybe next year.

More guns.

As the Supremes continue to take America closer to being a Christofascist state, it is important to read articles like the following from Tom Nichols ----writing for The Atlantic, to get a grasp of where we are heading as a country. I am afraid this trend will continue for awhile, because these Justices are still relatively young, and they have lifetime appointments. 

Just remember to vote next time. Elections have consequences. 

"I used to think of myself as a gun-control conservative—I supported both the right to own firearms and the interest of the state to limit that right—but America’s gun culture isn’t about rights. It’s about performative insecurity.

Back in 1959, the country singer Marty Robbins wrote a ballad about a murderous outlaw who met his well-deserved end at the hands of a handsome young Arizona Ranger who was carrying the “Big Iron on his hip.” (The song was supposedly inspired by a weapon Robbins saw in a shop, but there is some question about whether the Big Iron was a real gun.)

It’s a great song. But it wasn’t supposed to be a guide to life in modern America.

I don’t have the energy or expertise to debate whether the Supreme Court should have taken on the case of a New York State law that limited the ability to carry weapons around in public. Honestly, I just assume that many declines in the quality of American life for the foreseeable future will be announced with “In a 6–3 decision …” Elections have consequences, and with the current composition of the Court, this decision was inevitable.

The problem is not the Court’s decision. The problem is an adolescent, drama-laden gun culture, a romance with weapons that became extreme only in the past quarter century.

It didn’t used to be this way. I grew up around guns; my father had been a police officer, and we had two of them. My older half-brother, who lived a few streets away, was a police officer. Our next-door neighbor was a police officer. My hometown was a military town, and almost all of the men I knew were veterans who owned weapons and knew how to handle them. (There were some female veterans too. My mother, for one.)

What I remember about guns is that I remember almost nothing about guns. People owned them; they didn’t talk about them. They didn’t cover their cars in bumper stickers about them, they didn’t fly flags about them, they didn’t pose for dumb pictures with them. (I’ll plead one personal exemption: When I was a little boy, relatives in Greece once posed me in a Greek Evzone-soldier costume with my uncle’s hunting shotgun. I could barely lift it.)

Today, there is a neediness in the gun culture that speaks to deep insecurities among a certain kind of American citizen. The gun owners I knew—cops, veterans, hunters, sportsmen—owned guns as part of their life, sometimes as tools, sometimes for recreation. Gun ownership was not the central and defining feature of their life.

Don’t take my word for it that things have changed. Here’s Ryan Busse, a former gun-company executive who has now taken on his former industry, talking about the day someone showed up to a hunting party with an AR-15:

The unwritten rules of decency were enforced by firearm-industry leaders … I witnessed how this worked many times, including one occasion when a young writer brought his own AR-15 to a hunting event I was hosting in 2004. The senior figures there responded immediately. “That’s not the kind of thing we want to be promoting,” they said. The newcomer was shamed into locking the gun up for the rest of the event.

This kind of affirmation of cultural norms can be a lot more powerful than any law, and I suspect that the gun-culture extremists know it. They head off expressions of this kind of social disapproval by being aggressive and performative, daring anyone to criticize them for feeling the need to be armed while getting milk and eggs at the supermarket.

I have always trusted my fellow citizens with weapons. Now the most vocal advocates for unfettered gun ownership are men sitting in their cars in sunglasses and baseball caps, recording themselves as they dump unhinged rants into their phones about their rights and conspiracies and socialism.

The Supreme Court has now affirmed that all these guys can be the handsome ranger with the Big Iron on their hip. You can be angry with the Court for furthering and enabling this weirdness, but it’s not the Court’s fault. It is, as usual, our fault, as voters and citizens, for tolerating a culture that is endangering our fellow Americans instead of insisting that all of us exercise our constitutional rights like responsible adults." [Source] 

I have a slightly different take than Mr. Nichols, as I do put a little  more blame on the folks making the laws.  But I agree with his overall sentiment: This pseudo macho culture (mostly angry white men who want to make up for deficiencies in other areas, and young urban terrorist who measure their worth by the weapons they use) that has enveloped our society, will only cause things to get worse from here.  

 

 

Add climate change to our list of problems.

Still don't believe that climate change is real? 

Well, if you have been living in the FOX NEWS bubble over the past few years, you might still believe that it's all just a hoax. 

I hate to break it to you, but  if you do, you're in for a big surprise. 

The following is portions of an article from the Zinn Education Project: 

"If you have been reading the news or watching Democracy Now!, you have seen how climate chaos is crashing through the world:

Over 100 million people are under heat advisories in the United States as an early-season heat wave continues to break records from the Southwest to the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, firefighters are battling more than three dozen uncontained fires.

In Iraq, a massive dust storm hospitalized more than 5,000 people with respiratory ailments, in the latest of seven terrible dust storms to hit that country in just the last month. Temperatures in the Middle East and Central Asia have already soared to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

In Montana, record flooding has forced the closing of all five entrances to Yellowstone National Park. Roads and bridges in the area have been washed away. Flood levels on the Yellowstone River are now beyond record levels.

Pakistan and India just suffered through their hottest April in a century of record-keeping, with temperatures reaching more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of South Asia, resulting in misery for millions in that region." [Source]   

As if we don't have enough to worry about. 

Thoughts? 

Image from the University of Exeter. 

Just in case.

 I practiced criminal law in Philly for a long time, and during that time I represented some... let's just say... people who who most of us would consider less than upstanding citizens. 

Lately I have been thinking a lot about some of my experiences. 

One particular memory has been standing out more than most. The time I went into a "rough" neighborhood--- even by Philly's standards--- to see a client and collect some cash from him. I never worried about how dangerous the neighborhoods I visited  were, because somehow I always thought that the people I represented, and the cred of being a criminal lawyer, would protect me. This time, though, I felt uneasy. It probably had something to do with how much cash I had on me at the time. A youngster (who couldn't have been more than sixteen) and his pal approached me before I got into my car. They didn't look particularly threatening, and, as it turned out, they knew who I was and just wanted to make small talk. "You a "lawyer, right?" He looked even younger up close. I told him I was. " You got your  fire with you?" I knew he was referring to a gun, and I told him no. I told him something to the effect that I didn't think that I needed one among my own people. He laughed and flashed what looked like a 9mm Glock so I could see it. "I always keep mine Mr Lawyer, just in case". He laughed again and walked off with his friend. I didn't even want to think about where his life was heading. I am pretty sure that he is either dead or in jail now.

The more I read and hear about the carnage on the streets of Philadelphia and other major American cities, the more I think about that encounter with that youngster in North Philadelphia some fifteen years ago. Guns are still everywhere, and every sixteen year old in North Philadelphia who wants a gun can get one. And not just any gun, a really powerful one; like a 9mm Glock.

There are a lot of reasons for these urban terrorists terrorizing each other and law abiding citizens. I could could go on and on about their broken homes, poor school systems, toxic masculinity, and societal failures that have done nothing to address the root causes of poverty. But the quickest way to reduce gun violence in the streets is to make guns less available. It's really not rocket science. And  I know that it's easier said than done, but we have to say it so that we can at least start somewhere. 

Philly made national news again for all the wrong reasons this past weekend.  Knuckleheads on South Street started brawling, and rather than fight with their fists, they chose to settle their differences with their guns. And of course, they all had their guns, because every young punk in Philly either has one, or knows how to get one. They are not in the NRA, and they were not trained in proper gun safety or how to shoot. So when they start beefing amongst  each other and reach for their "fire",  people die, and chaos ensues. 

"I always keep mine Mr. Lawyer, just in case".

*Image from www inquirer.com 

Where are our "allies"?

 

And now I bring you the following article from Candice McDuffie, writing for The Root. 

It's still relevant, although you would never know it, because it seems that Buffalo happened so long ago.

"It’s been nine days since 13 people were gunned down—10 of them fatally—at the Buffalo supermarket Tops in the heart of a Black community. The white male terrorist behind it, Payton Gendron, published a manifesto online outlining his hatred of Black people and every step of his plan to kill them just days before the massacre.

He drove over 100 miles to shoot up the grocery store Black residents fought to have for decades; those same people were executed in it for simply existing. Yet there have been no public cries of outrage from white America, no condemnation for a truly inhumane and monstrous act.

The same white institutions that posted Black squares on their Instagram feeds to prove that they stand in solidarity with Black folks after the 2020 murder of George Floyd have gone radio silent—and the silence is deafening. Those pledges to do better by Black folks quickly became obsolete once it wasn’t trendy or provocative or convenient to do so. 

Where is your anger? Do all lives still matter?

Will Smith hitting Chris Rock at March’s Oscars ceremony drew more ire from white liberal celebrities than the loss of the Black lives in Buffalo. Responses to the slap ranged from being “traumatized” by the altercation between the two men to saying that Smith could have killed Rock. 

But why has there been no damnation from that same group regarding the white supremacist who actually killed Black people? After George Floyd was murdered in 2020 by Minneapolis police on camera, the nation finally paid attention to the very real plight of this country’s most vulnerable group.

The ones who are most likely to be harassed, arrested, assaulted and killed by cops. The ones who are most likely to be on the receiving end of hate crimes—like the one that happened in Buffalo.

Gendron spelled out his motives in his writings and they blatantly mimic the far-right rhetoric used to oppress marginalized populations. There is no room for interpretation—his reasoning was racism and the fear that white people will become minorities in America. 

The same reasoning is used by Tucker Carlson and his Fox News cohorts on a nightly basis, by the Supreme Court to outlaw abortion, by Republican politicians to ban books and critical race theory. Black people have been marching, protesting and speaking up about our mistreatment because we never had a choice. However, the burden should not be on us to fix a system that profits from our brutalization.

White people should march in the streets, speak out against white supremacy, donate money to Buffalo relief funds, stop advertising on Fox news, advocate for domestic terrorism legislation and fight for gun control. In other words, they should be working to dismantle the structures in place whose sole purpose is to disempower people of color. Black people don’t need performative allyship on social media—we need actual, tangible change.

Those who died in Buffalo shouldn’t be forgotten in the rapidity of the ever changing news cycle. Their names are: Margus D. Morrison, Roberta A. Drury, Aaron Salter, Andre Mackniel, Ruth Whitfield, Katherine Massey, Heyward Patterson, Celestine Chaney, Pearl Young and Geraldine Talley. Their memories not only need to be honored but should galvanize those who “support” Black people into action.

White America, what are you going to do to prevent what happened in Buffalo from happening again?" {Source}

What Ms. McDuffie writes about echoes the thoughts of a lot of black people in this country. But it won't change how the Tucker Carlsons of the world choose to paint the narrative about black people night in and night out. 

 You will hear Chicago Chicago Chicago, every time something like this happens. "Hey, they kill each other all the time, so what's the big deal if a racists kills them?" Of course it misses the entire point, but here we are. 

Make no mistake, the urban terrorists who terrorize each other on the streets of American cities need to check themselves. But they are not going into Whole Foods Market and shooting a bunch of people because they are white. The are shooting each other in a sick war for turf, money, and power. And yes, we must do something about it, but in the mean time we have to think about our own survival in this country that we proudly call our own as well. A lot of folks, as Ms. McDuffie proclaims, sure aren't making it any easier for us. 

 

AGAIN!

 

 

How do we stop this madness?  

Thoughts? 

There will be more replacement theory killers. And no one will be held accountable.

One common theme throughout my blogging career has been well meaning people who read my blog admonishing me because I allow the most hateful and vile white supremacists to post comments after my posts. 

Frankly, it's something that I have struggled with as well: Should I even allow comments? Should I block all comments, or just the offensive ones? At the end of the day, I always follow my strong First Amendment instincts and allow everyone to comment. I also allow it, because it's important that folks who read this blog realize what's lurking out there. They need to know how the landscape has changed, and how white supremacists--- and the hatred that they have for folks who look like me---- have become emboldened.

We all know by now what happened in Buffalo, New York, yesterday. A lone eighteen year old gunman took it upon himself to drive hours to find a black neighborhood and kill as many black folks as he could (eight is the latest count) before surrendering to law enforcement and being taken alive (Of course he was.) I am not sure if they took him to get a happy meal or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

His name is Payton Gendron, and his manifesto on white replacement , as someone stated on twitter, reads like a job application to be a producer on one of those FOX nightly news shows. 

There will be more Payton Gendrons in the days to come, because the right-wing hate machine that profits off white fear and resentment of others will not stop cranking out their hatred for profit. And gullible poor and undereducated white people will continue to think that folks who look like I do are the root of all of their problems. 

In the coming days the main stream media will tell us what a "troubled" and "unstable" teen Gendron is, and how he was simply suffering from mental issues. We won't hear that he is a vehicle for hate that was used and weaponized by the right-wing hate machine to take out his hatred on the people they tell us are trying to replace them. We won't hear that he is the product of a climate of fear and hatred that has emboldened racists and xenophobes thanks to the actions of the former president and his sycophants on the right. These are the people who praise Kyle Rittenhouse, but vilify Colin Kaepernick. 

 The blood of those thirteen people who were shot in Buffalo yesterday are on their hands.  

*Image from WTVD television. 

 

  

Samuel Alito's tale.

 I feel very comfortable saying as a man, that if men could get pregnant there would be more drive-through abortion clinics than Chick-fil-A restaurants in every town in America. 

So here we are. Fifty years of stare decisis  is about to be shot down by five conservative Judges on the Supreme Court. Why? Because only women get pregnant, and men don't have to give up control of their bodies for nine months to bring us our little bundles of joy. 

Forgot social stability and order in society, forget legal precedent, and forget respect for long settled law. These are different times we are living in. Justice Alito cites Sir Matthew Hale for crying out loud! The same Matthew Hale who said that husbands can't be prosecuted for raping their wives, and who sentenced women to death for being "witches".  Yikes!

Sadly, we should all have seen this coming when we elected the former guy to the highest office in the land. Now, anything is possible. We thought hat the highest court in the land was beyond reproach and could not be compromised. Boy were we wrong. 

Liberals and folks on the left are going crazy with rage. They can't believe that America has morphed into something out of The Handmaid's Tale.  And, quite frankly, some of them should be upset. I say some, because some of these same liberals and left-wing purists refused to vote for Her. ----You know, the e-mails lady--- Now, looking back, they are having regrets. 

But how could they have not seen this coming? It takes incredible political naivety the likes of which is reserved for the Susan Collins of the world to believe that these Justices were not going to get on the Supreme Court and do exactly what they are apparently going to do. When they all sat there lying to those Senators during their confirmation hearings about respecting precedent and Roe being settled law, we all knew they were lying. But the political game is so rigged in America, and the feckless and inept democrats in congress are so powerless, that we all knew that there was nothing that was going to be done to stop the inevitable. 

Now we will see how committed folks in this country are to making sure that we don't go backwards when it comes to our individual rights. If a woman can be prosecuted and jailed for a choice she makes when it comes to her own body, just imagine what could come next. 

I recently saw the following quote from an article written for cnn.com back in November. 

"Here's the best-kept secret about the so-called abortion "debate" in the United States: It's actually not that much of a debate at all. A majority of Americans believe that the decision to end or continue a pregnancy should be left to a woman and her doctor, not the state. Most Americans oppose laws that make it more difficult for reproductive health clinics to operate. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments next month challenging Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide, but fewer than a third of Americans want Roe to be overturned. "

When you have autocratic and fascist leanings, the will of the people does not matter. Only those who are in power get the final word. 

Happy Mother's Day everybody.    

  

You never know when those corn flakes might attack.

 

I'm going to need some of you to help me understand this trend with some of my gun loving friends. I mean  has it really become this dangerous to visit your local Target? 

What motivates a mother to bring her kids shopping with a long-gun strapped to her back? Spats over parking spaces can get rough sometimes. I get it, those minivans are big. But is Karen really going to go Rambo on someone for beating her to a spot? 

This trend, I must say, is troubling. I am not sure I feel comfortable in a public space with someone who just wants to show off that fact that they can exercise their Second Amendment right in the most open of ways. Especially when I see guys like this.  Of course we all know what his problem is. (Hey buddy, I guess you gotta find a way to make up for what you're lacking in other areas. Just saying..)

Some of you in Red States might have a totally different view about this. But personally, I don't think this good guy with a gun thing is a good idea. 

We pay law enforcement officers for that. Let them do their jobs. 

Swinging back.

Like many of you, I watched the speech by Michigan state senator, Mallory McMorrow, and I must say that it's good to have allies like her in the struggle against ignorance and bigotry. 

If you haven't watched it,  you are missing out on real classic. It's political speech at its finest. She touched all the right themes, and she was honest and unflinching in her delivery. More importantly, she was speaking directly to the person who smeared her in the first place, and it was everything you expected it to be. 

Watch it and give me your thoughts.   

Personally, I think that it's about time that some of these cowardly pols start "swinging back." I mean you can't let the right control the narrative and label you as a pedophile and you do or say nothing. 

That has gone on long enough, and finally someone is saying, enough.

*Image from wxyz.com