Caption needed.

I need a caption for this pic. 

I'll start: 

Thanks for giving sixty of my fellow Afrikaners refugee status Mr. President. 

No problem, Elon.  Thanks for your millions of dollars to help me beat Kamala, and for destroying and disrupting the government with DOGE. 

And now they come for the courts.

"Society cannot exist without law. Law is the bond of society: that which makes it, that which preserves it and keeps it together. It is, in fact, the essence of civil society" ~ Joseph P. Bradley~  

 Sometimes you question your life choices. I chose to become a member of the legal profession because I thought it was an honorable profession,  and an essential part of the democratic process.  And yes, the money can be nice, but I always considered that just a bonus. I mean electricians and plumbers can make good money as well, but theirs is not a profession that is essential to one of the three branches of our government. Now I am wondering if it was all worth it. Maybe I should have chosen another profession, because the legal profession is not looking so good these days.  

 I have been very upset with legal organizations such as the National Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the ACLU of late. Shout out to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, as they seem to be the only ones with a little fight left. Don't even get me started on some of these big and powerful law firms. The have totally capitulated to Trump for fear of losing millions of dollars in contracts with the federal government. 

 Donald Trump and his regime have been trampling over the rule of law and tearing down legal institutions  in a way that should terrify all of us.  And yet, sadly, there has been little or no pushback from the aforementioned groups. Trump and his minions have been relentless in their push to dismantle the rule of law. Our only saving grace is that Trump, who is himself incompetent, has surrounded himself with incompetent people. There is a saying that says, "there is nothing worse than an incompetent fascist". Fortunately for us, in this case its working in our favor. 

 A couple of days ago federal agents went into a state Judge's courtroom an arrested her. Their excuse for doing it was that she was obstructing justice and preventing ICE agents from arrested a wanted illegal immigrant. Now I could write an entire treatise on why this was wrong, but consider this: Ice warrants are administrative, and that Judge had no duty to honor such a warrant. She was doing her job in a state proceeding and federal agents had no right to be in her court and disrupt the sanctity of that space to enforce an administrative warrant. Where in a functioning democracy do we arrest Judges? And if we do, what happens to the checks and balances between the Judicial and Executive branches of government? 

Consider the impact these types of actions will have on the rule of law in various cities. Immigrants will now be afraid to go to court as witnesses, defendants, and complainants. What happens then? More lawlessness, as guilty people walk free, and justice cannot be properly serves to those who deserve it. This will be true for citizens, non-citizens, and those who are here illegally.  I have been in countless courtrooms arguing cases before Judges like Hannah Dugan, and I can tell you, that just the thought of a Judge being subject to arrest in such a manner diminishes the entire judicial process.    

A direct quote from the current president of the United States: "Radical Left judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country! These people are Lunatics, who do not care, even a little bit, about the repercussions from their very dangerous and incorrect Decisions and Rulings...The danger is unparalleled".  It certainly is. But not because of the rulings and decisions from the Judges. The danger is from the Executive branch, and their total disregard for the rule of law in what should be a functioning democracy.   

Stay vigilant. 

"The Death of Outrage"

 William Bennett wrote that book, the Death of Outrage, back in 1999. In it, he lamented about how Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky affair was an "assault on the American ideals", and how most Americans were willing to look away as long as they were doing alright economically.   

 I saw  William Bennett on a political talk show recently and he was making excuses for Donald Trump's behavior and encouraging him to keep pushing his agenda. The same William Bennett who wrote that the moral failings of Bill Clinton was disqualifying, was now encouraging republicans and those on the right to keep supporting Mr. Trump. 

This, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with America. And it's why no matter what Donald Trump does, he will have half of the country behind him. 

To his credit, Donald Trump has figured it out: Lean in on white nationalism and white pride to let white folks believe that rolling back progress in the area of civil rights does not affect them. Trampling the concept of due process and ignoring the rule of law is fine, as long as it does not affect those in the majority. Bullying and threatening large law firms who have the clout and the money to fight injustice is cool, because they won't be fighting for causes that affect  "red blooded American" white people.   

He is already doing all of these things, and there is no outrage. Not from William Bennett, not from  the elected politicians (in either party), not from the press, and certainly not from the majority of white Americans.  I watched in horror as those ICE agents snatched that doctorial student off the street in Boston because of her political views, and I thought to myself, this is it, this has to be the breaking point. Certainly, I thought,  this has to be where Americans open their eyes and say,  this could happen to me. But it wasn't. Sure it was a news story, and we all watched the video on various news programs. But most of  you just watched and  chalked it up to the Trump administration doing what they promised. 

We watched those undocumented immigrants being shipped off to one of the world's most notorious prisons without any due process, and we shrugged that off as well.  Trump promised that he would round up all the gang members and trouble makers and ship them out of our country. And we thought, looking at those images, that they all fit the profile:  Young,  brown, and male.  So no harm no foul. Just Trump doing what he promised. Outrage is not even on life support at this point. It's dead. 

This past week there was Signalgate. I won't get into it because  if you read this blog you're pretty plugged in politically. This story seems to have legs, not because we are shocked by the conduct of the uniquely unqualified sycophants that Donald Trump has placed in positions of power, but because of their hubris and total disregard for the safety of the country. 

The folks who are saying that planning a military strike and revealing war plans while on a public email chat is no big deal, are the same ones who were clutching their pearls until they choked over Hillary Clinton's email server being used to conduct State Department business. This is no big deal they say, because the mission was a success. (There are questions about that as well.) This is like saying don't prosecute the bank robber because he  didn't get away with any money.  Whether the mission was a success or not is beside the point. Imagine what could have happened in the alternative because of the incompetence and conduct of these people? 

I suspect, though, that this too well pass. There is no outrage from the right, because they are  in a cult, and they can't speak against Dear Leader no mater what. There is outrage from the left, but they feel hopeless  because no one else seems to care. The folks in the middle watch and stay disengaged because they do not believe that all of this affects them. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump keeps issuing executive order after order. He is skirting the rule of law, and daring the courts to stop him. His Attorney General has threatened to go after the very Judges who must interpret the law. And his agenda for his second term is to go after his perceived  enemies, and those who are not showing fealty towards him.  Sadly, at least for now,  those of us who fall into the latter category are in the minority. 

   

"State of the Union causes State of Confusion"

 

The state of this fragile American union is not good. It's not good because the leader is intentionally trying to divide us and destroy it. I am not one to dabble in conspiracy theories, but I am really starting to believe this one about the Russians having something very incriminating on Donald J. trump. 

  How else do you explain his latest move to isolate Ukraine and allow Russia to take some of the land they took from that country? How else do you explain his appointment of Tulsi Gabbard, a known Assad and Putin sympathizer, as Director of National Intelligence? For years many folks believed that she was a Russian asset, and she still very well might be. Donald trump disparages every world leader, including the Prime Minister of Canada, but he is afraid to say a bad word about Putin.  Why?  

What's scary is that he now has most of his followers (the MAGA cult members) believing that the Russians are the good guys, and all the other countries in Europe are bad. The same Russians who kill  their political enemies,  bomb hospitals,  and slaughter innocent  children. This is  what MAGA is embracing, because their leader told them that it's alright to do so. 

Those videos of trump and his bully friends ganging up on Zelenskyy in the White House was painful to watch and has been seared in my memory. The poor guy didn't have a chance. In Russia they were celebrating, in America we were wondering, what the f**K just happened?  And then, to top it off, some clown in a clown suit asked him, Zelenskyy, why HE wasn't wearing a suit? Imagine that. Your country is under siege, and you are fighting a war for your very survival, and some MAGA clown admonishes you for not wearing a suit to meet the most cowardly man to ever sit in the White House. A man who lied his way out of having to serve in battle for his own country. Here is another thing, I have seen Zelenskyy in a suit, and he wears one better than all the men who were sitting in that room with him. Apparently trump likes Baroni suits, bur the company should tell him to stop wearing them. On any given day he looks like Alfred Hitchcock in a bathrobe. And if they are bespoken, shame on Baroni for not telling the emperor how f****d up he looks. But I digress. The point is, the MAGA journalist was way out of line, and so was the president and JD Vance for the way they ambushed the poor man. 

But this is where we are in America.  Trump's address to congress was nothing but a plethora of lies, double speak, and misdirection. Nothing, and I mean nothing he said many any sense. "Eight million dollars to experiment on transgendered mice"? No! That is TRANSGENERIC mice. These mice are genetically modified with foreign DNA introduced into their genomes "to study the function of specific genes, model human diseases, or to test potential treatment." I know that science is hard for the MAGA crowd, but without this and other types of research, we would never be able to make advances in medicine.  So either trump can't read or he just flat out lied. It drew a few laughs from the GOP sycophants in congress, but there was nothing funny about what he was doing: Gaslighting the American people.   

We are now almost two months into Mr. trump's administration, and the price of eggs keep going up, gas prices are not going down, and the stock marker is going up and down like a Six Flags rollercoaster. Sadly, I suspect that trump is purposely trying to manipulate the markets for some pump and dump scheme with his buddies, but I obviously can't prove it. It would take a real journalist to look into it, but sadly, there are none of those left in America.   

On the foreign policy front, our traditional adversaries like Russia are now our allies, and our allies (See Canada) are now our enemies.  Trump wants to pull out of NATO, and we are no longer sharing intelligence with Ukraine. And, more importantly, our allies in Europe are going to be sharing less intel with us.  I don't feel safer, and neither should you. 

Shout out to Al Green for walking out of that lieathon to congress and heckling trump. Shame on the ten democrats who voted to censure him. You are what's wrong with the democratic party, not Al Green.

 At some point you will all have to stand up and say enough, before it's too late for the rest of us.         

Are we there yet?

 

" He who saves his Country does not violate any law" ~ Napoleon Bonaparte~ 

The president of the United States posted that quote on Saturday, February 15, 2025. I repeat: The president of the United States posted that quote on Saturday, February 15, 2025. 

Napoleon was a despot, who believed that his regime reflected the will of the people of France.

Are we there yet? 

I need your thoughts and feedback on this one.

*BTW, the image above is that of Benito Mussolini, not Napoleon Bonaparte or Donald J. Trump.  

  

Is DEI the new N word?

These are crazy times, field hands. The felon is now fully in charge, and prices have not gone down, there is looming economic chaos with his trade wars, and the FBI and other agencies charged with keeping us safe and holding criminals accountable, are being gutted because they hurt his feelings. Meanwhile, a feckless and weak democratic party does nothing but give us phony outrage talking points to stay relevant or in front of  news cameras. There are no calls for mobilization, no calls for mass protests, and no real plan to counter the oncoming fascism train that is going to doom us all. At least all of us who aren't in a cult, and who still believe in what America is supposed to stand for. 

This past week there were two tragic plane crashes, one right after the other. I am not blaming the felon for that, things happen, and it could have just as well happened when Biden was president. The thing is, though, the felon blamed the first tragic accident, which cost sixty -seven people their lives, on DEI. Think about that for a minute. Before the bodies were taken out of the cold Potomac River, or the families even had time to grieve, he was playing politics, and trying to score political points. He is truly a sick and demented individual. But we all knew that. Even the misguided people who voted for him had to have known that as well. 

Blaming the accident on DEI without any proof was such a trumpian thing to do. But you  have to understand, this is how he stokes his base, by blaming everything that goes wrong on DEI.  It's another scapegoating tactic that works well with the demographic he appeals to. These are the folks who blame their miserable positions in life on everyone else but themselves. Immigrants, blacks, transgendered people, and Gays. They are the ones making it hard for them to get ahead. Not the billionaires and Oligarchs who are only looking out for themselves, and taking advantage of every loophole to squeeze every penny out of the government and our pockets. These are the folks, by the way, who the felon is looking out for in his second term. Not the poor cult members who hold on to his every word and bow to all of his actions. It's DEI! Everything wrong with the government is because of DEI.  Let's cancel all those holidays that celebrate diversity, and let's scrub our history books of the achievements of black folks. That will make us feel better about ourselves. Sadly for them, it won't add one cent to their pocket, or reduce the cost of groceries or gas.   

The irony is, of course, that the felon has the most unqualified nominees to fill his cabinet positions in the history of the United States. Fox News hosts and television personalities who he views as telegenic will now hold some of the most powerful positions in government. His defense secretary is an alcoholic who has been credibly accused of sexual assault,  and he has zero qualifications for the job. Compare his credentials to the black man who was previously in his position, and you will see why black folks laugh when we hear the DEI refrain. We know it's just code words for n****r you don't deserve that job. It should go to a white man.  Don't even get me started on Tulsi Gabbard, the dog killer, who literally met with Assad and Putin and parroted their talking points at a time when they were committing all kinds of atrocities against their own people. Just today she said she is cool with putting children in Gitmo. Then there is RFK Jr., a vaccine skeptic who is in line to become, wait for it....health secretary! You can't make this stuff up. 

I called a friend from Philly to check on him after the recent plane crash in that city. He said he was fine, but he was really scared of what's to come. "Bro, something just feels off man" he said to me. "And I can't quite put my fingers on it. "  

I feel the same way, but unlike him, I know exactly what it is that's off: We elected a mad man to hold the highest office in the land for a second time. We didn't learn our lesson from the first time when a million Americans died because of his incompetence.  

Now, sadly,  he has more power, and less opposition. Not to mention four more years. That is, of course, if we make it that long. 

*Go Eagles*  

*Correction* Tulsi Gabbard was not the dog killer. That was Kristi Noem*

  

  

The Misinformation Machine.

 

 The level of insanity going on this country right now is mind blowing. On one side you have a cult spreading disinformation, lies, and wallowing in hate and grievance. (You would think they would be celebrating. The did, after all, win the damn election. Or so we were all led to believe.) On the other side of the political spectrum, you have a feckless Attorney General who is afraid of his own shadow, and a political party hell bent on taking a knife to a gun fight. 

 Donald trump now controls every aspect of the American media.  And the disinformation and lies will be taken to new heights with his new found power. The billionaire's boys club is making sure of it. Mark (I want to be more masculine) Zuckerberg, has announced that there will be no more fact checking on Facebook. He  actually went down to Mara-a- Lardo to kiss trump's ring, and beg for forgiveness for all of his past sins. And them he appeared on Joe Rogan's show to heap praise on the right, decry wokeism, and embrace toxic masculinity.  The owners of the Washington Post, and LA Times, have also declared their fealty to trump. This is a stunning development in a country that is supposed to value freedom of the press and journalistic independence. Don't even get me started on the South African who inherited his family's  diamond mine, came to America, and griffted his way into becoming the richest man on earth.  He has gone full replacement theory, and many believe that we actually elected him to be our president.  (Worth repeating: All you Negroes driving Teslas need to sell now! You look really silly driving a car from a company which is owned by a man who wants to replace you. ) And here is the crazy part: When he was going broke he begged for--- and got a bailout---- from the government of...wait for it...Barack Obama, a "Socialist" black man.  

 The torrent of misinformation around the tragic wildfires in Los Angeles has only served to shine a light on the problem. The people in MAGA world don't care about citizens in what they perceive as enemy territory, and there is already talk of trump declaring a federal takeover of the state when he takes office. Don't laugh, the guy wants to invade Canada and take Greenland by force, and the cult is on board.  Remember what I wrote about democrats in the first paragraph?  Yes, that part.  Whatever you thought was just too crazy to be true, is now very possible. 

  In a few days the felon will take office.  Prices will not go down, and our lives will not improve. But, true to form, he will be giving us one distraction after another to take our minds away from the things that REALLY matter in our lives.  His cult members will eat it all up and try to tell us how great America is again, and us normal folks will just shake our heads. Not only at the lunacy of the MAGA sheep, but at the willingness of the American press to play along. 

*To my family and friends in Los Angeles, please stay safe. You are in our thoughts.*  

Holiday cheer.

 Happy Holidays field hands!

Let's see what happens in the new year with this Elon Musk presidency. It should be very interesting.

If you voted against the con man and his crony, just sit back and enjoy the ride. MAGA wanted to "own the libs",  and now they will have their FAFO moment.   

Stay safe.

Transition train wreck.

The election is over and MAGA is still angry. I guess owning the libs was their only goal in life. For the life of me I can't understand where all this hate and angst is coming from. It's not like the democrats are crying foul and whining about the results. (Although, I must say, there was something mighty fishy about Elon and his behavior.) Dems won't be storming the halls of power, and crying stolen election for the next four years. They are totally fine with sitting back and watching Mr. trump make a fool of himself while he destroys the country for a second time. Just look at his cabinet picks so far. The man is clearly not a serious actor. 

Honestly, have you ever seen a bunch of less qualified people being selected to hold positions of power? How can these people cry DEI when they have all  these "failing up" characters being picked by trump to be a part of his team?  Pete Hegseth?! Seriously? Forget the fact that he is a scumbag and just a horrible human being, he is also clearly not qualified to do the job. The guy wrote a book about crushing the enemy, via an "American Crusade" for crying out loud! He writes about mocking, humiliating, and intimidating the American left (the enemy) and using the military to do it. The very military that Mr. trump picked him to lead. Yikes! And don't even get me started on Tulsi Gabbard. She has praised the Russians at every turn and is a huge fan of  Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator. Trump picked her to lead *checks notes* the intelligence department. I could go on, but you get the point. I'm not even going to get into Matt Gaetz, because, thankfully, his appointment was scuttled. Imagine a man being investigated for sex trafficking and having sex with a seventeen year old girl, being picked to lead the very agency that investigates such things. The guy should be sharing prison soap with Diddy, but he is a white male republican, so the same rules do not apply. 

Trump feels embolden to pick these clowns based on fealty and not qualifications. He believes that he had this resounding mandate from the American people. On further review, he did not. As more election results come in, we can see that his margins are getting smaller and smaller, and he did not win a majority of the popular vote. 49.87% is not going to cut it. He won by a a couple of hundred thousand votes across key swing states, and had those totals been different we would be looking at quite a different outcome. I was guilty of overstating the level of Mr. trump's victory myself (see my previous post), and I was wrong.  Sadly, like everything else with trump, perception became a false reality.    

But take heart Harris supporters, If you voted for her you should be pretty relieved and chill right now. Just sit back and enjoy the trump train roll off the tracks. The next four years will be one wreck after another. You will get to say I told you so when it's all said and done. 

Let's just hope , for all our sakes, that there will be someone left to say it to. 

*Pic courtesy of Reuters via Yahoo.  

Post- Mortem

 

~Paraphrasing Ali Velshi~ The most powerful person in America is not Donald J. Trump, it's you.

 These are tough times for progressives and democrats in America. There was a red wave this past week, and everyone in democratic circles are scratching their heads and trying to figure out why. Even the winners seemed a little shell shocked by the scope and magnitude of the outcome. 

I'm not, and if you are a student of American history, or if you pay attention to the psyche and mindset of the white majority population in America, you would not be either.

Frist, let's stop with all the talk about white working class and economic angst, and democrats not addressing their concerns. (James Carville, and Bernie Sanders, old white men themselves, will never get it.)  If you gave a lot of these white working class voters a million dollars, and in order to keep it they would have to have voted for Harris, your money would have been safe. They still wouldn't have done it. It has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with identity. Kamala's race and gender made it damn near impossible for her to win. Her opponent, at times, was acting like he wanted to lose, and he still beat her by a country mile. Performing fellatio on a mike at a rally, declaring that immigrants are eating cats and dogs, threatening political violence against his enemies, is not a winning message, but it worked for trump because it was never about the message. It was always about the people who are running. Plain and simple. 

As Americans we never like to hear this, because we like to think of ourselves as somehow being above bigotry and ignorance. We believe that this experiment in democracy is complete, and that we have created a perfect union. We have not. Take a look around you. Look who we are sending back to Washington. Not only Trump, but all of the slimy loathsome self-serving politicians who thrive in an environment of hate and division. Trump is the face of it, and he made it cool to hate without having to act like we are the haters. We channeled our hate through him. That's who we elected as our next president. A man who has spent his entire political life dividing people, and demonizing those who look different and who he perceives as being less than. This includes not only ordinary citizens, but military service members as well. The people who served in his administration and know him best told us who he is, and we still chose not to believe them. Why?  Because deep down most Americans ( I can say most now based on  the election results) know that we are no different than he is.

 I feel bad for black women who truly thought they had allies with white women. That their solidarity of sisterhood, united in their fight for reproductive freedoms, would be enough to beat the tyrant in waiting at the ballot box. It was not. At the end of the day, whiteness and fear of others comes first. Trump knew this, and he used it to his political advantage. 

A few years back a white women who worked for me told me that she might be coming into work a little later for a few days. She told me that she had to renew her parking privileges at a garage that was much closer to our place of work. And until then, she would have to rely on someone else to drop her off.  In the meantime, she couldn't park in a garage that was farther away. She just couldn't take the chance of walking a longer distance to work. Center City, Philadelphia (by all accounts the safest part of anywhere in the city), was just too dangerous for her. 

I thought about my former co-worker a lot during this election cycle. When those scary dark and ominous trump commercials of young brown men were running over and over, I knew that they would have their intended outcomes. Talking heads on cable television and political pundits were saying that there is no way Americans (especially suburban white women) would embrace Trump's message of fear and division. They were wrong. Harris and her message of joy, hope, and not going back, was never going to work with a majority population, whose fears and prejudices were a much more motivating factor in how they voted. 

I will let Elie Mystal's quotes close this post.

"America deserves everything is about to get. We had a chance to stand united against fascism, authoritarianism, racism, and bigotry, but we did not. We had a chance to create a better work for not just ourselves, but our sisters and brothers in at lease some of the communities most vulnerable to unchecked white rule, but we did not. We had a chance to pass down a better safer, and cleaner world to our children, but we did not. Instead, we chose Trump, JD Vance, and a few white South African billionaires who know a thing or two about instituting apartheid...America did this. America, through the process of a free and fair election, demanded this.. And America, as a collective, deserves to get what it wants."

These next four years will be interesting. And I will be hear for it. Hopefully, so will you. 

     

  

Three days and counting.

 

" I live in a crazy time" ~Anne Frank~ 

Just three days to go, and Americans are bracing for the election of a lifetime. It's hard to believe that Donald J. Trump could be elected as the 47th President of the Unites States, but here we are. 

I am not going to get into the litany of reasons why this man, a convicted felon, should never be seen anywhere near the White House again, I think that it is all well documented. (He should have been prosecuted and sitting in federal prison for what he did on January 6th.)  Although, I must say, that he is adding to that list every day.  The 1939 Nazi style convention in Madison Square Garden. The relentless attack on immigrants and people who are different. Openly bragging about his white skin, and mocking Kamala's ethnicity. Calling for the execution of Liz Cheney by firing squad, threatening mass deportations of people he doesn't think should be here.  Finally, and most importantly, not one single policy position that will make your life or mine any better. Not one. Oh wait...yeah, tariffs.

I am not going to  play pollster or prognosticator and dare try to guess the results on Tuesday. I'm bad at this stuff. I never thought that America would elect a black man with a funny name, and they did it. Twice. I never thought that someone like Donald Trump could be elected president, and he was.  So I honestly don't know what to expect. My gut instinct tells me that America will never elevate a black woman to the highest office in the land.  Heck, they wouldn't elect a white woman who was also more qualified for the position than Trump. The sexism is that strong. Throw race in the mix and you see where I am going. Most people who are voting for the felon will not be able to articulate a reason why. They will make all kinds of excuses for voting for him, and not one of them will make sense. They just know that Kamala is bad.  

I give Trump credit, he figured it out. His us against them fear mongering campaign is working because Americans are afraid of change.  The logic goes like this:  Trump might be a terrible human being who plays on our worst instincts, but at least he looks like us. He can't be that bad. He will protect us from the brown scary people who are trying to take our country from us. There is nothing he can say or do that will change that thinking in the minds of fifty percent of the voters in America. That man he shot on 5th Avenue had it coming.  When he says that he would like to be a dictator for life like his pals, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un,  the Wall Street Journal declares that he does not have the attention span to carry out his agenda, and then endorses him.  Republican politicians are on cable news shows every night translating what he meant when he literally said something else.  

This collective form of cognitive dissonance has infected a majority of white Americans.  Mr. Trump is hoping that it will be enough to place him in the most powerful position on earth once again.  He will be free to carry out project 2025, and play dictator while the sycophants around him feed his ego. Republicans will most likely control both houses, and the majority of the Supreme Court is made up of  obsequious hand-picked loyalist who have abandoned the rule of law for political reasons. 

This is what we might be facing come the morning of November 6th.  

Just know that whatever happens, I will be here. Maybe not as much as I would like, but I will still be posting when I can.    

Thank you field hands for always checking in with your comments and insights. 

Vote!