national news

GOP silence speaks volumes

Republicans’ stone-cold silence in response to Donald Trump’s lies continues to boggle my noggin … such as what he said the other day about the potential end to the Iran war.

You cannot make this stuff up!

He started the war with Iran. Trump is now working to end it. If he succeeds and the Iranians stop firing back at us and Israel, he’ll take credit for ending that war. Yes? Of course he will!

But then he said the other day that no previous president in U.S. history has ended a war. He has ended eight of ’em, or so he said. Hold on a second, Mr. Ignoramus in Chief.

In 1941, we were drawn into World War II when the Japanese bombed our fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. President Roosevelt asked Congress the next day to declare war against Japan, which it did. Then the Nazi Germans declared war on us and we responded by declaring war on them.

Nearly four years later, FDR died of a stroke, up stepped Vice President Harry Truman to take over as commander in chief. On May 7, 1945, President Truman accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender. WWII in Europe ended … on Truman’s watch. Give ’em Hell Harry wasn’t done. We dropped two A-bombs on Japan in August 1945. The Japanese surrendered on Aug. 14 and on Sept. 2, 1945, Japanese military leaders signed the surrender documents aboard the battleship U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

I learned of that historical sequence when I was a little boy.

He keeps blathering about his “landslide” election as POTUS; it was nothing of the sort. How he won more Electoral College votes than any POTUS since President Reagan; another provable lie.

And through all of this, the Republican conference in Congress sits silently on its hands, saying nothing to correct the record.

These GOP officials disgrace themselves, the government they are elected to run and the once-great political party they supposedly represent.

Uncategorized

Bulls, bears … what now?

When the POTUS launched that foolish war with Iran, the world found itself turned on its head.

Wall Street retreated immediately from its “bull market” status to becoming a “bear market.” The price of oil skyrocketed into the heavens, bringing the price of gasoline and diesel fuel right along with it.

Then Donald Trump began backing off some of the dire and grim threats he laid on Iran. The impact of that backing away was to watch the market storm back.

It prompts a question. Wall Street had been in bull market territory. Then it became a bear market. The NASDAQ and S&P 500 retreated so dramatically that market analysts said those markets had marched into “correction” territory.

Now the NASDAQ and S&P have marched into record high territory. So has the Dow Jones Industrial average.

What do we call a market that plunges into a bear market then storms back into a bull market?

This nuttier than hell political climate is doing a number on the business climate.

Uncategorized

‘Weaponization’ resumes

FBI Director Kash Patel lacks the gene that compels him to ponder the hypocrisy of his actions and statements.

Why else would he choose to launch a criminal probe into former CIA Director John Brennan’s actions relating to the first impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019?

The same can be said of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who’s going after many top officials who got swept up in Trump’s first impeachment.

These two people are doing precisely what they have accused the Biden administration of doing … and wrongly, I should add. They are using national security assets to seek revenge against Donald Trump’s foes and they have said all along that President Biden did the same thing to Trump’s foes. There stands no greater example of weaponizing the Justice Department than what we’re seeing unfold in real time.

It is striking in the extreme to realize how Trump has surrounded himself with hypocrites. Indeed, they are mirror images of the POTUS himself.

He wanted loyalty among his top advisors, the “best people”? He got loyalty, all right. The cost to our cherished American system is horrific.

International news

Avoiding comparison to Hitler

Readers of this blog will not find a direct comparison between the man who runs the U.S.A. to the worst despot ever to darken the world’s history.

I just won’t go there. You see, as much as I despise Donald Trump and his effort to turn the United States into some kind of tinhorn dictatorship, i simply cannot make the leap to compare him to Hitler, the father of the “thousand-year-old Third Reich” of Nazi Germany … tha lasted in fact from 1933 until 1945.

I’ve already taken one big leap by suggesting that Trump has gone mad, reversing an earlier vow to avoid diagnosing the imbecile in chief from afar. I am safe in suggesting it, given what the whole world is witnessing.

Let’s be real about Hitler. He killed 7 million Jews in effort to eradicate them from Earth. The Nazi army stormed across Europe from 1939 to 1945 and killed an estimated 20 million people along its murderous rampage.

At the end of the Third Reich, Hitler married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun, and then on his wedding night watched her kill herself before he blew his brains out in the subterranean Berlin bunker where he hid from the advancing Red Army.

Donald Trump is a lot of things. He is evil. He has malice in his heart. He lacks any semblance of human compassion.

Adolf Hitler, though, wallows alone in history’s cesspool.

crime news

Trump headed for an impeachment

With this blog post I am venturing tenderly onto a tree limb that is getting fuller by the hour with individuals who have said what I am going to declare.

Donald John Trump is insane! He may be certifiably so. He has gone mad. Bonkers,

I mean, can you name a president of the United States who ever has said he wanted to wipe a civilization off the face of the Earth? Can anyone find a historical reference to such utter madness? Trump said that if Iran doesn’t comply with his demands to end the war that Trump launched against Tehran that he would annihilate the population. They would be gone. All dead.

That is genocide in its rawest form, kids. And Trump has declared that he would be willing to drop the bombs to do the job.

We have established that the POTUS has made the declaration. That is an unlawful order if one has ever existed. No flag officer worth his or her honor would follow such an order. But you get my drift, yes? Of course you do!

Donald Trump need not say another word for the rest of his miserable life. He has established clearly his intention as commander in chief. He has gone ’round the bend!

Now comes the real hard part. Invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution that enables Trump to be removed from office. Such an act requires Republicans to join their Democratic colleagues in moving such an act forward. Based on what we all have witnessed, there aren’t enough GOP members of Congress or members of the Cabinet to say that “enough is enough!”

I feel better now that I’ve gotten it off my chest. I take no pleasure in joining the growing chorus. But, dammit! … the guy is beyond redemption.

legal news, national news

I’ll say it now: Trump is certifiably insane!

With this blog post I am venturing tenderly onto a tree limb that is getting fuller by the hour with individuals who have said what I am going to declare.

Donald John Trump is insane! He may be certifiably so. He has gone mad. Bonkers,

I mean, can you name a president of the United States who ever has said he wanted to wipe a civilization off the face of the Earth? Can anyone find a historical reference to such utter madness? Trump said that if Iran doesn’t comply with his demands to end the war that Trump launched against Tehran that he would annihilate the population. They would be gone. All dead.

That is genocide in its rawest form, kids. And Trump has declared that he would be willing to drop the bombs to do the job.

We have established that the POTUS has made the declaration. That is an unlawful order if one has ever existed. No flag officer worth his or her honor would follow such an order. But you get my drift, yes? Of course you do!

Donald Trump need not say another word for the rest of his miserable life. He has established clearly his intention as commander in chief. He has gone ’round the bend!

Now comes the real hard part. Invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution that enables Trump to be removed from office. Such an act requires Republicans to join their Democratic colleagues in moving such an act forward. Based on what we all have witnessed, there aren’t enough GOP members of Congress or members of the Cabinet to say that “enough is enough!”

I feel better now that I’ve gotten it off my chest. I take no pleasure in joining the growing chorus. But, dammit! … the guy is beyond redemption.

national news, Uncategorized

Hit the road, congressman Swallwell

Eric Swallwell looked to many Democratic partisans like a sort of political hero. Then the sh** hit the fan!

Swallwell ended his campaign for California governor and then today announced he intends to resign from Congress. What happened to this one-time Golden Boy? He got caught messing around with several women other than his wife. One of the “other women” reportedly is a member of his House staff.

So, just like that he’s gone from hero to zero. Good riddance, jerk!

I would give him the benefit of the doubt except that this pattern follows too closely the pattens set by other politicians caught doing similar misdeeds.

I would like to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. But it’s too hard to ignore the allegations leveled by these victims. Swallwell, considered a leading candidate for California government, calls the allegations “false.” Then he acknowledged making the mistakes too many married men make. It’s between “me and my wife.”

Give me a break.

I am shaking my noggin. This clown simply should just disappear into the darkest corners of any room he happens to find.

national news

Playtime for POTUS about to end

From my seat in Flyover Country, it looks as though Donald Trump’s recess is about to end and we’ll be returning soon to the very issues that are driving in him out of his vacuous skull.

We’ve had our attention ripped away by the Artemis II mission. Major League Baseball began its season. The NBA playoffs have begun. Rory McIlroy has just won his second straight Masters green jacket.

But wait. We have those Epstein files lurking. The Iran war is still blazing. Inflation is out of control. The POTUS makes less sense every time he opens his yapper.

What’s next? Beats the stuffing out of me. I am going to enjoy watching Donald Trump writhe and wriggle as he seeks an escape strategy from the myriad crises are gripping the office.

I have enjoyed the break from the daily dosage of D.C. rubbish. Gotta get back, I reckon, to paying attention to the issues that threaten our democracy. I remain confident our Constitution will withstand this assault.

However, I am far less comfortable making that assertion.

science news

Can’t shake Artemis II’s afterglow

It’s weird feeling as I continue to feel in this period after a spectacular mission to orbit the moon.

The Artemis II flight launched April 1 was our first manned flight to the moon in 54 years. Four astronauts got an up-close look at the dark side of the moon and snapped some astonishing pictures they transmitted to Earth.

I wept when the rocket launched. I cried when the astronauts came out of their communications blackout upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Damn! I behaved like a schoolboy when I would watch the Mercury and Gemini flights with Mom.

I don’t want to shed that glow. I now believe that desire hinges on what we’ve been enduring while our federal government continues to flounder and thrash as it seeks to govern. NASA’s success with Artemis II reminds us that the government can do great things. That we have the technological know-how to accomplish a high-stakes mission.

It won’t get any easier when NASA starts to prep for its moon landing mission. The space agency is preparing a new rocket for that task, Artemis III, the largest rocket ever built.

OK, I did nothing to accomplish this success. I am just a citizen, a patriot and a man who’s sickened by what is happening here, and in Iran and all the many trouble spots around the world. I am looking for something on which to hang my hope for the future. Artemis II has helped restore my hope.

science news

More ‘hard’ tasks remain for NASA

President Kennedy once reminded us — as if we needed reminding — that humankind doesn’t reach for the stars because “it is easy”; we do so, he said, “because it is hard.”

Artemis II has returned four brave astronauts from its loop around the moon. The landing was picture perfect. The heroes splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at precisely, to the minute, on time. They called it a “bulls-eye” conclusion to the first lunar mission in 54 years.

Let us remember what JFK told us in 1962. This is an endeavor with many thousands of moving parts. Virtually anyone of them could produce a tragedy were they to fail. I won’t presume is less difficult in 2026 than it was in the early ’60s. Indeed, the nature of the technological beast that will transport future heroes may be more difficult.

Let us always presume that future missions contain grave risks to the human beings who suit up for missions such as the one that captivated the nation with Artemis II’s success doesn’t lure us into complacency.

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