As we get closer to the election day, it’s important to know where the nation stands vis a vis Donald T****.

Ever since his successful campaign in 2016, Donald has been casting doubt on the nation’s electoral system. He has not provided a shred of evidence that it is riddled with massive fraud, but for Donald that is of little importance.

Instead, He channeles Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels: “Always accuse the enemy of that which you are guilty.” His administrations were in power, but it was the other guys who cheated.

Donald T**** knows that if the Democrats win the House it will cripple his legislative agenda. Losing both House and Senate will sink it. And virtually everyone who is or has served in his administration will be subject to subpoena and intense Congressional investigation.

Inconvenient as this may be, for T**** and his MAGAs, it is of little consequence. Congressional oversight? They simply won’t show up. In fact, several top T**** administration officials have already blown off Congressional subpoenas. The list includes one former Secretary of State, two chiefs, one deputy chief of staff, a chief strategist and a trade advisor.

They will do this with impunity. T****’s people know that AG Blanche will not be investigating or indicting anyone for contempt of Congress. And in the end, they know that T**** will pardon them.

T**** has spent almost a decade preparing for this election cycle, and the ramifications extend far beyond it. It started in earnest after his 2020 loss. Since then, MAGA operatives have infiltrated into key electoral positions across the country. Their role, from a state’s chief election official all the way down to the precinct level, is to disqualify Democrat voters and to refuse to certify results which favor Democratic candidates. There are many threads in this tapestry.

Take for example, the SAVE Act, which is designed to suppress the rights of millions of voters. Requiring voters to provide certified birth certificates in order to register will fall hardest on older voters. It will put an extra burden on married women who will need legal documentation of both their birth and their married names. Both of these demographics tend to vote Democratic.

It also orders the Department of Homeland Security to obtain full voter files from every state. T**** loyalists can then scour the voting rolls and remove voters at will.

The Act would virtually eliminate mail-in voting and forbid the use of voting machines. T****’s plan to use the Postal Service in these efforts are designed to disenfranchise millions of voters of both parties.

The list of so-called voting reforms Republicans have implemented across the country to “combat rampant voter fraud” since 2020 includes:
Reducing the early voting period from 45 to 21 days;
reducing polling stations by 33%;
eliminating early voting the weekend before Election Day;
making Hunting & Fishing license a valid form of voter ID while invalidating student IDs;
outlawing ballot drop-boxes in some states, reducing them by as much as 80% in others;
abolishing “Souls to the Polls” – a tradition among Black communities in the South that shuttled folks to a polling station to vote on Sundays when church let out;
banning voting-line “placeholders” – people who would stand in line for another in case the line was hours long and people can only get an hour off work;
prohibiting lawn chairs or any other kind of mobile seating in election lines, forcing people to stand for hours in line if they want to vote;
barring election workers from passing out water or snacks to anyone standing in line to vote.

Apparently, voter fraud consists of litle more than that nice lady handing a cup of water to an 80-year grandmother in a folding chair in a 4-hour voting line.

And it goes even further. In an interview with the New York Times published on Sunday, January 11, 2026, T**** said he regrets not seizing voting machines after his 2020 election loss. He said he should have used the national guard to seize machines in support of his false claims that the election was rigged.

There should be no question that he will attempt to seize voting machines in the next election if Republicans lose.

Donald has admitted that his plans also include declaring a national emergency–which which he can easily create on demand–and which he believes will give him a reason to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law, federalize the national guard and even order regular Army units into the cities.

He has even said that if the Senate does not pass his SAVE Act, that in itself will constitute a national emergency.

Military or not, there would still be squadrons of ICE agents on the streets patrolling the voting precincts. Legions of Hispanic voters, righteously intimidated by heavily armed and masked immigration agents, will likely stay home.

The bottom line is that T****’s plan for the election is to create chaos and cast doubt on the election results every way he can. This he believes would allow him to refuse to seat newly elected democratic representatives.

He is wrong. Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution says that each House is “the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.” That authority belongs to the full House. The Speaker, acting alone, does not have a recognized constitutional power to refuse to seat a properly elected, qualified representative.

Nor can the full House add its own extra qualifications to block an otherwise qualified winner. In its decision Powell v. McCormack (1969), the Supreme Court ruled that issues such as corruption, graft or even moral turpitude cannot be considered. No elected candidate has been refused seating in the last 50 years.

What Donald T**** is seeking is the right to decide who gets to vote, who does not, to suppress the votes of those more likely to vote Democratic, and to clamp down on and control the mechanics of the elections to the point where he controls the winners and losers from his desk in the oval office.

The danger of T***** succeeding in this extends beyond the ’26 midterms. Because if the Republicans win the midterms and then lose the 2028 election, it is hard to believe that Vice-President Vance would certify enough electoral votes to allow a Democrat to win the way MIke Pence did in 202.

According to the 12th Amendment, this would throw the election into a MAGA-controlled House and hand the presidency to a Republican candidate who lost the election.

Contemporary dictators like Putin, Jung Un, Erdoğan and Bukele all stay in power by controlling national election results. It is important to remember that all of these contemporary tyrants were at one point or another legally elected to office. For that matter, so was Adolph Hitler.

Much of the power Donald T*** needs to accomplish this corruption of our American democracy is already in his hands. The rest is in the works. He will have it all if he is not stopped.

And he can be.

We the people are the only sovereigns in this country. We exercise our power at the ballot box. We can vote Republicans out of office by such overwhelming majorities that the results simply cannot be challenged.


As Donald T**** and his MAGAs attempt to corrupt the electoral process, we can fight them first with our ballots. And if we have to, we take our case for democracy into the courts. And if need be we take our protest and outrage onto the streets.

In an iconic cinema moment, the outraged and mad Howard Beale urges his TV viewers to go to their windows and shout out their defiance. And by a hundred million or more, in the November midterm elections, we must take up the cry:

“We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

Power to the People.

Although many on the Left maintain it is true, perhaps not everyone who voted for T**** is a stone-cold racist, misogynist or homophobe.

No, they all may not share his Islamophobia, his xenophobia, his shallow ignorance, his lack of culture and decency, his apostatical brand of Evangelical Christian Nationalism and his White Supremacy. But they’re all clearly not bothered in the least that he is.

In fact, Donald T****’s brazen and in-your-face corrosive, hateful and defiant character is seen by many of his followers as resolute strength and confidence. It is a self-assurance they covet, a power they envy.

And so it comes to this: they cannot, they will not, criticize anything he says or does. Their support for him is absolute and defies reason and truth. This goes especially for the spineless MAGA Republicans in Congress.

And we know this because:
He pardoned 1899 violent criminals. And they say nothing.
He bulldozed the East Wing of the White House to turn it into a luxury underground residence and gold-plated ballroom. And they say nothing.
He intervened with the release of the Epstein files, violating a law he signed. And they say nothing.
He threatened Canada, Denmark, Greenland, Columbia and Brazil. He kidnapped Venezuela’s president and is starving Cuba. And they say nothing.
He committed murder on the high seas. And they say nothing.
He is threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center For the Performing Arts if he can’t get his name put back on it. And they say nothing.
He illegally tariffed just about the entire world except Russia, causing massive inflation and destabilizing the world economy. And they say nothing.
He abolished USAID and is responsible for nearly a million deaths around the world. And they say nothing.
He accepted a $400 million airplane from Qatar as a personal gift. And they say nothing.
His private army of ICE brownshirts terrorized millions of innocent people. And they say nothing.
He alienated Canada and our Western European allies. And they say nothing.
He started a war at his whim and killed 175 children on the first day. And they say nothing.
He attacked that nation during mediated peace negotiations and threatened to assassinate its envoys. And they say nothing.
He co-opted the Justice Department and directed it to prosecute his political enemies. And they say nothing.
He drove up inflation, expanded the deficit, increased unemployment and stalled the job market. And they say nothing.
He ordered the arrest and incarceration in concentration camp-like facilities of tens of thousands of people who are guilty of nothing more than a misdemeanor civil infraction. And they say nothing.
He approved of executing American citizens in the streets. And they say nothing.
He ordered the deportation of people to countries with which they have no connection and secretly deported many of them without any pretense of due process. And they say nothing.
He slowed the economy and shrunk the power of paychecks. And they say nothing.
He reduced consumer protections, kicked a million children off of food assistance and caused millions more to lose their health insurance. And they say nothing.
He is getting people sick due to reduced food inspections and is killing both children and adults due to his support of anti-vax policies. And they say nothing.
He took bribes, manipulated markets, engaged in graft, grifting and corruption. And they say nothing.
He exploded the military budget to over a trillion dollars. And they say nothing.
He has sold off public lands for private development and reduced and environmental protections. And they say nothing.
He wages war against our First Amendment rights to freedom of the press, speech and assembly. And they say nothing.
He allowed the depletion of critical military supplies and ordinance, leaving our country’s security at risk. And they say nothing.
He drained our oil reserves, and cozied up to tyrants. And they say nothing.

Following their leader they agree that North Korea is good and South Korea is bad.
They believe that oil and petro-fuels are good and that wind and solar energy is bad.
They believe that measles are good and vaccinations are bad. They accept that children working is good but children getting fed at lunchtime is bad.
They agree that billionaires getting subsidies is good but that poor people getting assistance or health care is bad.
They believe that unjustifiable wars are good and peace in the Middle East is bad.

Their hypocrisy is stunning. Consider:
They claim to support women but elected a rapist.
They claim to support law and order but elected a convicted felon. They claim to stand for the truth but elected a pathological liar.
They claim to stand for family values but elected a serial adulterer.
In order to protect T****, 211 House MAGAs voted to protect pedophiles.
They claim that Democrats rig and cheat on elections. Yet they have Donald T**** recorded telling the Attorney General of Georgia to manufacture some 11,000 votes in order to give him the victory in that state’s 2020 presidential election that he lost.

And. They. Say. Nothing.

All of these things that T**** has done violate any sense of propriety, morality, legality, justice, competence and/or humanity. And in all these things MAGA Republicans have and stood in silent approval.

And in their silence they share in the responsibility. They are complicit. This is what it means to be a Republican these days.

Vote them out in November.

All of them.

                                       SETTING IT STRAIGHT

Ahem.

We hear enough these days about America’s support for Israel, whether or not we should continue it, and so forth. We hear plenty of slogans in support of Palestine’s quest for self-determination—a cause which I support—including the ominous “From the River to the Sea…..” 

And yeah, I know Israel has a lot of problems, some of them of its own making. 

But still, Israel is the homeland of an indigenous people. My people. It is the only democratic state in the entire region, has been our country’s ally since 1947, and it is surrounded by hostile entities that would gratefully have it erased from the map.

Now. I am an American born and bred, and I love my country. But I do not like or agree with everything it does. And I’ll bet you don’t, either. And that’s OK.

So please, listen up. Because when it comes to slogans, I offer this:

Free Gaza from Hamas;

Free Lebanon from Hezbollah;

Free Yemen from Houthis;

Free Iran from IRGC.

Free the World from radical Islam. 

The world would be a much better place. 

Thank you. 

 TALKIN’ ‘BOUT THAT FIFTH

Donald T****’s notion of people invoking the Fifth Amendment was well-documented early in his political career. He once charged that “The mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

At a 2016 rally in Iowa, he criticized people connected to Hillary Clinton’s email controversy for invoking their Fifth Amendment protection. He also framed the same idea elsewhere, saying. “If you’re not guilty of a crime, what do you need immunity for, pleading the Fifth Amendment?”

But when it came his turn, of course, all bets were off.

During a deposition he gave in August, 2022 concerning allegations that the T**** Organization had misstated real-estate values and financial information, he invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer substantive questions about the case. 

In fact, he took the Fifth over 440 times. And he had an alibi. He said he believed the investigation of him, his family, and his company, was politically motivated and that therefore he had “no choice” but to invoke the right. 

When asked later about this apparent dichotomy, T**** admitted, “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question.”

There is a nuance, here. The court in a civil case may, in some circumstances, draw an “adverse inference”—the witness is lying or evading the truth—from a party’s refusal to answer. The judge in the T**** case said he was permitted to do so.

Now. Fast-forward to earlier this week. Dr. Anthony Fauci was subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The stated purpose was to examine, six years after the fact, COVID-19’s origins and allegations that Fauci misled Congress about his research and the pandemic response. Fauci has denied those allegations.

The Committee’s chairman, Senator Rand Paul, has been a long-time critic of Dr. Fauci’s handling of the COVID crisis. His bias has been no secret; he has more than once claimed that the Doctor belonged “behind bars.” 

At the hearing, Dr. Fauci, on advice of counsel, invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not answer the committee’s questions. His explanation was that the subpoena was politically motivated, and that Sen. Paul called him in an attempt to get him to say something that could be used to support Paul’s repeated calls for Fauci to be prosecuted. This, as opposed to any legitimate oversight purpose. 

The senator was furious, and by the end of the week Paul had a referral to the DOJ charging the Doctor with Contempt of Congress for not answering his questions.

The wording of the Fifth Amendment states: no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” However, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that this right may be asserted in any proceeding, not just a criminal case, where compelled testimony creates a real risk of criminal self-incrimination. 

Thus, Donald T****’s taking the Fifth at his civil trial, where a judge or jury is deciding the facts of a lawsuit. His invocation and the adverse inference ruling, which is specific to civil adjudications, could put him in jeopardy. ‘

Thus Dr Fauci’s invocation at his Congressional hearing. A congressional hearing is a legislative or investigative proceeding, not a judicial one. In that case, there is no judge or jury deciding liability or guilt.

But if the matter later becomes the subject of a criminal or civil lawsuit, the witness’s invocation may be introduced as evidence, and the adverse inference rule may apply. And Dr. Fauci’s invocation could put him in jeopardy

Donald T**** and Dr. Fauci invoked their Fifth Amendment protections under different circumstances. But when you look at it objectively, the two men invoked basically for the same reason and put them at similar risk. 

Of course, there is a major difference in the eyes of Republicans about people invoking their Fifth Amendment protections. And it has nothing to do with the circumstances of these two instances. No, the Republican’s response is a little more basic than that. 

As far as Republicans are concerned, when their guys take the Fifth, it’s just fine with them; it is their Constitutional right. And besides T****, there have been lots of them, including but not limited to the likes Eric T****, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Alex Jones, Ghislaine Maxwell and no less than thirty-four January 6 “patriots. And that’s just OK with the Republicans.

But when the other guys do it, they get madder than  hell. The cry goes out, they’re guilty; lock’em up.

It’s called hypocrisy. 

It is true that to one extent or another people on the Left, from traditional Democrats to Progressives to Social Democrats, all believe that their taxes should go for the aid and assistance of the poorest of us, the neediest and the most helpless. 

However, that is not because we are bleeding hearts, simplistic or naive. It’s because what we advocate works. Because those people whom Republicans tend to ignore and often scorn are actually pretty good civic investments.

Providing health care at minimal cost or free and making sure people have access to adequate diets isn’t a waste of taxpayer money. Properly fed and healthy people cost less in the long run. 

Fully funding schools is an investment in the future because educated people contribute more. 

Lifting people out of poverty and assuring that proper housing is available to everyone are not acts of charity. Properly housed and financially stable people are more productive than the impoverished and homeless. 

And it’s not just about the money. Of that there is plenty enough to go around. It’s not like we can’t afford these things. What we need do is tax the rich and the corporations at a fair rate, and re-structure out spending priorities. 

And that’s your Left Wing for you. 

The important element here is the human one, the one thing that the Republicans always seem to miss. Those of us on the Left believe it is the government’s responsibility to make sure that everyone in American has a fair shot and an even playing field, that anyone can become rich but in the world’s greatest country, no-one should be poor.  

The simple promise of this country is that everyone has the opportunity to make a good life for themselves and their families. That is why people from all over the world continue to leave everything behind and risk it all including their lives to get here. 

The Left does not believe it is proper to split hairs when it comes to these things. We believe that there is no such thing as more or less desirable or deserving people. There are just people.  

Humanity is one.

MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

(This story makes me very angry. – AJB)

In December 202, Elsie E. Dominguez, a civilian mariner, was a first assistant engineer with the Navy’s Military Sealift Command. While assigned to the civilian-crewed USNS Carson City in Italy, she alleges that the ship’s captain, Yamil Sanchez Padilla, entered her stateroom and raped her while she was in bed in her own stateroom after she had become incapacitated during an evening ashore.

Her civil suit also alleged that the U.S. government and Military Sealift Command negligently failed to protect her beforehand and failed her after she tried to report it. She alleged she was discouraged from reporting, and told she could not make a confidential/restricted report (ie: the whole thing would be a matter of public record).

Incredibly, in court the government argued that because Dominguez was required by her job to live aboard the vessel, the alleged assault should qualify as a work-related “personal injury” under the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act (FECA). That would channel her claim into the workers compensation system instead of allowing her civil lawsuit to proceed for broader damages.

In reply, her attorney argued that “It is inconceivable that the laws of the United States consider rape by a superior a natural, incidental, or anticipated risk of employment on a ship.”

The government ultimately demurred, agreeing that sexual assault was “absolutely and unequivocally not” part of a mariner’s job duties. Its position was that an injury that happens while a civilian mariner is required to be aboard a government vessel can fall under FECA even if the assault itself is plainly criminal.

What boggles the mind here is that the feds actually argued in court that rape constitutes an “injury,” and not, as criminally defined, the violation of a woman by force.

Even more insane is that the Department of Labor agreed with that finding. In August 2026, a federal judge dismissed Ms Dominguez’ civil lawsuit. That ruling had nothing to do with the facts of Ms Dominguez’ case. Rather, it was based on an absurd technicality.

And what, then, of the rapist? Padilla was placed on paid administrative shore leave. Coast Guard prosecutors filed a sexual-misconduct complaint, but the case was withdrawn after he surrendered his merchant-mariner credentials. Padilla is now a free man. He got away with the crime of rape.

And what now for the victim? Her civil lawsuit is over. Criminal accountability is not entirely foreclosed. However, federal prosecutors have already declined to prosecute, and she cannot force them to file charges.

Elsie Dominguez was raped by her superior while under the employ of the U.S. government. Neither party disputes that fact. However, there will be no justice under the law for her for the terrible crime of which she was a helpless victim. Her case is over.

This, then, is the level of justice in America available to those who are unfortunate enough to work for the federal government. And that is no justice at all.

And it is just wrong.

                           

Figuring out what Donald T**** is all about isn’t hard. You begin by assuming that if his lips are moving, he’s lying. So if you want to know what’s going on with him. don’t pay attention to what he says. Rather, you watch, wait, and see what happens. See what he does or doesn’t do.

For starters we can go back to his 2024 campaign. He pitched himself as the “peace president.” Among other things, Donald assured the public that he could end the Ukraine war on day one. 

He has talked to Putin and Zelenskyy. Over and over again. There have been any number of proposals. But more than a year and a half later that war just drags on. So did he really have a plan to stop the war? 

The answer clearly is no. Those who voted for him were deceived. He was lying and he knew it. You just have to watch, wait, and see. 

T**** also campaigned on lowering the cost of living. Prices would come down immediately, he promised. Yet the cost of groceries, electricity, housing and medical care are all higher now than a year before he took office. T****’s on-again off-again tariff madness has increased the cost of virtually all imported consumer goods from steel to avocados. 

For years T**** maintained the myth that the importing countries pay tariffs. But he knew that wasn’t true. He was lying about that, and now we’re paying for it. 

Was Donald able to bring down prices immediately? Forget about what he said he would do. Remember, his lips were moving. So no. Did he even try? No. Did he know he couldn’t? Of course. 

Donald promised there would be no cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, But he was lying, that was also part of his plan. We know this because these were all included in his “big beautiful bill.”

Donald also pledged to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits. But that was just a lie. His 2025 law did not end those taxes. Rather, it created a temporary extra deduction for some people over 60. Again, T**** will say anything. You just have to wait, watch what happens and what he does or doesn’t do. 

Another case in point: the infamous Epstein files. The question is, did he ever want them made pubic? Remember that during his 2024 campaign he promised over and over again he would. 

But did he really want to? Well, when Congress passed a bill ordering them to be released, he signed it. But only about half were released, heavily redacted. Did he direct his Department of Justice to obey the law? No, he did not. Clearly, he never meant to. 

Since then he’s been doing his best to make the issue go away. So in spite of that promise—and that law—did Donald T**** ever really want the Epstein Files to come out?

When you look at what he said, what he did and didn’t do, the answer is clearly, no. 

A more recent example is the case of the USS Abraham Lincoln. He publicly dismissed all the accounts of problems from the ship’s crew, and claimed there was nothing wrong with the ship or its 9-month deployment. But he knew all along the ship was a mess and pulled it off the line as fast as he could replace it. Decoding Donald here was fairly simple. We know what he said, then saw what he did. 

Here’s another example. In spite of all reports to the contrary, he claims the U.S. still has a huge stockpile of expensive, high-tech weapons. And then he cuts short the long-planned live-fire military exercises with South Korea. 

He says it’s because S. Korea won’t back our play with Iran. But remember, Donald is a liar. He knows we’re pitifully short of high-priced ammo. And so he acted exactly as he should to conserve it. 

Gong back to his campaign, this ability to decode Donald is obvious when you look at his promise to be the peace president and he pledged not to start any new wars. But he went right ahead and did it, anyway. Did he know he was lying when he said he wouldn’t. Of course. How could we tell? His lips were moving and what he did proves it.  

And he keeps on lying about this war. For example, it’s hard to count how many times he’s claimed that Iran’s military has been “obliterated” or how much Iran wants to make a “deal.” But none of this is true because it hasn’t and they don’t and he knows it.

T**** even maintains the U.S. has control over the Strait of Hormuz. But Iran has virtually total control over which ships move through the Strait.. Donald knows we don’t control the Strait and we can tell that because of what he’s done to keep it open. Which is nothing.  

He even declared that the Strait is U.S. territory, which he proved by displaying a big map with a circle on it. Donald knows that he can’t just make things like that happen by saying so because none of his similar claims about Canada, Greenland, Venezuela and Cuba have happened, either. So again, pay attention not to what he says, but what has happened. Which in all these cases, is, nothing. 

Will Donald ultimately give up on the war? He’s already done it. Because in spite of claiming a military victory over an enemy—which is what he’s been saying all along—he has changed his tune and chosen a new objective. Now says he’s going to impose catastrophic “economic consequences” on Iran and countries that do business with Iran. 

Leastways, that’s what he says. But remember, Donald’s made similar vows before and none of them have happened yet. So it’s it’s pretty sure he already knows his catastrophic consequences won’t happen now, either. Remember, don’t pay attention to what he says. Watch and see what happens. Or doesn’t. 

As of this writing, we will have to wait to see the endgame on this one. But for those who dabble in the prediction markets, it should be pretty clear where the smart money should be going. 

Because decoding Donald is not brain surgery. Pay no attention to what he says, which is virtually always a lie. So at the risk of repeating myself, watch what happens. Watch what he actually does.

Or doesn’t do. 

8/13/26

When asked about reports of food, medical supplies, water shortages, mold, mental health issues and even attempted suicides on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said President T**** and Defense Secretary Hegseth were committed to ensuring the U.S. military was “equipped with the resources necessary to counter any threat to the United States.”

She pointedly did not deny the reports nor confirm that the commitment she referred to was being fulfilled.

When the Defense Secretary was asked about these reports, he said they were “completely misrepresented,” responding with: “We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody. What they do in those high seas in those austere conditions with less port calls – it’s incredible.”

The Secretary does not say how the reports were misrepresented or that “everything we can provide them” at this “single moment” is adequate to the task. And he alludes to the poor condition of the ship’s crew under what he again he confirms are the “austere conditions” on board the ship.

With his non-denial the Secretary confirms the reports of the ship’s crew and its condition, plaintively admitting that they’re doing the best they can. By his own admission, his best isn’t good enough.

So by the words of both a White House spokesperson and the Secretary of Defense, the reports true: Both the ship and its crew are in bad shape and, by their own admission, that’s all they can do.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is calling for an official, bipartisan oversight visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln to investigate the reports of sailors and Marines living in poor conditions. Whether or not the senator is allowed this visit or can confirm the reports if he is, is not known as of this writing.

But at this point what clearly is true is this: The military operation against Iran is being run by incompetent idiots. No wonder we’ve pretty much lost this stupid war.

In the meantime, say a prayer for the USS Abraham Lincoln and its crew.

                EVIL ON BOARD

The following words were not spoken on some podcast or at some partisan rally.  No, they were spoken at the State Department’s Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism. This was Secretary of State Marco Rubio gathering of representatives from more than 60 countries to address international far-left terrorism.

The speaker here is none other than White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. A transcript of his words was published in full on the State Department’s own website. 

To begin with, what he told the world’s governments: that “the leftist” is driven by envy of “a perfect family [that] goes to church every Sunday.” Then he proceeded to instruct the world’s governments how to identify “the leftist.” He told them that “Not one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a “normal’ person.” 

He continued, “It is not a coincidence that when you look at these violent ANTIFA demonstrators, they are all deformed in some way….in their mannerisms, in their appearance, in their dress…..Look at photographs of ANTIFA demonstrators who are violently demonstrating. 

“Why is it that there is not one normal-looking person among them? Every one of them is deformed…in their bodies and their appearance to the point that their outer appearance is a manifestation of their inner hatred.”

He told them that “You should trust your instincts about who is ‘normal,’ who is ‘beautiful,’ and who is a threat to normal, healthy living.” Miller specified that his targets were “enemies of civilization,” and urged “completely unflinching pursuit.”

To students of history, this sounds all too familiar. For in truth, it echoes Nazi propaganda’s signature strategy in the 1930s, There is even a word for it: entartet, which is German for “degenerate” or “deviant.” It was designed to teach people to recognize degenerates by appearance – deformity of body as proof of deformity of spirit. Miller does exactly the same thing. 

In Nazi propaganda, it was used as a slur to label art, music, and people the regime considered racially, culturally, or politically “inferior.” The term was used especially to identify entartete kunst (degenerate art)  and entartet musik (degenerate music). The Nazis used it to justify exclusion, censorship, and persecution.

And most insidious of all, it became associated with Jewish identity. For here, entartet was a way to say “those people do not belong to the Volksgemeinschaft,” the Nazi ideal of a racially defined national community. And we know how that ended. 

MIller is using the essence of entertet in precisely the same way the Nazis did for precisely the same reason: identifying those whom he selects for summary prosecution. In fact, his speech reproduces the pattern of this propaganda almost to a T. 

To compare Miller’s speech to Hitler’s propaganda machine is not hysterical name-calling. It identifies a clear parallel to how Nazi propaganda taught people to identify things, and especially people, that would no longer be allowed to exist in their “new order.”

And today those words, those Nazi-style instructions on how to identify people to be singled out for persecution, are posted on the State Department’s website. 

It has come to this. From the obscene depths Donald T****’s depraved madness, the Administration has adopted the hateful essence of the most murderous propaganda machine in history, as official American policy. 

Watch your backs, people. We’re on shaky ground, here. 

FREEDOM ON THE ROPES

Donald T****’ and his MAGA movement’s determination to control the outcome of the midterms elections will lead to their defining moment. For them it is all or nothing, and their playbook is out there in plain sight. Among other things, this is where his placement of three Supreme Court justices has already begun to pay off. 

For example. Louisiana has the second-highest percent of Black residents of any state in the union, second only to Mississippi. New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport are three of the Blackest cities in the USA.

But the Supreme Court has ruled that Louisiana, which has six seats in the House, doesn’t need to have a single Black representative. It ruled that MAGA’s gerrymandering Black districts out of existence and diluting the power of the Black vote is just politics, not racism. Still, a state defined by Black history and culture having all white representatives is just OK with them  

In point of fact, it is both; it is crass, racial politics covered by a thin, transparent judicial veneer. It is white Supremacy, plain and simple. And it’s no accident that virtually all of the eleven states of the confederacy are all actively gerrymandering away their Black districts as well. Welcome to MAGA America, y’all.

But that’s just where it starts. 

They’re not only making it harder for Black and brown people to vote. Let me say for anyone who still does not get it: Women should not have to jump through more hoops, clear more barriers or take more steps to cast a vote than men do. 

And that’s important because if T***’s SAVE Act passes, it will be harder for women to vote, especially older married women. It will also be harder for trans people to vote. 

The fact is that it was never really about voter fraud. Never. Their own Heritage Foundation’s research proved that. Truth is, their goal is to suppress the rights of people whose demographics show that they tend to vote liberal. It’s that simple. Republicans know that a substantial majority of American voters— especially women and people of color—don’t like their policies and will vote against them. 

It’s all tied together, the culture wars, their racial bigotry and their war on women, and it always has been. Because the people who are saying today that gutting the Voting Right Act has nothing to do with racism are the same people who said four years ago that overturning Roe v. Wade had nothing to do with controlling women.

With the midterms just five months away, T**** and his MAGAs are on a tight timeline if they are to achieve their goal. T**** articulated that goal recently when he said that if the Republicans win the midterms they will be able to “rule” for a hundred years. 

In truth, it’s really about Donald T****’s fear that whatever is left of his legislative agenda will vanish in the wind if the party loses control of the House this fall. He also knows that, with the Democrats in control of the House, his corruption, his crimes and his depredations will all be exposed.

T**** needs to remain president to stay out of jail. He knows that once he’s out of office he will be criminally at risk for all manner of crimes and corruption. He tried to stay in office once before after his term was up, and there is no reason to believe he won’t try it again.

But there’s another, more sinister reason why the Republicans need to keep the House in 2026. This time, it is about commandeering the presidential election in 2028 and taking down the democracy. Because if they do keep the House, the 2028 presidential election is in the bag, and no matter who wins, they cannot lose. 

It all has to do with the Vice President. Acting in his Constitutional role, JD Vance will be responsible for validating the electoral votes when Congress convenes in January, 2029. But unlike Mike Pence, Vance has no soul, no honesty and no honor. He will do what the party and Donald T****tell him to do, his sworn oath to the contrary not withstanding.  

It works like this. If no candidate receives a simple majority of electoral votes there can be no declared winner. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution says that in that case, the issue goes to the floor of the House, where each state delegation gets one vote. 

All Vance has to do is what Mike Pence, as a matter of duty and honor, wouldn’t. He can refuse to certify just enough electoral votes from a few pivotal states to assure that neither candidate receives a majority. The election goes into the House, and democracy turns over in its grave.

If there are 26 states with Republican majorities, the Republicans will be able to claim the presidency even if they outright lost the election. It will all be legal, above board and by the book. At that point, all bets on the future of America’s 252-year experiment with democracy will be off. 

In furtherance of his autocratic and dynastic fantasies, Donald T**** has promulgated the myth that neither he, nor by extension any Republican, can lose an election unless the Democrats cheat. Most appropriately here we should remember the words of Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, “Always accuse the enemy of that which you are guilty.” 

T**** is already on record saying he should have seized the voting machines in 2020. There’s no good reason to presume he won’t hesitate to do it in 2026. So there’s no question as to who will be doing the cheating.  

That’s why the midterms are everything for T**** and his MAGAs. All  T****’s blathering about voter fraud and foreign intervention and all the rest is just a diversion. His purpose is to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process.

If he can convince enough people that the process is corrupt, and even if he can’t, it will provide him a dubious mandate to declare a national emergency up to and including martial law, seize voting machines, invalidate the election and do whatever else he will. He can cheat all he wants .

His little toady, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has already told the American military brass to be prepared to operate on the streets of our cities. And T**** has his private army of Brownshirt ICA agents at his command. 22nd Amendment be damned, he has teased the idea of his serving a third term many times. Ultra-conservative Republicans have a plan for doing just that and have raised tens of millions of dollars towards that end. 

Do not believe for a moment that Donald T**** is not serious about any of this, from subverting the electoral process to seizing dictatorial power. He is.

The question is, what are we going to do about it?

TRUTH BE TOLD

The other day I posted an article about New York Times reporters getting subpoenas from the DOJ to testify about T****’s new luxury AF1 and why he flew it out to Turkey but had to fly the old one back.

It seems that Israel intelligence picked up chatter about an assassination attempt on his Orangeness. But because he was in a hurry to use his new toy, it was no secret that the plane wasn’t equipped with all the security stuff that is required for an AF1. So the Secret Service said no. 

Now, I just assumed that T**** was sore because word got out about an apparent intelligence leak which blew blew his cover story about sending the new one off to England so that American GI’s could adore it clear out of the water.

Well, my assumption was wrong. Insiders are saying he was enraged because the story got out that his fancy jet wasn’t up to speed on its defensive retrofits. There was a full story about this on the front page of the Sunday Times but I missed it, my copy didn’t get here until yesterday evening. 

Rachael Maddow had the story on her show last night. And strangely enough, the Times reporters didn’t need leaks from anywhere to know that T****’s fancy Boeing 747-8 was lacking its state-of-the-art missile defense system. That fact was out there for anyone who knew to look for it. 

It seems that the company that builds the weapon has it’s design and operation fully illustrated on its public website. It’s not classified or anything. And the part of the device that actually shoots down approaching missiles, is mounted on the outside of the airplane’s hull. It’s there for all to see. 

All you have to do is know to look for it. You can see it clearly on pictures of the old AF1 planes. You cannot see it on the new one. The truth is out there; the missile system isn’t there. Case closed. 

All of which makes T**** and his lawyers look pretty stupid. You can’t throw reporters in jail just because they report something you don’t like. And you can’t make them talk. It’s against the law. That old 1st Amendment, again. 

Sometimes, I swear, as much as he wants to look tough and all that, T**** just can’t cut it. It is times like these that our country doesn’t look like it is being by an autocratic, a tyrant, or even a promising wannabe. 

More like Daffy Duck.

Contemporary Moslem historical accounts of Moslem-Jewish struggles commonly proceed forward from the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1947. However, any examination of the current strife in the Middle East must first be put in its broader historical context. 

For several millennium BCE the land known as Palestine was home to many peoples over different eras, including among others Canaanites, Philistines, Samaritans and Phoenicians. Jews lived there continuously from between 1,000 to 1,500 years before the Diaspora, which occurred under the Babylonians in 586 BCE and later the Romans in 70 CE.

Modern Arabs were late-comers in the region, arriving during and after the 7th century bloody Muslim conquests, when Arab armies from the Arabian Peninsula conquered much of the Middle East

The roots of the modern Arab-Jewish conflict can be traced back to the rise of Zionism—a movement for the re-establishment and development of a Jewish nation in the Levant—in 1897. At that time, the region known as Palestine, or the Levant, was part of the crumbling Ottoman Empire,and was inhabited by a majority Moslem Arab population with small Christian and smaller Jewish minorities. The culture was predominantly agrarian, the total population was less than a million.

Towards the end of WWI, the Levant came under British mandate. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration expressed support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. 

Jewish immigration accelerated during the 1920s and 1930s, and eventually tensions between Jewish settlers and Arabs escalated into armed violence. The Arab Revolt erupted in 1939 and began a period of intense armed Arab resistance against both British rule and Jewish settlers. 

In 1947, the U.N. partitioned Britain’s Levantine mandate into the state of Israel and, commensurately, statehood for the Palestinians. However, not anxious to accept an independent Palestinian state on their borders, that offer was rejected by the surrounding Arab states.

Palestinian Moslems had the choice of accepting full Israeli citizenship or, at the frenzied urging of the Arab states, becoming refugees. Several generations later, the descendants of those who became refugees remain stateless to this day. 

All of this is history. 

Against these historical realities, there are several truths about the contemporary violence in Gaza and Lebanon that must be made clear. 

First and foremost, Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. Genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic attempt to wipe out a given population, usually based on some ethnic, racial, national or religious criterion.  However, massive civilian casualties have been a fixture of modern warfare since the turn of the last century, and the war in Gaza was the Arab’s choice. 

The response of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre of Israeli citizens was predictable. Cold-blooded as it seems, what Hamas apparently wanted was the horrific optics of the Jewish military killing Moslem civilians. These casualties are not victims of Israeli genocide, they are the victims of Hamas’ undeclared war against the State of Israel.   

Also, genocide is not subtle. If Israel was intent on committing genocide in Gaza, it would have not dropped thousands of leaflets advising its residents when and where it was planning to drop its bombs. Its IDF forces would have indiscriminately slaughtered hundreds of thousands or even millions Gaza’s hapless population; this has simply not happened. 

Conversely, genocide is exactly what Hamas and Hezbollah have in mind for the Jews. A quote commonly attributed to Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, aptly applies here:  “Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.” 

That is what the Arabs do. 

There is absolutely no moral equivalence between a Nazi regime which sought to exterminate a race of people, and a nation and a people that seeks to avert its own extermination.

Second, Israel is not an apartheid state. Apartheid, from the Dutch/Afrikaans language meaning “apart,” refers to the old South African government’s policy of forced racial separation. Israel has no such policy. In fact, some 2.5 million of its 10 million citizens are Arab Moslems.

The claim is made that Israeli Moslems are often treated as second class citizens, and to an extent this may be true. But then, so were African-Americans in the Jim Crow South, and no-one has ever suggested that America was an apartheid state. 

And then there’s this. Arab support of Palestinians in the West Bank is cynical at best. The reason they are stateless to begin with is that the Arabs refused to allow Palestinian statehood in 1947. For decades, now, Arab states have opportunistically used the plight of stateless Palestinians in the West bank, a humanitarian tragedy which they created, as a political and military tool to wield against their common enemy, the Jewish state of Israel.

And finally, it is imperative to recognize that the stated goal of all the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel organizations and terrorist groups over the last eighty years, and at one time or another all the Arab states surrounding Israel, has less to do with the efficient administration of Palestinian territory or care for its people than it does with the elimination of the State of Israel. That includes the annihilation of the some 7.2 million Jews who live there. Not even the Nazis could match that total. 

The Islamic world’s open hostility against an indigenous people returning to their ancestral homeland has been the root cause of the violent history of  Palestine. The tragic, internecine warfare which has destroyed much of Gaza and the West Bank is an ongoing expression of that hatred. 

These are truths which Moslem scholars and historians would prefer the world to not remember. 

They must never be forgotten. 

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

Here is a quick historical retrospective:

When slavery was legal, helping slaves to freedom was criminalized. When the Holocaust was legal, hiding Jews was criminalized. When Jim Crow was legal, protesting racism was criminalized.

The point? Legality doesn’t necessarily equal morality.

The contemporary application: The criminalization of how people live their private lives may be legal, but it isn’t moral.

The imperative: Oppose MAGA’s agenda surrounding women’s rights, racial and LBGTQ+ issues. They’re trying to force everyone to live with their petty, hateful prejudices. No-one has that right.

I’ll take moral over legal any day.