Month: January 2019

The Reality Of Racial, Ethnic And Misogynistic Division On The Anniversary Of Martin Luther King, Jr’s Holiday And 90th Birthday Commemoration

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Today is the celebration of the heritage and message of the Reverend Dr. Luther King, Jr, who was assassinated in 1968; had a national holiday established in his honor in 1986; and whose 90th birthday would have been last week on January 15.

King spent his life trying to unite people, and promoted the civil rights movement, but sadly, in the age of Donald Trump, the reality is one of racial, ethnic and misogynistic division, which is daily encouraged by the 45th President, who revels in dividing people, and disrupting society.

It is highly discouraging to see the kind of hatred that includes the murder of black churchgoers in South Carolina; the murder of gay men in Orlando, Florida; the death of a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia at a white supremacist rally; the slaughter of Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue; and the rampant antisemitism, Islamophobia, and misogyny being exposed daily of prominent public figures.

We are more divided now than we have been since the 1960s, and this after an eight year period where many thought there had been great progress in race relations and civil rights, and something must be done to defuse this dangerous situation which now exists in America.

We owe it to the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. to do the best we can to bring down the temperature of the stresses and tensions which are destroying all internal civility in America.

Inspiring January 20s—1961 And 2009, And Then Depressing January 20s, 2017 And Today

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Today is commemorated as the Presidential Inauguration Day every four years, since the passage and ratification of the 20th Amendment in 1933, changing the date from the original March 4 from 1789 to 1933, to the new date starting in 1937 and every fourth year after.

The history of January 20 is one of two particularly inspiring Inauguration Days, those of John F. Kennedy in 1961, with his soaring oratory, and Barack Obama in 2009, with the largest Inauguration crowd in American history, and with this author and blogger in attendance with his older son, witnessing the historic event.

Kennedy was the youngest elected President, and the first and only Catholic President, and Obama was the first and only mixed race African American President, and both appealed to the highest ideals of the American spirit.

Already, both are rated in the top third or better of our Presidents, and both will always excite and inspire our image of what America could be.

But sadly, now we are in a crisis, which makes Richard Nixon look better, something thought to be impossible after the Watergate Scandal. We never thought we could have a worse and more corrupt President than Nixon, who with his manifest shortcomings actually had some positive contributions.

But with Donald Trump, we have a wrecking ball out to destroy American domestic policies since Theodore Roosevelt onward, and American foreign policies since Harry Truman onward.

We have a President who has collaborated and colluded with the Russian government of Vladimir Putin, and yet we have one third to 40 percent of the nation totally in delusion, and proving that as PT Barnum said long ago, “There’s a sucker born every minute!” People who should know better have their heads in the sand, as if they are ostriches, and nothing will convince this ill informed and morally deficient portion of the population to see the reality of the disaster we face.

Donald Trump gave a bitter, divisive Inaugural Address two years ago today, and has not stopped from his mission of total destruction, and division of our population with his insults, his racism, his nativism, his misogyny, his repudiation of our long time allies, and his promotion of the destruction of the environment and the concept of civil rights and civil liberties in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

January 20, 2017, was not a day to celebrate, and January 20, 2019 is not either, as the Federal Government Shutdown continues, with the long range goal of the undermining of the Federal government agencies, and the destruction of the lives of millions of dedicated workers, and the collapse of the American economy, as we hurtle toward another Great Recession or maybe even another Great Depression.

It is impossible to have hope that we can survive this Trump disaster without long range damage and harm that will permanently undermine the future of American democracy.

Wrong For Vice President Mike Pence And His Wife Karen Pence To Promote A Bigoted, Narrow Minded View Of Gays, Lesbians, And Transgenders, Not In The Tradition Of Jesus, Who Promoted Tolerance And Open Mindedness

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It is extremely disturbing to see Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, the Second Lady, Karen Pence, to be promoting an anti gay, anti lesbian, and anti transgender agenda.

Karen Pence is teaching art at a right wing “Christian” school that bans gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual teaching and other staff members, and also bans students of those descriptions or students who have parents of those groups.

They also promote an extreme right wing view of Christianity, including against premarital sex, adultery, and preach that women are to obey their husbands.

What century are we in? This is NOT a Christian nation, as we have always promoted, from the Founding Fathers onward, the principle of the separation of church and state.

We may have a majority of people in this nation who were born to a broad based Christian parentage, but of many different sects and beliefs, and that is not the same as saying we are a “Christian” nation, as we are a nation of all religions, with no favoritism or preference for any one religious belief. Jews,Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, other religious minorities, and even atheists and agnostics are all protected from any persecution, discrimination, or mistreatment by any institution.

For Karen Pence to have such a narrow minded view when she could be the next First Lady is a demonstration of a woman and her husband being so outrageously hateful, discriminatory, and prejudiced, and is unacceptable in a future President or First Lady.

We have never had this before, and if the Pences end up in the White House, and try to impose their theocratic views on the nation, they are in for a massive battle and struggle, as the vast number of Americans will not tolerate such bigotry.

The Wealthiest And The Poorest Presidents

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The American Presidents have varied greatly in wealth acquired or inherited in their lifetimes.

Some were born poor, such as Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, due to family circumstances, with Clinton and Nixon acquiring wealth in their lifetimes, but Johnson would still be the seventh poorest President at death, according to statistics.

Materials gathered by scholars have led to conclusions on the net worth of our 44 Presidents, including their post Presidential years.

Easily, at least by the knowledge we have now, Donald Trump is likely the wealthiest President, although subject to change by further Congressional investigation of Trump’s finances, sure to come in the 116th Congress by congressional subpoenas. By estimate, Trump is wealthier than all the other 43 men who have been President of the United States.

After Trump, probably John F. Kennedy, had he not been assassinated, would have inherited close to $1 billion later in his life.

Other than Trump and Kennedy, George Washington would be considered the wealthiest President, in modern terms, around $580 million.

Behind him would be Thomas Jefferson ($234 million); Theodore Roosevelt ($138 million); Andrew Jackson ($131 million); James Madison ($112 million); and Lyndon B. Johnson ($108 million), with all those numbers being estimates.

Other Presidents who had substantial estimated wealth would include Herbert Hoover ($82 million; Bill Clinton ($75 million); Franklin D. Roosevelt ($66 million); and John Tyler ($57 million). Clinton acquired most of his wealth post Presidency by speeches and authored books, and will likely rise much higher if he lives a long life.

At the other end of the scale, we had 13 Presidents who had $1 million or less wealth by all estimates, in 2016 dollars, including in ranked order:

William McKinley

Warren G. Harding

James Buchanan

Abraham Lincoln

Andrew Johnson

Ulysses S. Grant

James A. Garfield

Chester Alan Arthur

Woodrow Wilson

Calvin Coolidge

Harry Truman

Notice that the bulk of these Presidents served in the years from Buchanan to McKinley, the last half of the 19th century, a total of seven out of eleven Presidents.

The three Presidents from Wilson through Coolidge also are on this list, and Harry Truman ends up as the least prosperous President at his death, as compared to Andrew Johnson the poorest at birth.

Barack Obama is rated just below John Tyler at number 13 on the wealth list at an estimated $40 million, with potential over a long lifetime to become one of the top few wealthiest Presidents by speeches, books, and other activities due to the stature and prestige of being a former President in modern times.

Other Presidents are rated in the middle on wealth, such as George W. Bush at $39 million; George H. W. Bush at $26 million; John Quincy Adams at $23 million; John Adams at $21 million; Richard Nixon at $17 million; Ronald Reagan at $14 million; Dwight D. Eisenhower at $9 million; and Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter at $8 million each.

Donald Trump, The Republican Party, And The Trump “Base” Have No Respect, Regard, Or Appreciation Of Government Employees

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Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and the Trump ‘base” have no respect, regard, or appreciation of government employees, and the role they play in the lives of 325 million Americans.

Everyone in America is impacted by the dedication of public servants who sacrifice their lives and families in many positions, and in all cases, have an effect daily on all of us.

But there are those who trash public employees as if they are freeloading, when they must meet strict standards for their jobs, and in so many cases, are not well compensated.

How would Americans live without the effect of such agencies as follows:

Department of Agriculture

Department of Commerce

Department of Defense

Department of Education

Department of Energy

Department of Health and Human Services

Department of Homeland Security

Department of Housing and Urban Development

Department of the Interior

Department of Justice

Department of Labor

Department of State

Department of Transportation

Department of the Treasury

Department of Veterans Affairs

National Archives

The Library of Congress

Presidential Libraries

Smithsonian Institution

Federal Trade Commission

Federal Communications Commission

Consumer Product Safety Commission

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Environmental Protection Agency

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

National Science Foundation

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Tennessee Valley Authority

Securities and Exchange Commission

Small Business Administration

Federal Reserve Board

United States Postal Service

Social Security Administration

National Transportation Safety Board

Amtrak

Peace Corps

Central Intelligence Agency

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Secret Service

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

National Park Foundation

The continuation of the Federal Government Shutdown is a rebuke not only to the affected government employees, but to all 325 million Americans, and Donald Trump will pay the price in public opinion polls, and in the analysis over time of historians and political scientists.

Iowa Congressman Steve King Just The Tip Of The Iceberg, As Donald Trump Is The More Significant White Supremacist And White Nationalist

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The decision of the House Republican leadership, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, to condemn Iowa Congressman Steve King and strip him of his committee assignments, is a lame and belated acceptance of the Republican Party of how racist and nativist King has been for years, with the GOP tolerating him and his promotion of white supremacy and white nationalism.

He is not the only Republican who has shown evidence of racism and nativism, and many Republicans are now worried about the long range future of the party of Lincoln, TR, Ike, Reagan, and H W Bush.

The party has catered to white supremacists and white nationalists for years, taking over that role from the old former Southern segregationists who, thankfully, abandoned the Democratic Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act under President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

There should be no place for such racism and nativism in any establishment political party in America, but Donald Trump paid homage to them after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, when he said both sides in the conflict had good people, which was a sign he was allied with David Duke, Richard Spencer, and the right wing radio talk show hosts that spew such hatred regularly.

Until and when the Republicans in Congress in the House of Representatives and Senate repudiate the ultimate racist, nativist, hate monger, and misogynist—DONALD TRUMP—which they refused to do to this moment, then the action taken against Steve King is pure hypocrisy, to save their own rear ends.

The Republican Party is dead in the water as a future force until they return to the progressive trends of Lincoln and TR, the true paragons of virtue in their party history.

Trump’s Border Wall Is Not Based On National Security, But Simply Pure Racism Against Darker Skinned People

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Trump’s insistence on a border wall with Mexico is NOT based on concerns about national security, as there is little danger of that, and statistics demonstrate that most people we would term “terrorists” come through airports or ports of entry, not by walking or traveling through the difficult terrain that Central American migrants escaping violence, sexual abuse, and gang violence have used to pursue freedom and a new chance on a decent life for what is mostly women and children.

Yes, there is the problem of cocaine and other drugs coming to America, but it mostly goes through elaborate tunnels that have been constructed, are very sophisticated, and are extremely numerous in number and hard to detect by drug agents and border agents.

So why is Donald Trump pursuing this, despite two thirds of the American people being opposed to it, and wanting the end of the crippling federal government shutdown that is impoverishing millions, not just the actual federal workers and their families, but subsidiary businesses that are suffering from the lack of economic activity that has ensued?

Clearly, it is pure racism against darker skinned people, who Trump sees as inferior, and we have already heard his disgraceful, despicable comments about people from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, as well as from Asian countries.

We have never had a President as racist as Donald Trump. Yes, we had Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson,and all of the slave holding Presidents. We also had others who we know had the tendency to be racist in their language, such as Richard Nixon on the Watergate tapes, and in earlier lives, such as Harry Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson. But Trump is far worse than any of these, and has been his entire life, including when he was a landlord with his father back in the 1970s in New York City, and in many other situations ever since.

Trump is a combination of the worst racists of modern times in America—the dead Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and George Wallace; and those who are alive, including Pat Buchanan, David Duke, and Richard Spencer, among others.

The only time we had to worry about such a personality on the Presidential level was George Wallace in 1968, but he ran on a third party, winning five states and 13.5 percent of the vote, so could not win the Presidency.

And even George Wallace, in later years, after the assassination attempt by Arthur Bremer in 1972 left him paralyzed for life, changed his views, asked for forgiveness for his racism, and was accepted as reformed by many in the Civil Rights Movement.

There is no hope for Donald Trump in this regard, and his racism will always mark him as, certainly for modern times, the worst person on the race issue, without any chance of redemption.

Donald Trump Engaged In War Against Federal Government Agencies And Workers, Pleasing Vladimir Putin

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It is becoming clearer by the day that Donald Trump is engaged in a full scale war against federal government agencies and workers, with his refusal to end the federal government shutdown, harming hundreds of thousands of workers and innumerable agencies.

He is promoting anarchy and division unlike any time since the Civil War, and this pleases Vladimir Putin manifestly.

He has, since he took the Presidential oath, refused to fill many high government positions, and now has shown his total disrespect for federal workers, including denying them pay raises, as well as furloughing many, and others forced to work, but with no pay.

This will soon cause an economic crisis, and many workers will lose their homes or apartments, their autos, and their health, as well as cause great psychiatric stress. Many businesses that work around federal agencies are losing their business, and will disappear, and many workers will leave and go to the private sector, causing great shortages of personnel in key security, law enforcement, and other areas of the federal government.

And the closure of national historical sites, museums, and other tourist locations will harm those areas economies, and disappoint many who had planned tourist trips to these sites, in particular in Washington, DC, but also all around the country.

With so many people living paycheck to paycheck with little funding in reserve, the lives of ordinary Americans will be harmed, and now for the first time, even those whites with only a high school education are finally starting to turn against Trump, as they are now seeing the destruction and damage he has wrought.

Learning that Trump is now seen as clearly colluding with Russia, and took the translator notes from the summit in Helsinki with Putin away from the translator and any other government officials, who have no idea what happened at that summit in July, makes the constitutional crisis we face very more terrifying.

Donald Trump And Wasteful Spending: His Adult Children, Massive Tax Cuts To Wealthy, And Government Shutdown Causing Salary Payments To Government Workers Who Cannot Do Their Work

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Donald Trump is the master of wasteful spending, and is on the way to the worst example yet of total recklessness with the national budget.

Other Presidents have added to the national debt and to unbalanced budgets, but had the excuse of engaging in foreign wars, and promoting domestic programs that caused the problems.

But Donald Trump has wasted taxpayer money to provide security to his adult children who are doing private business deals (Donald Jr and Eric); giving massive tax cuts to the wealthy, who already had the tax cuts under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush; and now the federal government shutdown, three weeks in duration and continuing, where close to 400,000 workers are furloughed, but will be paid their lost wages when the shutdown ends.

Meanwhile, the waste of money on the shutdown will reach $6 billion by the time this shutdown ends, if it does in the next two weeks, and after that, ever more waste of taxpayer money will occur.

But Donald Trump, who has never known a rough day for economic survival as 80 percent of the nation has experienced, goes about his merry way, promoting reckless spending for wealthy people, and for his spoiled, privileged sons, just as much as he was treated by his own dad decades ago.

Senator Mitch McConnell The Ultimate Villain In Government Shutdown, Only Concerned About Himself And His Wife In Trump Cabinet

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The ultimate villain in the Federal Government Shutdown is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who could end it by calling for a Senate vote to end the shutdown.

All he has to do is call for a vote on the resolution that was passed in December before the holidays almost unanimously, and the crippling shutdown could end.

But McConnell will NOT do anything to defy Trump, as he has a massive conflict of interest, in that his wife, Elaine Chao, is the Secretary of Transportation.

McConnell and his Republican colleagues are totally afraid to oppose their own President, but what they are doing is making the Republican Party brand more toxic, and one can be assured that the party will lose seats in the US Senate in 2020, and likely will lose control to the Democrats.

And top of the list to defeat is Mitch McConnell, if he chooses to run for a seventh term, as he will have served 36 years in the Senate by the end of 2020, and is up for reelection.