Stealing Our Ability to Speak: The Threat to Humanity

We the people need a new pandemic relief bill. We need it now. Yet instead of meaningfully and honestly trying to get resources to those who need it, or resolve differences between legislative proposals, DT threatens and then takes executive actions most of which help no one but himself. His actions are doublespeak, attempts to steal the words, talking points, battle cries from those seriously attempting to help us, the American people. With words made meaningless, we can cry and shout but not speak.

 

For example, DT says he wants to get more money to American workers by enacting a payroll tax cut or deferral for September to December, by an Executive Order. But this action is merely a delay until after the election, to garner votes that he’s losing badly, and does nothing to help those who have no income. And since the President does not have the authority to nullify the laws dictating the collection of the taxes, businesses and corporations must collect the tax money anyway. This puts them in a possibly corrupting situation: What do they do with the money? Do they hoard it? Turn it into a corporate slush fund? They probably can’t give it back to workers, because they might be responsible for it in the future. The result: workers get nothing.

 

Another example is extending unemployment, which sounds like a reasonable thing to do until we see the details. His order calls for $400 per week to aid unemployed workers, instead of the previous $600 in the lapsed CARES Act and the plan proposed by Democrats, or the $200 in the GOP plan. Why DT didn’t push more for a compromise in negotiations with Congress is the question.

 

Look at the reality of what DT did. The executive order forces the states, instead of the Federal government, to cover one-quarter of the unemployment payment, while states are already in a dire economic situation and need their own relief package. And since DT does not have the legal authority to enact legislation, he must take money from already approved funds. In this case, he plans to take money set aside to help people and municipalities who suffer from tornadoes, hurricanes, massive fires and such, as if we haven’t been suffering from any natural disasters for the last few years. How will we help those victimized by hurricanes or wildfires if the funds are gone?

 

Another example is the supposed extension of the moratorium on evictions. His executive order does not ban evictions, nor does it provide money to help renters. Instead of this executive order or the lies and half measures which just keep the pandemic alive, the best remedy would be to protect the income and jobs of workers and to enhance unemployment insurance while closing the economy down for 4 – 6 weeks and putting an end to the pandemic, as a top Federal Reserve official recommended. Instead, DT’s order asks Alex Azar, secretary for Health and Human Services, and Robert Redfield, of the CDC, merely to consider if an eviction ban is needed. Meanwhile, 40 million people could face evictions, and create the most intense housing crisis in our history.

 

DT wants to put on a mask as a savior (but not one to protect people from the virus) while he sacrifices Seniors, as he has already said he would sacrifice brown and black workers, children, etc. The payroll tax funds Social Security and Medicare, two crucial and popular programs that help millions. DT and his GOP backers have for years been trying to destroy or privatize any government programs that help people live more decent lives, even ones that the beneficiaries actually pay for, unless those programs generate profits for the already over-wealthy. And as he made clear when he signed the Executive Orders on Saturday, if elected he will make the cuts to fund Social Security and Medicare permanent.

 

We need times of respite and calm. They are necessary for our physical, mental and emotional health and also to push ourselves to take clearly considered political action. But there are no sidelines anymore. DT’s response to the Coronavirus, to Black Lives Matter protests, to polls showing how likely it is he will lose the next election, and almost everything else he’s done since elected makes it clear⎼ he is willing to take everything from us, even our lives.  All those seemingly safe places for us to retreat to, our homes if they’re paid for, an apartment if we have enough money saved, won’t help us for long if we don’t find our voices, our hands and feet, and find ways to act now.

 

In my experience, we can make 4 calls in 5 minutes to GOP Senators. Writing letters or making calls to get out the vote, joining street protests in our home towns or cities, in Washington, D. C. or at Congressional offices, takes more time. But combined with the efforts of thousands of other people, in the government and out, is what provides the only safety we have.

 

**For more details on the Executive Orders and what led to them, read this piece by Heather Cox Richardson.

 

This article was syndicated by The Good Men Project.

Is It Arrogance, Ignorance, An Impeachment Wish, Or All Three?

Hiding Investigations Crucial For the Rule of Law Behind Ones That Undermine that Rule

 

Last week was dramatic and this week more of the same has been occurring. We have heard clear evidence, once again, of possible criminal acts by T, lies and distortions topped with extortion. We’ve seen the President and his minions try to cover up, obfuscate, or distract our attention from what T did and attack those who reveal what occurred.

 

But this latest series of revelations regarding the Ukrainian affair is so obvious a violation of what any President should do and so obviously screams for impeachment, I wondered, once again how much of T’s behavior is from pure narcissistic arrogance and the craving for absolute power, how much from ignorance, and how much is it an impeachment-wish?

 

The most obvious evidence that the phone call between T and President Zelensky of Ukraine is impeachable (aside from the transcript of the call itself) comes from State Department official David Holmes who testified last Friday behind closed doors and will testify before a public hearing this Thursday. If you haven’t heard about his testimony, he overheard a phone call from the Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland to T on July 26th, the day after the infamous phone call that is at the heart of the impeachment proceedings. This second phone call took place on Sondland’s non-secure cell phone in a restaurant in Kiev. Holmes could hear Mr. T clearly, as the Ambassador held the phone at a distance from his ear because the President was speaking very loudly.

 

In the July 26th call, T asked Sondland if the Ukrainians were “going to do the investigations?” Sondland replied that they were ready to do anything T asked of them. Later on, Sondland told Holmes that T only cared about “the big stuff.” When asked if the war in Ukraine was “big stuff” Sondland clarified that “big stuff” referred to anything that personally “benefits the President, like the quote, unquote, ‘Biden investigation’ that Mr. Giulani was pushing.” Saving Ukraine from Russia or supporting democracy were not “the big stuff.”

 

Earlier last Friday afternoon (11/15), I also felt a mixture of outrage and disbelief when I heard about the President’s tweet attacking Ambassador Yovanovitch during her testimony to Congress.  This tweet destroyed any pretense that the President cared about the law. It was not only a clear and very public example of witness intimidation, but it was done on the day it was announced that T’s adviser, Roger Stone, was found guilty of witness intimidation and other crimes.

 

The main point of the phone call between T and President Zelensky, as David Holmes and others made clear, was to force the Ukrainians to do T’s bidding. If they wanted a public meeting with the U. S. President and the military aid passed by Congress, they would have to announce they were undertaking two investigations, one into the Bidens and one to create evidence supporting the Russia backed claim that it was Ukraine that interfered in the 2016 election, not Russia.

 

This is a strategy often utilized by the T administration and other Republicans in the past. Remember months of investigation into Benghazi and the eventual revelation that Mrs. Clinton followed procedure and that responsibility for the deaths at our embassy lay elsewhere? Remember “Lock her up” and T’s continual attacks and calls for investigations not only of Hillary Clinton but President Obama?

 

In the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017, possibly to detract from Russia working to help him win the election as well as to counter the fact that he lost the popular vote, T claimed that millions of people voted illegally, despite there being no evidence to back up that claim. David Becker, from the Center for Election Innovation & Research, and others have examined Trump’s claim. They found no evidence of any massive illegal voting or fraud.

 

Despite the lack of evidence, T went on to appoint a White House Commission into voter fraud. The commission, despite being conducted by T supporters, also found that no state in the union uncovered any significant evidence of voter fraud and the commission was disbanded in 2018.

 

This strategy has been used to smear Democrats and undermine the rule of law. It is being used to attempt to make any investigation of T meaningless by creating counter and unwarranted investigations of their own. It is part of his larger tactic of attacking anyone who disagrees with him and creating fear in his political or economic opponents.

 

All through the Mueller Investigation, T claimed, without any evidence, that the investigation was a “Witch-hunt”, that it was based on shoddy intelligence or illegal wiretaps or a bias against him. When the Mueller Investigation was coming to an end, T and his GOP sycophants pushed to “investigate the investigators.”

 

The Trump DOJ has started several investigations to advance their agenda to hide the facts of T’s abuse of power and utilizing Russian interference to win an election. Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz has been examining how the FBI obtained a warrant to wiretap Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

 

The DOJ has now opened a criminal investigation into the origins of the Mueller probe into the Russian Interference in the 2016 election. This investigation is being overseen by the Attorney General himself, William Barr, although it is being officially run by John Durham, the U. S. attorney in Connecticut. The targets of the investigation include FBI officials like James Comey, or anyone that was part of the Mueller team that could be accused of anti-Trump bias. Durham has been asking witnesses if the CIA somehow tricked the FBI into opening the Russia probe. Mr. Barr has personally participated in the investigation. According to the New York Times, he has flown to Italy to speak to their Prime Minister, and also contacted officials in Australia and Britain, and possibly Ukraine.

 

A recent blog by Mark Sumner for Daily Kos speaks about this and Barr’s efforts to protect T with a report on the Russia investigations. The report is due to come out before Thanksgiving and aims to re-write history and distract from the impeachment proceedings. It will repeat Russia’s claim that it never interfered in the 2016 election and attempt to discredit the evidence of 16 U. S. intelligence agencies to the contrary. And it will claim that T has been unfairly attacked ever since he was called the winner of the 2016 election.

 

Barr has often attacked the Democrats and the courts for working against the President’s agenda and, according to NPR and in his own words, working to “cripple the T administration from the beginning.” His position is that there are almost no legal restraints on T’s presidential power. He accused Democrats of the “systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law.” According to Neil Kinkopf, a law professor who testified at Barr’s confirmation hearing, Barr believes that any dissent or opposition to the president is contrary to democracy. This is in line with T calling for Democrats to be arrested for treason for opposing him or calling for his impeachment.

 

So, this is what we face. I don’t know if T has a secret wish to be removed from office or not.  But I do know that if I had had any doubts about why T must be impeached or legally removed from office, ASAP, this evidence would convince me. The fight here is to preserve the rule of law, preserve our rights, freedoms, and the principle that political power resides in the people of this nation as a whole, not one person, party, class, race or gender, and not Russian or other foreign agents. And we must be prepared to defend those rights.

 

 

This blog was also published by The Good Men Project.

 

 

 

 

 

Facing the Nightmare: The Threat that is Trump

On Wednesday, February 27, to conclude his testimony to Congress, Michael Cohen said: “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power…” Cohen’s revelations of Trump as possibly threatening the government, the constitution and rule of law with violence, affirms what many of us have suspected ever since he was elected, but it is frightening to see our fears stated so bluntly by someone who knows Trump so well.

 

Cohen is not the first to speak of this threat. Roger Stone warned America in 2017 of “insurrection” if Trump is impeached. Politico reported that Stone said, “Try to impeach him. Just try it. You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen.” This is probably another example of Stone’s political theatre. But, in case anyone still holds the illusion that Trump and most of his supporters value democracy or our constitution, think again. They will do anything they can to intimidate and confuse us.

 

This is, of course, part of the nightmare that is Trump. In 2018, he warned of violence if the GOP lost the midterm elections. When he said this, there was no proof of any planned violence by anyone. So, was he just stressing the stakes for his supporters, saying his opponents will “overturn everything” if the GOP lose Congress? Or was this an attempt to intimidate or to warn Democrats of what he was capable of doing?

 

Was he, as an article by Jonathan Chait in the Intelligencer wrote in November 2018, “tantalizing his supporters with the prospect of bloodshed”? He has often threatened and tried to dehumanize or encourage violence against those who oppose him, labeling them, us, as the “resistance mob” or the “radical resistance.”  …

 

If we want any chance of a future with a substantive choice at the ballot box, or elections without threats of violence, our first priority must not be to support whomever will promise our most dreamed of policies. We must support the candidate who is most likely to defeat Trump and what he stands for.

 

To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

The President of Lies and Corruption Strikes Again

Did you listen to the President of lies and corruption last night? I couldn’t listen to him for even five minutes in a row. It just made me too angry. I heard the bulk of the speech this morning.

As Lawrence O’Donnell reported, this was a fundraiser for his re-election funded by the tv networks. Both before and after the speech, T sent out requests to his base for contributions to raise $500,000 in one day for a fund to secure the border. However, the checks were to be sent to T’s re-election campaign, to the Make America Great Again site. O’Donnell called it T’s first re-election speech. T says these funds will go to build a wall, when they have apparently been earmarked to pay for his re-election campaign.

As for other lies and deceptions: T called the border a humanitarian and security crisis. The humanitarian crisis is one created or worsened by T’s policies and those of other nations south of the border. As for security, he said “every week, 300 citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90% of it floods across the southern border.” As the New York Times fact-checked, most heroin comes through legal points of entry so a wall would do nothing to stop it.

As for the opioid crisis, this has little to do with Mexico, as most of the opioids come from China. And the crisis was not created by immigrants. It was created by policies internal to the US, by doctors over-prescription and such.

According to the Washington Post, apprehensions of people at the southern border peaked in the year 2000 at 1.6 million and have been in decline ever since. In 2017, Customs and Border Protection reported 303,916 apprehensions. There is no crisis except in who we have as president.

One of his biggest claims regarding security was that US officials have blocked nearly 4000 known or suspected terrorists from entering the country through the southern border. This, too, is false. T’s own government statistics show that almost all terrorists known to have entered the US recently did so through air flights. There can be no wall through the airwaves. There is no credible evidence of terrorists coming across this land border.

During the 2016 campaign, T said Mexico would pay for the wall. Now he says the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement will pay for it. This, too, is deceptive. The trade agreement has not been ratified by Congress. Although T said he has already started building the wall, in fact only bollard fencing has been built, and this is from a bill passed in 2009.

So, this speech of T’s is more of the same thing. More statements lacking evidence, more racism, more corruption, more lack of respect for the rule of law, more putting himself before the well-being of most Americans. Please make calls, write letters, read the NYT and Washington Post fact-checks or watch the MSNBC, BBC or other reliable reports. T is, as many have said, holding us hostage, shutting down part of the government, trying to waste our tax money in order to save face with his base. We must do what we can to stop him.

Where Will Our Words Lead Us?

It is raining. It is raining on the foot of snow that fell last week. It has been raining, it seems, since the beginning of August and it is now almost December.

 

I can hear the rain striking the roof, the snow melting on the drainpipes, and the wind in the naked trees. A woodpecker pecks on the wood siding of our house, then stops to look in the bedroom window at one of our cats, Tara, who looks back at him, excited.

 

Chickadees, blue jays, cardinals, tufted titmice, nuthatches, downy and red bellied woodpeckers, and squirrels surround a bird feeder hung from an apple tree branch and the food spread below it on the ground. The branches of the tree are tipped with light. Dripping ice or rain acts almost as a prism, not to refract but concentrate the light.

 

Max, another of our cats, sleeps between Linda, my wife, and me. Linda is reading a novel. I am writing this.

 

At first, it was not just the sky that was gray. My mood, even the trees, looked gray. I could barely see the blue of the blue jay or the red of the cardinal. But the more I listened to the rain and the snowmelt, listened for the moment words began to form in my mind, it all changed. The sky lightened as I focused on the light on the tips of the apple tree branches.

 

And when I allowed myself to feel the fact that this person and this cat were here next to me, one reading by my side, one sleeping by my hip, my mood lightened. All sorts of words came to me, but none were as deep or eloquent as the reality itself, or the feelings.

 

Our words can be the way we speak a self into existence. They can split the world in two by separating in our thinking what we perceive from who is doing the perceiving. We then think what we perceive is “out there” distinct from us “in here.” We think the gray mood we feel is entirely caused by the gray sky. We mistake the world of our words for the world itself. And then we imagine we live in that world of words.

 

Or words can be signposts leading us back to the point before words were born, to where we tie feelings to thoughts, sensations to memories, and create emotions and understandings. It is where we shape how we perceive the world with what we have learned about it. It is also where we all, where every single being, meets all others more directly. It is where practices such as mindfulness or meditation can lead us, so we learn how to pay attention, each moment, to whatever arises.

 

Emotion is not just feeling. It begins with feeling but includes thoughts, sensations, and proposed actions. Just consider the thoughts that go through your mind when you’re jealous, or the sensations you experience when angry. One purpose of emotion is to tag the stimuli we sense with value so we know how to think and act.

 

Daniel Siegel, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, describes phases in the process of constructing emotion. The first phase is jolting our bodies to pay attention. Siegel calls this the “initial orienting response.” The second is “elaborative appraisal,” which includes using feelings to label stimuli as good or bad, dangerous or pleasing. We begin to construct meaning and then prepare for action. We feel good or threatened and then want to either approach or avoid someone or something. These first two phases can be unconscious. In the third phase our experience differentiates further into categorical emotions like sadness, happiness, and fear. And we have conscious responses.

 

Emotions thus integrate diverse realms of experience. They link physiological changes in our bodies, feelings and sensations, with words, with explanations of how things work, and with perceiving and communicating social signals. Without this orienting attention and assignment of value, we could not learn and we could not act. In other words, body, mind, and relationships arise together in an emotion.

 

In order to think clearly and act appropriately, we need to mindfully step back from any particular way of thinking about a situation or person. We need to reflect on how we are hearing words. Do we hear them as self-contained objects, whose meaning and very being is created entirely by the speaker? If we do this, the other can become a label, a threat distinct from us, and a not-me that we can have no empathy for or any relationship with. If we don’t hear what we say to ourselves, we miss a good part of any conversation.

 

Or when we hear the words of another person, do we hear them as arising from another thinking, feeling being not much different from us? Do we take time to pause and feel how his or her words radiate in our mind and heart? Do we respond not just to the meaning we think the other person intended but also to the whole situation—to our own humanity as well as theirs? Do we respond with care and awareness that what we say creates not only an identity for this other person but for our selves?

 

When we speak, we often think we are simply expressing what is in ourselves. We then don’t realize we can’t speak ourselves into existence without speaking an audience into existence. We speak to who we think the other person is, or who we would like them to be. So, before speaking or acting, it’s important to check how accurate or comprehensive our words are, and what they imply about ourselves, about whom we are with, and the nature of the world we live in.

 

And doing this can make all the difference. It can free us from a gray mood, allow us to realize the beauty in the rain, and really see who we are and who is sitting beside us.

 

This post was also syndicated by The Good Men Project. 

You Can’t Concede Democracy To A Would-Be Dictator

After the midterms, a majority of Americans breathed a collective sigh of relief. Now that Democrats have won control of one branch of Congress, they will be better able to act to hold the President and this GOP administration accountable for their actions.

 

But if you listen to some news commentators, the biggest challenge facing Democrats is to avoid the temptation to go after T or try to impeach him. A Monmouth University poll reportedly found that only 36% of Americans thought T should be impeached. Instead, these pundits argue, Dems should try to pass health care legislation, rebuild infrastructure, establish a higher minimum wage and control gun violence. These are all worthy pursuits. But it’s not enough.

 

Focusing on health care instead of impeachment helped most of the Dems win in the midterm elections last week.  And the party itself is unsure just how progressive they are or can afford to be. I get that. But to ignore T’s assaults on the rule of law, on our rights, voting systems, environment, on our ears and hearts, would be suicidal, not only to the lives of many people but to any remaining semblance of democracy.

 

And many Americans know this. We feel fear and anxiety almost every day about what T is doing. We care about our humanity. And, I hope, most won’t let T have his way.

 

The Monmouth University poll also found 52% of the public think keeping T in check should be the major priority for the new Congress. Even a majority of Republicans (54%) join 92% of Democrats in saying that keeping Trump in check should be at least a minor priority.

 

According to a Pew Research Poll, about 60% of voters in the 2018 election said T motivated them to vote: 38% were motivated by an opposition to T, 26% supported him. And 7.1% more people (about 4 million) voted for Democrats for the House in the midterms than voted for Republicans.

 

Many of us recognize that T is selling out our nation to a group of super-rich individuals, maybe selling us out to demagogues and oppressors like Putin. Many of us know that he is using his office to directly enrich himself and violating the emoluments clause. His tax legislation funds the rich and robs from the rest of us.

 

If Democrats, for example, do not fight the appointment of Matt Whitaker as Attorney General, T might be protected from being held accountable for his actions. We could see an increase in unlawful behavior, rights violations, even religious persecution initiated by the GOP. For example, in his 2014 Senate bid, Whitaker said he would not support “secular judges” and any judge should “have a biblical view of justice.” Non-Christians, particularly atheists, Jewish and Muslim people are, according to Whitaker, unfit for such a position.

 

Former lawyer to the President, Don McGahn interviewed Whitaker to join T’s legal team as his “attack dog” against Robert Mueller. Whitaker has openly spoken out against the investigation, and the very idea that he could even appear as a neutral and qualified attorney general, or as anything other than T’s protector is absurd. He also claimed states should have the right to nullify federal laws.

 

How can we get legitimate health care legislation with a GOP controlled Senate and with T as President? Remember it was the GOP who, according to Mitch McConnell & Paul Ryan, called for Congress to go after Medicare, Medicaid, (Social Security) and the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions. It was the GOP who last year proposed health care legislation that would make big cuts to Medicaid and undermine health care for millions.

 

How do we get gun control when the GOP is controlled by the NRA?

 

T warned Democrats “investigate me, and I’ll investigate you.” Mitch McConnell warned Democrats not to “harass the President.” It is not harassment if legislators speak the truth or act in accord with their sworn oath to defend the constitution. I think the news analysts who caution Democrats not to spend much time investigating and prosecuting T are serving the interests of the GOP, not the majority of the American people.

 

Democrats can and should propose legislation that actually serves the interests of the great majority of Americans. This includes resurrecting voting rights and protections, eliminating gerrymandering, and even more comprehensive health care legislation that would protect Americans and lower health costs. (The list could go on and on.)

 

They can keep in mind the great diversity of citizens in this nation. A Democracy only exists if people listen to and are willing to work with others and even compromise. Too much is at stake for Democrats to fight amongst themselves or vie for who is the most progressive, for example, or most independent. They have to remember it was the GOP who turned ‘compromise’ into a dirty word.

 

However, without using their new House majority to protect Mueller and carry out their own investigation into exactly how much T (and other GOP) aided Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, or how deeply he is beholden to Putin, financially or otherwise—without prosecuting him for interfering in the Mueller investigation and a myriad of other crimes, the Democrats could concede democracy to a would-be dictator. Many Democrats have said they are ready for this challenge of fighting T. For the well-being of our nation and world, I hope they are right. And I hope we are ready to work with them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

T Is A Hurricane of Historic Proportions

I have many calm moments, when I meditate, exercise, walk in the woods, talk with friends or simply breathe. Beautiful moments. And then—I turn on the radio or my phone and who knows what insanity might ensue.

 

I just heard the latest news about Hurricane Michael, which struck the Florida panhandle with winds of up to 155 miles an hour. It is now called the strongest hurricane to ever strike the coast. It grew so quickly, from a category 2 on Sunday to almost a category 5 today, probably due to waters overheated by global warming, the same global warming the GOP deny despite the overwhelming scientific evidence against their position.

 

Yesterday, a neighbor called to tell me of two sightings of Fishers, a carnivorous mammal related to weasels. They have only recently returned to this area and have been known to kill squirrels and other small animals, including porcupine and hare, occasionally wild turkey, bobcat, and even house cats (although rarely). They are excellent climbers and can be vicious. I immediately went to the front door of my house to call in my cats. After the Kavanaugh abomination and almost two years of T, I am, like everyone I know, a bit sensitive to bad news.

 

This administration puts us all on a continual threat alert and I think this is exactly what they want. People continually stressed are not as likely to think clearly or feel powerful.

 

The last two weeks and the hearings and discussion on Judge Kavanaugh were especially bad. They were a continual assault, a political hurricane of historic proportions threatening not only women but all of us who are not misogynists, not white nationalists or sycophantic supporters of the President, or who are not in favor of considering corporate rights or the rights of the wealthy as more important than any other rights.

 

These GOP attacked anyone who called for a real investigation into Kavanaugh’s past and were particularly vicious in their attacks on any of the women who came forward. In fact, T even mocked Dr. Ford.  He called for holding those who made “false” claims against Kavanaugh liable. What about false claims by, or in support of, Kavanaugh? Would Kavanaugh or any his supporters who lied or rushed to hide the truth be held accountable?

 

Many wondered: was the GOP rush to judgment due to fears about what will happen in the November election? Or was something else involved?

 

The Supreme Court is going to hear a case called the Gamble v US. It involves a felon arrested for possession of a firearm. It could, however, have grave implications if T is ever impeached, indicted, or tries to use his power to pardon anyone from his administration or campaign who have been prosecuted for crimes or called to testify to the Mueller investigation.

 

The Gamble case involves the question of whether “double jeopardy” is limited by “dual sovereignty.” In other words, whether a state can separately prosecute anyone after they were tried by the Federal government.

 

Right now, T can pardon people for Federal crimes, but anyone so pardoned can still be prosecuted in state courts. T wants to destroy this possibility. And Kavanaugh could help make that a reality. He might be the deciding vote in expanding T’s and the GOP’s power, so they can’t be held accountable for crimes they commit or their assaults on the rest of us.

 

While hurricane Michael was striking Florida, hurricane T was in Erie, Pennsylvania at a fundraiser and then a rally, yelling “lock her up” and such. Even a threat to the lives and property of millions of citizens did not stop him from focusing on himself and trying to rake in money.  He needs to be stopped.

 

And let me repeat what many have been advocating: each of us needs to vote, make calls, volunteer as an election official, write postcards to get out the vote—to do whatever we can to energize ourselves and throw T and his supporters out of office.

 

**Thank you to Jill Swenson and other friends who first posted on FB about Gamble v US.

The Haunting Truth of A Lie

I think we all know this. When we are less than honest we are more than likely to be haunted by it. But there is so much discussion today about lying, so many lies fill the headlines, we might stop looking at how our own lies affect us.

 

When we tell a lie, we know the truth. If we say something we think is true and it’s not, we’re just wrong or misinformed, not lying. When we lie, we split ourselves in two—the truth we did not speak and the lie we did. One we let out in public, one we keep hidden in a back room.

 

Sometimes, we feel there is a good reason for lying. We think it might serve the greater good or save someone from being hurt. We feel the person we’re talking with is not ready for the truth. 

 

Sometimes, we’re the one not ready for the truth. We lie because it’s convenient or easier for us to do so. It gets us something we want or it protects our image of ourselves.

 

But if we think a lie serves our self-image, than our view of ourselves becomes haunted….

 

This blog was published by the Good Men Project. To read the whole piece, click on this link.

Stand Up Against the Would-Be King

I want to write a blog saying there was a revolution in Congress. And throughout the land the heart of the nation was awakened⎼but it did not happen, not yet. It’s just so hard to acknowledge what is going on politically, or to think about it too much. It ‘s so ugly. And disturbing.

 

But I have to say what seems obvious to so many of us: we are confronted with a situation where one man (and those that finance and support him) thinks of the whole world, and all the other people and beings in it, as, at best, pieces to manipulate; at worst, as commodities to acquire or resources to exploit for his (their) own wealth and power. Everything and everyone exists for the taking. Even words, laws, notions of truth exist only to serve his interests. Only what increases his wealth, and what mirrors back to him his own primacy, is true. Everything else is false; everyone else is a liar and dangerous.

 

For laws to rule, the difference between opinion and facts must be, at least theoretically, fairly clear. Truth is recognized as being what really occurred or what was actually said, and what can be reliably verified. If everyone is “innocent until proven guilty,” then we are all theoretically and equally innocent unless proven guilty. For freedoms and rights to exist, the laws guaranteeing those freedoms and rights must be upheld.

 

But in Trump’s world, there are no commonly verifiable truths and thus no commonly enforceable laws. Thus, no “rule of law.” The only law is what emerges from his own mouth in that particular moment. No one is free except him. No one is innocent except as we mirror back to him his own image.

 

An example of him believing and asserting he is the truth and the law is his pardoning of Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative author, filmmaker, and admitted felon—and supporter of the president. Likewise, Trump pardoned his ardent supporter and convicted felon, Joe Arpaio, as well as Scooter Libby, the aide to former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.

 

As Ruth Marcus argues in a column in the Washington Post, there is something particularly wrong and askew in these pardons. Trump violated the normal process and criteria for a pardon.  The process usually involves a five year waiting period and serving a sentence as well as accepting responsibility and atoning for the offense. Instead, D’Souza, and Trump, both showed disdain for the legal process itself.

 

D’Souza had admitted his guilt in court, for establishing straw donors in order to deliberately violate campaign contribution limits. However, the New York Times reminds us that on “Fox and Friends” after the pardon, he claimed his prosecution was retribution by President Obama for a movie D’Souza had made—so much for accepting responsibility and atoning for his crimes. He also asserted selective enforcement during the court trial and the judge held a hearing over the claim. The judge found: “There is no evidence of discriminatory effect nor of discriminatory purpose…” The judge called D’Souza’s claim “nonsense.”

 

After the pardon, Trump tweeted D’Souza “was treated very unfairly.” He also said nobody had asked him to grant the pardon. Yet, according to the New York Times, D’Souza himself, and congressional officials—Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX) pleaded the case for the pardon at a White House dinner the previous night.

 

As Ruth Marcus points out in her column, all these pardons show a political and personal motivation and illustrate Trump’s constant narrative of “they’re out to get me,” “I am the victim here.” Instead of these pardons serving the purpose of correcting an injustice, they commit an injustice. And they possibly also serve a very disturbing political purpose—to signal to anyone who might fear criminal prosecution for collusion with Russia, or for money laundering or corruption, that if they support Mr. Trump, they too will be pardoned. After all, he is the law.

 

If you doubt he is trying to assert this absolute power, look over his tweets from yesterday (Monday, June 4th). An article in the New York Times speaks to this and the ramifications of Trump’s actions. In one tweet he said he had “the absolute right” to pardon himself for any crime. Last year, he asserted he had “an absolute right to do what I want with the Justice Department.”

 

The NYT article goes on to quote David Kris, a former senior Justice Department national security official as saying Trump is making “a far more sweeping claim to power than even other presidents by saying he can use the Justice Department for whatever he wants.” Trump’s lawyers are in fact claiming, “that he is the law—that he is the personification of justice and cannot obstruct himself.” So much for our constitution and our laws being meant to free us from monarchs, or the King from Mar a Lago.

 

Well, Trump becomes the law only to the degree we, and our elected officials, participate in his delusion and yield to him this awesome power. Mueller by himself can’t get Congress to act. We, the majority of the American people, need to unite to stop him, and take the fight against the health care laws as an inspiration. We need to turn our distaste for even hearing his name into action, to call Congress, talk with friends and neighbors, be ready to protest, and use our imaginations to find ways to wake up an organized opposition, to wake up the heart of this nation.

 

**Update: This has been a big week for pardon talk. Why? He has granted six so far and is talking about many more. He has granted pardons both to well-known individuals and those fortunate enough to have a celebrity advocate for them. Maybe he is getting off on the power? Maybe he thinks the people he pardoned can feed his made-up narrative of the deep state being out to get him? Or maybe he thinks that if he grants lots of pardons to a diverse group of people, it would fool us into thinking he is not doing it for his own personal and political purposes? Maybe he thinks we the people would have more trouble discerning and attacking his real motivation, the one Ruth Marcus describes above: namely of undermining the pressure exerted by the Mueller Investigation on Cohen, Manafort and others to reveal what they know about T possibly colluding with Russia?

When A Politician Proclaims “I Am The Truth”

What happens when you discover you have been lied to, especially when the lie is not a little white lie but a major deception? In a relationship, the words you speak become part of what weaves you together into a couple or a friendship, or a story that you live. You have to feel some trust in what the other person tells you in order for a relationship to exist at all.

 

Of course, words aren’t everything. If someone says they love you or care for you and their actions say otherwise, and they abuse you, wouldn’t you doubt the words? It might depend on how you think about love, or truth.

 

The same happens in a society. A society is held together by relationships of all kinds and types, not only between friends and families, but also between politicians and constituents. When someone lies, consistently, a break occurs and the whole relationship can shatter, or it can be reshaped in distorted ways, which I think is happening today with Mr. Trump.

 

Lies are not new to politics, nor is it unusual to claim Mr. Trump lies. His lies and misleading statements are frequently pointed out in the mainstream news media (although not usually in the conservative media). But the volume and obviousness of his deceptions might be new⎼ and getting worse. Several fact check and news sources, like the Washington Post, found that in the first 100 days, he lied or played loose with facts 4.9 times a day. Recently, it has almost doubled to 9 times a day. (See also the New York Times and Politifact.) According to the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, in an interview with the New York Times on December 28, 2017, Mr. Trump said something false, misleading, or dubious every 75 seconds.

 

For example, on May 1st, after the list of questions that the Mueller investigation might want Trump to answer was released by the New York Times, the President said none of the questions on the list were about collusion. Certainly, as far as I can tell, the word collusion was not used. But 13 of the questions were about Trump’s “campaign coordination with Russia,” which is the meaning of collusion. Or his lies about the 2017 tax cut bill, which he called a “giant tax cut” for the middle class, promising a $4,000 pay raise to each household. He called it the largest tax cut in history (ignoring, for example, the John F. Kennedy tax cut and Reagan’s) and claimed the bill “…is going to cost me a fortune.” According to a New York Times fact check, “the proposals [in the bill] seem almost tailor-made to enrich the president and people like him.” According to USA Today, this bill only advances the agenda begun 40 years ago (in the Reagan administration) of taking a trillion dollars a year that used to go to worker wages and giving it to corporations and the superrich.

 

Is it that he doesn’t realize he is lying? To lie implies some knowledge that what is being said is not truthful. If you say something and think it is accurate, and it turns out it is not, that is not a lie. It is not a truth, either. It is an inaccurate statement. Maybe he doesn’t understand what it is to say the truth?

 

What is the truth? Although there are different types and meanings of truth, in most cases, when you say something is true, you mean this is what actually exists or this is real. It is not simply an opinion or an assertion of what you like. Instead, a truth is what corresponds with the preponderance of reliable evidence.

 

Is he using the “big lie” to hide the truth, lying so openly no one can believe he is doing it? Or is he claiming there is no truth? Maybe he is simply not in touch with reality? Or is he merely saying one thing one moment and denying it the next?

 

When a person lies openly to you, you might no longer trust them and you end the relationship. But something else can occur. You might feel afraid of losing the sense of security provided by the relationship, or fear a variety of other possibilities. You might so deeply fear your relationship ending that you try to tell yourself the speaker is the truth, instead of what is spoken; or what is important is not so much the content of what is said, but the fact that a specific someone is saying it. Or the content becomes a secondary or lower truth. The higher truth is the person.

 

And this is what I think is happening today. Society is being pushed to the edge of breaking apart. And one segment of society is tying itself feverishly not to the reality of what is being said, but to the person saying it.

 

Mr. Trump and his followers are creating a mirror effect. By lying so openly, Trump asserts that he is the truth. This is another way to describe a narcissist, as someone who thinks his viewpoint is the (only valid) viewpoint, or that whatever thought enters his head is true because he thinks it. And apparently, about a third of the American people agree with him and mirror back to him his view of himself. They do not question or check the veracity of what he says, even when what he says is obviously untrue, and videos of his interviews or speeches clearly show he lied or misrepresented the facts.

 

Certainly, you could argue that his followers do check his statements. But they check only with right-wing, highly biased news sources, and are only able to confirm (mirror back to them) what they already believe. For example, 40% of Trump voters cited Fox News as their main source of political information. Fox is so distorted a media that in 2015, 52% of its viewers still believed weapons of mass destruction were found following the invasion of Iraq.

 

And Sinclair Media, nicknamed Trump media, is even worse. During the 2016 election, from July to November, the Sinclair conglomerate of stations gave Trump and his surrogates often extensive interviews 31 times. Many were declared “must run” stories by management. The Clinton campaign got seven interviews. According to former Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, the conservative news media have convinced the white working class to focus blame for their woes “downward⎼at the racial other⎼rather than up.” So, maybe you should forgive his supporters, when they hear him say one thing one minute and a different thing the next, and for holding on not to his divergence from the facts but the fact he spoke?

 

Everyone does this to some degree (it’s called a confirmation bias), but the extent to which this is happening today with Trump is astounding. The media that Trump supporters rely on for information have conditioned them to believe Trump more than any other source of information. And when people close their eyes and minds so deeply, they are always fighting themselves and reality, and are often angry, but unable to find a cause anywhere but where Trump points them.

 

This is what happens in some religions. It is what happens in dictatorships. It is what happens in some relationships. To understand how to change this reality, you have to better understand how people leave such relationships. You have to better understand what is happening to our political system, economy, and media. You have to better understand your mind.

 

When you base your political sense of reality and security on a person who believes he is the only reality, the world will always feel threatening to you, and will always feel that it’s constantly shifting beneath you. If Trump believes he is the only reality, you and your needs are indecipherable to him, or nothing more than an illusion.