Taxpayers Fund Pathetic Big Brother
According to several news agencies yesterday, an ad promoting Trump began airing this week. It says it was paid for by the government, despite a law banning taxpayer funds being used for propaganda.
I find Trump vulgar. I find his AI productions of himself as Jesus, as himself in a military uniform (applying honors to himself which he never earned), and his glowering portraits from public buildings inappropriate. Pathetic. Distasteful.
I find his fripperies and vanity projects disgusting. The man has no taste. He is erecting monuments to himself. He would destroy the Kennedy Center because he is jealous – he wrecked it.
I’m careful with my money. What offends me the most is that I am not reluctant to pay taxes; we earned government salaries, we respect the need for a government to provide services, and that good citizens pay their fair taxes. I object to paying for self-glorification, or “love-me” ads. I believe this is illegal – just as I believe our fight in Iran is illegal, was not discussed with Congress, and that the citizens paying for this war should be given accurate information, such as the tolls taken on our servicemen and women and on our installations during this war.
Why do we continue to let this fraudster operate with impunity?
He dares to put his face on the corrupts Justice Department, filling it with loyalists who submit to Trump’s policy of vengeance against his perceived enemies – those who would disagree with him.
He puts his face on the Labor Department, at a time when mortgages are once again hitting an all time high, inflation is hitting food and gas prices, and our young people cannot find jobs nor buy houses.
His vanity knows no boundaries. His ignorance is wrecking our economy. His vulgarity shreds our efforts at civility. His greed takes the food out of the mouths of the hungry, and medical care out of the hands of the sick and dying. He refuses to disperse funds already allocated to the powerless. He sells off our National Parklands, or leases off lands, for commercial exploitation, and invalidates environmental rules put into place to keep our food, water, and emergency systems in place.
In the previous entry in this blog, we see Trump and Melania glaring suspiciously at the camera, and the President of China looking at Trump with a look that appears to be pity.
Pity instead the poor taxpayers, footing the bill for this monstrous, vain, big baby.
Where to Start?
A President who won’t take accountability for his own policy follies? A President who fiddles (gilds the White House, demolishes a monument to former President Kennedy, starts a war without Congressional approval, gives contracts to his cronies without going through established processes, fires, and then re-hires critical bureaucrats, lies to the American public about election security, dabbles in trivialities) while Rome burns (gas hits record prices, allies are increasingly imperiled, national parks are starved for funds and broken apart, the education system tumbles and incivility reigns)?
A President who lies to the American people about just about everything AND who is trashing the American economy?
How Do We Celebrate the 4th of July?
Today’s Lectionary provided a prayer for today, along with today’s saint, Saint Moses the Black:
PRAYER (contemporary language)
Almighty God, whose blessed Son guides our footsteps in the way of peace: Deliver us from paths of hatred and violence, that we, following the example of your servant Moses, may serve you with singleness of heart and attain to the tranquility of the world to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
It brought to mind a troubling conversation in a meeting with a group of women I greatly admire. One said “I’m having a problem with knowing how to celebrate the 4th of July without compromising my belief that our nation is on a very wrong path.”
In a brief discussion, we agreed that no one party owns the flag, or fireworks, that those are the influence-free celebrations of our freedoms, but that gatherings that involve political speeches and practices that support beliefs we find repugnant are contrary to our well-being.
I think we all came away from that discussion with a troubled sadness.
My family has a history of service to our nation. Much of what we have built, and what we have worked so hard to accomplish, has been wrecked. I love our nation, I love the American dream, I love the Statue of Liberty welcoming those who arrive with little but hope, and a desire to live free in a land of opportunity. I love our freedom to disagree with leadership and for the tools to fight unjust practices. I love that we have lived a life of service: serving our country, building alliances, and building a network that fights the evils of tyranny.
This morning, I put out our flags.
When Lies Control the Narrative . . .
Truth disappears.
Today, National Pulic Radio reports the following:
The Trump administration has mass-deleted information regarding prosecutions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including cases involving defendants who assaulted police officers. This move marks the latest attempt by Trump to alter the narrative surrounding the violent riot. Last week, Justice Department news releases that detailed guilty pleas, jury verdicts and prison sentences disappeared from government websites. An NPR review found that the deletions included information about some of the most serious assaults on law enforcement that happened that day.
We all watched the attack on the Capitol happen in real time, with our own eyes, and much of it filmed by the insurrectionists who had been told the election was stolen. Mike Pence didn’t believe it and did not do as he was instructed to do. He supported the truth of the 2020 election of Joe Biden,
And now, we have a Trumpian edict of “non-disclosure” for all Federal Employees.
We used to take pride in the transparency of our government – not even that long ago! Less than one presidential administration ago! What happened to oversight (DOGE’D out of existence) and whistleblowers calling out corruption?
Calling out corrution is inconvenient for this regime. Bringing corruption into full view should make the corrupt squirm, but this administration has no scruples, no embarrassment.
And now, we have a new corrupt senatorial candidate out of Texas, Ken Paxton. Paxton has been charged with scandal and corruption by his own fellow Republicans, and is a welcome addition to the shameless corruption of the Trump Administration, bellying up to the trough, feeding off the taxpayers.
Did you know that “Tromper” in French is to fool? Si je ne me trompe pas.
My Problem With ICE
I have a long history with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I’ve been in and out of the USA since I was a little girl. We have filled out countless forms for passports, and many times more those forms telling what we are bringing back into the country. The only time I ever had a problem with ICE was on returning from one of our African trips when I was bringing in wildebeest jerky from South Africa. I laugh now, it was me and a lot of African nationals shunted off. They were opening suitcases full of vegetables they were bringing back for family, and I was told my package of jerky was illegal in the United States. AdventureMan was annoyed with me, and I was ashamed I didn’t know. But they let me off with a mild scolding about infecting disease free animal life in the USA. I’ve never forgotten.
I’ve never minded the tiresome lines for immigration, always manned by sturdy, polite young people wanting to know where we’ve been and how did we like our trip; they were doing their job and they had been trained how to deal with people. In all my times going through those lines, I never saw any kind of incident.
They had a mission.
With the new administration, that mission changed, enlarged. They were given different, even SECRET orders, orders that encouraged them to commit the sorts of acts we saw in Minnesota. It always looked to me like those acts, committed on US Citizens, committed on resident citizens, smacked of incitement to violence. Why else would these customs and immigration officers be asked to violate the US Constitution in pursuing their mission?
I applaud those stoic and humor-filled Minnesotans who protested with restraint, who did not invite violent responses. Even if the Department of Justice will not cooperate in the investigations you are conducting into the murders of Minneapolis citizens, you are gathering witness from street cameras and witnesses against the illegal actions, and the lies and accusations, unjust, of the ICE officials and the Department of Justice. I applaud the restraint that forestalled any illusion of reason for a “national emergency” and activation of a military presence. The militaristic costumes of the immigration and customs officials did not fool nor intimadate you. Your patient, evidence based investigations will be embarrassment enough to those who thought to prevail by intimidation and brutality.
So we have to look at why the ICE men and women sent by our leader to Democratic states felt so empowered to misbehave?
Many ICE hirees have law enforcement backgrounds. Many of them have served in the armed forces. They know the basics. They know the law. They must have had second thoughts, many of them, while conducting these unrestrained acts of violence characterized as arrests of “rapists, thieves and the mentally ill,” as they arrested family men, women – and children, with no criminal records.
As well as knowing the law, and the legal use of power, those who are Christian would know Christ’s admonition to love our neighbor as ourself. Those who are Jewish would know the Old Testament verses about welcoming the stranger. Those who were raised without religion might be familiar with Spiderman, who teaches us that with great power comes great responsibility.
These $50K hires are as expendable as Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem. Once they have served their purpose, they can be scapegoated for excessive zeal in pursuit of the mission, or charged with murder while their superiors, who put the secret policies into effect, escape blame and punishment.
Again, I applaud the Minnesotans, who with restraint, humor, and humanity, protected the weakest, the families and children, while EFFECTIVELY resisting the provocation they faced. Well done, Minnesota!
And lets take a minute to grieve the effects of the violence upon those who inflicted it, mere pawns in a greater game of thrones.
Slight of Hand and Wires and Mirrors; No Accountability
Our leader announced a speech to the nation, which turned out to be nothing but repeats of “Truth” social posts and comments previously made. A boring, disjointed 19 minutes of nothing credible. Credibility is stating a mission and following through. Chaos is changing the mission and its achievements every ten minutes or so. If you don’t believe me, watch the stock market.
Meanwhile, behind the curtain, The Great Oz and his handlers are changing how our democracy operates. The failed military officer, Pete Hegseth is examining and removing African Americans, females, and especially African American Females from promotion lists. He is firing the top general who questions his judgement in toying with a time honored system where the military chooses its leaders based on performance and leadership abilities, not their gender nor their color.
Does Hegseth understand demographics? Does he understand that military recruitment is problematic these days days, that the pool of recruits has shrunk dramatically? Does he understand that brawn no longer wins wars, but fighter planes, drones, new ideas and weapon development are fighting a new kind of war, where every gender and color contributes the the nuances of creative strategies available to a commander in chief who genuinely understands how to function in the fog of war?
Today Heather Cox Richardson alerts us to another slight of hand, the kind of small change the controllers hope will go unnoticed: The challenge of ACCOUNTABILITY and how it impedes a sitting President. She quotes the following, and it quite takes my breath away:
Yesterday Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, of the Office of Legal Counsel, published an opinion for the White House that claims the Presidential Records Act, which requires that presidents keep records of their official business and turn them over at the end of their term, is unconstitutional. Gaiser clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
“The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II. The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose,” the memo reads. “For these reasons, the PRA is unconstitutional, and the President need not further comply with its dictates.”
(taking a moment to catch my breath)
We burden our elected president with the requirement that we know what he does and why he is doing it?
How can anyone believe this lunacy? Any person in a position of responsibility has to answer to his polity! Elected politicians all the more. He answers to us, the voters.
Our leader has a lot to answer for. We can’t trust anything he says, from minute to minute. Our treasury has been declared insolvent. He is sending our children off to war with unclear orders and insufficient leadership.
He has hired a confederacy of ignorant, greedy sycophants. He has gutted our diplomatic service. He has gutted Consumer Oversight. He has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency. He has corrupted the Department of Education.
He is terrified he cannot win and is attempting to take over national elections. Meanwhile, he is bankrupting our country with garish monuments and wars we never agreed to fight.
He is subjecting women to outdated standards and taken away their rights to make decisions for their own bodies.
He is corrupting our social system, taking medical care away from those who need it most, and callously neglecting the veterans who have served our country so loyally.
He has made agreements with other countries that we only learn about by accidental comments.
This can’t go on. Give us Accountability. Oversight. Congressional Approval. Fair and Free Elections. Constitutional Restraints!
Even Fox News?
From Robert Reich’s post of March 29, Trump’s ratings continue to tank. The relevance? Most presidents get a bump with a war, people tend to back their leader. Then again, when most country leaders start a war, they consult with allies, and give their population a clue about what is about to happen and why. Failing to do that results in lack of enthusiasm by former friends, treated rudely, and a population treated as irrelevant to the needs and goals of the leader.
Meanwhile, Trump’s polls continue to tank. In the new Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 36 percent approve of his performance while 62 percent disapprove, a new record low for Trump. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, 38 percent approve of him; 56 percent disapprove. Even the latest Fox News poll shows Trump approval at only 41 percent; disapproval at 59 percent; and fully 58 percent of Americans opposing U.S. military action in Iran.
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Early Voting in Florida
