a taxing time in the old town tonight

We have met the enemy, and he/she is...

Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, has called the president unhinged, and decried the tax proposal that just sprinted at lightning speed to passage in the senate as a boon to the rich at the expense of everybody else.  The good senator also is in favor of working on documentation to help Dreamers under DACA, which has nothing to do with the tax bill.  With a promise, and what he admits is not real ironclad commitment from senate leadership, a leadership that has proven time and again that their word means nothing, Senator Flake has voted for a bill he has called a disaster.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine voted against the repeal of Obamacare, citing her concerns for those who will lose their insurance under the republican plan.  The tax bill contains a provision eliminating the requirement that people who fail obtain health insurance would be subject to increasing fines, coverage for them that would otherwise be subsidized by the government.  On the same promise that this issue would be looked at in some hazy time in the future, she voted for this tax bill, thereby ensuring that the people she said she was protecting would be thrown off the rolls of the insured and increasing premiums for everyone else.

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said he would not vote for any bill that increased the national debt and busted the budget.  In exchange for an increase in the amount pass through businesses can deduct from their taxes, a pet project of his, he voted for a bill that will add more than a trillion dollars to the budget.  By the way, the increase in the deductibility of pass through businesses, his "must have" in order to vote for this bill, will add even more to the deficit.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the repeal of Obamacare.  She was leaning against voting for this monstrosity, when suddenly in the bill appeared a provision opening the Alaska Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration, something that has nothing whatsoever to do with taxes or tax relief, but does have a whole lot to do with a pet project of hers to make those poor oil and gas companies a little less poor.  So she voted for the tax bill, and has now practically ensured the destruction off one of the last pristine wildlife preserves in the country or on the planet for that matter.

And the newly sainted Senator John McCain, who has been on a crusade railing against legislation being rushed through the senate without hearings, without public comment, without scoring from the congressional budget office and without proper time for the senators to read what they were voting on voted for this bill.  By the way, he announced that he was satisfied that the bill had been properly drafted, presented, debated and scored more than a day before the more than five hundred page tax bill was actually published and distributed to the senators.

Do not ever let any of these lily livered gutless excuses for human beings tell you again that they are fighting for you, fighting for the middle class and fighting for jobs.

Ever.

Not when the corporate executives who will lead the creation of these so called great paying jobs have already told the head of the idiot in chief's national economic council to his face that they will not use their tax windfall to create jobs, but will do what they always do when they get windfalls -- pocket the money.

For obvious reasons, I have not had the chance to read the bill.  I only know what I have seen in the news and on various on line sources discussing the bill.  At this point, I figure my taxes will go up about two thousand dollars this year mostly because I live in New York and my property taxes are above the limit for the deduction imposed under this bill.  The only way I benefit under this bill is if I sell my house and move before I have to do my taxes next year.  Selling my house in New York is going to be a little more difficult now, as the senate has managed for the first time in the history of this country to pass legislation that will have the effect of discouraging people from buying a house, at least in states like New York where we have high taxes.

And don't tell me the solution is lowering taxes on the state and local level.  I want the children of this state to be able to go to properly staffed and supplied schools, protected by the police and fire departments.  I want my libraries.  I want the public water systems to be properly maintained.  

And I want the trash to continue to be collected, which at this point may include the politicians.

With the passage of this legislation, I still have health insurance.  With the repeal of the mandate, more people will choose not to get insurance, mostly the young and healthy who think they do not need it.  That means my insurance premiums will go up.  The estimates I have seen have the premium increases pegged at anywhere from ten to twenty-five percent -- annually -- above what the increases would have been without the repeal.

And on top of everything else, my tax decrease, which I figure will cost me somewhere between two and three thousand dollars a year, is temporary, so in ten years my taxes will be even higher.  Maybe if I stand on my head and look at my taxes, they will actually at least look like a real decrease.

While I am certainly much more well off than most, I believe my situation is fairly typical.  I have read that the vast majority of people polled opposed this tax bill, many vehemently.  Yet in the face of overwhelming opposition, the bill passed.

Why?

Congressman Chris Collins of New York explained all of this a month or so ago when he candidly told the public that his big donors, you know, the guys who actually do get tax cuts -- huge ones -- from this bill, had told him that if he doesn't get tax "reform" passed, not to bother calling them again.  Nobody has denied that they are voting for the bill for this reason.

So now we truly know, as if we did not already know, where the allegiance of congress stands.

It ain't with us.

for the teachers

A shout out to all the public school teachers out there.

Every year for the past fifteen years or so, i have done our tax returns myself. I am a self-employed attorney. in other words, other than keeping my clients from themselves, what i do for living is completely useless. My wife is a public school teacher. I bet if you made yourself a list of the five most influential people in your lives, at least one, probably more than one, would be one of the teachers you had while you went through school.

Being self-employed, I get to write off just about every conceivable expense on my tax return. Every paper clip. Every piece of paper. Every folder. Since my office is in the house, I even get to write off what I would have thought were common household expenses. A portion of the utilities, a portion of the mortgage and even when the guy comes to cut the grass. It is my understanding that if I really wanted to, I could buy myself a small coffee machine, deduct that from my taxes, and then deduct all the coffee, filters and cups I wanted, as long as I drank the coffee during business hours in my office. I can get away with it. Come to think of it, I do not have to get away with it. It's legal. Besides, I have the coffee stains on the floor proving I at least spilled the coffee in the office. Come to think of it, I guess that means I can hire somebody to clean the carpet in the office and deduct that as an expense also.

My wife is a public school teacher. Each year, she spends thousands -- THOUSANDS -- of dollars on supplies for her classroom. Educating our children, Betsy DeVos' thoughts notwithstanding, is not a business. IT IS A PUBLIC OBLIGATION.

We as a society have a sacred duty to educate our children so that they may go on in life as contributing members of our society. There is nothing more important we do as a society -- nothing -- than properly educating our children. As a corollary to this, you would think that ensuring that our public school classrooms are properly supplied with all the pens, paper, notebooks, folders and equipment needed to ensure the children get a proper education is of paramount importance. This does not even get close to talking about ensuring all the best textbooks are available.

Well...

We do not fund our schools adequately, or at least properly. One of the first places the politicians look to cut every year is funding for public schools. If you want a microcosm of what is wrong with the way our schools prioritize what funding they get, all you need to know is the fact that in the district my wife teaches in, the classrooms are not air conditioned, but the offices of the administration and their staff are. Now, over the years I have come to know many of these people. They are very fine folks, who in the vast majority of the cases have appeared to have the interests of the kids at heart.

But think about what is more important on a day to day basis in early September and mid June. Should we be more concerned with the comfort of a bean counter who has no day to day contact with the children, or the fact that the classrooms are so hot it is impossible for the children to learn, regardless of how good the teacher may be. I know of some teachers who have brought portable air conditioners into their classrooms just so they, or more importantly, the children could have a fighting chance.

If I did that for my office, I could deduct the cost of the unit. I could then deduct the cost of installing the unit if I needed to hire somebody to do it. I could then deduct the cost of the electricity needed to run the unit. If the unit broke down a few months later, I could deduct the cost of having somebody come to repair it, and if that was not possible, I could buy a new unit and start the deduction process all over again.

If my wife bought an air conditioner for her classroom, she could do none of this. Well, she could buy the unit herself, bring it to her classroom, hope there was somebody at the school who would help her lug it from the parking lot to the classroom, and then hope it worked once it got there -- all of this provided for simply by the hope that the school administration, while sitting in their comfortable offices, would allow her to do this in the first place.

Every year, teachers all over America buy supplies for their classrooms, never mind air conditioners, because the politicians, aided by some sort of perverse anti-education, anti-teacher culture, slash budgets to the point where the districts have to make choices.

And those choices inevitably come down to adequately staffing and supplying the classrooms or installing new air conditioners in the administrative offices.

And each year, the districts make the wrong choice.

So the teachers go to Staples, to Office Max, to Costco. To the Dollar Store. They search for economical supplies and equipment for their classrooms. The stores, knowing this, give the teachers discounts, which is nice of them, but begs the question of why the teachers have to go out and spend their own money to ensure their public school classrooms are adequately supplied in the first place.

As I said, my wife typically spends a couple of thousand dollars a year to supply her own classroom. She does not submit an invoice, bill or voucher to be reimbursed, nor would she be reimbursed or expect to be so if she did.

And when I do our tax returns, while I get to deduct the cost of bottled water I could sip while leaning back in the chair I bought in front of the newly installed air conditioner, while staring at the screen of my new computer and regaling in the newly installed sound system -- all of which are deductible -- my wife, as a teacher, is limited to a $250 educator's deduction for supplies purchased for use in her classroom. Typically, that deduction ends up reimbursing us a grand total of something in the neighborhood of eighty-five dollars.

So apparently, our politicians and our local newspaper who has led the charge in bashing just about everything about public school teachers you can possibly think of, have believed until now that it is a good and fair trade off to have our public school teachers spend about two thousand dollars out of their pockets annually in the hope that they will be reimbursed eighty-five dollars when they do their taxes.

Until now.

Now they want to take away the educator's deduction entirely.

Now they want our public school teachers to go out and spend thousands of dollars every year of their own money to supply their classrooms adequately, and get NOTHING back for it.

Think of that for a moment. Is there another profession out there where the employee is forced to go out and spend thousands of dollars of their own money each year just to have the supplies at hand to do the job, and then either not get reimbursed for the purchases or have the ability to deduct the cost on their tax returns? Would you take that job? On top of that, would you take a job in which you were forced to spend thousands of dollars out of your own pocket every year just to have the supplies on hand to do the job, knowing you were not going to be either reimbursed or be able to deduct the cost on your taxes, all the while putting up with the daily abuse from the public, led by those very same politicians and newspapers that would deny you proper funding?

That's what I thought.

What I do for a living is nice. Mom gets to tell her friends i am her son, the lawyer. Well, somebody has to do it. I get to deduct everything.

My wife, who has a career that is more important than anything I or any of my clients will ever do will now get to deduct nothing.

All this in the face of laws that require classrooms to be adequately funded. Laws that for some unknown reason have to be fought for regularly in court and in the court of public opinion.

All this in the face of union contracts that require the classrooms to be adequately supplied, and do not require the teachers to spend their own money to do so.

So here is a suggestion for our public school teachers.

STOP BUYING THE SUPPLIES.

You are not required by any law or contract to buy the supplies yourself. Force the school district to buy everything -- just like they are supposed to in the first place.

If the parents complain, give them a list of supplies that you believe will be needed so that their children will be able to learn, and let them pay for it. It sounds cruel, but I would be willing to bet that if all the teachers stopped buying supplies, parents would start going to school board meetings, like they don't but should, in order to complain. The school boards would then start going to the politicians to agitate for proper funding. Maybe they would prioritize pencils in the classrooms over lattes in the administrative offices.

And ultimately maybe....

Expenses fronted by teachers for their classrooms would be just as reimbursable and deductible as the purchase of a cell phone made by an attorney for his practice so he can yammer away with his clients while in his car, also deductible, while driving to and from court, parking, tolls and mileage also deductible.

And then I woke up.

tuesday night cannot come quick enough

The election is tomorrow.  The polls close by mid-evening in just about all states.  

I cannot wait.

By about nine o'clock tomorrow, it may possibly be safe to turn on my television again, as long as I do not accidentally turn the dial to the fox cheerleading network.

I was watching the evening news last night. In the middle of reporting the mayhem of the day, they took a commercial break and went to the other mayhem. Five commercials came on. Each was a political ad, one of them repeated within the sequence. Each blasted the adversary, claiming in no particular order that he/she was in favor of higher taxes, illegal immigrants coming to the good old USA for no other reason than to kill us all, killing jobs to the point of eliminating any hope of working again, and causing traffic jams. None of the ads, if one thought about it, had any ring of truth to them at all.

None. Well maybe the one about traffic jams did.

None of the ads made a single mention of why we should vote for that candidate on the candidate's merits, rather than why we should not vote for his/her opponent.

None. Not a single one.

Throughout the evening, as commercial breaks arrived at the various stations we watched, the process repeated itself. Not a single political ad came on touting the merits of the candidate and what the candidate stood for rather than why we should not vote for the other guy, usually aired in hysterical fashion, with ominous music playing in the background and a photo of the adversary in the most unflattering light, facial expression or pose they could possibly have found short of a photo of the candidate naked with barnyard animals.

We did not even get the standard candidate's spouse stands in front of the camera and tells us what a wonderful guy/gal he/she is married to, and how he will be just as wonderful for you, ending with the family, including their parents, grandparents and 2.4 children, posing in front of the ancestral palace that has housed eighteen generations of Smiths, all of whom were mayor of Padookatown, Nowhere, USA going back to the Mayflower.

Don't you long for the day, if it ever really existed, when candidates told us what they actually stood for and what they actually intended to do in office? And not simply in generic, meaningless terms?

So the question is now posed:

Of the candidates who are running for office this time whom you plan to vote for, can you say why you are voting for that candidate, as opposed to why you are not voting for the other guy? I bet most of you, aside from the usual drivel we hear from Washington, or our state and local capitals, cannot really and truly say why you are voting for any one particular candidate instead of why you are not voting for the other guy.

And that is what is wrong with us.

guns. the next chapter

"I do not want your thoughts and prayers.

"Thoughts and prayers will not bring back the dead or unwound the wounded.

"Thoughts and prayers will not prevent the next attack, and we all know the next attack is coming.  The only questions are when and where".

-- from "guns" an essay published here on October 4, 2017 in response to the Las Vegas shootings.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, now we know the when and the where.

And we also know the how many.

Add to the 59 in Las Vegas the 27 in Sutherland, Texas.

While we're at it, add to that total all of the gun victims since Las Vegas.  According to www.gunviolencearchive.org, since Las Vegas, there have been twenty-eight incidents of mass shootings resulting in twenty-seven deaths and ninety-seven injuries.  See, http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting.

So in 36 days, there have been at least 30 mass shooting incidents in this country, resulting in at least 113 deaths and somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 injuries.

And this does not even count the casualties from single, discrete shootings.  That, Mr. President, is the real "American Carnage", and nothing is being done about it.  There has been some noise about outlawing the use of butt stocks, those wonderful doohickeys that can turn a semi-automatic weapon into an illegal fully automatic weapon, but nothing has been done about this yet.  Don't expect it to happen.  The NRA has been in all out mode in congress telling those morons that guns don't kill.  People do.  The idiots are now debating criminalizing people so that the guns are kept safe from them.

But they will not debate criminalizing the actual weapons of mass destruction among us.

Instead, we once again get their empty thoughts and prayers, and the usual platitudes of how in an open society, there is nothing you can do about this.  They gnash their teeth and wave their arms, pausing long enough to make sure the cash stuffed in their pockets from the gun lobby doesn't fall out.

But they will not do or even admit the obvious.

They will not admit that if you outlaw guns, then the guns disappear in the vast majority of incidents such as occurred today in Sutherland Springs, and the casualty count goes way down.

They will not admit that if you are too loony to drive a car, you are too loony to own a gun.

They will not admit that if you have already been convicted of a violent felony, you should not be allowed to own a gun.  You cannot vote, which last time I looked did not kill anyone, unless you count the last presidential election, but you can walk into a church with an AR-15, one you all but advertised you were going to use, and blow away the congregation.

They will not admit that ownership of a weapon carries with it certain responsibilities that should carry consequences if not lived up to.

They will not admit that manufacture and sales of certain weapons also entail a certain level of responsibility that should also have consequences if not met.

In each and every instance of gun violence, of shootings, there is one single factor present each and every time.

The Gun.

Eliminate the gun, and there is no shooting.

How difficult is this to understand?

So we get to see thoughts and prayers again, and we are now Texas Strong, just as we have been Las Vegas Strong and San Bernadino Strong, and Charlotte Strong and Orlando Strong and.. well, you get the point.

And tonight our hearts are in Texas.  Of course they are.  How could they not be?

But, once again, our thoughts and prayers, our hearts and minds, and our utter bewilderment will not bring back the dead.

Only our spineless politicians can do anything to at least prevent the next empty thoughts and prayers moment, but you can just about guarantee that the NRA and their rest of the gun lobby buddies are already hard at work.

So once again, until the rest of us wake up, the only questions left are when, where and how many.

Get ready to be Some Town, USA Strong soon.

complicity

Well, it's about time that a republican in office said what the rest of us already know. But no, Senator Flake, you don't get to take a bow for calling the moron in office a dangerous fool who is leading both this country and world to unmitigated disaster, and announcing you won't be complicit.

You already are.

And so are you, Senator Corker, and you, Senator McCain.

Each of you voted in favor of every single one of the unqualified, corrupt swamp rats that now make up our cabinet.

Each of you voted for Betsy DeVos, knowing that she owned charter schools and had every intention of changing regulations that would personally benefit her. Each of you turned the other way when she rescinded rules protecting women on campus from being raped. Each of you have been completely silent while she has dismantled protections for our special education students, the single most vulnerable among our most precious commodity, our children.

Each of you voted for Tom Price, even though it was obvious that he violated the law in purchasing and dumping stock in companies that benefited from legislation he was considering. None of you said a word about his use of military and government airplanes at the public's expense.

Each of you voted in favor of Steve Mnuchin for Secretary of the Treasury in spite of his knowingly hiding two billion in income from his disclosure statements and then trying to explain how he, a heavy hitter at Goldman Sachs, could not figure out the complexity of the financial disclosure form.

Each of you voted for both Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zincke knowing they had conflicts of interests that would completely bar them from working in the field that they now head. Mr. Pruitt spent a career suing the Environmental Protection Agency trying to get them to roll back regulations that protect us, all so that his friends could make a larger profit. The same for Mr. Zincke, who conducted an exhaustive investigation of national parks and monuments that would lose their designation upon his say so while simultaneously vacationing in the Greek islands at our expense.

Each of you voted for Ben Carson, who declared that he was not qualified for the position he was nominated for, but accepted anyway.

Each of you voted for Rick Perry, who could not remember and probably cannot spell the name of the department he now heads, which by the way, is the department that controls the nation's nuclear capabilities.

I could go on. Look at the cabinet. Nearly every single one of them has spent a career fighting against what they are now charged with heading, and now that they are cabinet secretaries, continue to fight against the very interests they are charged with protecting.

And each of you voted to allow them to do so.

Each of you turned a blind eye when he continuously debased his office and every tradition this country holds dear. No financial disclosures? Ok. Emoluments clause? What's that? Conflicts of interest and self-dealings at every turn? Nothing to see here. A psychopathic urge to declare war on anyone he disagrees with? Why else do we have a military? Tweets as official government pronouncements? Have you ever seen somebody so in tune with technology?

And where were each of you as he spent the last few weeks insulting a pregnant lady who just lost her husband who was serving this country and sacrificed his life -- for what?

But he insults a couple of you in congress and now he's a dangerous, deranged fool.

Newsflash to Senators Flake, Corker and McCain. Oh, and to you too Senators Sasse and Graham:

He was a psychopathic fool when he declared for office, and when he ran for and was elected. And he has not changed. Just because you come out and pooh pooh his behavior once in a while does not make you a hero. It makes you COMPLICIT because you promoted all this, you campaigned for all this, and you condoned all this, just so that your political party could be in power, the good of the country be damned.

Well damn you. Every single one of you.

You are not heroes. You are not straight shooters. You are cowards.

No, let me clarify that. You are fucking treasonous cowards, because you knew this was going to happen, and you let it happen all so that you could bar innocent refugees from entering a country founded by refugees, doing so because they don't look or talk like us.

So no, Senator Flake,you do not get to go to the well and say you are not going to be complicit in the debasement and destruction of our traditions and in what made this country the greatest on earth until January 20 of this year. You especially don't get to announce that you are leaving government, thereby allowing some other fool possibly with a similar background and political bent as the fool in the White House to take your place, and now when you have nothing to lose, point out what the rest of us already knew.

Not when you were in a position to stop it before it started, when you knew what was going to happen, but voted to allow him to destroy us anyway.

You do not get to go to the well, with your voice cracking with emotion and say No More!!! That time was months ago, and you allowed it to happen.

So now, you have a year left. 'And so do you Senator Corker. And the rest of you. That is plenty of time to at least try to reverse this nonsense. I do not believe a single word any of you said until you actually do something other than try to give rich guys such as the billionaire in chief and yourselves tax breaks beyond your wildest dreams while paying for them with my 401K.

Call him out. Bring on the articles of impeachment. It should not be difficult to figure them out. The more difficult issue will be figuring out when to stop adding to the articles.

Want to do it quickly? There's the 25th Amendment. There isn't a certified health care professional out there, with the possible exception of the guy who said he had heel spurs who would not say he's insane or at least not mentally capable of fulfilling his constitutional duties in a sane, rational and safe manner.

Until you do that, you are the problem as much as he is or will ever be. He may not be able to help himself, but you were among the only ones who could have prevented this. So no. You do not get to take a bow now.

Damn you.

Damn every single one of you complicit sons of bitches.

gold star condolence calls

I do not have training in grief counselling.  I have no background in psychology, other than taking a "gentleman's C" in basic undergraduate psychology courses at Penn that I probably did not deserve.  I have no on the job experience in international diplomacy, unless you count the time I deposed an attache to the UN mission from Pakistan, and ended up getting punched by him during the proceedings, which is a story for another time.  I am not a military veteran.

I am not all of these things, but I am a human being, hopefully one with at least a little bit of empathy towards the feelings and human condition of my fellow man.  I also believe I am possessed of at least half a brain, and a few ounces of common sense, which many may disagree with.

All of this being said, I offer the following script to be used by the neanderthal in chief for his next phone call to a gold star family, who has just lost a loved one killed in action overseas:

"Hello.

"On behalf of this very grateful country, Melania and I wanted to extend our condolences and very best wishes to you and the rest of your family and your friends for the loss of _______________.  To that, let me add our personal condolences as well.  You and your family, and especially your son/daughter are in our thoughts and prayers.

"I did not know your son/daughter personally, but I have been told by his/her commanding officer that he/she was brave, loyal and kind, and had the respect and admiration of his//her entire unit.  We know that he/she was willing to lay down his/her life and make the ultimate sacrifice defending our freedoms and the ideals this country was founded upon, and for this we will always be grateful.

"Your son/daughter was one of the best, and we are so very sorry for your loss.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

That's it.  That is all you need to say.  Please do not ad lib or go off script.  We know how that generally turns out for you.

I know we risk a lot by including the last sentence, but there has to be some sort of an ending.  Besides, most of the time, the response of the family is going to be something along the lines of "your call and your thoughts are enough" and that ends the call after you say "God Bless" and hang up. 

It may be delicate at at time like this, but in reality, the words you chose are very simple, because in the context of what is appropriate, there are not that many to choose from.

So do yourself and the rest of us a favor, and just read the above over the phone.  Heck, unless you are skyping, you are on the phone.  The grieving parents/widows/children will not know you are reading from a script, and probably will not care.  You do not even need to care yourself.  Just read the script, and make it sound like you care.  If you can't do it, hire somebody.  Alec Baldwin could do it.  Come to think of it, I would possibly be available.

You know where to find me.

guns

I know a guy who lives in the great American West.  I am not going to name him or where he lives.  I am not even going to give him a pseudonym.  Well, maybe I'll call him the Gun Guy.

Anyway, a few years ago, black talon bullets, the ones that expand outward into a sharp prism like pattern upon impact with their target thereby creating and inflicting the maximum possible damage, were going to be outlawed.  The bullets had come to be known as "cop killers".  In their wisdom, the geniuses in congress never did get around to completely outlawing these bullets that have absolutely no use in civilian life, but some state governments, seeing the carnage or the potential for carnage that these bullets posed did.  So, at least on the federal level, there was a threat that the cop killer bullets were going to be outlawed, but nothing ever came of it.

But that did not stop the Gun Guy.

When Gun Guy thought black talon bullets were going to be outlawed in his state, he went straight to his local gun shops and bought up cases and cases of these bullets.  As many as he could find.  As many as the shops would sell him.  He then brought them back to his home, where he stored these cases in his garage, I guess because he could not store them anyplace else in his house.  They barely fit on the shelves in the garage.  He proudly showed me the boxes of these bullets.  He then admitted that he could not hunt with them, nor could he target shoot with them, as they were not practical for either use.  In jest, I asked if he planned on hunting humans, which he rightfully laughed off.  I then asked if he had any of the bullets loaded in any of the weapons he had in his house to use in case he needed to defend himself from an unwanted intruder, and was told that he would not use these bullets in his house because of the potential collateral damage they would cause to his property, even if it meant defending his life.

So, Gun Guy spent thousands of dollars, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars, on bullets he never could and never would use.  Why?

"Nobody in Washington is going to tell me what I can buy".

I called Gun Guy a moron.  We walked out of the garage and into his house.  We never talked about his armory again.

And in a nutshell, that demonstrates what the rest of us are dealing with.

Which brings me to Las Vegas, the latest stop in the can you top this mayhem tour of the goons who run the NRA.

It is illegal for a civilian to own an automatic weapon, the kind that I am told can fire up to nine bullets per second.  The reason should be obvious to anyone.  There is no legitimate reason for a civilian to need a weapon that fires nine bullets a second.  Self defense would seem to dictate that one single shot, or perhaps two or three should do the job.  So you cannot go into Joe's Gun Shop and buy a fully automatic weapon.

But in Nevada, you can go into Joe's Gun Shop and for somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks, you can buy a modifier that turns a semi-automatic weapon, which for some reason is legal to own, into a fully automatic weapon, which is not.  Let us contemplate this lunacy for a moment.

You cannot buy a fully automatic weapon, but you can buy something to modify a weapon that is sort of automatic along with a product that has no use other than to make your sort of automatic weapon fully automatic.  You can make both purchases simultaneously and legally.  You might as well hang a sign around your neck while making the purchase that announces to the dealer that you intend on taking your sort of automatic weapon home and converting it into a fully automatic weapon, which the dealer is not allowed to sell to you.

And that is legal in Nevada.

And you can take that now fully automatic weapon, and load it with cop killer bullets.

And use it.

You can sling that now fully automatic weapon over your shoulder and walk around Las Vegas showing off to the world the immense size and firing power of your penis.... I mean your weapon, you know, the gun, not your penis, because Nevada is an open carry state.  You can announce to the world that you bought a sort of automatic weapon and converted into a fully automatic weapon, which is illegal to buy, and in Nevada, that is legal.

You can then take as many of those weapons as you want into a large hotel/resort/casino in Las Vegas and openly carry that cache to your suite on the 32nd floor of the hotel, a suite that overlooks the venue of a large outdoor country music festival, because in Nevada that is legal, and nobody will stop you.

You can then bring hundreds, maybe thousands of rounds of ammunition up to your 32nd floor suite overlooking a large outdoor country music festival, where you have brought and set up dozens of modified, and now fully automatic weapons, and nobody will stop you because in Nevada, this is still legal.

You can then spend three days in your suite setting up your weapons in such a manner as to aim them in the general direction of a large outdoor country music festival, because until you overtly threaten anyone or fire the weapons, in Nevada, that is legal.

And the great part about all of this, aside from the fact that all of this is legal in Nevada, is that all of the casinos have comprehensive surveillance systems throughout the common, public areas of the grounds.  I know this because I have represented a number of casinos over the years in my law practice.

So the hotel/resort/casino knows that you are carrying dozens of weapons into your suite, although I will concede that the surveillance may not have picked up on the fact that you were also carrying all those rounds of cop killer bullets, but they will do nothing about it, because in Nevada carrying all those weapons and all that ammunition through a hotel lobby into your suite is perfectly legal.

Move on.

Nothing to see here.

You can then spend a few days setting cameras up in your suite that will let you know if the police or hotel security is coming to see if you are having a nice day while you set up your array, because in Nevada, this is all legal.

And then the firing starts.

And in one instant, which cannot be stopped, because everything that led up to that one instant is legal in Nevada, everything changes.

Fifty-nine people are dead.

More than five hundred are wounded.

And the NRA wants to make it legal to put silencers on those weapons.  Why?  To protect the hearing of the shooters.  It seems to me that for five bucks, they could buy ear plugs.  In the mean time, at least the rest of us can hear where the shots are coming from and make some sort of attempt to find cover, even if it is just about impossible to run from somebody shooting up to nine cop killer bullets a second at you.

And by the way, they also want to further loosen the restrictions on fully automatic weapons.

And they also want to prevent jurisdictions from restricting people from buying these weapons of mass destruction and carrying them into their state where concealed or open carry is not permitted.  In other words, they would like it so that that you can go to Nevada, where all of this is legal, and take your stash to California, where is it not, and make it so California can do nothing about it.

And they say now is not the time to talk about this.  So when is the right time?  Just let me know.  I will be there.  I will look you, the NRA, the gun manufacturers, who we all know are the same people, and their bought and paid for buddies in congress in the eye, and tell them this one -- and all the other ones -- is on you.

I do not want your thoughts and prayers.

Thoughts and prayers will not bring back the dead or unwound the wounded.

Thoughts and prayers will not prevent the next attack, and we all know the next attack is coming.  The only questions are when and where.

We do not want thoughts and prayers.  We want action.

The ultimate job of our government is to protect us.  That is what they say when they go to foreign lands and shock and awe a civilian population that has done nothing to us.  But protection starts at home.

And protection does not mean to protect profits of gun manufacturers.

Repeal the Dickey Amendment and allow government funds to be used to study the public health effects of gun violence.  We all know what every single one of those studies will find.

Repeal the laws that protect gun manufacturers from civil liability.

GET THE GOD DAMN GUNS OFF THE STREETS AND OUT OF THE HANDS OF THOSE WHO HAVE NO BUSINESS OWNING OR POSSESSING THEM.

We are watching.  The NRA likes to remind you that they vote.

WE VOTE TOO, AND THERE ARE MORE OF US THAN THERE ARE OF YOU.

those pesky puerto ricans

"Such poor leadership ability by the mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help.  They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort".
-- Donald J. Trump, September 30, 2017 (There.  I said his name).

Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico about ten days ago.  It was a category four storm, carrying sustained winds of up to 155 miles per hour, leaving behind what can only be described as total devastation.  For ten days now, there has been virtually no electricity, no water, little food, fuel, hope and most importantly, virtually no help from our government.

Almost immediately, it became apparent that the storm would leave in its wake the potential for a human catastrophe the likes of which we have never seen before, as the population desperately scrambled to stay alive without power, fuel, food or water, or any practical way to get any to it.

As of 2015, there were approximately three and a half million (that's 3,500,000 for those of you who need to see numbers) people living in Puerto Rico.  That's three and a half million people who are citizens of this country, even if they do not get to vote in federal elections, even if many of them are of darker skin tone, and even if many of them do not speak English.  So what?  They are all American citizens.

Even more important, they are all human beings.

So, the reaction has been what?

After nearly complete radio silence for days, the occupant of the White House went on the air to say that he was doing a "fantastic" job responding to this humanitarian crisis.  What exactly he had been doing up until that moment that was so fantastical remains a mystery to the rest of us.  Right after making the announcement, it is believed he visited his orthopedist to get the shoulder he dislocated from patting himself on the back surgically reattached.  He then strongly implied that one of the problems was the fact that Puerto Rico was struggling under massive debt that had crippled the economy of the Island, which seemed to further imply that he was reluctant to respond to a humanitarian crisis because those suffering owed money to those who could provide the relief, or that the storm was divine retribution for not paying the bills on time.

If only his creditors and the courts had reacted the same way each time he or one of his "world class" companies fell into massive debt and filed for bankruptcy.

Right after that, as emergency supplies began arriving at the port in San Juan and just sat there, we began to question what was being done to help our people, our fellow Americans, who were getting beyond desperate.  We were told by those on the ground, that the supplies could not be delivered due to a lack of drivers, who were obviously at home trying to somehow survive and save their families, a lack of fuel and the fact that most roads remained impassable.  So, where were the helicopters, the army of national guardsmen, and the aid professionals sent by the government who can drive trucks, the tankers who could deliver the oil, provide humanitarian relief and put boots on the ground to start making the roads passable enough to deliver food, water, medicine, fuel, etc.?

In the interim, further shipments of relief supplies sat off the coast and could not be delivered because of the Jones Act.  What is the Jones Act?  Look it up.  46 USC 688 and 46 USC 30104 for those who want to bother slogging through the United States Code.  The Jones Act was originally codified in 1920, and remains on the books to this day. 

In short, the Jones Act exists, at least in part, to protect the United States Merchant Marine by requiring all goods transported by water between the ports of the United States be carried by United States flagged ships, constructed in the United States, owned and manned by citizens of the United States.  There is nothing in the statute that either obliges or prevents anyone on board from taking a knee as the ship enters port.  Foreign ships inbound with cargo are not allowed to stop and offload their cargo at certain locations, specifically including Puerto Rico, without paying a significant tariff on the goods on board.  As a result, many of these shippers simply do not send their goods via water to Puerto Rico in the first place.

The effects of the Jones Act are bad enough; however, it is not difficult in times of emergency to overcome the hurdles to humanitarian aid presented by the Act.  All that is needed is an executive order by the president waiving the Act and allowing the aid to flow.  He did that almost immediately for Texas after Hurricane Harvey.  Texas went for him in the election.  Ditto for Florida after Hurricane Irma.  Florida also voted for him in the last election.  He did not do that for Puerto Rico until he was practically shamed into it.  He only did it after originally explaining that he was not going to waive the Jones Act for Puerto Rico because the American shipping companies did not want him to do it.  In other words, the potential protection of profits of American shippers was more important to this guy than saving lives of American citizens in Puerto Rico.  Nearly three and a half million of them. 

And when he did get around to finally doing the right thing, his order waiving Jones Act requirements, issued September 28, only waived the requirements for ten days.  This at  time when it is generally understood that it is going to take months, if not years, if not our entire lifetimes for Puerto Rico to get back to where it was before the storm hit.  So eight days from now, Puerto Rico is going to be right back where it was ten days ago, unless he can be prodded or shamed into doing something again.

Puerto Rico does not vote in presidential elections.

Puerto Rico has a large population that does not speak English.

Many Puerto Ricans do not look like "us".

Besides, as our nitwit in office told us yesterday, Puerto Rico is an island.  It is surrounded by water.  Lots of it.  As Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station said yesterday, we would all like to thank the president for filling us all in on what an island is.  We never would have known otherwise.

Throughout this time, politicians in Puerto Rico; specifically, the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, and the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, complimented the president, telling us all that the president had been responding to all their requests.  While they were complimenting the president, it was clear that the situation on the island (surrounded by all that water) was becoming more and more desperate by the moment.  To many of us, both the governor and the mayor made their statements knowing that the only way to get something out of this president is to compliment him.  So to save their people, they said he was fully responsive and on top of everything.

Until they could not say it any longer.

This has gone past the point of desperation.  People -- American People are dying.  People are dying of thirst.  People are dying of starvation. They are dying because they cannot get their medications.  They are dying because they are shut off from the rest of the world while our president is more concerned with the profits of American shippers and whether or not football players are standing at attention for the national anthem.

Finally, the mayor could not play the game any longer and criticized the lack of response from our government to save its own citizens.

"We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy".

His response?  A tweet.

His people are dying, and he responds with a tweet.

And the tweet, of course, lashes out at the mayor, accusing her of poor leadership.  Well it takes one to know one...

The tweet concludes with a statement that Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans "want everything".

No, they just want help.  They want enough food and water so the citizenry will not starve to death, medical supplies for the sick and wounded, and help starting the rebuilding of their homes, their infrastructure and their lives.  We did not seem to have that sort of trouble in Texas or Florida.  As far as I can tell, at this point, he has not asked congress for anything for Puerto Rico, although he has repeatedly told us what a fantastic job he is doing.

Aside from the lack of concrete assistance, the lack of a plan, the lack of urgency, and the basic lack of humanitarianism, the tweet brings to mind that old stereotype of lazy Hispanics who want nothing more than to live off the largess of the rest of us, resurrecting an old canard that insults everyone, not just Hispanics.  Especially not Puerto Ricans.  Not now.  Not ever. 

I would like to think that real aid is on its way.  I would like to think that there is much more going on to help than appears apparent from what we have seen on television, even on the Fox Cheerleading Network.  One would hope that the allusion to the lazy Puerto Rican bringing all of this upon themselves is not what the president meant.

But then again with this guy, you never know.

some thoughts on kneeling during the national anthem

Since nobody in particular asked, I thought I would add my two cents to the National Anthem/NFL debate.

During the time I participated in sports through high school and then in college, the anthem was played at just about every event, except perhaps little league games.  Nobody missed the fact that the anthem was not played at little league games.  Nobody demanded that it be played.  At the organized high school and college games, everyone stood at attention during the anthem.  It was just the thing we did without thinking about it at all at the time.  If the anthem was not played, very few, if any, would have demanded to hear it.  At the games I played when the anthem was not played, nobody called a timeout to demand it be played.  Nobody missed the fact that it was not played at all.  Frankly, for many of us playing in the games, the anthem was an interruption in our pre-game preparation that we knew was coming, we knew we had to stand politely for, and we just wanted to get over with so we could get on with our preparations and the game itself.  Patriotism, real or otherwise, had nothing to do with it.

How or why the anthem came to be played before just about all games is not relevant to this discussion, other than to note that in the NFL, which seems to be the controversy du jour, it was not until 2009 that the teams even came out onto the field prior to anthem being played.  It was only when the government thought that in the interests of patriotism and recruiting folks to join the military that the teams were trotted out to stand at attention on the sidelines.

And they only did this because our government, in their great judgment about where to spend our money, paid the billionaire NFL owners millions annually simply to have a somewhat elaborate and entirely unnecessary pageant/ceremony associated with the flag and the anthem before each game.

Query whether or not the owners would have made the players come out and stand for the anthem if they were not getting paid to have them do it.  That stands for Jerry Jones, who owned his team prior to 2009 and who never made the players come out and stand for the anthem before he was paid to do it, and now says any of his guys who do not stand will be immediately fired.  I for one am really looking forward to Dez Bryant, Ezekiel Elliot, Dak Prescott, et. al. taking Jerry up on this, and watching him run out onto the field and fire them on the spot, thereby eliminating the possibility that the Cowboys will win the Super Bowl this year or that any minority NFL superstar, or anyone for that matter, will ever want to sign to play for the Cowboys again.

So there is no requirement by law that says anyone, including NFL players, has to stand for the anthem, although many folks think they should.  In fact, there is Supreme Court precedent in connection with the Pledge of Allegiance that says we cannot be forced to stand.  There is also nothing in the NFL collective bargaining agreement that says the players have to stand; therefore, as a condition of their employment, they do not have to, and the owners cannot stop them from kneeling, turning their backs, or eating a hot dog during the playing of the anthem, as many of those at home actually do if they are not using the time to go to the bathroom, nor can they discipline them if they choose not to stand.

Which brings us to the National Anthem and the present spreading protests, which he who is residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would have been far better off keeping his mouth closed about if he had any sense about the situation at all.

I never served in the military.  I never had any desire to.  I have family and friends who have served.  I have all the respect in the world for them.  I have all the respect in the world for all who served.  I also have all the respect in the world for those who kneel or who do not stand with their hands over their hearts during the anthem.  Doing so has nothing to do with respecting the flag, the anthem or our military.  It has everything to do with upholding the rights our military supposedly fights for.

When we send our military to defend this country, if we are not sending them to protect this country and its people, and to protect our rights under the Constitution, then what are we sending them for?  If we are sending them simply to make profits for oil companies, then the troops should be brought home and the oil companies should be told to protect their pipelines and their profits themselves.  I am not a citizen of the United States of Exxon.  If we are sending troops to fight and die for us simply to massage the ego of whomever is in charge at a given moment, bring them home, and kick the ego out of office.

There is not, and should not be an argument that our military is there to protect our rights under the Constitution, and that the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance exist to recognize our rights.

All of our rights.

Each and every one of us and each and every one of our rights.

One of those rights is that granted under the Constitution to petition our government with our grievances, as explicitly provided for under the First Amendment.  There is a reason that freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly is the first of the amendments.  It is that important.

When one is kneeling instead of standing for the anthem, one is expressing those very rights.  Considering that our military is fighting on our behalf for those very rights, I would ask who is right and who is wrong when Colin Kaepernick kneels on the sideline.  Mr. Kaepernick, who is quietly, and I would add respectfully expressing and asserting his rights or those who are denying his right to do so simply because they do not want to see it.  As long as the protest is done respectfully, there is nothing wrong and everything right about it.  Players quietly kneeling on the sideline shows no disrespect to anyone.  It simply makes a statement and upholds the right to protest as guaranteed under the First Amendment.

Besides, is there really a dispute that people of color, who were enslaved for nearly the first one hundred years of our history are still not treated equally?

Is there really a dispute that educational, housing, employment, etc. opportunities are much greater for whites than they are for people of color?

Is there really a dispute that whites are given the benefit of the doubt by law enforcement far more than minorities?

Is there really a dispute that when I am walking in a strange neighborhood at night and happen to pass by a police officer that I will simply nod to him and he will nod back, but if I were a minority, chances are I would be stopped and questioned over what I was doing there?

Really?

If you ask most veterans, while they have enormous reverence for the flag and for the anthem, nearly all of them will tell you that they fought or continue to fight for the rights granted to all of us under the Constitution.  That includes the right to protest peacefully.

So when Colin Kaepernick sees what is happening and decides to exercise his constitutional right to protest, is he really wrong?

And if we recognize the right to protest, who better, a star athlete who will be seen on national television or some guy who anonymously kneels in the stands of the game or at home?

So in the interests of peace and understanding, why don't we just stop playing the anthem before games.  Nobody will really miss it.  Nobody will complain when the players kneel in protest beforehand.

Even better, how about we address the problems those protesting point out instead of yelling about supposed disrespect of a piece of cloth that happens to have stars and stripes on it.

september 11

So that day has come upon us again.

Once again, I find myself wanting to hide and stay away from the onslaught of social media, urging me to "Never Forget", as if I could.  It certainly is not my intent to tell everyone or anyone not to commemorate this day, nor is this meant to insult the memory of anyone we lost or anyone who wishes to look back and contemplate the events of the day.  Like many other days, events, or experiences in life, this is personal to each of us and one that should be observed as one wishes.  If you believe that we should "Never Forget" and that the meaning of this day is that we should be patriotic on this day, then by all means, that is your right, and I will not try one bit to prevent anyone from doing so.

As for me, I don't want to forget, but I don't want to be awash in the tidal wave of "patriotism" that images of the towers, first responders, weeping statues of liberty and bald eagles can rain down upon me in a single day.

For three hundred and sixty-four days a year, we face a continuous torrent of hate postings calling all of us anti-american, haters, bigots, etc., simply because we have some basic disagreements over how we should be governed, over our form of government, over how we approach basic decency between us.  Much of this comes from our so called leaders and television commentators who all get way more attention than they deserve.  I admit that I am probably as much a part of that onslaught for a good many people on the right.  That being said, we come together for twenty-four hours a year because somebody else attacked us.

We don't seem to come together so much when it is a commemoration of when we attacked ourselves. Please note we do not come together April 19 every year.  What is April 19?  In case you forgot, that is the day of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 by "one of us".  We also do not seem to go into a national catharsis every year on December 14, which is the date "one of us" shot up Sandy Hook Elementary School.  That day was not even enough to get a package of common sense gun control legislation passed.

We also do not seem to come together so much when it comes to upholding decent human rights and dignities in this country.  It is worth remembering that the atrocities that occurred on September 11, 2001 were not perpetrated by every single Muslim in the world.  It is also worth remembering that there are any number of persons in this country who are just as American as anyone else, but either look different, sound different, worship a different god than you do, love somebody you personally would not fall in love with and live a lifestyle you do not want for yourself.

On this day, and every other day, they are just as American as you are.

On this day, they hurt just as much as you do.

On this day, they remember too.

So on this day, as I search for something to say, as if I or anyone else really has to, I come back to what I wrote and posted on Facebook as the tenth anniversary of that day approached.  It seems just as valid to me today as it did then:

"i was downtown at my office four blocks from the world trade center that day. i watched the second plane hit. i watched from my office as the first tower fell, and received word that the second tower fell while in the bomb shelter of the building. the attendant at the parking lot and i brushed a couple of inches of building dust and probable human remains off my car so i could drive home. at each corner was a national guardsman with rifles pointed straight at us. i don't intend to watch all the 9/11 hullabaloo tomorrow. i would like to spend a quiet day of reflection and relaxation, while not having the day shoved down my throat. i've had enough. i hope that doesn't make me a bad person".

God bless everyone one of those who we lost on that day, and may this be the year we finally remember each other with kindness and respect the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year.

impeach him or remove him from office NOW.

On the morning after the election, I wrote:

"While I accept the results of elections and he is going to be the president whether I like it or not, I for one cannot yet bring myself to even say his name right now.  My hope is that he can show me something very soon so that I can. Believe it or not, I hope he can show me something so that I can actually become proud that he is our president".

In spite of what you may have read from what I have written here and elsewhere, I truly believed what I had written at the time.  I truly hoped that with the campaign behind him, he would turn to governing, and that the immensity of the task would transform him from histrionic race baiting, misogynistic, etc. campaigner into something presidential and worthy of calling a leader.

Today, I surrender.

I am not going to get into the campaign complete with the pussy grabbing nonsense, the race baiting, and his refusal to state whether or not he would be willing to accept the result of the election if he lost.  The mere fact that he refuses to let go of the fact that he did not win the popular vote tells you he would, in fact, have willingly created a potential constitutional crisis if he had, in fact, lost the electoral college vote.

I am not going to get into the nearly all male lily white cabinet of curiosities he created to drain the swamp, including a collection of people who were primarily unqualified for the position appointed, including one who outright said he was not qualified for any position in the cabinet and then accepted a nomination to the position he now holds the very next day.  So we have a secretary of state who had no prior government or foreign policy experience, matched by a U.N. Ambassador who also had not foreign policy experience.  We have a secretary of education who does not believe in public education, but does believe we need guns in schools to protect the children from grizzly bear attacks.  We have a secretary of energy, who when he can remember the name of the agency he now heads, has no degree or experience in nuclear energy or arms, which he now presides over.  We have a secretary of the interior who has apparently discovered that a comprehensive study of national monuments he intends to remove from the protected list of national monuments can be conducted while smooching with his wife somewhere in the Greek Islands.  We now have a head of the environmental protection agency who believes he can protect the environment by removing every environmental regulation he can find.  What he does not believe in is climate change, leaving us in grand company with Syria and Nicaragua upon our withdrawal from the Paris Accords.

Etc.

No I am not going to get into that.

I am not going to get into the fact that in seven short months, he has denigrated the value of the United States of America to the point where North Korea...  NORTH KOREA... is talking and acting in terms that are being taken seriously as amounting to a threat of war against this country.  He is openly talking about starting a nuclear war with a peanut dictator, a war that considering the alliances of various countries involved, could thrust us almost instantly into a mass global nuclear event.  There is no indication whatsoever that he has given any thought to the consequences of his words or his actions that have either led to this moment or could follow his pushing the button.

I am not going to get into the fact that he cannot control himself to the point that his closest advisors have apparently given up on advising him to stay away from twitter.  I firmly believe in the first amendment, but would support legislation forbidding any president from posting ANYTHING other than perhaps directions for the public in the case of a national emergency on twitter.

I am not going to get into the fact that he violates the emoluments clause of the constitution daily via refusing to divest himself of his businesses or place them in a truly blind trust, while at the same time charging the government for offices in his buildings, rooms in his hotels, etc.  We will not even get into the nepotism involved in appointing family members to government position, who have no business being near any governmental position of authority.

I am not going to get into the fact that he can routinely denigrate in schoolyard terms anyone who has the temerity to oppose him, to the point where it can now reasonably be said that there will be no significant legislation of any kind that can be expected to be passed for the foreseeable future for the simple fact that he cannot get anyone in congress to work with him.  It takes a special kind of talent to get Mitch McConnell, whom I have previously called the worst person in the world, to no longer be on speaking terms with you. 

On the other hand, while he can routinely excoriate people, who unlike himself or anyone in his family, have spent their entire careers in public service, even if you do not agree with their politics, he cannot seem to unequivocally bring himself to condemn nazis, white supremacists and the ku klux klan.  You would think this is the easiest thing he would ever have to do; however, I have no doubt that I could get my cats to issue a clear condemnation of the nazis, white supremacists and the ku klux klan before I could get him to do it, and then not backtrack on his words the next day.  And I would not even have to offer the cats the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you ever saw.

I am not going to get into the fact that he apparently has never seen a fact he cannot lie about.  You have to wonder about the state of the presidency when it reaches the point where you can tell the president has said a lie simply because his lips are moving.

No, I am not going to get into any of this, even though he has turned us into the laughing stock of the world from all of the above and more.

I am simply going to point to today.

1.  He has brought us to the brink of war with North Korea, while at the same time increasing the number of troops dedicated to the quagmire in Afghanistan without any apparent strategy for how that is going to end this abomination, other than his assurance that we are in it to win it, which is about the same strategy I have used in the past in playing the lottery.  Hint, I have not yet won, but inspired by the president, next week, I will spend more money to play more numbers.  In the mean time, while he is bringing us further into war, for no real reason I can discern, today, he actually signed that order disqualifying transgenders from military service.  He can point to nothing at all that shows that patriotic persons who happen to be transgender cannot serve ably and honorably.  Instead, he hides behind the canard that unidentified generals have told him they cannot absorb the cost of gender transition surgery that obviously all transgenders are using the military to obtain.  I assume I will be seeing an executive order shortly banning the military from spending any money on viagra.

The bottom line on this is that at a time, when he is ramping up military adventure, he is reducing those eligible and who are otherwise qualified to serve.  In other words, he is deliberately setting us up to have a weakened military in a time of war.  

In my book, that is treason.

2.  He has pardoned a man, who is about as disgusting a figure in public life to come along in decades, not waiting for the courts to issue their final verdict in the form of a sentence upon him.  It appears quite possible that this pardon comes simply because the man supported his candidacy early and never wavered in his support.  You can support the policies of Joe Arpaio if you want.  It is certainly your right.  He was not convicted of any such policies.  He was convicted and found in criminal contempt of repeatedly ignoring federal court orders.  You cannot ignore or support this.  This is a country built upon the rule of law.  Without respect for the law, we are no better than any tinpot dictator in any banana republic, including North Korea.

And now, I am hearing and reading about talk that he is looking for ways to pardon himself, his family, friends and cronies from anything to do with Russia and Robert Mueller's investigation.

So in one single day, putting aside all the other nonsense since January 20, he has weakened the military simply due to the fact that he can't stand transgender people for no logical reason, and undermined the rule of law in this country.

I said on November 9, 2016 that I could not bring myself to state his name.  Now I can.

DONALD J. TRUMP IS A MONSTER.  HE IS A MENACE TO THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF THIS COUNTRY AND THE DEMOCRACY WE SEEK TO SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

DONALD J. TRUMP MUST BE STOPPED, AND THE SOONER THE BETTER.

DONALD J. TRUMP MUST BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE FOR THE GOOD OF THIS COUNTRY, AND FOR THE GOOD OF THE WORLD.

HE MUST BE IMPEACHED OR REMOVED VIA THE TWENTY-FIFTH AMENDMENT.

WE CANNOT AFFORD TO WAIT ANY LONGER.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???

With apologies to my mother, who does not like when we use certain language in describing events and feelings here on line...

We now know precisely how sincere his statement was yesterday.  It took only a day to walk it back.  It will take a lifetime to walk back our moral standing in the world.  In the mean time, where do the rest of us go to protect ourselves from the monstrosity that occupies the White House and the under the surface evil he has unleashed.

We are back to there are bad people on all sides.  Ok, there are bad people on all sides.  How many bad people on the left yelled nazi slogans in Charlottesville?  How many bad people on the left were there with a published purpose to let the world know that Jews, Blacks, Immigrants, Gays, Transgenders or anyone "who does not look like us" does not belong?  How many bad people on the left ran down the good folk on the right with their cars, killing and maiming along the way?  How many bad people on the left put those good little nazis on the right in hospitals?

But they were just protesting the removal of statues and renaming of a park.  Never mind that the statues were offensive to a very large percentage of the citizens of this country, many of those offended not being Jews, Blacks, Immigrants, Gays, Transgenders or anyone "who does not look like us".  Where does it stop, he wants to know.

No, it does not stop at Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson.  I may not have taken all the history classes at Penn, where I am ashamed to say he also attended, but if I search the back of my mind, I seem to recall something along the lines of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson being generals in an army that fought against the United States in the Civil War.  They were Americans who fought against their own country.  Translation -- they were traitors.  Worse, they committed treason against this country.  Last I looked, we did not erect statues and celebrate treason and traitors.

Yes, it does stop short of George Washington.  Last I looked, he was and is still called the father of this country.  He fought to establish this country, not to tear it apart.  I know you did not major in history at Penn, but I would have thought this knowledge was a basic requirement to entrance at the university.

This false equivalence is bad enough, but he used it to try to justify the behavior of nazis.

Think about that for a second.

The president of the United States just tried to justify the behavior of nazis.

NAZIS.

Holy shit.

He just tried to justify the behavior of nazis in this country, just barely a generation after THE greatest generation, of which I am sure he tries to think himself a part of, fought and died in a war to defeat nazis and save the free world.  Since that war, more than a generation has lived by "NEVER AGAIN".  When a list of the worst people in the history of the world is compiled, Hitler, the leader of the nazis, is always at the top.  There are countries in the world where just being a nazi is a crime.  That's how bad it is.

But according to this jerk, "there were many very fine people from both sides in the crowd".

I suppose those were the ones yelling "Jew will never replace us", because we know that the Jews had everything to do with the South being on the losing end of the Civil War, which led to the erection of the statue being taken down and the renaming of that park that all those very fine people were "concerned" about.

I may have missed the class that he apparently took at Penn where we were taught that the nazi salute was a call to arms for all the good people of the confederacy, and has since morphed into a source of cultural pride for them.  Maybe that's what those very fine people were there remembering.

Or maybe those very fine people were the ones walking around in white shirts with symbols of the old South emblazoned over their hearts, carrying tiki torches to remind everyone of the good old days when those lovable louts from the Klan rode into town all robed up and with torches so they could lynch the nearest uppity nigger.  Ah the history.  Ah the nostalgia.

Here's a clue for the clueless.

THERE ARE NO VERY FINE NAZIS.  THERE ARE NO VERY FINE GRAND WIZARDS OF THE KKK.  THERE ARE NO VERY FINE BLOOD AND SOILERS.  THOSE "VERY FINE FOLKS" ARE NOT BIDING THEIR TIME WAITING FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT TO CONVINCE EVERYONE ELSE THAT THEIR COMRADE REALLY DID NOT MEAN IT WHEN HE PUSHED US INTO THE OVENS, HUNG US FROM THE TREES ON THE EDGE OF TOWN, OR JUST SHOT US AND BURIED OUR REMAINS IN EARTHEN DAMS OUT IN THE COUNTRYSIDE.

Just because your daughter married a Jew does not make you one of us.  It also does not make you tolerant.  Some of the worst anti-semites, racists, etc., try to convince you that they are not who they really are because they "have a friend who is a (fill in the blank)".  I am sure Ivanka loves her husband.  That does not make you a true friend of any Jew on this planet, other than perhaps your son in law.

Let me clue you in further.

YOU ARE NOT ONE OF US.  YOU WILL NEVER BE ONE OF US.

There is no Jew who can now morally claim any part of their heritage and embrace you.  The same goes for people of color, women, gays, transgenders, immigrants, Native Americans, anyone who does not look like you, most people who do look like you, and anyone who has a brain and a heart.

You have ceded the moral ground permanently.  For crying out loud, the leader of fucking GERMANY, the birthplace of the nazis, came out with the appropriate statement.  She came out quickly, and without the need to be told it was the right thing to do.

The president of this country is supposed to be our moral compass.  We now have no compass, no rudder, no steering wheel, no navigational system.  We do, however, have all those good nazis and klansman who prevented an all out massacre last weekend, and their cheerleader in the white house.

We also have a congress who can now not avoid their moral and constitutional duty to this country to get this menace away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as fast as their grubby little minds can move him.

Until then, God help us all.