Tag: news

Are We Still a Democracy?

Are we still a democracy? I think that is a good question and not one asked hyperbolically or in the ‘sky is falling’ moment of hysteria or panic. Serious people are asking that question and the answers may not be to your liking. I struggle that I even have to ask that question, but one must in today’s America. A demagogue rules America by fiat and edict. Two reports offer a snap shot of the health of America’s democracy. You be the judge.

This past November the Charles F. Kettering Foundation published a report on Americans attitudes towards democracy.  This report was done in conjunction with Gallup, a respected polling organization.  

Their conclusion was, that overall, Americans were committed to democracy, but with clearly defined differences in how one’s age defines how one perceives democracy as an ideal and how one’s economic circumstances impact perceptions of democracy’s effectiveness in solving problems.  

If you are over 65 democracy is super.  A robust 80 percent are strongly committed to democracy.  If you are under 29 not so much.  Only about 53 percent say that democracy is the best form of government. Economics also played a role in how one perceived democracy is performing.  If you are ‘living comfortably’ about a third gave democracy a thumbs up.  Those who say it is ‘very difficult to get by’ only 12 percent give democracy a thumbs up.  For those that ‘feel disconnected from their communities’ or question their status in society are likely to question democracy’s ‘value and performance.’

In another report recently released, researchers at a Swedish University published a report on the global health of democracy.  Their tenth annual report.  According to the V-DEM Institute website, the report is an analysis of “….the largest global dataset on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries and territories from 1789 to 2025.  The report involves over four thousand scholars and other country experts and measures over 600 different attributes of democracy.” Go to the this link to read the report: https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy_Report_2026_lowres.pdf)

It does not look good for the world, much less the United States.  Devoting an entire section of the annual report, the authors addressed democratic backsliding in the United States. They conclude that the United States is no longer a liberal (small l liberal) democracy, primarily because of the unprecedented and rapid concentration and accumulation of power in the presidency and the dismantling of our constitutional checks and balances.  I think they are right. They also conclude that America’s fall from democracy to autocracy was done in record time.  Faster than both Turkey’s and Hungary’s slip into the autocratic abyss. In a rank ordered list of 179 countries for strength of democratic values and norms, America has slipped to 51st.  Yeah, make America great again.

So, it appears most Americans still believe in the great experiment called democracy, but, paradoxically, a majority do not believe democracy is working in America.  

Given the K-shaped economy, where wealth inequality continues to grow rapidly in America, it is no surprise that Americans tend to be skeptical of democracy, but strangely unskeptical of unrestrained capitalism.  Democracy doesn’t make one unequal, capitalism does. One should not conflate an economic system (capitalism) with a political system (democracy).  That’s not to say, however, that they are mutually exclusive; one should try to understand them as interacting spheres of power.  Our democratic decline is a reflection of America’s broken political economy.

The Kettering Foundation report does to some extent explain why many Americans, it seems, are indifferent to the collapse of American democracy. The V-DEM institute report shows the result of that indifference in hard numbers, at least at the federal level.

Where are we then as a country?  And where do we go from here?

At a federal level, yes, I think we are no longer a democracy.  Our system has collapsed.  Trump’s war in Iran is an example of our spectacular fall from a constitutional system of checks and balances to complete and utter deference to Trump by Congress.  Only an absolute monarch takes their country to war without consulting the people.  That is exactly what Trump did, and Congress cowered like the spineless shits they are.

The courts are still functioning as defined but has no ability to enforce its decisions.  These court decisions are theoretically enforced by the executive department, a department that in many instances has given the Court’s the middle finger. As such, Trump’s threat to take over the mid-term elections and challenge the results should be taken at full face value.  

At the state level, at least in Virginia, we still are a democracy.  Some states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida are authoritarian regimes, by my estimates.  Wrecking the barriers that separate church and state, restricting women’s rights, demanding schools teach white heritage and not real history, imposing voting barriers such as a de facto poll taxes (getting a passport for instance, which costs a couple hundred dollars), restricting and banning books, to list a few.

The question then becomes not only about democracy, but whether our social contract as a united country can survive, or is it in terminal decline?  Is it possible for America to remain a federation of united states, some liberal democracies while others theocratic autocracies? A king like president punishing states and rewarding others?

Fundamentally, and I acknowledge this, our perceived health of our democracy seems to be defined by where one is standing in the political spectrum. Some think Trump hasn’t gone far enough while others think he is gone way to far; many others just want to pay for gas and feed their family. It’s complex, it’s fluid, it’s uncertain. Our crisis of democracy, I think is a crisis of identity. It’s about whose America this is and whether democracy is the solution, or as some argue, the problem?

“I Didn’t Vote for This”

I think over the past weeks, if I got a quarter for every time I heard or read about a Trump voter saying, “I didn’t vote for this.” I could buy a box of chicken tenders and a Dr. Pepper at the local Elk Creek Store.

Mostly I think it is a bullshit dodge, a cop out, a self serving excuse. Given the chance to vote for him again, I believe, they would. Trump was pretty clear where he stood on most things and clearly articulated what he intended to do. So they knew damn well who and what they were voting for. Why? I think Trump’s racist and bigoted words and actions resonated with a majority of them and continues to resonate with them to this day.

His islamophobia and animus towards black and brown people were on full display during his campaign for a second term. His racist rhetoric was so vile and repulsive as to be disqualifying for high office. And that is without even factoring in his disastrous first term and attempted coup.

Now we learn of a woman who claimed in an 2019 FBI interview that Trump sexually assaulted her in 1984 at his Atlantic City Casino. These interviews were initially withheld from release of the Epstein files, but journalistic sleuths pointed out clues to their existence and they were later released, the Justice Department claiming an oversight.

The victim was 13 or 15 when she was raped. I believe her and she should have her day in court to demand justice for herself and other victims. You may recall that Trump oversaw the Department of Justice and FBI as President in 2019. A civil jury in 2023 found that Trump had sexually assaulted another woman in the dressing room at a department store in 1996. Notice any patterns?

Those that voted for him knew about his sexual predatory behavior. In addition to the 2023 civil jury findings, a majority were also aware of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tapes where Trump bragged about sexually battering women. Over two dozen women came forward with allegations of sexual misbehavior during his campaign for his first term in office.

So, Trump voter, don’t tell me that you didn’t vote for this. Yes, you did, and you damn well knew what you were voting for.

“It’s Not If, but When”

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

—Martin Niemöller

I try not to post more than one essay a week, but this week seems to warrant another.  After reading an article about a viral video of a 70-year-old bookstore owner who said he was “fucking angry’ before walking back into a haze of smoke and tear gas in Minneapolis, I wanted to research the back story of the quote he posted in his store. The one above.

The history of the person, and why he said or wrote these words, is just as important at the words.  

Martin Niemöller was a Lutheran pastor in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – which displays this quote on a wall as you exit the exhibits as a final thought — Niemöller originally ‘sympathized with Nazis ideas’ and supported the far right. However, when Hitler began to “interfere with the protestant church” he dared to criticize Hitler.  He spent seven years in prisons and concentration camps.  

For those who support the far right here in America that is your right. But when you stand by, and even cheer and gloat, when the government comes for migrants, liberal politicians, journalists, or late-night comedians, that quote should be a wakeup call.   Don’t think you are immune, you are not. It’s not if, but when they come for you.

“Guards of this Kind:” A Brief History of the Original Intent of Madison’s Second Amendment.

New York Times Reporter: “Do you see any checks on your power….”

Donald Trump:  “Yeah, there is one thing.  My own morality.  My own mind.  It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

No Mr. President, we the people can stop you.

What is happening in America is not normal.   When a president sitting in the White House, stewing in his own grievances and thirst for vengeance and proclivity to spectacle, says he is only bound by his “morality,” we as a nation are in deep trouble.  As is the world.

I know this essay’s title may make some folks uncomfortable, but please bear with me (yes, a pun). I am self-aware enough to understand that invoking the Second Amendment can be provocative. I struggled while writing this essay on a number of levels. First, is that it even had to be written. Given the words and actions of Trump, I feel it is necessary. On another level, I don’t want to be interpreted as calling for armed revolt. I do not want that. That would be insane.

My whole adult life was living, working, or traveling to conflict and war zones, failed and failing states, police states. I know that option to be unacceptable. On a third level, I feel too many Americans are indifferent or distracted or worn. down and just don’t give a shit, that only some people are impacted and they will never by touched. Inevitably, in a dictatorship, even it you agree with the dictator now, you will be touched and your soul will be crushed eventually as you tire of being told what to watch, what to read, and what to think. Because you are reading this, you know I hit the publish button.

I want to lay out my thoughts on the limits of power of the central government and what States can do once Trump and federal government blows past those limits.  The origin and intent of the Second Amendment figures prominently in any discourse about how to create “guards” to a tyrannical central government.

Blue states continue to get pounded by the Trump administration.  It routinely withholds funds from blue states as punishment for resisting his policies.  Incongruously, it is the blue states that provide most tax raised monies to the federal government, with red states getting more federal tax dollars in terms of spending than they actually put in. In essence, Trump is super charging the transfer of wealth from blue to red states.  Oh, the irony.

Trump targets blue states and cities with mass deployments of militarized immigration agents as punishment for deigning to treat migrants as human beings.  As the result of protests against these deployments, Trump federalized and deployed national guard units without traditional requests from state governors, and in all instances in blue states, against the wishes of the governor and the majority of the state’s peoples, to quell, he alleges, widespread violence, but we know it is to smother the people’s voices.  

Now he is deploying hundreds of additional Homeland Security agents to investigate alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social safety net programs, according to DHS’s secretary.  A calculated and chilling response to the protests over the killing of a woman by an ICE agent and the states demand to be included in the investigation of the homicide of Renee Good.  Incongruously, Trump condemns the death of protestors in Iran, but claims an American protestor shot and killed by an ICE agent was a domestic terrorist, and, intoned, deserved to die.  

Hey, Ayatollah in Iran.  News Flash:  Just rebrand Iranian protestors as deranged left wing domestic terrorists.  Then you are good to go.

This is what despots do.  They flood the streets with thugs and faceless paramilitaries and then sanction investigations to cover up murders. Nazis Germany’s Brown Shirts of the past are being reborn as combat fatigue wearing ICE agents.

This is what he will do to Virginia now that we will have a democratic governor and a state legislature controlled by democrats.  Expect payback with canceled programs, stopped federal grants, and deployments of Homeland Security agents to intimidate citizens.

The ability of a state to resist a tyrannical central government is how the Second Amendment was born.

What became the Second Amendment was not intended as an individual right to bear arms but a collective right of a state to bear arms to maintain its’ citizens inalienable rights.  Lord Dunmore, the English Governor of Virginia’s, attempt to seize the militias’ arms in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the outset of America’s first civil war was still fresh in the mind of the founding generation.  

It never crossed the minds of folks back then that the constitution needed to enumerate the right to own firearms for defense or hunting at the federal level.  Gun ownership – mostly muskets — was so ubiquitous and a traditional right in the colonies that enumerating the right would be ridiculous.  States had the right to regulate firearms and did so, most notably restricting possession primarily to whites.  

The Second Amendment was intended as a state’s right to maintain armed militias for their defense against a tyrannical central government.  It was a meant as bulwark of self defense against a large standing Army used by the central government to impose its will on a state or states. If you follow how the language of the amendment changed and unfolded, I think one can get a sense of what the intent was and how the amendment was seen and understood within a broader conception of constitutionalism, tradition, common law, and gun possession in the early republic.

On June 8, 1789, James Madison introduced nine propositions or resolutions for amending the Constitution. From these propositions the House of Representatives would derive 17 amendments, of which, ten would eventually become the Bill of Rights. Way down the list, buried in proposition four, after statements about religious freedom, freedom of speech and press, the right to peaceable assembly and petitioning for redressing of grievances, Madison, proposed what would become the second amendment.

The Annals of Congress contains the record of the running debates surrounding the amendments to the Constitution and reflect contemporaneous conceptions of the meanings of these amendments, and how they changed over the debates. Madison, borrowing from the other state constitutions and even the 1689 English Bill of Rights, proposed the following language regarding the right to bear arms (House Records, pp. 451-452):

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Madison’s propositions did not gain much traction in Congress. Members of Congress were more concerned with the mechanics of setting up a functioning government. The debates preceding and surrounding the discussions on the proposed amendments centered on funding mechanisms and structure of the various executive departments being contemplated. Madison nonetheless persisted, and on July 21 requested further consideration of the amendments. After “desultory” conversation on the amendments, they were referred to a committee of eleven, which included Madison.

Just short of a month later, the committee of eleven finished their work on the proposed amendments and presented them to the House of Representatives on August 17. Madison’s language on bearing arms was revised and read:

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms (House Records, p.778)

Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts, a veteran of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and who was one of three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution at the end of the convention, led the debate regarding the amendment to bear arms. His remarks are crucial, I think to understanding, the intent of this amendment. He states:

“This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of the Government; if we could suppose that, in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed (p. 778).”

Not one person during the debate contradicted or challenged Gerry’s assertion, which seems to state that the ability to keep and bear arms referred to the people’s ability to form militias as a collective defense against a tyrannical central government. The remainder of the debate that day on this amendment surrounded primarily the question of religious scruples and service in the militia.

After more “desultory” (I love that word) conversation, 17 proposed amendments to the Constitution were sent to the Senate on August 24. The bearing arms amendment was number 5 and read after some minor tweaking (Senate record, pp. 63-64):

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

On September 4, the senate, whose records of debate are not as detailed as the House’s records of debate, showed that senators objected to a number of the amendments, but without comment as to why. “On the motion to adopt the fifth article of the amendments proposed by the House of Representatives, amended to read as followeth: ‘a well regulated militia, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed:’ It passed in the affirmative” (Senate Record, p. 71).

So, there you have it, a brief but spectacular history of the origin of the Second Amendment.

Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller’s call to abandon America’s social contract and resort to a ‘state of nature’ where brute force is the first and only response should scare the shit out Americans.  This new dogma of ‘power, strength, and violence’ will fundamentally rewrite the world order but also crush America’s social contract between the people and the government:  the annihilation of the separation of powers, the demise of a democratic central government, and the eradication of shared sovereignty between the states and the central government.  That, good reader, is why we have “guards of this kind,” the Second Amendment. 

Let me be clear, I am not calling for armed revolt or violence against our central government or secession, I still believe in the vote and the power of the American people to reign in Trump.  But as Congress and the Supreme Court not only fail to curtail Trump’s excesses, and in fact enable him, what are the people to do?  

States are the peoples last bulwark against Trump and a despotic central government.  A new pposition is rising, however.   Not from spineless democratic leaders like Schumer, but from Republicans.  Republican Senators that voted to restrain Trump’s war powers received threatening profanity laced phone calls by Trump.  A sign he is losing control and trying to bully folks back into line.

What I ask is that our new, incoming governor, think long and hard about how to deal with an increasingly authoritarian and despotic central government that continues to ratchet up the level of violence against the people in targeted states and cities – maladministration as Eldridge Gerry put it.  The governor needs to develop contingency plans on when and how to resist, to include using the National Guard to defend our natural and inalienable rights as a free people of Virginia.  

It seems to me America cannot long remain a nation if Trump puts his boot on the neck of blue states while red states happily bend the knee to the tyrant in the White House. Time to mobilize once again, stay engaged, and get family and friends to vote this November.

America’s New National Security Strategy:  Let the War Dogs Loose.

Welcome to the New Year, I guess . . . . .

During New Year’s Day lunch with family the topic of predictions for 2026 arose.  Predictions ranged from Democrats winning the mid-terms, to Trump being removed from office for health reasons, to Ukraine falling to Russia.  I posited it will be a year of war, pointing to our country’s new national security strategy, particularly the part about the Western Hemisphere.

Little did we know two days later the United States would attack Venezuela, seize its President and his wife and transport them to Brooklyn, New York, to face drug trafficking charges (juxtapose that with Trump’s pardon of Honduras’s ex- president for drug trafficking) and declaring that America would “run” Venezuela, with a focus on its oil resources.  

Expect more such military strikes and attacks in the months leading up to the mid-terms.  This attack was predictable and conforms to the new national security strategy published this past November.  It is a roadmap to war in the Western Hemisphere, even global war.

In a section of the strategy paper invoking the Monroe Doctrine, — which coined a new term “The Trump Corollary” —  two new strategic dogmas for dominating the Western Hemisphere, ‘Enlist’ and ‘Expand,’  were fleshed out.  Our national security policy strategy is clear in the Western Hemisphere:  America will use force to seize and control assets it deems vital and strategic to America’s national interest …… if countries don’t kindly ‘enlist’ in our cause.  

Pointedly, the new strategy targets the very things we, America, paradoxically created through our own past racist policies of empire and exploitation.  America’s new hemispheric strategy of domination and control contains a measure of stick and carrot, ostensibly calling for willing partners, but like most domestic abusers, ready with a big stick or worse.  

It says, in part, “After years of neglect the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.  We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.  The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”  This includes further down the paper, “establishing or expanding access in strategically important locations,” as one of four pillars of this new robust Monroe Doctrine version 2.0.  

The call to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, a relic of late 18th century and early 19th century empire, says much about the mindset of the Trump administration.  A strategy stuck in an anachronistic mentality of empire, great powers, and white supremacy.  It does not bode well for America.  

This ostensibly back to the future strategy fails to recognize the complexities of today’s world.  Much less acknowledge that the days of empire and colonialism died in the early to mid-20th century, first in the fields of Flanders and then in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.   It is a mindboggling strategy that will be ruinous.

Are we really going to return to the days of a Darwinian global nation-state race to empire and war?  

One can read “control strategically vital assets” as Venezuelan oil reserves, Panama’s canal, and the minerals in Greenland or the arctic.  I think Greenland and the Panama Canal are Trump’s next military objectives, followed by Cuba, and then eventually seizing parts of the Arctic under Canadian sovereignty.    

Seizing Greenland, an autonomous region under Danish sovereignty, would provoke a broader war. Denmark is a member of NATO, and an attack on Denmark would be an attack on all members of NATO.  No doubt Denmark would invoke Article 5 of the treaty, which would oblige all 31 members (really 32 if you include the US), to come to Denmark’s aid militarily. Ditto if Trump attempts to seize parts of Canada that he deems of strategic, vital interest.  The potential is a catastrophic war with Europe and Canada, global isolation, the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and devastating collapse of US exports to the world.

Strangely, for a purportedly modern, 21st century security strategy, the strategy paper reads, in part, like a white Christian nationalist cultural manifesto.  Akin to the “white man’s burden” of late 19th century empire.  In a section titled ‘What America Wants,’ it calls for the “restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long-term security is impossible. We want an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age.” It laments Europe losing its whiteness and thereby, its culture.  The Right wing’s racist conspiracy ‘Replacement Theory’ has become a corner stone of our national security strategy.

This new security strategy is a dangerous call to return American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, as part of a broader division of the world into global ‘spheres of influence,’ presumably he big three being China, Russia, and the United States.  Yes, Russia because Russia is, for Trump, a fellow traveler, an archetype of white male Christian patriarchy and nationalism.  

The past age of empire ended with two world wars.  The historical impacts of these European colonial empires are the root causes of today’s wars, tensions, and conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia between Pakistan and India, Sudan’s civil war, and other places too numerous to list.  Mass migrations to Europe are a result of these colonial conditions that persist to this day. 

America’s empire building and meddling in the Americas contributes directly to mass migration to our southern border.  Decades of America’s heavy hand, coups, regime change, looting and expropriation of natural resources by American corporations, encouragement of assassinations and death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s resulted in weak, corrupt states, an absence of civil society, the strangling of the rule of law, oligarchy, endemic  poverty, and the rise of the Narco-state.  

Haiti was a particular country of scorn and hate by America (and France) over generations as the result of its successful slave revolt that the rid the country of French rule.  The South’s slave society feared the example set by black Haitians fight for freedom would spread to their slaves.  Haiti would be punished and looted for well over a century by both France and the United States.  Haiti’s failed state status is on us, yet Trump and the right vilify them as pet eaters, as savages.  Who’s the real ‘savage’ in this story?  

Pointedly, the new strategy targets the very things we, America, created through our racist policies of empire and exploitation.  America’s new hemispheric strategy of domination and control contains a measure of stick and carrot, ostensibly calling for willing partners, but like most domestic abusers, ready with a big stick or worse.  

Not only will this new national security strategy destabilize the Western Hemisphere, but it will also provoke land grabs by China and Russia, promote authoritarian rule, engender economic chaos, fracture long standing alliances beneficial to America, and reduce America to a pariah state.  Trump has unleashed war as his domestic policies flounder.

For a president that promised America first, an end to forever wars, an end to military adventures in regime change and nation building, we seem to be heading in the opposite direction.  He is letting loose the war dogs, not caging them. Americans will suffer and die along with those we murder in the name of Trump. Rise up America before it is too late.

AP News Release: Christmas Close to Cancellation

Yes, Virginia, Christmas could be cancelled this year.  

The AP, that is the Arctic Press News Service, is reporting that Santa Claus may have to cancel Christmas in America this year. According to elf sources within Santa’s North Pole secretive Headquarters, the office responsible for obtaining all of Santa’s travel visas to enter countries around the world has yet to obtain a U.S. entry Visa. 

Delays mount as Mr. Claus, according to one elfian source, must submit decades worth of social media posts. Santa’s repeated travels to such shit hole countries such as Somalia, Nigeria, and South Africa have also raised suspicions by terrorism experts Moe, Larry, and Curly at Homeland Security’s Office of North Pole Counter Terrorism (ONPCT) along with his use of multiple aliases, according to the same source.  

Although, the Department of State’s press office said if Santa was travelling to see Afrikaners in South Africa, that was acceptable.  They also denied Trump demanded Santa buy $10 million in Trump family bitcoin memes before being issued a visa.  

Those familiar with negotiations between Santa and the Department of State, report that the Secretary is demanding that only American children receive gifts, and children born to non-U.S. parents must not receive presents; that Santa must provide a list of the immigration status of all children that receive presents as proof. Santa continues to refuse these demands, it is said.

Moreover, The Secretary apparently ordered his staff to check Santa’s social media posts twice, and said, it is reported, that he won’t let a ‘woke’ Santa Claus travel to the United States or its territories.

Further mudding Santa’s travel plans to America; the Secretary of Homeland Security is reported to have formed an anti-Santa ICE task force group in what has been dubbed ‘Operation Clear and Present Danger,’ according to transcripts of a leaked cabinet meeting video.   The Secretary adding, that ‘if that red suited red baiting groomer of young children lands’ in America he’s going to end up being deported to an El Salvadoran prison.  “No Habeas Corpus for that woke Mother F*#@r.’

Additionally, the Secretary of War, per a leaked Signal Chat, declared during a situation room meeting after ordering new death squad strikes on more Venezuelans, that ‘if that Tre de Aragua terrorist Santa crossed into Venezuelan airspace he will be ‘swimming with the fishes’ and any surviving reindeer ‘would be hit with a second strike.’  A short video attached to the leaked Signal chat appeared to show a ‘Franklin the Turtle’ coloring book next to the Secretary, who doodled with crayons while an admiral briefed in the background.

Furthermore, in a deleted segment of a recent 60-minutes interview obtained by the AP, Trump is reported to have said that he isn’t on Santa’s List, and that he never knew Santa or travelled to the North Pole on his sleigh or engaged in inappropriate relationships with underage elf.  

Trump even indicated his desire to annex the North Pole, saying, ‘they love me there, they really do.’  ‘I am really popular among the Elves,’ adding, ‘I would have been elected Santa Clause but the election was stolen by dirty, sleepy, fatso Kris Kringle.’  ‘His wife’s nice,’ he continued, ‘but not my type.’ ‘Once she said I was a sore loser, it told her quiet, quiet piggy.’  He even teased renaming the North Pole, Trumplandia and changing Christmas to Trumpmas.

To complicate things even more, Trump secretly imposed a 2000 percent tariff on all presents brought into America manufactured in North Pole workshops, per a leaked confidential White House decision paper last spring.  Santa’s Office of Legal Counsel — the Office of Legal Clause — filed suit – in a rare writ of dies natalis Christi — challenging what it termed punitive and ‘illegal tariffs’ in June, but the Supreme Court, in a shadow docket ruling issued at three this morning sided with Trump, overturning an appeals court ruling to stay the tariffs until December 26.

Merry Christmas America.

“I Believe Him”

Today, America’s national security policy, as it pertains to international relationships, is more akin to looking for a gas leak with lighted matches than serious deliberations.  That makes the world a more dangerous place and Americans less safe.

The Washington Post in a recent article claimed that Secretary of Defense Hegseth ordered a second strike on a destroyed boat to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage.  The extra judicial murder of alleged drug smugglers is a crime in its own right; the murder of two survivors is particularly heinous.

These murders threatens our intelligence network as key partner allies back away from sharing intelligence.. Hegseth denies giving such orders and now claims an Admiral directed the second strike.  Trump says, “I believe him.”  This is a Trump pattern.

Trump, and therefore America, has an “I believe him” problem.

Trump brags about killing alleged drug smugglers one minute and then post on social media that he will pardon the ex-president of Honduras, who is serving 45 years in a federal prison for, well, drug smuggling, claiming he got a bad deal. Another example of I believe him syndrome.

 The ex-Honduran president during his term turned Honduras into a narco-state, one step worse than the kleptocracy it has been for decades. Following his term in office in 2022, Hernandez was indicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges, following a long investigation by Trump’s Justice Department during his first term.  

Honduras is a major drug transshipment country, accounting, with some estimates, for between 75 and 90 percent of all cocaine that reaches the U.S.  Less than 2 or 3 percent of all US bound drugs come through Venezuela, yet 10 percent of our entire Navy is in the Caribbean murdering alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers. That means more drugs in America not less.

In his first term Trump famously threw the whole of American intelligence under the bus, when he stated at a joint press conference with Putin in Finland, that he believed Putin’s denials of interfering in the 2016 election over the national intelligence assessment that he did. 

A few weeks ago, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto head of state for Saudi Arabia, was feted with a State Dinner at the White House.  The Crown Prince was persona not grata since 2018 after the murder of American permanent resident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi.  If you don’t recall, Kashoggi was lured to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, where he was drugged, murdered, and dismembered by a Saudi government hit team in the Consulate.  His body disappeared.  Our intelligence service determined that the murder was orchestrated by the Crown Prince. 

At a White House press event earlier in the day, the Crown Prince was asked about the Kashoggi murder by an reported from ABC.  After calling ABC fake news, Trump responded that ‘a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman [Kashoggi] ‘’, adding, “whether you like him or not, things happen.’  Trump followed up by defending the Crown Prince, stating that the Crown Prince denies any involvement in the killing, and “we can leave it at that.”  Another ‘I believe the man’ moment.  Trump also denied profiting personally from his Saudi connections. A $63 billion real estate deal with a firm connected to the Royal family says otherwise.

Never in my three decades experience in the foreign service arena has American national security and foreign policy been so chaotic, disjointed, lawless, undisciplined, and shortsighted.  From illegal tariffs, extrajudicial killings, interfering in elections, defending murders of dissidents, propping up authoritarian regimes, destabilizing alliances, breaking treaties and agreements, suspect travel bans, and massive curtailment of humanitarian aid, this administration has made America a pariah. Hero to zero in 200 days.

This all makes Americans less safe, domestically and abroad.  It also impacts Americans in other facets of our daily lives: American exports become less attractive; Americans pay higher prices and import taxes; more illegal drugs not less, America’s rural health care deteriorates further as foreign born and trained doctors and nurses, who make up a large share rural American health care provider, stay away;  America loses the talent wars as scientists and researchers shun work in America and head to other countries. These are not America first policies, but America last policies.  And when Trump says, “I believe him,” don’t. Look for the grift and the greed.

The Piggly Wiggly Presidency

Ever wonder what it would be like to live in one of those moments in history when an emperor or monarch or sultan goes stark raving mad.  It usually doesn’t end well.  Now we know what it’s like, I suppose.

I shortly expect our Emperor, Sir Piggly Wiggly to turn up at an Air Force One press availability naked, babbling incoherently about conspiracies, God, McDonald’s fish sandwiches, and nominating a horse as Secretary of War.

Yes, I think our dear leader is nuts.  He is not well and has the nuclear codes.  His erratic and terrible-twos behavior is alarming.  

Calling for the execution of lawmakers who called on our military leaders to not obey illegal orders is abnormal.  As is the ordering of extrajudicial murders of alleged drug smugglers.  

His outbursts are more frequent. This includes dressing down and berating reporters, calling one female reporter on Air Force One ‘piggy’ as he told her to shut up. His explosive and inappropriate responses raise questions about his emotional state, or more precisely his emotional dysfunction.  Meanwhile, and ironically, his Transportation Secretary issues a retro themed public service announcement asking passengers to act civilly on air planes.

His gold mania is another example of his increasingly repugnant and eccentric behavior, especially since our economy has tanked since he took office.  He lives, eats, and sleeps in another world, a world of fairy tales and illusions.  Many Americans are unable to either pay rent or make monthly car payments, but he parties on like he is Louis XIV.  

His poll numbers continue to tank to historic lows.

Car loan delinquencies are up, as are Americans’ credit card bills.  Americans are drowning in debt as wages shrink, inflation grows, and good jobs get ever scarcer.  Yet Sir Piggly Wiggly throws an Epstein-inspired Great Gatsby bash at his private resort in Florida, complete with scantily clad young women in oversized martini glasses and 1920s-era short, skirted girls doing the Charleston.  

Furthermore, without warning, he levels the historic East Wing to build in its place a $300 million gold clad ballroom. Osama bin Ladin wanted to flatten the East Wing as well.  He acts like the White House is his, like it is one of his personal resorts, and not our house, the people’s house.  He thinks, acts, and behaves like a tyrant, a crazy tyrant at that.

It all makes for great late night TV comedy, but it is also a tragedy.  Every day the world outside our borders shakes its’ collective head, wondering what the fuck is happing to America.  Worse, every day the world becomes more dangerous, not because of a rising China, or a petulant Putin, or a new terrorist group, because we, the most powerful nation in the world, have an unstable president that is emotionally, spiritually, and cognitively crippled.  Every day he gets more madder than a hatter.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Trump Clause

I am damned angry.  The democrats once again appear prepared to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory on promises of talks later. Coming off great results in Virginia and New Jersey and California in last week’s elections with national consequences, it did not take long for the Democrats to deflate like a pricked ballon once again at the national level.

My first thoughts on hearing a number of Democrats defecting on the shutdown showdown:  Mother Fuckers!  (not really, it was longer and more expressive) Why, after 40 days of standing up to, and resisting Trump and his autocratic agenda, did Democrats cave on their supposed principles?  Why?  Senator Kaine, what were you thinking?

You claimed to stand fast with American workers who were going to get slammed with extreme health insurance premium increases because subsidies were cut by Trump’s big, beautiful bill.  You lobbed the health insurance ball firmly into the Republicans court — who control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court — in order to extend the subsidies, hoping to provoke a compromise.  They held fast.  

In this standoff, the only power left to the Democrats was solidarity and the senate filibuster to force negotiations.  But no, you give up that last bastion of protecting minority rights in Congress to force negotiations and compromise.  So, after 40 days you have nothing to show if you cave in.

You gave up the two hallmarks of democracy with a half assed fight. Can you be trusted to fight Trump’s trespasses when he invokes the insurrection act or martial law or challenges the results of the 2026 mid-terms; to fight for the working and middle classes?  I think you will be halfway to the hills with your tail between your legs, that’s what I think, leaving state and local democrats holding the proverbial bag of shit.

No wonder Democrats in national polls  aren’t trusted to do the right thing at the national level.  The public, given the asymmetric power relationship in Congress, blamed the Republicans for the shutdown and associated pain. I think virtually overnight that blame will shift to you. 

I supported the principled stand on health care subsidies, but I also thought it was about resisting Trump’s autocratic gains, protecting the rule of law, and our constitutional system of checks and balances.  Apparently not.   You now own the shutdown. For taking a stand, you were essentially unwilling and incapable of following through on.  

Come on man, get some balls, some chutzpa, some spine.  Why all the pain and suffering and angst endured by millions when you collapse like a mud hut in a rainstorm?  All for promises of future talks in December, exchanging your principles for a bag of magical beans.  The Republicans have chutzpa at least. They lie to the Supreme Court that they don’t have the cash to pay out full SNAP benefits yet a day or two later, after the Court agrees with Trump, Trump announces taxpayers will get $2000 each from a so called tariff divided. What don’t you get about them? Did you not read the fine print under the Trump Clause?

Trump Clause:  Any and all agreements made with Donald Trump are conditional, subject to change, lies, misrepresentations, and omissions.  You take his word at your own peril and risk.

I don’t know whether this round of spending bills will pass the hurdles before it, but I do predict that should the spending bills pass to reopen the government, that promise to have December talks to extend the ACA subsidies will vanish like a cheese burger on Trump’s lips.  The House and Senate will adjourn without passing the subsidy bill, and you know it.  The Republicans have stolen Christmas from millions of Americans and you are his accessory after the fact if you give in. 

The Strange Death of Liberal Congress (Small l)

 Elected assemblies were no stranger to colonial Americans before the Revolution.  Virginia’s General Assembly first meet in 1619.  The American colonies’ long experiences with representative assemblies informed the debate on the creation of our national government as expressed in our Constitution.

The Constitution created three separate and equal branches:  Executive, Judicial, and Legislative.  The legislative branch was divided into two.  A House of Representatives, directly elected by the people every two years, and a Senate.  The Senators were not elected by the folks of their states but picked by state legislators.  This changed in 1913 — in an age of reform after Gilded Age excesses when ‘robber barons’ (proto-tech bros) bought and sold senators – when the 17th Amendment was adopted.  This amendment made senators directly elected and accountable to the people of their various states. 

As the drafters of the Constitution debated structure of the national legislature, it is clear many mistrusted rule by the masses.  The solution was another level of checks and balances:  A divided Congress.   The House was meant to represent the hot and passionate voice of the people, hence the two-year election cycle.  The Senate was meant to temper and cool the passions of the people, hence the six-year terms.  A ying-yang type of thing. 

In its time, it was a liberal creation (small l).  A directly elected national assembly rare.  Although one must add a huge asterisk to that claim as suffrage was primarily reserved for men who owned property, and in many instances in the early republic to white men only.  Eventually the franchise did expand, with women being the last added. As a side note, I should comment that white immigrant men could and did vote in national elections as voting rights were not tied to citizenship until well into to the 19th century.   Many states permitted immigrants the right to vote into the early 20th century.  The nationalism of the post-world war I era ended that practice.

The enumerated duties of Congress were listed in the Constitution, but, it’s primary duty was a check on the power of President (king) — in the liberal tradition of Great Britian since the Glorious Revolution of 1689.  As such, the list of congressional powers was long and gave congress the power to declare war, the power of the purse, the regulation of the militia and Army, the power to regulate domestic and foreign trade, to list a few.  For the Senate, the power to ratify treaties and confirm presidential nominees to high office was added.  

This system basically worked for close to 236 years, until it didn’t.  It’s not the structure.  Our political party system is fatally broken.  You need two parties, not one party and one cult lead by a messianic Daddy Trump.

Congress is dead.  Long live Trump.  

A postmortem would reveal the cause of death as neglect followed by blunt force trauma.  The manner of death?  Democracide.

 Et Tu, Johnson and Thune?  Speaker Mike Johnson and senate majority leader John Thune have murdered Congress, finishing the job started by Mitch McConnell.   Johnson won’t even call the House back into session and Thune has attached himself to Trump’s scrotum like a sucker fish attaches itself to a shark. This week Sec Def Hegseth severely constrained congressional oversight by severing most routine formal and informal discourse between congress and the Defense Department and one trillion dollars in spending.  

Trump literally shits on the people in his AI generated fantasies and Congress defends him. He frequently moves money without congressional official approval and routinely uses rescission to ignore legislative funding bills.  In short, Congress ceded most of its enumerated powers to Trump.  Even the act of declaring war has been ceded, permitting Trump to order extra judicial killings on the high seas.  In the old days we called that piracy.  Congress is dead in name. 

The Supreme Court is the undertaker.

I have no concluding paragraph.  What is there left to say any more?  The phrases “that’s illegal” or “that’s unconstitutional” are deader than a door nail in a post law and order America. Might as well stop using them as they are as useless as Congress and a spittoon full of spit.