“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
America is a unique country in the history of the world. Founded on the concept of liberty and equality it is a beacon of hope to all. If you were born in this country at this time, you have pretty much won the lottery. What you do with your life is up to you, but the potential for greatness and the opportunity for success and happiness is here. People from all over the world want to come here.
Freedom is worth preserving and the cost of liberty is vigilance.
That is why the clown show in Washington is of such concern to me. The clowns and the jugglers like Trump, DeSantis, Matt Gaetz, Loren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, George Santos, and Kevin McCarthy present a clear and present danger to our freedom and democracy. They want to control what you read and what you say. What you study in school and whom you can marry. They want to control women’s bodies. They are like ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing.
They are snake oil salesmen who would sell their snake oil on a street corner in hell touting its medicinal effects on healing burns. They are lies and liars and should be called out at every opportunity. With a Republican-controlled House, things will only get worse before they get better. Stay vigilant.
Neil Gorsuch is a big fat liar and the Case of the Praying High School Coach was wrongly decided.
The case was a significant test of how the court balances free speech and religious liberty against the establishment clause, with the court increasingly giving more weight to the former. In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor took issue with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s portrayal of the facts in the majority opinion; She said the opinion “misconstrues the facts” regarding whether then-Bremerton (Washington) High School football coach Joseph Kennedy’s prayers were “quiet” and “private.”
Gorsuch began his opinion by stating:
“Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks. Mr. Kennedy prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters. He offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied. Still, the Bremerton School District disciplined him anyway.”
Gorsuch later writes that the evidence makes clear “that Mr. Kennedy has demonstrated that his speech was private speech, not government speech.”
Sotomayor said this was, in fact, a misrepresentation:
“To the degree the court portrays petitioner Joseph Kennedy’s prayers as private and quiet, it misconstrues the facts. The record reveals that Kennedy had a long-standing practice of conducting demonstrative prayers on the 50-yard line of the football field. Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student-athletes in prayer at the same time and location. The court ignores this history. The court also ignores the severe disruption to school events caused by Kennedy’s conduct.”
Essentially, there is a lengthy, years-long history in this case that includes suggestions that players might have felt compelled to participate. Sotomayor argues that this was important in determining whether Kennedy’s conduct violated the separation of church and state, even after he was issued warnings and his players no longer participated.
In other words, Gorsuch lied. this is not surprising as we have other liars on the supreme court. Those who lied their way onto the court, saying at their confirmation hearings before Congress that Roe was settled law.
The credibility of the court is at an all-time low and confidence is waning.
Full disclosure: I attended Bremerton (Washington) High school when I was 14 years old. This was at a time when I was losing my religion. I clearly remember being appalled and offended by the religious activity taking place at the High School.
Another heartbreaking mass shooting yesterday at a grocery store in Buffalo New York lies in the intersection of rampant gun violence, racism, white supremacy, and pure evil. While most Americans are not racist fear-mongers a significant portion apparently are. The manifesto written and uploaded to the internet by the shooter references the “replacement theory” that black and brown people will replace white people. This is based on the original theory that “Jews will not replace us” which is an antisemitic trope found in the “Blood and soil “propaganda propagated by Nazi Germany. It is a philosophy based on hate, racism, and white supremacy.
Last year, an Associated Press poll found that about a third of American adults believe an effort is afoot to “replace” U.S.-born Americans with immigrants. In addition, roughly 3 in 10 Americans think additional immigration will cause white, Americans to lose their economic, political and cultural influence.
This is dangerous thinking and fuels right-wing extremism that leads to violence. Also, while I am at it, no one in America needs a military-style assault weapon. The damage these weapons do to the human body and the number of people killed in a matter of seconds beggars the imagination. There are too many guns on the streets of America. It is a national health crisis of staggering proportions. Attention must be paid! Every day a person is killed by gun violence on the streets of Louisville, Kentucky where I live. You take your life in your hands when you are out for a walk at night. We need common-sense gun laws now to make our cities safe again.
Once we are through with the 1619 project perhaps, we could move on to the Vietnam War Project.
While we are at it and are stressing over our fighting a proxy war with Russia and fearing the possibility of a nuclear confrontation let us remember that we (the USA) are the only country in history to drop an atomic bomb on another country. And it was we who let the nuclear genie out of the bottle in the first place. One can only hope that we don’t inherit the wind.
And let us not forget we fire-bombed Tokyo, another civilian target, nearly burning that city to the ground. Robert Macnamara, the Secretary of Defense at that time, is quoted as saying that if we had lost the war he would surely have been tried as a war criminal.
This is not to say that we should not condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its merciless targeting of civilians, but as the saying goes, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. There is a reason we are not signatories to the International Criminal Court.
We can do better and we are doing better I think, but let us not forget from whence we came for he who forgets the lessons of history is forever bound to repeat them. Rather, let us be a beacon of hope to those who love freedom and a keeper of the eternal flame of remembrance for those who have fought and died in war.
France Haugen testifying before the Senate. Photo credit: Drew Angewrer/Getty Images
Facebook is a double-edged sword. And like many things in life, it can be a force for good or evil. First the good. It is a means of connecting and staying in touch with other like-minded human beings or family members. It can hook you up with long-lost friends or relatives. It can be fun, entertaining, and a platform for free expression and creativity. I have met people from all over the world and even in my own city that I never would have had the chance to meet otherwise. And I really do care about these people.
Now, the bad.
Facebook can be divisive, polarizing, and demoralizing.
There is a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, who worked as a product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team during and after the 2020 election testifying before congress right now.
The key problem, Haugen has argued, is that Facebook’s business is built around driving as much engagement as possible from the social network’s billions of users, and data shows that social media users engage more with inflammatory content.
“When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other,” she added. The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.”
“Extremists subsequently weaponized Facebook to plan the Capitol riot. Facebook posts have repeatedly been cited by federal prosecutors in cases against the Capitol.”
“Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money,” Frances Haugen told Scott Pelley of CBS’s “60 Minutes.” She went on to say, “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.”
Mark Zuckerberg operates according to his motto: “Move fast and break things.” Which would seem to presage living in a consequence-free environment. However, in 2019, the FTC fined Facebook a record-breaking five billion dollars for deceiving billions of users and failing to protect their privacy.
So, I have mixed feelings about Facebook. I have been in some pretty ugly Facebook fights that were unpleasant, and I have dropped friends and have been dropped. Neither of my two sisters is friends with me on Facebook because of my political views and edgy comments. That makes me sad. But, on the other hand, I have some remarkable friends that I interact with every day and share ideas with and pictures and well wishes who I wouldn’t give up for the world. I also have an audience, some of whom will actually listen to me and read my rants and raves. For that, I am truly grateful. But Facebook needs to clean up its act and be more of a force for good. I know they can do better!
In the course of human affairs, there is perhaps no more important principle than the right of personal freedom for the individual. However, these rights are not unlimited. One has to go no further than to John Stuart Mill for guidance. Mill posits the “harm principle” which holds that the actions of individuals should only be limited to prevent harm to other individuals. He states in his treatise, On Liberty, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” If we turn to Frances’s Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789,” we see a similar statement of values: “Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.”
Articles IV and V from the Declaration of the Rights of Man states:
Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.
The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.
An individual’s action can be legitimately encroached upon if and only if that action might harm another individual.
Returning to Mill, “No person is an entirely isolated being.” But it is only when an individual “violates a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out of the self-regarding class.” We harm an individual only when we violate an obligation to that individual. The damage done by the bad example set to others by a drunkard provides no legitimate reason for interference with his conduct; if his drunkenness causes him to violate the obligation to support his family, then that action constitutes “a harm” and is subject to interference.
If we cause sickness and death to come another individual through our actions or inactions such as wearing a mask and or being vaccinated during a pandemic, then we are in violation of the “harm principle” and are subject to interference.
The dividing line between the legitimate and illegitimate use of our freedom is difficult, but not impossible to draw. As responsible citizens and moral beings, we must look out for the rights of others as well as our own individual rights.
Trump wants to mobilize active duty U.S. military to attack peaceful protestors. This action would be unconstitutional, unlawful, and unconscionable. It is the action of a dictator and tyrant and a further degradation of our democracy. What Trump really wants is a race war.
What makes this illegal is the Posse Comitatus Act which states: Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. The exception to this law is the Insurrection Act. But to use this there has to be an insurrection, and what is happening is clearly not an insurrection.
The Attorney General for New York, Letitia James, has stated, “We will not allow Donald Trump to dominate New York.”
Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly disagreed with President Trump’s threatened use of the 1807 Insurrection Act. Speaking to reports at a recent Pentagon briefing Esper said, “The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”
In my view, any soldier asked to deploy to an American city to fight protestors and enforce the law has a duty to disobey this unlawful order.
Representative Alexandria Occasion-Cortez, of New York, recently called the U.S. detention camps for migrants “concentration camps.” She caused quite a stir by so saying. I have been saying the same thing for months. I feel that it is a complete moral outrage for the American government to detain these men, women, and children in these camps.
Now we are arguing over the terminology. In my view a thing ought to be called what it is. And these camps are clearly concentration camps. The meet the technical definition. Historian Andrea Pitzer has made the same assertion in her piece in Esquire magazine: “The United States has created a concentration system.” She argues that mass detention of civilians without a trail was what made these concentration camps. The full text of AOC’s tweet reads as follows: “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States, for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis.”
Strange bedfellows Liz Cheney and Bill Maher condemned the remarks as being emotionally laden with memories and connotations of the holocaust. Masha Gessen, writing in the New Yorker, says this is a failure of imagination. We don’t’ want or cannot imagine a world where we as a people would be evil enough to place human beings in the same predicament as the Nazis did in WWII. Well, I agree with Green and I disagree with Bill Maher. Maher every once in a while, strikes a sour note and sings out of tune. It is surprising coming from a fellow who wears his political incorrectness on his sleeve like a red badge of courage.
These camps meet the technical definition of concentration camps, and so what if it brings up images and memories of the holocaust? It doesn’t devalue it. Rather, it shrieks out a warning, do not go there! It should be a warning that this is what we are capable of, the same thing the Nazis did in WWII. This what Hannah Arendt describes as the banality of evil.
We have to have the moral imagination to realize what we are doing is wrong and can lead to greater evil. We need to make a course correction now!
The word treason has been bandied about a lot lately. Both by Donald Trump describing his political enemies and his political enemies describing him. There are many who say they don’t know what they are talking about. No less a political pundit that Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s, The Last Word, says it’s impossible to at this time to commit treason, as there is no war declared by congress currently being waged. The last person who was convicted of treason was convicted for offences during WWII.
Words matter and it is important to know what they mean. There is more than one definition of treason. There is the technical legal definition as stated in the US Constitution and there is the more generic definition which can be found in any good dictionary.
The legal definition of treason is as follows: The crime of betraying one’s country, defined in Article III, section 3 of the US Constitution: Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
The dictionary or more generic definition of treason is as follows: The crime of betraying one’s country, especially attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the country the government. Synonyms: treachery, disloyalty.
Another simpler definition: The act of betraying someone or something.
So, you see, everyone is right, and no one is wrong. Or are they?
Pretty sure Trump is conflating the two meanings. If he is talking about the legal term of treason then people like James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and FBI agent Peter Strzok would all be subject to the death penalty. A pretty serious charge and one that could only emanate from a deranged mind.
On the other hand, Trump has recently said, while he was on foreign soil, that he agreed with North Korea’s murderous dictator, Kim Jong Un, that Joe Biden was a low IQ fool. Pretty disloyal. And what about the fact that Trump sides with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies? This could certainly be grounds for disloyalty.
Well, we are in a new presidential election cycle. It seems only yesterday that the monster Donald Trump was foisted upon us. There is literally nothing more important than removing him from office, either through the ballot box or otherwise. We have a rather large field of Democratic candidates. Should be an interesting primary season.
My favorites include Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke,and Julian Castro. Any combination of these candidates would work for me. Of course, the most important consideration, in my view, would be electability and the ability to defeat Trump. Although I do think it might be questionable if Trump lasts long enough to run. If he does, we are all in danger.
I believe the electorate needs and wants a female candidate and a person of color on the ticket. I think it is high time we have a woman president or vice president. There is no question that Hillary Clinton was robbed last go round.
Joe Biden has the most experience, has the most gravitas, and is the most presidential. He would restore much needed decorum to the office and the land. However, he has some drawbacks. He has some things in his past which will bear scrutiny when his record is examined. Also, his age and gender might work against him. Do we really need another old white guy in the Oval Office? But, if he agreed to one term and chose a younger running mate, it might work.
I like Kamala Harris. She impressed me by her intelligent questioning in some of the congressional hearings that she has taken part in. She has an impressive record and background and I agree with her on many policy issues. Also, of all the candidates, she has got social media down to a science. A necessary ingredient in today’s world.
Cory Booker appeared on my radar while I was living in New Jersey and he was mayor of Newark. Quite an impressive fellow and a man to watch. Elizabeth Warren has the best record on consumer rights of any candidate and of any congressperson ever. This is a subject close to my heart she gets extra point for this.
Beto O’Rourke reminds me of a young Bobby Kennedy and he brought democrats together in Texas. He could turn the state Blue and would be a valuable asset on a ticket.
We will just have to see how all this shakes out. Can’t wait for the debates. Let the games begin!
Ghost Dog 