Another Low In American Politics, But We Now Expect Such Behavior From Donald Trump

Once again America was lowered to the basement of human depravity.  

While most of the nation spent days leading up to Thanksgiving making pies and perhaps polishing some silverware Donald Trump was rubbing shoulders with Nick Fuentes, a Nazi sympathizer, and holocaust denier.  When not chatting it up at his Florida home with someone who has equated 6 million exterminated Jews with burned cookies in the oven, Trump was breaking bread with another dinner guest, Kanye West, who is an acknowledged antisemite.  

It does not take this little site on the internet to remind readers that President Jimmy Carter built homes in his post-White House years. Or that his fellow officeholder, George Bush, takes an empty canvas and creates painted art, while Bill Clinton focuses on world problems, and Barack Obama works to create his presidential center as an engine for economic gain on the South Side of Chicago. All that is in sharp contrast to Trump intentionally stirring the vilest stew of violence, hatred, and bigotry that was unleashed in the 20^th century.

When I heard the news over the holiday weekend, I wish able to say I was stunned.  Or surprised.  I wish there was a reaction other than feeling, well, this is the latest bizarre and tragic consequence of elevating Trump in our political culture. The thought that came to mind upon hearing the NPR news report was recalling a book published this summer that reported about Trump’s desire to have generals like the ones who had answered to Adolf Hitler.  The following quote comes from “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

“Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Mr. Trump told John Kelly, his chief of staff, preceding the question with an obscenity….”

I pondered the impact of Trump’s dinner last week on the nation.  What it says about our citizenry where there is still a very sizable and energized segment who would follow him off a cliff if he said to do so.  (No one should assume he would lead the way, however.) Historians will long study how so many susceptible people were lured into the bizarre cult of Trump.

Trump’s base supporters over the past days in rural America are deflecting from his actions, trying to spin them into an event where he was hardly even aware of it having happened. It is absolutely perplexing how Trump can still command their allegiance when it so sharply flies in the face of a chapter of history that is devastatingly painful.  Yet for Trump, it just was something else to cheapen with his disdain and low-brow character. It is almost chilling to consider that Trump would not even know how to talk about the memories and messages of those who walked to their deaths in places like Auschwitz or Dachau.  

I still believe in a political class that is defined by character, ethics, morals, and values. I guess that results from when I was born and the history I read and better try to understand. We can have sharp clashes over fiscal policy and the size of our footprint on the international stage, but when we witness the vilest and most absurd behavior from a pol as we did last week, and especially one who sat in the Oval Office, there is no other path the majority of the populace can take than one of complete and utter repudiation.

A few notables within the Republican Party found their resolve on Monday and spoke to the deplorable behavior of Donald Trump. We need an avalanche of their fellow party members to do the same, Every reporter needs to press elected officials to go on the record and speak about an ex-president sitting for dinner with a holocaust denier.

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy stated: “President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites. These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party.”

“There’s no bottom to the degree which he’s willing to degrade himself and the country for that matter. Having dinner with those people was disgusting”, said Utah Senator Mitt Romney.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune said of Trump breaking bread with a Nazi and Holocaust denier: “Well, that’s just a bad idea on every level. I don’t know who was advising him on his staff, but I hope that whoever that person was got fired.”

Many in the nation will wonder why an aide needs to be upbraided when we all know the only reasonable reaction Trump need to have taken upon seeing a Nazi sympathizer in his home was to point to the door and say, “get the HELL out!”

Just Plain Dumb, Herschel Walker Talks About Climate Change, Makes Sarah Plain Look Like Rhodes Scholar

I have never been a fan of stupid jocks. I never found them of interest in high school, and even less so as an adult. I do not much care if they find their way to some sports channel to talk about this team or that play on the field. After all, capitalism allows for even the most base to make money, too.

But when the seriously inept and cerebrally challenged wish to trade their name and fame for a powerful political office we need to stop them.

Georgia Republican senate nominee Herschel Walker is such an example of being just plain stupid, and also wanting to secure a senate seat in this year’s midterm election. The troubling candidate who seems more suited for an election as a hall monitor in grade school wanted to talk about climate change on the hustings.

In Columbus: “China’s bad air floats over into our good air. And now we’re trying to clean their bad air and of course it just floats over here and now we gotta clean it, so all we’re doing is throwing money at it.”

In St. Simons: “The trillions of dollars that you’re paying for is cleaning up their bad air but now it’s gonna float back over to China because of the Earth’s rotation and until we can get China and all of these other places to invest in it, it isn’t gonna be any good.”

In south Georgia: “We’re gonna clean it up a little better than it’s already cleaned. But our good air, since we don’t control it, is gonna float over to China where they got bad air. Now China’s bad air floats over to us, where we have the good air.”

I have never been a fan of Sarah Palin, and this blog reflects that fact. But she does not fall as far down the hole of absurdity as Walker has willingly taken. I place her name in this post, however, as she was used by the Republicans for political purposes, even though she has a limited IQ. Just like Walker is now being used. Her acceptance by much of the party has allowed for more of her kind to be elevated and praised as candidates in the GOP.

I know from having done public speaking there were times when my thoughts and words took somewhat separate directions. But I can claim I never made the same mistake or blunder twice. A person who speaks publically learns the lesson.

Walker did not. Will not.

After clearly receiving brain damage from football allows some wiggle room for Walker’s bizarre ideas about how air pollution spreads. But the fact he is not now able to read and learn that reducing or increasing pollution in either China or the U.S. affects the entire globe, or that “our” air does not just say…’hey, some travel time would be fun’ and heads to China points to why this baffoon needs to be stopped by the voters.

If anyone thinks our atmosphere operates like geopolitical masses they need to be scorned, not elected.

Black FedEx Driver D’Monterrio Gibson, Chased, Shot At By White Men

We read, hear, and see far more of the outrageous actions from our fellow citizens than we often think is even possible to occur. I do not think anyone would disagree with that opening sentence.

Now comes a story that echoes with the killing of Ahmaud Aubrey. It is scary, and utterly racist.

A Black FedEx driver says he was making deliveries in Brookhaven, Miss., late last month when two white men assailed him, including one who allegedly fired multiple bullets into his delivery vehicle.

The driver, 24-year-old D’Monterrio Gibson of Utica, Miss., told the Mississippi Free Press today that he had just delivered a package around 7 p.m. on Jan. 24 when he saw a white pickup driving toward him from a nearby residence located on a connected plot of land.

“In my mind I’m thinking (the driver) is leaving to go to the store or something like that, but then they get extremely close to me and start blowing their horn,” Gibson said. “I proceed to leave the driveway. As I’m leaving the driveway, he starts driving in the grass trying to cut me off. My instincts kick in, I swerve around him, and I start hitting the gas trying to get out of the neighborhood because I don’t know what his intentions are.

“I drive down about two or three houses. There’s another guy standing in the middle of the street pointing a gun at my windows and signaling to me to stop with his hands, as well as mouthing the word, ‘Stop.’ I shake my head no, I hide behind the steering wheel, and I swerve around him as well. As I swerve around him, he starts firing shots into my vehicle.”

As Gibson drove toward the end of the street, Gibson said, one of his managers at FedEx called him, and he told her what was happening.

“They’re shooting at you?”

“Yes.”

“OK, head back to the station as soon as you can,’” she said as Gibson recounted.

D’Monterrio Gibson provided this photo of one of the bullet holes in the white Hertz rental he was driving when he says a white man fired repeatedly at his vehicle. Photo courtesy D’Monterrio Gibson.

As he was trying to make his way out of Brookhaven, Gibson said he noticed the white pickup truck was following him from behind.

“I just went as fast as I could. He chased me all the way to the interstate,” he said.

Once he was about 10 or 15 minutes down the interstate and the white pickup was no longer following him, Gibson said he called another manager and told him what had happened. The manager told him they would file a police report the next morning.

(I can not fathom such a profoundly ludicrous comment from the FedEx manager.)

But Gibson called dispatch to report the incident himself.

“I reached dispatch and let him know what was going on, and I only had a chance to get a little of the story out when he cut me off and he was like, ‘Were you at this address?’ I said yes,” the FedEx driver said. “He was like, well I just got a call of a suspicious person at this address. I was like, ‘Sir, I’m not a suspicious person, I work for FedEx. I was just doing my job.’

“I also let him know that they shot at me, and he was like, ‘Well, they didn’t tell me that.’ Of course they wouldn’t. … He told me to save the rest of my story, and he’d take my name down and give it to my supervisor.”

Once he arrived back at the FedEx station, Gibson said, the first manager he had spoken to immediately after the gunfire examined the back of the truck.

“There were bullet holes all in the back of the van, inside packages and everything like that,” he said. Through his attorney, Carlos Moore of The Cochran Firm, Gibson shared photos showing bullet holes in the truck, in packages and a bullet lying on the vehicle’s floor bed.

The truck he was driving at the time of the incident was a Hertz rental with Hertz markings on the side, not an official FedEx truck, Gibson said, but he was wearing his FedEx uniform.

The next day, on Jan. 25, Gibson said, one of his managers traveled with him to the Brookhaven Police Department to file the police report. Moore shared a copy of the police report with the Mississippi Free Press.

“Ms. Candice Welch, said she was Mr. Gibsons boos [sic], the van had atleast [sic] two bullet holes, One in the back door and one in the bumper, and three packages inside had bullet holes in them. She also had a picture of a bullet, that is still laying on van,” the report says.

The report, by Officer Kennis Montgomery, recounts the same story Gibson shared with the Mississippi Free Press. The FedEx driver said he spoke with three police officers the day he filed it. He told the Mississippi Free Press that one white officer, whose name he did not know, asked him if he had been “doing anything to make them think (he) looked suspicious.”

(Ma’am, do you think that short dress was the reason for the sexual assault?)

“I felt disrespected at that point, because even if I did, they still can’t take the law into their own hand,” Gibson said. “So I told him all I did was my job. If they think that I was suspicious, that was on them. He was like ‘OK, I was just asking.’”

The Brookhaven Police Department did not respond today to a request for comment.

Gibson said the police chief “tried to emphasize how unracist the town (of Brookhaven) was, which seemed odd to me.” (The Brookhaven chief of police, Kenny Collins, is black). Brookhaven has a history of lynching. In 1955, civil rights activist Lamar Smith died after someone shot him on the lawn of the Lincoln County Courthouse in Brookhaven. Local police never charged any suspects with the crime.

Gibson said the third officer drove him back to the scene of the alleged shooting to look for bullet holes and invited the FedEx driver to get out of the car and help look for bullet casings, but they did not find any. He said the police told him the name of the driver of the white pickup truck was Gregory Case and that the man in the road was his son, Brandon Case.

The Cases turned themselves in at the police station on Feb. 1. Police charged Gregory Case charged with conspiracy and Brandon Case with aggravated assault. The men posted bail on $75,000 and $150,000 bonds, respectively, the next day, the Lincoln County Jail told the Mississippi Free Press.

Gibson said FedEx initially put him back on the same route after the shooting, but he resisted returning to work in Brookhaven.

“I’m actually on unpaid time-off because I told them I was uncomfortable and I was very anxious about being on that route. And they said they were going to do what they could about changing the route for me,” he said.

Moore told the Mississippi Free Press that he plans to ask the FBI and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations to open an official investigation. He also plans to ask the U.S. Department of Justice “to prosecute this as a hate crime,” he said.

“They can’t take the law into their own hands,” Gibson told the Mississippi Free Press. “We’re really just tired of stuff like this happening, always looking suspicious to a certain type of people.”

I posted the article due to the bizarre and racist nature of these white men with a gun–who apparently were not at work–feeling weakened and undermined when seeing a Black man.

And so it goes.

Donald Trump And The Second ‘Gettysburg Address’, Or Is He More Akin To James Buchanan?

I received my booster shot on Tuesday and am feeling great. The only thing noted about the past 24 hours that is a bit different is my raving hunger. Homemade chicken and rice at midnight (and pickles!) are not usual.

It was this morning as I was finishing the leftovers for breakfast–minus pickles–that I first heard a most outlandish news story.

In his new memoir, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows compared former Donald Trump’s post-COVID hospitalization speech to the Gettysburg Address.

Meadows, whose book “The Chief’s Chief” was released on Tuesday, attempted to illustrate how Trump’s brief speech urging Americans not to fear the coronavirus reminded him of former President Abraham Lincoln’s magnum opus.

“Although the prose wasn’t quite as polished as the Gettysburg Address, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln after the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, it had the same compressed, forceful quality that had made President Lincoln’s words so effective at the time they were delivered,” Meadows wrote.

Had the news not been reported on NPR I would have thought the booster had caused a bit of mental confusion. When I did a quick online search I learned the booster was not the cause for my ‘hearing’ issue, as the information was, sadly, correct.

When one has no actual understanding of history, no grounding in substance and fact….well, this type of book happens. It was shockingly ignorant for Mark Meadows to have written such lines. And for an editor to let it slide. Or a publishing house to consent to roll it off the presses.

For those who do know history, the character and wisdom of President Abraham Lincoln, and the sacred nature of Gettysburg, will quickly grasp the utter insanity of what Meadows wrote. Likewise, we know that Meadows would have a far easier time connecting Trump to President James Buchanan.

Readers might say, ‘but was not it strongly rumored that Buchanan was gay’, while Trump is a known womanizer, even when married to his third wife? And we know from reading about the man who was in the office prior to Lincoln that he was always dignified. When was Trump ever accused of that?

So how, then, the comparisons?

The reason I consider it most fair to link these two is the air of sedition and treason that was rampant in both of their White Houses. Donald Trump was the center of the most dangerous attack on our nation’s foundation since the Civil War. We know from reading that Buchanan had fire-eaters in his cabinet who were fomenting succession. Trump had an array of wild-eyed and dangerous operatives pushing forward with undermining the results of a presidential election made by the people.

Had Meadows been, at any level, a reader of history he could have better found the analogy he was seeking for his book. James Buchanan.

Meanwhile for the bottom line.

“Donald Trump’s former chief of staff has been all over the news for all sorts of reasons, but his new book “The Chief’s Chief” is barely budging on the Amazon sales chart. At last check, the book is #1,436 on Amazon — a very disappointing start for a promising title that’s generating so much press” Per CNN’s Brain Stelter earlier this week.

And so it goes.

First Step Towards Pushing Marjorie Taylor Greene Back Under Her Rock

The House correctly voted to strip the bat-crap crazy member of congress from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, of her committee assignments following her countless racist or violent statements, which ranged from anti-Jewish blasts to wanting the hanging or assassination of prominent lawmakers in our country. She is no more fit to hold a committee assignment than she is fit to be allowed in polite society. She has proven herself to be totally reprehensible.

The racist hate-filled airhead was allowed eight minutes to muse on the House floor about her place in which she now resides in history books, a place very few members of congress ever find themselves. And during that time today she could not find the ability to exercise one single ‘I am sorry’.

What she instead did was try to spin her latest concoction that she had broke away from QAnon in 2018. But the rest of the nation, who has not drunk the Kool-Aid, have followed her racism and buffoonery on the national stage and know that her statements today do not match the facts. There are a series of posts she made in 2019 and other social media activity from that time, including liking a Facebook comment that endorsed shooting Speaker Pelosi in the head and suggesting in the same year that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been replaced with a body double. When she was not blatantly lying today she was trying to deflect, and blamed the media.

It needs to be noted that the Democrats in the House had to clean up the mess that the Republican Party leadership was unable, and unwilling to do this week. There are times when it takes muscles and a scouring pad to get rid of a dirty stain.

That is what was done when Democrats and 11 House Republicans removed Greene from any committee assignments. Meanwhile, Democrats have marvelous amounts of video footage to combat Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.

The nation has taken the measure of this loathsome person and supported the vote to kick Greene off any and all House committees. Now she will have more time to ponder if she was potty-trained at gunpoint. Something had to have happened to make her into the embarrassment she has presented to the nation. But look on the bright side, if she plays her cards right she might even become the fourth wife of Donald Trump.

Now, who will play the new role of Stormy Daniels?

And so it goes.

Unbelievable Times As Marjorie Taylor Greene Does Everything But Spews Pea Soup In Public

The soft fluffy snow this week–over 8 inches–made for a most perfect Wisconsin winter scene. But if one turns to the headlines in the newspapers and on the evening broadcasts the pleasant mood is soon cast aside for reports of ‘Jewish space lasers’ and rewarding a president who undertook sedition to remain in office. I am not sure how massive of a blizzard would be required to place our attention, again, on winter landscapes.

At the center of why many people are rightly troubled is that in the face of members of Congress having their lives threatened from the attempted coup on January 6th, many Republicans are trying to have the lead instigator brought back into the fold for the midterm elections. Following the scenes as members of Congress huddled and crouched down for their safety about a month ago, a few truly disturbed (and disturbing) members want to carry concealed guns onto the floor of the House. on of these gun-toters made recorded personal threats about Democratic elected officials.

I grew up in a home where dad always told his children that at the end of the day all we have is our good name. I have thought about those words this week when learning of the latest outrageous comments from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Clearly, her dad did not stress the same life lessons in Georgia. News reports this week informed us Greene had advocated for the assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, along with former secretaries of state John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. To top it off, for the party who wishes us to think they are always concerned about the ones who carry on the tasks of law enforcement, Greene also called for killing FBI agents.

When I write that I have no words to capture my response, well, in your mind can you offer one that meets the enormity of the lunacy from Greene?

While demonstrating she is too stupid to even be allowed with a blender–let alone a gun–Greene has also made it known she thinks that both the Sandy Hook slaughter of little kids in Connecticut and the murders of high school students in Parkland, Florida were staged. She has doubled down on her views that in our land there is a group, led by the opposition party, that kidnaps, kills, and drinks the blood of children.

But it was not until I had a late breakfast, and while watching the news, that I became aware of her latest conclusion. Greene has now claimed that the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family that is popular targets for anti-Semites, were partly responsible for the California wildfires because of some tenuous connection to a satellite that she said was shooting lasers at the forests, setting them ablaze.

Scrambled eggs seemed most appropriate as a meal.

What I find most interesting and also most concerning is the absence of a majority within the GOP–or even anything near it–condemning the rancid, vile, insane, and outright putrid words and thoughts of Greene. In my world either you speak the truth or you have done nothing other than offer tepid support and worse yet, indifference.

When the loudest voice in the Republican House conference should have been standing up and making a moral call about Greene, he instead was kneeling in Florida to Trump. It was not what I would term ‘good optics’ to see Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy get mushy with the insurrectionist while placing Greene on the Education and Labor Committee.

I have lived a few decades–and more to the point paid attention–so when I talk of Congressman Gerald Ford, Robert Michel, or Dick Gephardt who presented the bipartisan maturity of minority leaders in the House it underscores how bereft of leadership the current caucus is with McCarthy. It was painful to watch as he flew to Trump, so to play to an autocrat-wanna-be, rather than deal with the internal fight eating at the soul of his party.

There seems to be a most concerted effort to make Trump center stage for the midterm elections, and McCarthy was clearly embracing such a strategy. The voters, come the midterms, may not be as creatively described as ‘Jewish space lasers’, but as 2020 proved they are accurate when showing their power. As such, Trump may prove to be an albatross to the party of the angry resentment-filled whites.

As for how to deal with Congresswoman Greene, I have an idea. I suspect one can be found in Fascist Brown.

International Newspaper Front Pages Of Trump’s Coup Mob Attack On Capitol

How is the United States viewed around the world following the attack by Donald Trump’s mob on our nation’s capitol? Here is a sampling of the front pages of newspapers around the globe. This is a most embarrassing stain–the darkest one yet–from Trump.

Absurdity: “Stop Living In Fear”

Every medical professional pleads with the public to stay home for the Thanksgiving holiday, so to stem spreading COVID and not further encumber hospitals with overcrowded ICU beds. At the same time, there are a disturbing number of people in rural Wisconsin who have a mindset that runs counter to science about the pandemic.

Earlier this week a Facebook poster urged readers not to cancel the holidays as “this may be the last holiday you have” and “stop living in fear”. That was an absurd post, but the following comment left me aware of how far removed some people are from logic.

As we learned in church on Sunday. Thomas Paine quotes “those who forfeit liberties for security deserve and receive neither”

First, one does not need to wonder long before knowing what type of church it is when Paine is used in a sermon. But I did not venture down that path in my response. I also did not point out that Paine was a man of reason and free thought and in much opposition to Christian doctrine. Why point it out to the parishioner when the one at the pulpit did not know it either! (I was trying to be diplomatic.)

Rather I asked if the minister talked about being a responsible person and acting in accordance with medical guidelines for others in society? After all, one is only being asked to wear a mask and self-distance. I pointed out people wear seatbelts and do not smoke in public places. I ask if she quoted Paine after stopping at a legally required red light!

That prompted this retort.

I don’t understand your hate or negativity towards a different opinion?! Individuality is what makes America great.

I then pointed out that decades-ago Sunday school lesson where Jesus said that the world will know that we love Him by how we love one another. I offered the fact James and I learned this past week of a nurse in our friend’s list who had worked 16 straight days. I wrote that it is incumbent on each person in society to do what is best for the whole. Not wearing a mask or self-distancing is not “having our own thoughts and opinions” but rather a selfish act devoid of medical facts. We must look out for one another and act with regard for more than just our personal wants.

I also tried to venture down the road of how economic activity is severely torpedoed until there is a truly collective act of stopping the spread of the virus. Since too many go out and “live their life” and do so in opposition to medical advice, how then does that help businesses and employees keep their profits and jobs? Meanwhile, sensible and reasoned people (with money) are staying away from restaurants, stores, and any place where people congregate. And will continue to do so until the virus is contained.

Well, I was put in my place for such a question!

I will continue to pray for your hate & negativity to turn to kindness.

After wishing her well, I ended the dialogue this way.

Happy Thanksgiving! Having a differing opinion based on facts, however, is not hate. Using such a phrase, as you have twice on this thread, seems to put you in a place where you never need to frame your views with logic.

What I wanted to write was she must be a delight at a dinner party with a wide-ranging array of issues being talked about. All those who disagree with her are haters!

The above type of lingo is what I have heard and read from many rural residents over the past weeks. It aligns with the fears of those in the medical world who know what is to come following the holiday gatherings. The pandemic will only grow much worse.

But at least Thomas Paine’s name is being used, even if ironically.

And so it goes.