Democracy – Page 2 – frustratedboomers

Nighttime in America

The American Dream is OVER. It’s nighttime in America.

If Biden was running for the ‘soul of America,’ he was too late. It had already been sold to the Devil. And its apprentice, trump, along with his squad of overweight, wannabe SS, has now emerged, crueler, more sadistic, and more vengeful than ever, whether, in the end, he wins or loses.

I write this, around noon on November 4^th, trump and Biden are basically neck and neck in terms of votes. The Senate is about the same, so no clear winner there either. Biden has been sitting at 223 Electoral College points, and trump at 213, since I first checked in, around 5 a.m. At this point, either man could be declared the winner. But whomever wins, whether with 50.1% or 51% of the votes, it is America that is the loser. Because a country that split, that cleaved so cleanly, cannot hold. And a Senate that split, cannot pass any measures to help a country that is hurting badly.

In 2016, the world was shocked at what America chose, but we could still pretend that this was somehow a mistake. Good people looked at those who struggled economically, and, based on the violence, racism and inequity of American society, said, “well, maybe they had to do it, had to pray there could be a different way. They put their trust in a con man, but, really — how bad could it get?”

And then, for four years, we found out. Boy, could it be bad. So bad, that parts of the nation now look like a third world nation, as tens of millions have been plunged into poverty and homelessness; immigrants, refugees … children! … have been treated with a sadistic cruelty not seen since Hitler’s camps; 230,000 Americans are dead from what should have been a preventable public health crisis; the environmental clock has been turned back to before anyone cared about clear air or water; peaceful protestors are routinely met with pepper spray and rubber bullets, and there’s no hope in petitioning the court, because McConnell and co. loaded up every court, right up to the Supreme one, and it’s all tilted in their favour, and their favour means you are going to lose the last of your health care AND your social security.

And yet half of America, knowing this, decided they want four more .. no, it being trump… forever more years of this. And worse.

We now know the truth about that half of America; they not only chose that all of that evil continue; they ran towards it with open arms and embraced it, with all of the strength in their bodies.

It’s a travesty. Even before mail-in votes are counted, trump has racked up two million MORE votes than he got in 2016. There were more votes cast for Joe Biden as president than in any other election in American history. And yet – there still isn’t a clear winner.

The Dems wanted and needed a landslide, a total repudiation of the evil that the trump administration has perpetrated, but that didn’t happen.

But the polls! The polls! I mean, most of us were suffering from PTSD from believing the 2016 polls, but come on! How could the polls have been THIS wrong again, in 2020 …? All the experts swore that they’d gotten all the bugs out, and that this time – FOR SURE Were the polls that wrong? Were people lying to pollsters? How did the Democrat message get so garbled.

And here we are.

Trump will not concede; he will never concede. Predictably, at 2:21 a.m., in the wee hours of November 4. trump attempted to falsely claim victory, saying that it was a “fraud on the American public,” and “an embarrassment to our country” that he hasn’t been able to fully celebrate his win properly.

“Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said, while also suggesting he would take legal action to keep further ballots from being counted, insinuating that Democrats were committing fraud as key states continued to count hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots.

“Millions and millions of people voted for us today,” he said, “and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won’t stand for it.”

As expected, trump will be petitioning the Supreme Court for a stop to the counting of the remaining ballots, again insisting that the remaining ballots, which number about 25 million from mail ins and the military, are somehow illegal.

“We’ll be going to the US Supreme Court; we want all voting to stop, we don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”

So how to explain this mess? Racism? But Obama won twice, and with a majority, so racism might not quite be the issue. Could it be misogyny? A vote for Biden, at 78, almost guarantees that at some point, you might have a black FEMALE president. Trump spent a lot of time hinting that Biden was too fragile to survive, even claiming that Joe Biden would be “shot” within three weeks of taking office. (While he meant ‘shot’ in the sense of exhaustion, he had no problem with the more violent connotation so many of his supporters hoped he was insinuating.)

Trump also told his supporters that they would never have to see Kamala Harris as president in Biden’s place.

“People don’t like her,” the president said at a rally in North Carolina, recounting her falling poll numbers on the Democratic primary trail. “Nobody likes her. She could never be the first woman president. She could never be. That would be an insult to our country.” (ABC News)

And recently, he went even further, when he told his supporters at the retirement community, The Villages, in Florida, “We’re not going to have a socialist president, especially a female socialist president.”

And here we are.

In the Senate, despite the $100 million spent in South Carolina on Jaime Harrison’s campaign against Lindsey Graham, Graham won 55% to 43.7%. Mitch McConnell beat Amy McGrath, 58.2% to 37.8%. Even Joni Ernst won her race, which no one could have envisioned. And Maine’s Susan Collins, believe it or not, will hang around to continue playing her Lucy to the Democrats Charlie Brown for another six long and dithering years.

I’m numb. My head is splitting, and my ears are ringing. The TV is blaring CNN updates, while MSNBC keeps me informed on the computer. But the numbers are unchanging, no matter how much attention I pay to them.

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele reminds us that, “Democratic Americans still don’t understand what Donald Trump represents, and that it’s what 50% of Americans want.”

Joy Reid (MSNBC’s AM Joy): “I just wonder what all of this says about us. I think it raises real questions about what America is, at the end of the day, and whether what trump is, is more like what the American character is, than people ever wanted to admit.”

Randy Rainbow tweeted, “Woke up with a hangover in a stranger’s bed. But the stranger was America. “

And the comments pour in. On Facebook, “I feel like I was lied to my whole childhood. I was so proud to be an American, that we are the greatest country in the world. Now I see America for what it is – a bunch of horrible, selfish, stupid people who are unAmerican run the country. And the rest of us are screwed pawns.”

From Richard Kay, “To all the people I talked to previously about the extent of Trump-supporting rednecks, Christian fundamentalists, gun-crazy yahoos in the USA, and those people I was talking to, who replied, “oh, they’re only a small % of the country; the majority of citizens are good people.” Well, here’s proof you were wrong.”

From Jim Wright/Stonekettle Station, “It’s not over, of course, and Biden may indeed yet win. But even if that happens, it’s pretty obvious that at least half of our country would have been those Germans who embraced the Nazis. It’s about what I figured.”

Gary LeDrew: “It is looking like about 4 years before we can open the border. Not much hope for the world and mega deaths for USA “

From Daniel C. Castellano: “After all that has happened. After all that they have seen. Still, they say, “Yup, that’s my guy.” 67 MILLION people. They are despicable. Every last one of them. If one of them is a friend or relative of yours, I’m sorry. But they are awful, awful people. Every. One. Of. Them.”

Wayne Baggs: “Many believe one gets what they deserve. The beginning of the end. Goodbye health care, social security, public schools, right to choose, balanced courts. I love watching train wrecks. They wanted the GOP; they got the GOP. Let the shit show begin. The cowards were only getting started.”

David Corn, (Mother Jones): “Close to half of the American electorate voted for a man who just declared he would try to block election results and undermine American democracy to remain in power.”

Annie G. Robinson:“It’s like a family in our neighbourhood was accused of committing murder. We then determined that only a few family members were guilty, and the rest were innocent. Now we’ve discovered that the guilty family members are actually serial killers, and are acting proud of it, sticking their middle fingers in our faces. And a few that we thought were innocent are guilty also. The truly innocent ones are shocked and heartbroken, and now they, too, are under threat. That’s the way I feel about the US this morning.”

Glenn Morgan: What I DON’T look forward to … is the DOUBLING DOWN of HERR TRUMP’s denigration of the Free Press… he will now try to CRUSH DISSENT of journalists such as CNN & MSNBC, and truly try to DOMINATE the airwaves and Social Media with his insane blather.”

Peter Winholt: “Whoever wins, the loser is America. They have chosen, by close to the same margin as last election, to embrace the values that Trump has shamelessly flaunted in the campaign. The only difference now will be in which direction the U.S. is facing going forward. Where they are standing is in the middle of an Idiocracy, having chosen Q-Anon over science, lies over truth, and sociopathy over empathy.”

Michael Moore: “Sadly, as to why our fellow Americans did not repudiate Trump yesterday in a massive way, as to why nearly 70 million Americans still embrace a bigot and a psychopath — well, we must have that discussion soon as to who we REALLY are. Shameful. Apologies to our Black brothers and sisters, and apologies to the rest of the world.”

Shameful indeed.

But here we are ….

To be continued ….

And Then I Wrote

by Roxanne Tellier

From time to time, people have accused me of ‘hating’ Donald Trump irrationally. But really, there’s nothing irrational about me hating the guy. I admit it, I despise him, and everything he is, has been, and currently represents. So should any free-thinking lover of progress, freedom, individual and civil rights, and most of all – democracy.

I might even argue that it’s irrational to LIKE the guy, since, no matter how hard you search, you are unlikely to find even one moment of his life, or one action that he has taken, that has been in service to anything other than himself and his ego.

What’s to like? Go ahead, throw a dozen things you like about him at me, and I’ll knock them back to you with a rebuttal quicker than the most expensive ball player could do in his entire career. You may not agree, you may not believe me, you may call it ‘fake news, ’ but at some point, and in the fullness of time, even his most devoted and loving acolyte will be soundly and permanently disabused of the idea that trump’s got anything but contempt and disdain for anyone but himself.

You don’t even have to take my word for it. At last count, pretty much all of the current best sellers listed in the nonfiction section were written by people who were, at one time, not only colleagues of the man, but counted themselves as faithful and loyal friends, even family. Right up until the day they were booted out the door, and trump told the press that he never met them, might have seen them in passing in the hall, but that he’d always considered them weak, stupid losers that he – as a form of noblesse oblige – had deigned to allow to sit in his regal presence for a short time.

The walrus-moustachioed John Bolton, formerly the late, unlamentedNational Security Advisor of the United States, is the latest ex to literately spill the tea on his OrangeNess, ripping off the title The Room Where It Happened from the hit musical Hamilton, perhaps hoping that a little bit of the musical’s hipness would rub off on his tome.

The funny thing about Bolton is not that extravagant and clearly well-loved moustache, it’s that he’s disliked equally on both sides of the political scene. And while we’re all happy to snicker over the revelations the books has produced, despite it’s not even being available (supposedly – I’ve already got a pdf of it) until Tuesday, most people are planning to avoid actually BUYING a copy. The libraries will serve as the greatest resource for his wordy work, I have heard.

People resent that Bolton dragged his feet when asked to contribute to the pre-impeachment discovery sessions, waiting until offered a cool $2 million to tell the world what he really should have said then – that the president had not only committed the crimes with which he’d been charged, but several other impeachable offenses that the Democrats had not added to their suit. In fact, he was pretty snippy about the Dems not having done so, despite the fact that he had not actually given them any of the requested information.

Some would say that Bolton screwed Americans over twice – once as a trump appointee who failed to ‘tell all’ when his country needed him … and now as a very well-paid author of a ‘tell all.’

He’s joined the rogues gallery of cowards who laboured under trump, took his money, and then spilled their guts when their hearts were broken. Eventually pretty much every one of his handpicked, adoring cadre will have their own moment in the author spotlight. And these aren’t the ‘never trumpers’ .. they’re the die hard fans for whom he could do no harm.

History offers a plethora of examples of presidents who’ve clashed with their staff, but this is an extraordinary deluge of those who once grovelled at his feet and kissed the ground upon which he walked, who are now expecting us to believe that they’ve had an epiphany since being bounced from the White House. NOW they realize that he’s incompetent, incapable, and, yes, as bad as his critics said he was. NOW they want us to believe that they thought he was just fooling when he told them straight out that he was a snake.

Having bought back the souls they sold to trump to secure employment, they are now happy to resell their souls for a chance at political redemption, along with the fat advances they’re receiving from publishers. And the public eats it up.

In 2020 alone, we’ve had Bolton’s book, along with a tome from Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig titled A Very Stable Genius, and a book written by trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, whose axe to grind is titled Too Much and Never Enough; How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

Last year saw six books, from everyone from Jim Acosta to Anonymous, Victor Davis Hanson, James Poniewozik, Rick Reilly, and Michael Wolff, which joined the thirteen books published in 2018, and the eighteen penned in 2017.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who stood by while trump cut taxes on the rich, demanded an expensive and nonsensical border wall, and who turned a blind eye to cruel practices designed to hurt Muslims, immigrants and Dreamers, yet nevertheless managed to release his “The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea, “ in which he revealed that trump knew nothing about governing and operated on ‘knee-jerk reactions.”

Omarosa Maningault Newman, Trump’s former communications director for the Office of Public Liaison, and his token African American female, left us with “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” in which she revealed trump as a racist with no aversion to repeatedly using the “N-word” as he slimed people of colour behind their backs.

The list goes on and on …. Anthony Scaramucci, Sean Spicer, James Comey, Hope Hicks, H.R. McMaster, even convicted presidential campaign adviser Roger Stone – all have profited from their association with trump.

Tell all’s about trump are nothing new. In 1993, Harry Hurt III published “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump,” an unauthorized biography that used parts of trump’s first wife, Ivana’s, divorce deposition to describe his cruelty.

“The part of the book that caused the most controversy concerns Trump’s divorce from his first wife, Ivana. Hurt obtained a copy of her sworn divorce deposition, from 1990, in which she stated that, the previous year, her husband had raped her in a fit of rage. In Hurt’s account, Trump was furious that a “scalp reduction” operation he’d undergone to eliminate a bald spot had been unexpectedly painful. Ivana had recommended the plastic surgeon. In retaliation, Hurt wrote, Trump yanked out a handful of his wife’s hair, and then forced himself on her sexually. Afterward, according to the book, she spent the night locked in a bedroom, crying; in the morning, Trump asked her, “with menacing casualness, ‘Does it hurt?’ ” Trump has denied both the rape allegation and the suggestion that he had a scalp-reduction procedure. Hurt said that the incident, which is detailed in Ivana’s deposition, was confirmed by two of her friends.”

At some point, even the most fervent supporter has got to see that there is indeed something about trump, and it’s disgusting. Just ask anyone who has been in his presence for more than – how long did Scaramucci last, eleven days?

So it’s not just me, is what I’m saying. And I’m gonna keep on hating trump – rationally or irrationally – for as long as he is resident on this planet, whether that be as president or, hopefully, in good time, as a long-term political prisoner.

……………………………………………….

I caught this 2019 ideaCity talk on YouTube last week, and was just blown away. I hope those who cherish democracy, and who have been wondering if there’s any hope for the planet, will take some comfort from Marie Henein’s calm, yet passionate, defence of democracy, and the free speech that enables democratic nations. This one’s a keeper.

“Here’s the three things that I noticed happen. The democratic dialogue has been replaced with a digital screaming match. Our ideas of democracy began to unmoor from liberalism, and the concept of democracy was suddenly equated with populism. Or as some authors have called it, we see the rise of Illiberal democracy. And thirdly, caught in the eye of the storm were many of the values and freedoms so essential to reconcile the success of the democracy with the protection of minorities, of the marginalized, of those who did not have the majority vote. “

Democracy and Freedom of Speech – Marie Henein

Corona My House, Baby

by Roxanne Tellier

So – that was a pretty wild month, right? Even for a leap year? At this time of year, I’m usually talking about cabin fever, and writing about ‘hygge’ and how to cope when winter just won’t leave.

But not this year! This will definitely be a February to remember. We’ve had early primaries and voting that’s driven some Democrats to the edge of hysteria – James Carville may never survive the Bern. Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow, so we can hope for an early spring. And Trump unveiled Kushner’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan, causing the Palestinian National Authority to cut all ties with the US and Israel.

Trump’s obsequious and sycophantic GOP acquitted him, despite pretty much all of the Senators agreeing that baby’d done a bad, bad thing. I mean … COME ON, folks… Trump’s already so narcissistic he expects presents on Mothers Day. Now he believes he is America’s King and the presumed second coming of their Lord and Savior. He is a mad king, high on his own infallibility, trying, but miserably failing, to oversee a pivotal moment in history. We can thank the spineless, power mad, Republican party for this ‘very special’ moment in American history.

And – oh yeah, we got hit with a plague.

Whether you believe history repeats or rhymes, studying what’s gone before tells us much about where we are now. People smarter than myself have warned for decades that the planet was long overdue for a global pandemic. It’s a cycle, and one which has, in the last 12,000 years, killed between 300-500 million people. We’ve had cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, and of course, influenza. Heck, the Antonine Plague of 165 AD is thought to have been either smallpox or measles, something the 5 million people who died in Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece and Italy had never heard of before it hit hard.

In the seven years that the Black Death decimated Europe, Africa and Asia, there was an estimated death toll of about 200 million.

Over the last two hundred years, we’ve had odd outbreaks of cholera and flu, but apart from the great flu pandemic of 1918 that killed about 50 million humans, there have been smaller death tolls, and a quicker response, saving millions of lives, through a wise and well prepared use of science and good health policies.

No matter when an epidemic appears, or where, there are two key measures necessary to halt the spread as quickly as possible, and to care for those who become infected by these diseases. A society needs to be prepared, with prophylactic obstructions organized to routinely stop the movement of illness across borders. And once infected, a society needs to be kept informed as to how to protect themselves, how to care for those who fall to an illness, how to deal with the necessary complications of everyday life, and how to stop the spread of the illness to any vulnerable citizens.

However, with this current epidemic, the trump administration has opted to politicize the response, and to muzzle trusted experts by insisting that they only report to VP Pence, who will, ostensibly, then bowdlerize whatever the experts say, and squeeze that through a funnel that may or may not be trump’s colon, before releasing it to an anxious nation.

The first problem with that ‘solution; is that no one believes or trusts, trump’s words. As of January 2020, he’d racked up almost 17,000 out and out disproven lies. Would you trust your life to this man?

Pence and trump are willfully walking down exactly the same path that Iran did; when confronted with the virus, they attempted to deny the truth. And they should hope that they don’t get a similar outcome

“In early February, as rumours about coronavirus cases and deaths started spreading in Iran, the Iranian regime went into full-scale denial mode and held the 40th anniversary celebrations for the Islamic Revolution. Hundreds of thousands marched on the streets, met, spent lots of time in very close proximity to each other.

And the Iranian Regime continued to deny any coronavirus cases despite being in the middle of an outbreak.

Last week, just a few days prior to their sham elections on Friday, it seems that the situation got so bad that the regime could not deny it anymore. They had to admit to numerous cases and deaths caused by the coronavirus. Nonetheless, they decided to go ahead with their sham election in the middle of an outbreak of a highly contagious virus.

The result has been that many in the Iranian Regime have been infected, including the vice deputy of health and one of the vice presidents. 6 parliamentarians have also been infected, with one of them having died already. It’s even probable that President Rouhani, who held cabinet meetings with some of the infected ministers, is also infected. It should also surprise no-one if many of the religious leaders are infected, as well. “

Trump is actively making matters worse. After spending several years dismantling the government apparatuses that were set up to handle precisely this type of situation, he’s calling the epidemic a ‘hoax, ’ saying that it’s just another thing the Dems have cooked up to hobble his campaign.

(kudos to the Dems for going all in on the hoaxing, right? I mean… talking China and North Korea into ‘faking’ their symptoms and all of those deaths, not to mention having the Iranian vice president hospitalized … that deserves a round of applause, at the very least!)

He’s made himself and his party the real victims here, claiming that the Dems are somehow complicit in ruining his re-election efforts. Doesn’t seem to register in his pea brain that the Dems are knee deep in their own election concerns, as the contenders vie for party leader in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Trump’s managed to maneuver several Republican led states into forgoing caucuses or primaries in 2020, so he essentially has no party competition between himself and a fall re-election. Nonetheless, he refuses to abandon his Nuremburg style rallies, in which both he and his faithful cult apparently seek a simultaneous climax through the mangling and ingestion of his tasty word salads.

In the face of the coronavirus, that fervor is quite likely to turn many of their gathering places into seething, simmering petri dishes of disease.

Trump’s only interest is to protect himself, his money, his re election… the people aren’t even close to the top of his list of concerns. And that’s sad, because most of those people who follow him really love him, and they’re about to get sick, and maybe even die, as they follow his dance to the cliff’s edge. Sadder still – he just doesn’t care.

For the last three years, any laws, rules or regulations that would benefit the lower- and middle-class voters of the United States have been deregulated, cut, or have simply disappeared from the budget. Despite repeatedly swearing to his base that he would never take away their Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, all three of those are on the chopping block in the budget he and his minions are in the midst of preparing.

And, to date, he’s cut the working budgets of the CDC, National Security Council, (entire global security health unit) Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services.

Not only that, “In its latest budget proposal, the Trump administration sought to cut CDC funding by 16% — even as Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar seeks emergency spending from lawmakers to combat the coronavirus.”

The remarks come amid warnings from CDC experts that the virus’ spread in the US was “inevitable” and urged Americans to prepare. But the Trump administration has spent the last two years gutting critical positions and programs that health experts say weakened the federal government’s ability to manage a health crisis.

In 2018, the White House eliminated a position on the National Security Council tasked with coordinating a global pandemic response. The CDC that same year also axed 80% of its efforts combating disease outbreaks overseas because its funds were depleted.”

The funds we used to spend on global pandemic preparedness were not wasted money – that was the nation’s first line of defense

And now clinics and hospitals face a shortage not only of face masks, but of working testing kits that would help them to identify new victims of the virus.

There are other issues here, though, and we need to be making a plan of what to do next. American citizens lack a lot of the amenities that might have made the handling of this health crisis a lot easier. Having a proper health care plan would have been good. Instead, we’re hearing that those who seek medical aid are being hit with bills of over $300, just to determine if they have the virus. How are they expected to pay for treatment, if it turns out they are infected?

Minimum wage earners likely haven’t got the option of taking sick days, but they are also unlikely to have any extra money lying around to get them through a period of not working. What happens when cashiers, restaurant servers, cooks, bartenders, gas station attendants, and the like just stop going to work, either because of their own illness, or to help soothe the illness of a child or spouse?

What happens when restaurants and stores close, because there’s no staff, and there aren’t enough customers to keep the doors open? What happens when the “just in time” ordering that has kept businesses financially solvent for decades, comes up against China not having the people or resources to keep the supply chain lubricated?

The stock market lost $6 trillion dollars last week. How many people will lose their jobs due to that drop?

What happens to the homeless, who are already in poor health? What about the immigrants and refugees, mostly little kids, crammed together in camps around the nation? Those camps are ripe for spreading contamination.

It’s hard to believe, but even as America begins to count its own dead, the trump administration continues to call for funds – $3.8 billion this week – to be steered from other congressionally approved budgets, like the Department of Defense, to be used to build that infernal wall, instead of using any and all available money to save their own citizens.

The Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, called for $8.5 billion in emergency funding to help fight the coronavirus, which was three times the $2.5 billion that trump had requested be released.

Meanwhile, the head of Homeland Security told American citizens that a vaccine was at least ten or eleven months away, but when it was available, not all citizens would be able to afford it. (Although their taxes WOULD pay for the research and distribution of the drug.)

And White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney suggested that Americans were guilty of paying too much attention to the small amount of information media was at liberty to give them. While he admitted that their everyday lives would be fraught with school closures and public transit issues, he thought it best the average Joe “turn off your televisions for 24 hours.” After all, anyone concerned with school closures and public transit issues is hardly likely to be someone the trump administration cares much about, after they’ve got their vote.

These are scary times, all over the world. From Australia to Africa, Russia to South Korea, we’re worrying about ourselves, and each other, and wondering what happens next. Nothing we’ve ever known in our lives has prepared us for this.

Pretty sure that whomever can figure out some way to lift that Chinese curse about living in ‘interesting times” could retire a trillionaire.

In the meantime, all I have to offer is this information from WHO on how to properly wash your hands.

Democracy Died in Daylight

by Roxanne Tellier

In the last several years, I’ve written umpteen thousands of words about the trump presidency. I’ve tried my best to point readers and voters towards the truth of what so many warned us about – a rogue presidency ending in political, financial, and physical disaster for American citizens.

Three years into his disastrous reign, the damage being inflicted on the people, their institutions, and, sadly, their psyches, is no longer up for question. If there is to be any hope for the country in the future, it will require decades of labour, just to bring things back to where they were in November 2016, when Trump won the Electoral College, after losing the popular vote to Clinton by 2.8 million votes.

Whether America will ever get the chance to even start that repair, is now moot.

Despite the guardrails set in place by the Founders and the Constitution, trump has successfully kept two of the three governing branches under his thumb, coupled with his having put two trump loyalists in the Supreme Court, and installing a trump sycophant as Attorney General of the United States. With the entire system rigged against dissent, many hoped that there might be a few patriots remaining in the Republican Party who could look beyond their own wealth and best interests for long enough to rein in trump’s excesses.

‘You’re’ .. but they got the rest right…

But that was a lost cause; there are no heroes in the GOP, just a lot of evil, incompetent, long past their best before date, cowards.

Nancy Pelosi didn’t want an impeachment investigation during her time as Minority Leader. She often declared that she would prefer the next presidency be decided at the ballot box. Her reticence might perhaps also have been partially due to the line of succession; in the event that a president is successfully impeached and removed from office, the presidency then goes to the Vice-President, and if he is also impeached, goes to the Minority Leader. That could be construed a conflict of interest, if the articles of impeachment were deemed not to rise to a sufficient level of concern.

When Pelosi finally opted for an impeachment investigation, it was predicated by a whistle-blower’s suspicions, which were later corroborated by several witnesses, that the president had engaged in bribery, by withholding funds that Congress had voted to give to the Ukraine for their defence against Russian aggression. Trump insisted that he would not release those funds, nor formally acknowledge/host the new president of the Ukraine, until an investigation was announced that would look into possible corruption on the part of Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, who is currently the front runner for the Democratic party in the run up to the November 2020 election.

The funds were eventually dispersed, after the whistle-blower’s allegations emerged.

Despite the president’s denials, withholding those funds DID have a negative impact on the Ukraine.

“At least 13 Ukrainian soldiers were killed while President Donald Trump’s administration was withholding military aid from the country from mid-July to mid-September. The men, aged from 20 to 45, are among at least 78 Ukrainian soldiers killed in action up to mid-September this year in the east of the country, according to various local media and Ukrainian government reports.

It is impossible to say whether timely delivery of American aid would have helped any individual soldier. But their deaths are a potent reminder that while the Trump administration was wrangling over military assistance, Kiev was—and remains—locked in a deadly struggle with its Russian-backed separatist adversaries.” (Newsweek, Oct 2019)

Throughout the impeachment process, the Republicans in both the House and the Senate behaved like spoiled children being denied their candy; they impeded the process at every turn. Rather than mount a defense against the alleged crimes, they attacked the process itself, and the White House repeatedly refused to allow people in the administration to testify during the preliminary meetings. They also refused to release documentation that would have clarified much of the testimony.

They upped the ante during the trial itself, with trump’s ‘tv’ lawyers perjuring themselves endlessly, while Justice Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, sat like a bump on a log in a dress, ignoring falsehoods and outright lies with a ‘supreme’ lack of interest.

Despite the brilliant outlining of the crimes with which trump was being charged, the Republican Senators in the Congress ignored what they could not deny, playing crossword puzzles, doodling, checking their (illegal) phones, or dozing during Democratic testimony. And when the time came for the Senators to vote on whether or not to allow additional witnesses, the GOP decided that they’d heard enough, and denied the request.

There has never been an impeachment trial, in the history of the US, that did not include witnesses, and proper evidence. The trial was rigged, from start to finish, with the aid of the president, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.

This trial made a mockery of justice in America. And, on Wednesday, when these same Senators vote to acquit the president of the charges, they will, in effect, raise the president to the position of King, establishing a trump monarchy as the government of the United States.

“If the president does something which he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment, “ Dershowitz said.

L’Etat – c’est moi……

Incredibly, many of the Senators agreed that the president WAS guilty as charged, they just didn’t think it rose to the level of impeachment. Some said that they feared what an impeachment might do to the country. Considering what happened in Kentucky on Jan 31^st, they might have had a point.

Gun rights activists carrying semi-automatic firearms pose for a photograph in the Capitol Building on January 31, 2020 in Frankfort, Kentucky.

From Twitter: “Weirdest thing about guns in the Kentucky Capitol: if you have one, you’re told to walk around the metal detector. Others must pass through and get wanded.”

Also, and probably to be expected, many of the Senators blamed the Democrats for having insufficient witnesses or evidence, despite these lacks being wholly the fault of trump and the White House.

“We will never know how this impeachment trial would have unfolded if the House had waited to secure additional testimony and court orders. One thing is certain, however: The case against President Trump could only have become stronger,” wrote law professor and House Judiciary witness Jonathan Turley.”

Without being able to call witnesses, and without further requested evidence, there’s nothing left now but for the Republican party to vote on Wednesday, and do as they have said they would do all along – acquit him of the charges. Despite the oath that they swore, promising to perform honestly and with due diligence, and despite knowing – and ADMITTING – that he is guilty of the charges, they have opted to ignore his corruption, and, essentially, proclaim that the president of the United States is literally above the law. Trump becomes America’s first King.

And America is about to get royally reamed.

Wanting presidential accountability Is not about party. It’s not a ‘trump delusion syndrome’. It’s not about assessing how he’s behaved all of his life, unfaithful to the women in his life, screwing over those unfortunates who did work for him for which they’ve never been properly paid, or even that he’s been pathologically dishonest throughout his entire presidency.

No. It’s about looking at the facts, objectively, and seeing the truth – that the role of president needs to be held by someone who is better than this, but more than that, that the president must be held accountable for criminal actions.

Denying that accountability renders the rule of law moot. Elevating the POTUS to Monarch is exactly what the Founders tried so hard to prevent, in demanding accountability through impeachment.

“There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

How crazy could things get in a post-impeachment America? Well, just yesterday, Wyoming State Rep Rodney Garcia made a statement at a state party gathering in which Garcia’s concern about socialists ‘entering our government’ and socialists ‘everywhere’ in Billings, ended with Garcia insisting that the Constitution says to either shoot socialists, or put them in jail – despite his inability to point out exactly where in the Constitution this is written.

As Jim Wright, aka StoneKettle Station, wrote yesterday, we have to accept the reality that the Republican party is not just protecting their own seats, or being cowardly, they are profoundly evil. Just like all those who committed atrocities and horrors in the past.

“It’s easier to believe that the people who are right now selling out the Republic are doing so because of some vast complex invisible multinational conspiracy, than to believe they are just … bad people.

As if the Nazis needed to blackmailed into being genocidal monsters.

As if the Confederacy or the Klan needed be blackmailed into racism.

As if the Proud Boys had to be blackmailed into hating women.

As if all the people who’ve listened to Rush Limbaugh for the last 20 years only did so because Vladimir Putin threatened to kill their kids.

As if human nature wasn’t enough.

I don’t know.

Maybe it speaks well of you that you believe these are decent people who have to be blackmailed into doing terrible things.

Maybe you’re a better person than me, probably you are, in that you believe there has to be more than just hate and fear, ignorance, deliberate stupidity, greed, selfishness, and lust for power.

Maybe.”

Evil has won. On Wednesday the Republican party will sell out the country when they vote to acquit a man they admit is guilty of the crimes outlined in the impeachment process. Trump will be acquitted, but he will still be impeached. That doesn’t go away.

There will be no show of integrity, duty, or courage on the part of the Senators casting their votes. And when, inevitably, more crimes are committed, more citizens are harmed by his hair-brained, demented ideas, more countries are denied access to the nation, and inevitably, tales of sadistic, horrific injuries are perpetrated against trump’s enemies, they will clutch their pearls, and deny their part in the atrocities.

American will continue its descent into a sinkhole of depravity. Good people will continue to be emotionally, physically, and financially abused by his policies. Attempts to fight back – legal, peaceful protests protected under the first amendment – will soon be deemed to be ‘against the nation’s best interests.’ Eventually protests will be banned, and protestors, most likely found guilty without trial, will discover their possessions forfeited under new laws that only serve those in power.

The early lessons learned from tormenting the likes of comedian Kathy Griffin will blossom into full-blown assaults designed not just to humiliate those who fail to show loyalty, but to grind them into total subservience.

It’s entirely possible that trump will simply cancel the 2020 elections, but whether he does or not, we can rest assured that a lack of prophylactic work beforehand to keep the elections from being rigged pretty much guarantees that the outcome is already determined, as surely as Russia’s have been for decades.

Meanwhile, on social media, some are demanding that the Democrats walk out on Wednesday’s vote to impeach, as a protest against the rigged trial. Others think that the invitation to the State of the Union should be rescinded.

But none of that matters anymore. The game is already lost. I wouldn’t bet the farm on a ‘blue wave’ where they’ll get to vote all the bad guys out. I wouldn’t bet the farm on there even being anything resembling a normal election.

All this kind of thinking does is push the battle along, to be fought months away from now. They’re saying, let’s not fight the battle now, while the war is raging, but somewhere down the line where, if Jupiter aligns with Mars, and the exact right, suitably virtuous, Dem is given the nod, well, maybe … maybe … maybe …

This all smacks of wishful, magical thinking.

Americans have to face the truth, and that is that Lady Justice is not just blind, she’s been raped and murdered, her broken body left on the steps of the Washington Monument.

Democracy dies in darkness, but this week, it was murdered in broad daylight, by the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” in the Upper house of the United States Congress.

Impeachy Keen – Full Speed Ahead

by Roxanne Tellier

Another week, another round of hysteria emanating from the beleaguered White House resident. With the impeachment inquiry picking up speed, despite the constant obstruction and spurning of Congressional subpoenas, the inquiry is still on track to finish as early as Christmas.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that Trump himself has brought them to this moment, stating that his actions are “a betrayal to his oath of office, betrayal of national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

The first order of business is for all senators to agree on a set of rules that will be in place for a trial. While the Republicans have declared that the Democrats are behaving ‘unfairly,’ in fact the rules and procedures used are pretty much the same as those in place from former President Bill Clinton’s trial.

The big question will be whether it is even possible to have a truly bipartisan process in the Senate, with so many of the GOP living in fear of possible Trump reprisals, should they display any disloyalty to him.

Hopefully, the use of electronic voting, rather than a roll call vote, will allay some of their fears. However Brian Babin, of Texas, has argued that Americans ‘deserve to hear from our own voices rather than from a spreadsheet on the Clerk’s website.”

He added that electronic record voting “shields Members from having to stand before their colleagues, their constituents, and the world.” It could be argued that that is precisely why a large contingent of Republicans would prefer to vote anonymously.

Despite the talking point that Republicans have hammered incessantly, that the Democrats are attempting to overturn the 2016 election results, the real reason to move forward with this impeachment investigation and trial hinges on the Trump admin’s determination to topple democracy in America.

The Democrats (and a large portion of Americans) have weathered nearly three years of constant chaos and the overturning of norms, so the denial of election results is something that’s long disappeared in the rear view mirror. In fact, if anything, what is clear in the overt and covert actions of Trump’s cabal of AG Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rudy Giuliani is a determined attempt to rewrite history, and overturn the established fact that Russia helped Trump to victory.

As far back as 2017, when Breitbart’s Steve Bannon was put in charge of national security, there was never any question that the Trump administration preferred to work outside of governmental norms. Bannon operated outside of, and with no input from, the National Security Council, like a shadow NSC, preferring an environment that allowed no dissenting opinions, and left no paper trail.

In the days and weeks since the whistleblower alerted the Select Committee on Intelligence of his ‘urgent concern’ about the president’s actions, it’s become very clear that the president has indeed authorized several of his colleagues and big donors to operate outside of institutional norms as yet more ‘shadow government agents.’

Last month it was revealed that, since May, AG Barr had been conducting an administrative review into the origins of the Mueller inquiry. At the end of October, the process had switched to a criminal probe, seeking to overturn the official conclusion that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election, with the intention of installing Trump as president. While the Mueller Report did not establish any criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump, it did not clear the president of obstructing justice.

Barr’s escalation of the ‘investigation of the investigators’ to a criminal probe has raised concerns of a Kremlin styled ‘justice department’ that can, at any moment, begin criminal proceedings against the political foes or dissenters of the Trump regime.

Meanwhile, as the GOP tells anyone who’ll listen that this is all Democratic sour grapes, and that the House needs to get back to work, the House has indeed passed over 400 bills that have been sent on to Mitch McConnell’s Republican controlled Senate. And there the bills languish, as Moscow Mitch crowns himself the ‘Grim Reaper’ of liberal legislation.

Senator Tammy Duckworth recently had a taste of Mitch’s refusal to work, when she unveiled legislation to protect undocumented relatives of military members and veterans, allowing them to remain in the U.S. temporarily .

That bill will more than likely also die, on McConnell’s watch.

So I wonder – how can elected representatives who spend all of their time defending Trump’s criminal activities, indulging in illegal, harebrained schemes to slow down the pace of the impeachment inquiry, or actively engaging in the tearing down of the pillars of democracy, face their constituents when they return to home base? How can they expect to be re-elected, when there’s no proof that their time in office has actually moved the country forward, or helped their fellow Americans?

What do they know that allows them to continue pursuing a complete lack of accountability, while expecting to coast into a smooth re-election, that we don’t?

My fear, after three years of seeing the abnormal redefined as normality is that America is falling into a state of learned helplessness. The ‘Resistance,’ once vocal and widespread, now seems more tepid than red hot. A few boos at the president’s attendance of a sports game smells more like acceptance of a new reality than an organized front of opposition.

………………………………………………………………..

Fans and friends of musician Ernest Lee were saddened to hear of his passing in September. On Sunday, November 10, we had a Celebration of Life for him, at the Royal Canadian Legion – Woodbine Heights Br. 22, 1240 Woodbine Avenue. (Just north of Mortimer Ave.)

Here’s a little time line of the events, from organizer Robert Winter:

**Controlled Demolition** which features **Ernest Lee Band** drummer **Mark Hundevad** on vibes and drums, Ernest band alumni **Jim Heineman** on sax and **Sam Heineman** on drums and keys.

” We kick off at 2:00, music starts at 3:00. Food provided. Cash bar. We are at the Legion but since it is not a Legion event hats are allowed. Music features a set by Controlled Demolition which features Ernest Lee Band drummer Mark Hundevad on vibes and drums, Ernest band alumni Jim Heineman on sax and Sam Heineman on drums and keys. Special solo guest appearance by long time Ernest friend Steve Fever on acoustic. The Ernest Lee Band will play a set, with regular band members Mark Hundevad on drums, Russell Noseworthy on bass, Robert Winter on guitar. Jim Bish will be on sax. Jim spent time playing with Ernest many years ago and rejoined the band in 2019. John Fletcher, long time Ernest band alumni on guitar and bass, will be joining us on guitar. “

The Three Divas; from left to right – Mari Nicholson, Roxanne Tellier, and Marion Drexler

Featured singers for this set of Ernest Lee original songs and songs by others that Ernest put his stamp on were Marion Drexler, Mari Nicholson and Roxanne Tellier. A draw for 5 of Ernest’s CD Rhythm & Rhyme was held after the music for those who donated to Dixon Hall who have an excellent music program for disadvantaged Toronto youth.

Lying Liars, Bullies & Cowards

by Roxanne Tellier

I’ve written before about the dangers of elected officials lying to the public. Twice, in fact. In modern politics, it seems that lying in public has replaced any pretence of integrity or any desire to have one’s tenure be remembered with respect.

Lying breaks our faith in others – once we know that someone will lie to us, we can never again truly trust that person. And it doesn’t matter why the lie was told, because the lie reveals something very important about the liar; the liar is a coward.

There’s a reason that the book ‘Profiles in Courage’ is so slim .. it’s because most people are cowards. Oh, they talk a good game. Keyboard warriors slam those who disagree with their contentions. But put them in the same room with their opponent, face to face, and …. crickets. What are they going to do, pull out a gun? Not in Canada, thank heavens. A raised voice is generally our strongest weapon.

The media, bound by economics to depend on ratings and ‘hits,’ lies regularly, either to advance a cause, by omission, or to ensure that the fool sitting in front of the camera will be willing to return the next time they do something newsworthy enough to be asked back. They forget that truth is what is needed, and that you are allowed to talk over or contradict a liar. Profit has trumped truth.

Getting along with other people is integral to a workable society. Being friendly and helpful to others, while respecting their differences and opinions, is the glue that advances and enhances our society.

Humans have evolved to tell polite little ‘white lies’ in their daily lives, and most of us tell at least two a day. But there is a very clear distinction between ‘white lies’ that are meant to soothe the person being lied to, and ‘black lies’, which are antisocial, and meant to benefit the person doing the lying.

Black liars are cowards, and cowards are afraid of being found unworthy. So they lie to cover their lack of abilities. They know that there will be consequences if people discover the truth about what they are, what they do, and why.

Those who stand behind liars and bullies for fear of the bully taking reprisals are cowards, who only have loyalty to themselves.

Right now, we’re watching a dismantling of nations. We have discovered, as people do when little can be hidden, that too many of the people in whom they are supposed to have unlimited trust, are liars and cowards.

In this time, when people have long been vaguely aware that governments are fallible, and that those same governments are often not working for the working classes, but rather for the enrichment of big businesses, a lack of leadership contenders has never been so blatantly obvious.

Whether in Canada or the United States of America, a huge swath of taxpayers feel that their concerns are being ignored, and that the world they will be leaving to their children has been hijacked by the wealthy, in favour of the wealthy.

People have little faith in the ‘checks and balances’ built into government, because they see those in power blow right past those defences. And then it’s check .. and mate. Goodbye clean air and water. Hello oligarchy.

With elections on the horizon in both halves of North America, there is a rise in the use of dirty tricks, innuendo, and accusations that are near slander. There are trolls and bots in social media, sent to shake our faith in all of the political contenders.

It seems that we are now being coerced to choose our country’s leaders and representatives NOT by assessing who is the most qualified, but rather, by whom we’ve defined as the least corrupt, the least politically incorrect, or the least likely to indulge themselves at the tax payers expense.

Instead of a spectacle of intellectual and/or heroic giants battling it out for the prize of leading us, we watch maggots trying to convince us that they are less maggot-y than the other contenders.

Our words and deeds teach others how we expect to be treated. The lesson these politicians have learned is that we expect a circus of high wire acts and fireworks, rather than a clear and cogent statement of policy. Like children, we wait to be delighted by Seussian spectacles.

” They’ll bang on tong-tinglers, blow their foo-flounders, they’ll crash on jang-jinglers, and bounce on boing-bounders!”

Rather than creating platforms or visions of a strong and united nation, these professional politicians seek only to win an election, form a government, and put into place formats to ensure their own enrichment. The voters are just the cannon fodder; the voters are the rubes the con men seek to fool.

And that’s sad.

I’ve always known that there are many people that haven’t the time, or just don’t care about politics, because they’re doing the things that build a nation.. having a family, buying homes, starting businesses, and buying stuff. They only care when it affects them, their children, or their pocketbook.

And that’s sort of understandable. We need those nose to the grindstone types, to keep the country ticking along. But it is still really frightening to see the lack of understanding from the voters, to watch them be played and swayed by the machinations of the parties’ publicity wonks.

In the United States, the president, terrified of the prospect of impeachment, is now seemingly unable to say anything but lies. His Secretary of State was caught in several blatant lies to the public, and pretty much all of his administration and Cabinet are complicit in impeachable, illegal offences.

In Canada, the leader of the Conservative Party has been caught lying on his resume about his work record, and his education. His loyalty to the nation was questioned this week, when he told the media that he’d never spoken publicly about being a dual Canadian-United States citizen, because “no one ever asked me.”

Scheer stayed silent on his citizenship, even as the Conservative party regularly attacked politicians for their citizenships, like Michael Ignatieff in 2011, insinuating that he was ‘just visiting Canada’ They made a huge issue of former NDP leader Tom Mulcair and former Liberal leader Stephane Dion having dual Canadian-French citizenship. And in 2005, Scheer himself questioned the integrity of former governor general Michaelle Jean’s dual citizenship, asking in a blog written to his constituents if they could trust her, saying ” “Does it bother you that she is a dual citizen (France and Canada)? Would it bother you if instead of French citizenship, she held U.S. citizenship?”

It’s a breathtaking example of two-faced hypocrisy.

Do political parties, particularly on the right, no longer even vet their members, and potential leaders? Is it just a question of being the right colour, having money, and being willing to toe the party line?

We are going to find out a lot of things about ourselves in the next few months, on both sides of the border. We’re going to find out who we really are, and how much effort we put forward to understand the policies and platforms of those parties viewing for our votes. We’re going to discover if we are sheep that manipulative entities can herd into their enclosures, or if we are willing to make the time and effort to choose the leaders that will decide our countries futures.

It’s up to us all to stop accepting lies and dirty tricks as the foundation of political campaigns, and to demand truth and accountability from those we’ve chosen to lead our nations.

“In 2016, candidate Donald Trump boasted, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” In the coming weeks, we will find out whether he’s right about who he thinks we are as Americans” Rep Eric Swalwell

Hiding the Mueller Report Under a Rabbit

by Roxanne Tellier

Happy Easter! Did you find any chocolate in inappropriate places today?

eostre We’re not religious, nor do we have any little ones in the house, so we just sort of forgot about the whole thing until we tried to buy some milk, and found the grocery store closed Friday.

Christians in the West celebrate Easter somewhere between March 22 and April 25, on the first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox on March 21. This timing, and the halting of capitalism for the day, is brought to you by the pagan Teutonic goddess of the dawn, fertility and spring – Eostre. If that sounds familiar, it’s because her name is the ‘root’ for words like estrogen … the female hormone necessary for fertilization and child bearing.

easter origin As cavemen, we couldn’t be 100% sure that Winter would actually end, or when. The pagan ritual of the Spring Equinox is a celebration of the change and renewed life we yearn for in this season. Early priestesses encouraged worship of Eostre as the symbol for this return.

” Today, pagans continue to celebrate spring and attribute the change of the seasons to the powers of their god and goddess – also portrayed as The Green Man and Mother Earth.”

That’s an irony indeed, since today’s pagans are greatly outnumbered by those who are intent on stripping the earth of all her wealth and beauty, in order to enrich a small number of people.

Ah well, mustn’t grumble. Let’s eat some chocolate and sing along with Deanna Durbin!

Think the timing for the official pre-wash with extra spin cycle of the Mueller Report might have had a little something to do with Easter? As in … hopefully most people will have forgotten about it by the time they get back from their holidays?

….. and how about that Barr, eh?

It seems like only yesterday that I was opining on the wisdom of the official Attorney General of the United States position being a partisan one; surely the top law enforcement office for ALL of the citizens of the United States should be one that rules from a bipartisan stance.

barr is bizarro john goodman And why, oh why, by all that’s holy, does William Barr have to look like a Bizarro World John Goodman?

Following in the footsteps of a president that favours his base over the greater populace, AG Barr came down firmly on the side of Trump, donning kid gloves to handle how the Mueller Report was unveiled, and, like a mum defending her bad widdle boy, provided excuses for the despicable behavior that has irrevocably despoiled the presidential seat, ahead of the actual report outlining those behaviors.

He was shilling for the POTUS like a two bit carny trying to get the punters to buy tickets to see the Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla Grrrrrll.

watergate Worse still, his toadying ensured that the Report only deepened the public distrust of the justice department, while revealing conclusively that the Republican Party is morally and legally bankrupt.

“We have in Mueller’s report a narrative, a timeline narrative, of the cover up by the President and his actions. There’s absolutely no question that this has been a vast Presidential cover up.” says legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein.

trump pres worse than Watergate “Bernstein, a CNN analyst, cited his former Watergate colleague Bob Woodward’s book Fear: Trump in the White House, in which Woodward reported that former Cabinet officials believed Trump was not acting in the best interests of the United States and was a danger to national security.” (CNN)

And even the legal beagles of FOX (News) were more honest in their comments, if cautious not to bring down the full wrath of the president upon them, than the Republicans in the Senate who are still attempting to defend the indefensible.

Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano on Thursday noted that there were items in the report that Barr failed to mention during the pre-spin press conference on Thursday morning.

“The president—the behavior of the president is immoral, deceptive, and repellent,” Napolitano exclaimed. “But it doesn’t rise to the level of criminality.”

We should be reminded that the worst of the president’s impulses, that would have lead indelibly to criminality, were generally forestalled by unelected, career administration personnel, who had to try and read his rants and determine if he was just blowing off steam, ‘joking,’ or really intended for others to commit criminal acts on his behalf. A master of deception, Trump will never put anything implicating himself in wrong doing in writing – he leaves it for his minions to divine his intent, to carry out his crimes, and then pay the legal price for their loyalty.

Well, his previous conduct, and the belief that a sitting president cannot be indicted might have kept him out of jail so far, but the aftermath of the Report’s release may change how he goes forward.

trump Bear in mind … the report only covered the lead up to his inauguration, and his first few months in office. What he’s gotten up to in the two years since then are blowing up the pages of American history on a daily basis.

You’d think by now we’d be inured to his constant threats and bullying. Trump is lashing out, demanding an investigation of the investigators, and causing those who testified against him to fear for their futures. He has called the investigation an illegal witch hunt, and said that “the whole episode was an illegal takedown that failed … and somebody’s going to be looking at the other side.”

mcConnel stopped obama warning about russia Despite overwhelming evidence that the Russians did, indeed, meddle in the 2016 election to help Trump win the presidency, Trump continues to fight the ghost of his defeated opponent, Hillary Clinton, and now,-incredibly – has begun to blame his predecessor, President Obama, for not stopping the Russian interference, for some nefarious purpose that doesn’t make much sense at all … why would Obama encourage the electoral win of a Republican candidate by allowing a foreign power to influence the outcome? Do you have to be in full blown senile dementia to understand that convoluted contention?

But what now has to be determined is if the Democrats are prepared to pick up the gauntlet that the Report has thrown down.

” In its extensive discussion of the constitutional issues implicated by special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation, the report asserts that Congress has the authority to apply law “to all persons – including the President.” Specifically, Congress may “protect its own legislative functions against corrupt efforts designed to impede legitimate fact-gathering and lawmaking efforts.” The authority to prohibit a president’s corrupt use of power, the report finds, is essential to “our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”

The report declines to reach a judgment on whether the president has committed a crime because Mueller views himself as bound by Department of Justice policy against indicting a sitting president. This does not mean that the president has not committed a crime. Indeed, Mueller’s refusal to reach a judgment is based partly on principles of fairness to the president: while people accused of a crime usually have the opportunity to give their story at trial, in this case, when no charges can be brought, the accused has no opportunity to clear his name. Mueller pointedly notes that the sitting president’s immunity, however, would not preclude prosecution “once the President’s term is over or he is otherwise removed from office” — that is, impeached.” (USAToday, 2019/4/21)

And this is where the going is gonna get rough for traditional Democrats. In the past, egregious interferences into Obama’s presidency were largely tolerated, rather than called out as the profound malfeasance McConnell practiced for eight years. This must stop .. right here, and right now … if America is to regain her fading democracy.

The time for the battle is when it presents itself, not somewhere down the road, when the contentious actions have become ‘old news’ and the battle itself appears to be nothing but hurt feelings and the re-treading of old ground.

mcconnell with garlands head The time to stop McConnell from preventing Merrick Garland’s appointment was in 2016, when it happened. The Democrats assumed they’d win 2016, and ‘fix it in the mix,’ but that political hubris now has America dealing with a Supreme Court and minor courts stacked with Trump loyalists that will impact upon major legal decisions for decades to come.

No, now is the time for the Democrats to show some of the backbone and ‘strong man’ attitude that so many in the United States believe to be the measure of their vigour. This is not the time to ‘go high.’ It’s the time to stand up and fight.

lindsey graham No more delicate tippy toeing towards justice, fearful of causing upset. It’s time to roar ahead, just like the Republicans did against Clinton, when they showed that they were prepared to go to the mat over a presidential blow job, to win, no matter the cost. And it worked for them electorally, got them more seats, and moved Lindsey Graham into a position of power he could only have dreamed of before he snatched the media spotlight with his pearl clutching antics.

There has been some talk from moderate Dems that they would like to conduct a few more lengthy investigations before deciding on whether or not to consider impeachment procedures, but in my view, that has the potential of further angering the populace, who are fed up with what looks to them to be a major waste of time and tax payer dollars.

There’s also been talk that it would be smarter, this close to the next election, to focus on positive progression on the health and environmental front, but let’s face it .. ain’t nothing good coming from that as long as Trump has the bullhorn, and his gang of sycophants are blocking any forward movement from the Dems.

Although it IS possible to talk impeachment AND other concerns simultaneously.

Some contrarians are advising that calls for impeachment might lead to a further division of the country, but, apart from the Civil War, it would be hard indeed to find another time in history when the country was so critically divided.

Despite the voluminous material, articles, and books – AND this Report – that have been written outlining the illegalities and corruption of the current administration, those who have drunk the Trump Kool-Aid are not going to change their minds on what they believe. Six more months, another year, of investigations, are not going to change the hearts and minds of his base.

It is up to the Congress, who are charged with oversight, to hold the president accountable for the obstruction that he has committed.

The only way the Dems are going to change the current trajectory of American history is to stop trying to be the party that always has to be perfect and correct, always taking the punishment that ensues with a gracious smile. They have to put an immediate stop to McConnell’s sneakiness, and burn it down the minute he raises his unholy turtle head. They have to stop pretending that politics is a gentleman’s game, where everyone plays fair – they have solid proof that fairness is a foreign concept to career Republicans, and that playing nice only benefits the GOP. Ignoring how dirty the Republicans play is only making the Democrats appear like weaklings.

As the Democrats wonder if they dare go after a career criminal, the GOP are already in attack mode, with a double pronged frontal attack that is determined to punish those they consider treasonous for the audaciousness of investigating the election, while also implying that a move to impeach the president would mean that the Democrats do not love their country. The banners are being printed, the catch phrases practiced, and the talking points sharpened.

In Trump, the Republicans have found their savior, and they are not afraid to use every last fibre of their beings to stand by their man, even as they abet his corruption, and help destroy the country they claim to so love. It may be a twisted, ultimately destructive, passion, but it definitely trumps the indecisiveness that the Dems are bringing to the skirmish.

impeach trump Yes, a call for impeachment has little hope of succeeding, in the face of a Republican senate and presidency. But it is what the Democrats must be seen to do, charged as they are by their elected positions to bring oversight to the most powerful position in the nation. They must be seen to be the face of all of those who decry this president, who rules from a throne of lies and corruption.

The road to impeachment has been laid out for them to follow. All they have to do is pick up the gauntlet, and fight for those who put them into power.

The Democrats have to look to 2020, and their crop of young, exciting, fresh faces with progressive ideas looking to be the next leaders of the nation.

impeach trump2 All that the Republicans bring to the party is a senile old man, whose lies and corruptions will drag them down, and a bunch of long in the tooth senators content to live out their last years fighting against someone who hasn’t even held office in over eight years.

Launching an impeachment at this time will throw into sharp contrast the difference between the party of tomorrow, and the party of the old, corrupt, past.

It’s time, Democrats.

Let’s Kill Hitler

For baby boomers, on whom the shadow of World War II fell the darkest , the post war years teemed with possibility. Our future lay before us like a shimmering landscape, designed by the brilliant minds now free to bring us sci fi and fantasy tales of a world filled with scientific and technical advances beyond our wildest dreams.

Flying cars anyone?

But, if we looked to our families, who were now coping with war’s aftermath, or when we saw the shadow of a tattoo on someone’s wrist, we felt the pain of the millions who’d perished for a tyrant’s narcissistic wet dream, and, even the youngest of us wondered .. why didn’t anyone stop Hitler when he first started killing people?

During Hitler’s years in power, there were 42 failed assassination attempts on his life, that we know of. Surrounded by bodyguards and security forces, it’s pretty hard to kill a dictator.

But if you were a writer possessed of a fantastical mind, you might have asked yourself; what if you could go back in time, and kill a younger version of Hitler, before his rise to power?

It is perhaps unsurprising that this particular trope appealed to hundreds, if not thousands, of scribes, and that the attempt to find a time travel exemption to changing the past, continues to be tested. As recently as August 2011, my fave sci fi series, Doctor Who, took their own stab at the genre, in an episode called, “Let’s Kill Hitler.” (Spoiler alert; they failed to kill him.)

Actually, the very first story to do so was published in Weird Tales, in July 1941, and was called, “I Killed Hitler.”

In James Gleick’s book, Time Travel, he posits that “humans invented time travel to counter the regret that we only have one life to live. “ The question isn’t really, “Should you kill Baby Hitler?” But rather, “How do we best come to terms with a world where evil exists?””

But why do I bring this up, you ask? We’re all aware that Godwin’s Law says that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” So it’s moot, right?

Well, here’s the thing… by June 24, 2018, even Mike Godwin had to admit that “The question of evil, understood historically, is bigger than party politics.”

“The seeds of future horrors are sometimes visible in the first steps a government takes toward institutionalizing cruelty. In his 1957 book “Language of the Third Reich,” Victor Klemperer recounted how, at the beginning of the Nazi regime, he “was still so used to living in a state governed by the rule of law” that he couldn’t imagine the horrors yet to come. “Regardless of how much worse it was going to get,” he added, “everything which was later to emerge in terms of National Socialist attitudes, actions and language was already apparent in embryonic form in these first months.

So I don’t think Godwin’s Law needs to be updated or amended. It still serves us as a tool to recognize specious comparisons to Nazism — but also, by contrast, to recognize comparisons that aren’t. And sometimes the comparisons can spot the earliest symptoms of horrific “attitudes, actions and language” well before our society falls prey to the full-blown disease.”

So, why am I bringing up this comparison? The answer lies in a portion of a new digital exhibit, the 1938Projekt, that catalogues the final days of European Jewry.

” As was the case with French Jews who threw lavish parties in the months leading up to their deportation, or the Poles who helped manufacture the very weapons that would be used against them a year later, for my family the impending loss of their property, their homes, and even their lives seemed so surreal as to be almost impossible. They don’t actually mean it. They’ll make a show of it but we’ll be fine. There’s no chance we’ll really be gone tomorrow. The tragedy is that we don’t recognize how intractable these political climates are with a sudden timely realization, but rather as a slow burn—imperceptible until only after the damage is done.”

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“You’d have to have been crazy to have predicted such a thing as the Holocaust. Most of them simply didn’t believe that there was any credible reason why things would suddenly surpass normal levels of anti-Semitism and go from bad to catastrophic.

It is the story of how easy it is to become inured to the progression of a deteriorating situation. Through its lens, we see the time more clearly for what it was: not just another brief chapter in the thousands-of-years-old story called anti-Semitism, but a tinderbox heating up with the passage of each day. It’s easy to look now and see a series of warnings plastered onto the walls of the past, plain and clear for all Jews to see, only for fools to ignore.

But if someone were to tell you about a shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and swastikas graffitied on the Upper West Side and Nazi marches and Jewish cemeteries being defaced and a president who calls himself a nationalist and ordinances that dissolve the rights of immigrants and of the queer community and a caravan of refugees, and told you to leave behind your family business and your belongings and your home and move across the world to a place where you didn’t know a soul and didn’t know the language, would you? You’d have to be crazy.” (https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/274646/what-it-was-like-to-be-a-german-jew-in-1938)

You see, I think that, like those long ago writers of science fiction who yearned to turn back the clock to a time before Hitler took power, we’re now living in a time when there is a chance to change what seems to be inevitable.

And I think that, if a change doesn’t happen, we’ll see future writers scribbling about wanting to time travel back and kill a baby Trump, before the real horrors began in America.

Unlike a lot of people who still cling to the idea that checks and balances, and the application of the Constitution, will prevent anything too destructive from happening in America, I see that we are once again following a historic arc that has always moved in a horrific direction, and that swing is accelerating.

The assaults on the justice system and law itself are compounding daily. Where is the outrage over Khashoggi‘s murder? Why have those who swore to stand by AG Sessions, or to defend Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation, suddenly disavowed their previous words?

What did you think it meant when President Trump suggested he could pull press credentials from any reporters who didn’t show him “respect.” Can you not see that Trump has essentially revoked the First Amendment without even having to use an ‘executive order’ to do so? Like all dictators, first they must take out the press, in any way possible, because the press are they that would show you the misdeeds the administration would rather conceal.

The POTUS, on his bully pulpit, cannot repeatedly tear down American institutions verbally, without risking their actual destruction. When every speech at his rallies sounds like the words of an authoritarian, the supposition of an authoritarian regime can’t be avoided.

Post midterms, and post some of the most despicable attempts to thwart a legitimate election in recent history, many Republicans are publicly calling the attempt to count every ballot cast, voter fraud, and an attempt to ‘steal’ an election. But this is not theft or a fraud … you may not recognize it, GOP, but this is democracy.

When I hear Americans cry, “...but this isn’t America. This isn’t who we are!” I have to beg to differ.

There’s an historic pattern of racism and xenophobia that has a long through line, from America’s very beginnings, right through to the US Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to gut a key element of the 1965 voting rights act, based on the election of a man of colour to the presidency. That law demanded that areas with a history of racial discrimination at the polls get prior authorisation before changing their election or voting laws. As we’ve just seen in the 2018 midterms – we really needed that provision. We all watched the disastrous Republican-run elections that slashed the rights and ability of people of colour and indigenous people, to cast their votes, in the name of non-existent voter fraud. What you saw was voter suppression.. they never got a chance to vote, so there was never a chance of fraudulence, except on the part of those making up these rules to benefit their own party.

“That problem is solved,” Justice Roberts intoned, dismissing centuries of racism and exclusion.

“This isn’t who we are!” you say?

Do you remember the poem that begins, “first they came?” America’s version begins with calling Mexicans rapists and claiming that they bring drugs and crime, then moves on to the torment of American Muslims, before dancing on to the Dreamers, the Trans community, the LGBTQ, Puerto Ricans, Hondurans… and eventually, it comes to the Jews, as it ever has.

The massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue came at the hands of a white, middle aged, right wing, Trump supporter, who thinks Trump isn’t hard enough on the Jewish citizens of America, and so he murdered 11 people in Trump’s name.

Ironically, and In spite of his overtly racist leanings, Trump enjoys solid support from the Jewish community. One of his most fervent supporters, Miriam Adelson, the wife of Sheldon Adelson, will soon receive a Medal of Freedom, that is essentially her reward for her part in her husband’s donation of $113 million to Trump’s election and midterm support.

Like those in Germany, Poland and France that went to the movies, or threw parties, mere days before they were marched to camps, supporters like the Adelsons think his racism will stop with Mexican immigrants and African-Americans.

The pattern is too consistent. History shows horrible acts of racism, over and over and over again, against the most vulnerable of citizens. The United States, like 1984’s Oceania, has always been at war .. with itself.

This IS who you are, America.

Bill Maher has been calling this flaunting of law by the Trump administration a ‘slow moving coup‘ for the last year. With the illegal appointment of Whitaker to the position of Acting United States Attorney General, that coup picked up speed.

“In third world dictatorships, the chief law enforcement officer‘s main qualification is – he doesn’t enforce the law. Officials of independent mind are hounded out, or shoved aside.”

As Maher said, “In mid 2017, I first read you my dictator checklist, but since this week is the week we first added, “install your personal protector as head of the justice department, ” after adding in September, “install your personal protector on the highest Court,” let’s review the dictator list one more time.

You’re a narcissist who likes to see his name and face on buildings.
You appoint family members to position of power
You hold rallies, even when you are not running, and they are scary.
You talk about jailing the press, and political opponents.
You want to hold military parades, and muse openly about being president for life.
You use your office for personal financial gain.
You love other dictators.
You lie so frequently your supporters don’t know what the truth is anymore, and don’t’ care.

For a coup to work, it is first necessary for truth itself to be destroyed – as well as the people who try to report it. So the dictator is free to say anything, and his followers believe it.

Adding to that dictator checklist, we now have state TV in this country, an actual propaganda channel, where the ‘reporters’ openly endorse the leaders. And we have people who oversee the elections they are running in.

In August of this year, Trump’s semi-liquid mob mouthpiece, Rudy Giuliani, said “the truth isn’t the truth.”

So – truth isn’t truth, the press is the enemy of the people, there are ‘alternative facts,’ “there’s no proof of anything, ” “What you’re seeing and reading isn’t what’s happening.”

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In 1986, after 21 years of being the president (dictator) of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, and his wife, Imelda Marcos, had their reign of corruption overturned, and the family was sent into exile. It is estimated that the couple plundered between 5 and 10 $BILLION US dollars from the Philippine people during those years.

And yet, Imelda made a comeback, and somehow managed to get elected to the the Philippine House of Representatives , not once, but FOUR times, despite having been called a kleptocrat by historians, being listed by Newsweek as one of the “greediest people of all time” and having had the distinction of having committed, along with her husband, the greatest robbery of a government, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

In November 2018, Mrs. Marcos was convicted of corruption involving US$200 million, from the time between 1978 and 184, when she was governor of Metro Manila. She has been sentenced to a total term of up to 77 years of imprisonment.

I’m telling you this because of the parallels between the Marcos and Trump camp … neither can quit their love for a self-serving, selfish, corrupt, world champion thief. Nothing you say will change the opinions of his or her cult. And just as the Filipinos kept voting Imelda back in, as she siphoned over $200 million from the people to her Swiss bank account, there will still be Americans voting for Trump some ten, twenty years down the road, and probably even after his death.. maybe especially after his death.

“Godwin’s Law was never meant to block us from challenging the institutionalization of cruelty or the callousness of officials who claim to be just following the law. It definitely wasn’t meant to shield our leaders from being slammed for the current fashion of pitching falsehoods as fact. These behaviors, distressing as they are, may not yet add up to a new Reich, but please forgive me for worrying that they’re the “embryonic form” of a horror we hoped we had put behind us.” Mike Godwin
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Lest we forget …. On this, and every Remembrance Day, I remember and thank my family for their sacrifice.
WWI: Uncle Len, Uncle Cecil
WWII: Uncle John, Auntie Anne, Auntie Pat
KOREA: Uncle Leo, my dad
and Uncle Dennis, who served in peacetime.

Daylight Savings And Other Idiocies

ENOUGH already with this daylight saving nonsense. The cost to the country, and it’s citizens, has been recorded and shown to be of little to no benefit to the nation.

I wonder if Ford has considered making this a pet project for Ontario. (Opting in or out of daylight saving is within a provincial premier’s purview.) It would fit into his stated platform, save money, and kill something that the ‘elites’ determined decades ago would be beneficial to the ‘little people.’ And, when he’s finally out of office, it will be one thing he can point to as having successfully and fairly easily accomplished.

Anyone got Dougie’s ear?

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Hey, it’s Indie Week! My colleagues have written a fair bit about what that means, musically, so I won’t belabour the possible tuneful delights that your wristbands can get you into. There IS a lot of great music, I assure you, a veritable cornucopia of raw talent.

But .. I probably won’t get to many of the shows. You see, I’m more like those people that buy Playboy for the articles.. I like the conferences. I like to learn from people with experience and stories to tell.

So, on Wednesday, you’ll likely find me checking out a forum on anxiety, depression and mental health, or taking notes at Martin Atkins’ discourse on “How to Make an Extra $100K in the Next Year.”

On Friday, there’s a seminar on Women Influencers, and another on “New Rules in the Music Industry.”

And those are the things that interest moi … but that’s moi. Why don’t YOU check out what’s available this week, and see what turns your crank? I’ll see you there!
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We’re now literally days away from the American midterm elections, when those who will exercise their right to vote will determine the arc of America’s future. It really is a critical moment in time. Voting Democrat will enable the guardrails to keep Trump and his madness in check. Voting Republican will tell Trump that his madness and rush to a fascist dictatorship is A-OK with the citizens of the United States

VOTING IS HOW YOU SEIZE POWER. And that’s why old people, rich people and people who are terrified of change… are ALWAYS voting, every chance they get. That is why there are old, rich, white men in power in the U.S., who’ve been voted back in every time those old, rich, white, scared people get a chance to enter the voting booth. That is why there is a lying, perjuring, accused sexual assailant on the Supreme Court.

Does your vote count? Damned straight it does! And mouthing off that it ‘won’t change anything anyway’ is not a ‘too cool for the pool,’ detached cynicism, it’s a naive, and entitled sentiment that betrays an ignorance of how democracy works.

Are you enjoying Trump’s America? Because, despite how many people tell me that I am incorrect about America sliding into fascism… it’s looking pretty textbook fascist-y right about now.

” Fascism is a form of government which is a type of one-party dictatorship. Fascists are against democracy. They work for a totalitarian one-party state. This aim is to prepare the nation for armed conflict, and to respond to economic difficulties. Fascism puts nation and often race above the individual. It stands for a centralized government headed by a dictator. Historically, fascist governments tend to be militaristic, and racist. In the Third Reich German society was pictured as a racially unified hierarchy, the Volksgemeinschaft..” (wikipedia)

The country has been steamrollered under the armoured treads of an administration that has control of the House, the Senate, the Presidency, AND the Supreme Court. Except for the horrific tax cuts that sent billions of dollars to the 1 per cent, the majority of Trump accomplishments have come about through the high handed use of ‘executive orders,’ which, when used in lieu of democratic debate, compromise, and bipartisanship, are, of course, the way dictators govern.

Now, there may have been times in America’s history where one party having control of ALL aspects of government might not have been quite as frightening as it is in 2018. But the horrors that we’ve seen to date can’t hold a candle to what we’ll see in the future, if the midterms keep the power in the Republican party’s hands.

While you might have been aware that the Supreme Court newbie, Kavanaugh, has some interesting views on presidential reach and abortion, and that the other newbie, Gorsuch, has some equally interesting opinions on religious liberty and the rights of LGBTQ citizens …. did you know that the Supreme Court is about to begin debate on whether or not America will be maintaining a separation of church and state?

That’s kind of a biggie right there. What will be left of America, when it is only the furthest hard right thinkers who decide what citizens are allowed to do, in public, or in the privacy of their own homes?

Many of those who agree with the far right’s racism and xenophobia are not only falling prey to the president’s Hail Mary pass to save control of the House and/or Senate through terrorizing the people with talks of war and invasions, they’re whipping up even further paranoia by declaring that migrants have a super power that enables them to bring extinct diseases back into the American mainstream.

America needs a Zanax. Despite Trump’s assurance that the migrant caravan is an invading horde, his words, and those of the Foxy Friends who agree with him, are nothing more than a panicked attempt to continue their icy grip on America’s gonads.

Imagine the desperation that would make you gather up your family, what little you could carry, and force you to walk thousands of miles, to somewhere that you hoped .. didn’t know for sure, but hoped … would grant you sanctuary. This is an apocalyptic scenario. You’ve seen it in movies, in ‘after the end of the world‘ scripts, but this is real life for these migrants.

It is believed that there are two caravans, one traveling thru southern Mexico, and the other just now crossing Guatemala into Mexico. The second group is believed to be mostly the family members of the first caravan. The number of people in both of these caravans fluctuates daily, but is estimated to be between a thousand to five thousand people total. (And, bear in mind, neither of these groups would be converging at any one American border, all at the same time.)

Among the sympathizers to Trump’s cause and senile paranoia are the citizen militia, who, with significant armament, are hoping to join the even more heavily armed 15,000 troops, 20,000 border guards, and 10,000 Nation Guard members gathering to dispel .. with brute force and severe prejudice – the few thousand dusty, dirty, thirsty, tired refugees fleeing gang violence and government corruption in Honduras.

Sadly.. those migrants are walking right into the unwelcoming arms of America’s own home-grown violence and government corruption.

The sight of this gang of tens of thousands, shoulder to shoulder against these desperate people, should be the most humiliating spectacle that America ever hopes to see. Home of the Brave? No, it’s the land of the loose bowelled, chicken shits.

As of November 2nd, the caravans are in Matias Romero, a town in the southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca. They are at least several weeks away from reaching the United States, although the Department of Homeland Security – well known for fudging and outright lying of facts – has said they could arrive at the border somewhere in between four days and two weeks from now.

I guess if they all grow wings it’s possible. But these are families, that include women, children, and at least one newborn who made her appearance just a day or two ago.

I can draw a straight line from the ‘no room at the inn‘ prejudice and xenophobia of 2000 years ago to the cruelty and barbarism we’re seeing at the American border today. Two thousand years later, what these ‘warriors’ choose to cloak themselves in on a Sunday morning doesn’t look very much like Christianity at all.

This is Trump’s Last Stand, this desperate Mexican standoff, and he’s got all of his hopes pinned on his belief that America will believe the lies and hyperventilation that he, his administration and FOX News have poured into the far right’s ears like so much aural poison. I am hoping that Americans are smarter, and better human beings, than that.

I want to believe that justice will prevail in America. I want to believe that there will be a fair election, and that America and the world will be able to believe that the results of the voting are just and true, and show the real will of the people.

That’s what I want to believe, America. That’s what I need to believe. All you have to do, America, is listen to your better angels. Listen to them now, while they still live.

Our Flag is Red and White

Canadians … we love our country, but that’s never stopped us from having our beefs with how it’s run. Unlike many other countries, we feel free to speak up about what angers us. For all our reputation of being a polite and respectful people, we reserve the right to disagree with those who would impose their will upon the nation.

We love our healthcare, but are aware it needs tweaking to be all that it should be. We know that it is not ‘greedy’ or ‘entitled’ to demand that the healthcare that we pay for with our taxes, works for every Canadian.

We love our democracy, but want to ensure that we remain democratic, which calls for electoral reform. We don`t want to run the risk of any party taking control of the system and bending it to it`s favour – we won’t accept trickery or gerrymandering in our elections.

Many were angry at the direction we took in the last decade, under the Conservative prime minister . We now have a Liberal prime minister, and likely just as many have issues with his party. In our Canadian way, we will protest against what we dislike, and in due course, vote for the direction we would like to have in the future.

Because this is not a “my country – love it or leave it‘ place, we can and will criticize those in power, and insist upon our right to do so.

On July 1, we honoured the establishment of Confederation in 1867. But the interesting thing about the adoption of the July 1867 date is that, at that time, Canada consisted of only four provinces; Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. While Canada Day acknowledges an important national milestone, it’s not really celebrating all of the country we now call Canada.

Nor does the concept of Canada Day include the indigenous peoples who were here before the settlers came from Europe. Even our national anthem ignores the fact that this is not our native land. Instead, we live ON native land, 89% of which is Crown Land administered by Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, and still in dispute, hundreds of years after the first treaties were written.

The First Nations people have been here for over 13,000 years, and for many, the celebration of Canada Day amounts to ” celebrating resource extraction of our territories. The Indian Act is still in place. The government is not allowing First Nations to have a voice. So why would I ever celebrate?”” (Anishinaabe traditional storyteller and teacher Isaac Murdoch.)

The #Resistance150 movement was created nearly eight months ago by Murdoch, Michif visual artist Christi Belcourt, Cree activist Tanya Kappo and Métis author Maria Campbell, as the group discussed the festivities planned by the Liberal government for Canada 150. They found it increasingly difficult to accept that the government, while giving lip service to plans of reconciliation, continued to ignore the ongoing fraught relationships between native Canadians and the rest of Canada.

Their resistance movement was developed to inspire other indigenous people to reclaim what they lost during colonization; their land, language and traditional ways.

The group created a camp for indigenous children and youth to attend called Nimkii Aazhibikong on Ompa Lake, located about 20 kilometres north of Elliott Lake, Ont. this year. Here the children can immerse themselves in traditional languages, explore their culture, and discover their environment under the tutelage of visiting local elders.

“Beyond attention to culture, Murdoch`s group also wishes to send a strong message on the negative effects of climate change and the First Nations longstanding dispute with the government over land ownership.

All over the country there’s this free-for-all in resource extraction that’s happening,” he said. “First Nations people are screaming and saying, ‘No’ and Canada just keeps saying, ‘Yes.’”

On top of sounding the alarm over how resource extraction and pollution is hurting the environment, Murdoch said the #Resistance150 movement is also calling for the abolition of the Indian Act, which was first introduced in 1857 by the British colonial government, and reads very much like a treatise from the Southern Baptist religionists banning dancing in the 1984 film Footloose. Cruel, vindictive and petty, the Act aimed to crush the people and their culture, by any means available.

” Over the next hundred years the Indian Act was amended a number of times but each time was aimed at a more efficient means of assimilating First Nations into white society. The Act was amended to ban the “Sun Dance” an important ritual among the Lakota and other Plains aboriginal cultures. On the west coast the “Pot Latch”, an elaborate ceremony of feasting and gift giving was also banned. With an eye to forced assimilation, the Act authorized the forced removal of children to Residential Schools and stripped any Indian who obtained a University Education or Ordination of his rights under the Act.

The act vested title to reserve land to the Crown represented by the Minister of Indian Affairs deeming it “Crown Land set aside for the use of a Band of Indians.”

The 1876 act also made it illegal for an Indian to sell or produce goods without the written permission of the local Indian Agent, who became the de-facto ruler of Indians on reserve. (this includes fruits, vegetables, and farming, to this day.) Indian Agents had to give written permission for Indians who wanted to leave the reserve for any reason.

Status Indians were not allowed to vote until 1961.”

When I speak with many middle aged to older Canadians about the past, present and future of our First Nations people, whether status or non, it’s clear there is a confusion in what is believed to be true and what is fact. Sadly, the contents of the Truth and Reconciliation documents mean little if you’ve already made a pre-judgment on the nature of a people.

However, fairness and justice is what we should be working towards, for all Canadians. There are specific problems that need to be addressed amongst indigenous people. Some of these problems are brought about by where the reserves are located. There are currently about 150 long-term and short-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities that are difficult to reach in good weather, and impossible to reach in winter.

In some of these far flung communities, suicide rates, especially among the young, are five to seven times higher than the national average.

First Nations and Metis are 2-3 times higher at risk for diabetes than the non-Aboriginal population, while tuberculosis – almost nonexistent among non-Aboriginals, is 26.4 times more prevalent in First Nations Canadians.

I am proud of my country, but I know that my country has to include ALL of it’s people – those who came before us, and those who will join us in the future – to be strong and united. As a country, we can do so much better. And I have faith that we will work towards being a better, stronger, fairer country in the coming years.

In an article on what it means to be a Canadian, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, ” “This is something we are able to do in this country, because we define a Canadian not by a skin colour or a language or a religion or a background, but by a set of values, aspirations, hopes and dreams that not just Canadians but people and the world share.”

And as writer Mike MacNeil responded to those concerned that the Canada Day150 celebrations ignored Canadian history and absolved us of our crimes against the First Nations people, “ It”s not the pilfering and genocide that’s being celebrated. It’s instead – and finally – the recognition that something positive is being done to correct decades of misuse and mistreatment. It’s slow, granted. It’s imperceptible, granted. The pace of change could be infinitely faster, granted. But the change – however it’s characterized – is there.”

And that’s Canadian, eh.