America: Use it or Lose it
The nearest medium to large city closest to Mar A Lago is West Palm Beach, about 3 miles away.
It has a violent crime rate of 802 incidents per 100,000 residents. It’s the 244th largest city in the US with approximately 117,000 residents.
Atlanta is the country’s 38th largest city with about 497,000 residents. Its crime rate is higher. There’s 936 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. For cities with 100,000 or more residents, that makes it about the 53rd worst for violent crime in the country. West Palm Beach is about the 63rd worst.
The third & last city in this comparison is New York City, the largest city in the country with 8,468,000. That’s more than twice the size of the second largest city, Los Angeles. It’s around the 133rd worst for violent crime rates in cities above 100,000 population, well below the other two cities. It averages 539 violent incidents per 100,000 compared to West Palm Beach (802) and Atlanta (936).
Keep those violent crime rates in mind.
Governor DeSantis and Mike Pence also referred to a NYC crime wave in their Pavlovian barks.
The reality:
In crimes of violence, murder and armed robbery declined in the past 15 months since Bragg took office. Armed assaults and rape have increased a little but none of the 4 crimes can hardly be attributed to a DA in office for such a short period.
It’s become normalized for Republicans to do this, and to also use racist and antisemitic slurs in the process.
On March 23:
“Why won’t Bragg drop this case?” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Thursday morning. “Everybody says there is no crime here. I did nothing wrong!” Apparently referring to Cohen, Trump continued: “It was all made up by a convicted nut job with zero credibility, who has been disputed by highly respected professionals at every turn. Bragg refuses to stop despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He is a Soros backed animal who just doesn’t care about right or wrong no matter how many people are hurt.” He added that there “is no legal system, this is the Gestapo, this is Russia and China, but worse. Disgraceful!” In a follow-up post, Trump claimed Bragg knows he’s innocent. “But he doesn’t care,” Trump added. “He is just carrying out the plans of the radical left lunatics. Our country is being destroyed, as they tell us to be peaceful!”
A Soros spokesperson responded, indicating that Soros has never had contact nor ever communicated with DA Bragg. But he’s been regularly attacked by prominent Republicans for funding progressive organizations, including some that have donated to some political campaigns. Those decisions have been made independent of any direction from Soros. And as I noted last week, billionaires donating to republicans outspent those donating to democrats by a wide margin.
Republicans have used racist attacks on political opponents ever since the 1960s when Nixon deployed the ‘Southern Strategy’ successfully. The unapologetic open racism and antisemitism of the past 8 years has been a steady feature of Trump’s influence, along with heavy doses of racist and antisemitic violence.
He’s also attacked the Fulton County, Georgia DA using similar racist terms, as she’s Black too.
On cue, Trump’s pack of Congressional hounds responded to his clanging bell with failed opthalmologist Rand Paul laughably stating Bragg ‘should be put in jail’. Paul, Jim Jordan, Bryan Steil, the silly James Comer, MT Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Elise Stefanik, JD Vance and his other small school of remora suckups have yet to define any actual law that Bragg has broken, because no such law exists.
It’s up to us to prevent the racist and violence incitement escalation.
And as far as the violence Trump’s blamed on Bragg, remember my comparison, that NYC ‘averages 539 violent incidents per 100,000 compared to West Palm Beach (802) and Atlanta (936).’ With a huge population to manage and protect, Bragg’s city is way less violent than the one right next to Mar-A-Lago.
Speaking of violence, though, what does this Trump post suggest to you?
Trump quickly deleted it, likely on advice from others. Any appearance of a threat to a court official is intimidation at least and may be an effort to obstruct justice. When the Trump remora in the House started demanding that Bragg drop everything and rush to DC to answer their politicized questions, Bragg responded: “We evaluate cases in our jurisdiction based on the facts, the law, and the evidence. It is not appropriate for Congress to interfere with pending local investigations. This unprecedented inquiry by federal elected officials into an ongoing matter serves only to hinder, disrupt and undermine the legitimate work of our dedicated prosecutors. As always, we will continue to follow the facts and be guided by the rule of law in everything we do.”
Notably any claim that Bragg’s investigation was based on his political leanings keep forgetting that the NYC investigation began in 2018, almost 4 years before Bragg was elected. Trump’s attacks on Bragg are partly made to trigger donations from his more avid supporters. But the bigger reality is Trump’s afraid of Bragg, who has already successfully convicted Trump's family company for tax fraud.
Though proven wrong with his post that he was going to be arrested last Tuesday, he’s now promoting the opposite, saying Bragg won’t indict him, because of the threats against Bragg that Trump incited. The grand jury hasn’t even voted on that question yet.
Behind the scenes, Trump’s made it clear that if he’s re-elected, he has an extreme vengeance plan in the works to prosecute every prosecutor who’s convicted him or indicted him, plus a sweep of numerous officials in the Department of Defense, DOJ, FBI, State Department and the National Archives (who pursued the retrieval of classified documents he was hiding).
It’s not presidential, ethical or legal and again, it’s up to us to prevent him from any chance of following through on such plans.
Trump’s incitement actions keep losing support from conservative media outlets too.
And this was followed by Trump’s second campaign rally of the year, with these highlights:
At the Waco rally Saturday, Ted Nugent kicked it off, referring to Ukrainian President Zelensky: “I want my money back! I didn’t authorize any money to Ukraine for some homosexual weirdo!”
Also: “A moment of silence for the political prisoners in the gulags of Washington DC because of jackbooted thugs in our own government.”
MT Greene: “Here we have Alvin Bragg, on the verge of breaking the law, as he’s trying to please his Master, George Soros.”
"I'm fed up with the Republican party that will not fight the fight and stand up for the American people. We need to end that party completely.” (And specifically mentioned Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham.)
Also: “We should be bombing the Mexican cartels and defending our border. Not funding a war in Ukraine defending their border.”
Matt Gaetz, in a bright red usher dinner jacket: more nonsense.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller: “You know when I started in politics a few years back, it was the Republicans versus the Democrats. And then it changed into something totally different. It became conservatives against liberals. Now we’ve, we gone beyond that. And I’m convinced today, it’s patriots versus the traitors. And I’m a patriot. What about you?”
Trump: "We won in 2016. We won by much more in 2020, but it was rigged."
Also: “The rule of law is a tremendous threat to Western Civilization. I was asked the other day and I took a little heat for it. They said ‘Who’s our biggest threat? Is it China, sir or is it Russia?’ I said no, our biggest threat are high level politicians that work in the United States government, like Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi…. Schumer…. Biden…. Justice Department. Because that’s poisoning our country.”
And: "While leftist thugs are allowed to roam the streets killing, looting, burning, raping and pillaging, patriotic parents, Christians, conservatives, pro-life activists are being hounded by the FBI and the DOJ like terrorists They’re being treated so badly."
Get that? “The rule of law is a tremendous threat to Western Civilization.” China and Russia aren’t. Russian money was laundered through his TruthSocial media site, which is also under investigation by the SEC for fraudulent activity and another media site - Gettr - is funded and run by Steve Bannon’s pal, Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui. Wengui was arrested on March 15th, charged with 11 counts of securities and wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses.
The Washington Post explained how Wengui’s Gettr was a cash machine to Trump media influencers.
‘The rule of law is a threat to’ the Fraudfather and his cronies who don’t exactly represent ‘Western civilization.’
But everyone knows ‘birds of a feather’, etc & etc.
Trump tore up the nuclear agreement that was successfully preventing Iran’s nuclear weapons development. He spoke of Kim Jong Un’s “love letters” to him. The ruthless dictator who’s been testing nuke delivery systems at a rapid pace ever since and - like Trump’s pal Putin - threatening to launch a nuclear war against us.
Don’t think that Trump wouldn’t sell out our national security in a second, if it meant more money and power for him. Everybody knows this and can see it quite plainly, except that less-than-25% of adult US citizens who voted for him.
With over 75% not supporting him, it’s not so hard to see why I say it’s up to us to prevent him from damaging our country further.
How?
We have legislators that can outmaneuver Trump and his quaint little Q-Anon minions. I’m certain Jamie Raskin, Katie Porter, AOC and others can handle the House side of the fight.
As for us ‘little people’ we need to push mainstream media sites to stop pussyfooting around with these bullying lunks of complete conspiracy stupidity. Vapid soft sell neutrality is gonna get our democracy killed, along with press freedom. More shouting and better adjectives please. We must insist.
Satire’s useful but we gotta do more.
Can you afford one letter to an editor each month to get the point across that we’re mad as hell and aren’t gonna take it anymore? I know you can.
That and phone-banking. That and convincing friends and neighbors to run for any down ballot office, from school board to Congress. That and pushing more people to register & vote.
Trump won’t win without a recession or some unforeseen tragedy. But as I said, we need to do better than that. Sixty percent of offices across the board is what we have to aim for.
Our healthcare system, our tax system, global warming, the hate groups… they’re not going to fix themselves. We’ve dawdled so long it’s now a race to save all the things.
No more excuses. We can do it with thoughtfulness, with courage and strength. We have better thinks in us. We persevere to protect future generations and people today.
We can use subtle appeals, too, as Arnold does here. But it’s all the same fight. Don’t appease and don’t surrender.