Heroes and Villainy to live by or die for
Two Crawford County Sheriff Deputies and a Mulberry Police Officer, in Mulberry, Arkansas yesterday. The detainee apparently earned being restrained and arrested, but not like this. The officers have been suspended while the state police investigate.
A social media outcry caused the investigation.
We sigh. We get angry. We demand public safety from our public safety officials. We insist the responsible and effective public safety officials clean up their ranks instead of maintaining silence to cover for bad cops. The abuse, manslaughters and murders must stop. In every town, every city and every state.
Our taxes pay for our public safety officials so we, the public, can decide this.
An important special aired on CNN last night. Dana Bash defined the rise in antisemitism in the country and how to address it. It should be available ON Demand starting today.
Because of loopholes designed by people catering to billionaires, apparently a company can make billions of dollars and donate it all to a non-profit, paying no taxes on the windfall. Many would be okay with this arrangement if, say, the nonprofit was researching cures for cancer or Alzheimers.
But in this case, the nonprofit is a support network to aid conservative causes and candidates. So it’s essentially an advertising agency that pushes programs and public subservients that will enrich the mega-wealthy more.
Funny how that works. Government for sale to the highest bidder, whose pockets get filled in return. Loading Congress and the White House with officeholders who’ll give them even more tax breaks. Loading the courts with judges who’ll rule that these tax free transactions are legal.
It matters not if such tax giveaways are done by either party. It matters that it’s how oligarchies work, not how democratic republics are supposed to work. We the people only get a say in this while voting but the effects of the advertising - including tons of lies - tries to negate our last hands on the levers of our government.
This is the case because conservatives packed the Supreme Court that passed the Citizens United decision. It’s about hoarders so addicted that they have to hoard more, a well known mental disorder.
A few hundred people are more equal than the rest of us now. Deal with it. And remember when you hear billionaires claiming this vote or that vote ‘is rigged’, it is. Rigged in their favor. And with the way the federal courts have been stacked, there’s zero chance of changing this for the next 25 years.
The only defense to this is to be a well-informed voter who looks at the voting record of candidates, and then to show up to vote without fail.
The annnouncement by Dr. Fauci that he’s leaving a half century of public service at the end of this year drew this response from President Biden:
During my time as Vice President, I worked closely with Dr. Anthony Fauci on the United States’ response to Zika and Ebola. I came to know him as a dedicated public servant, and a steady hand with wisdom and insight honed over decades at the forefront of some of our most dangerous and challenging public health crises. When it came time to build a team to lead our COVID-19 response – in fact, in one of my first calls as President-elect – I immediately asked Dr. Fauci to extend his service as my Chief Medical Advisor to deal with the COVID-19 crisis our nation faced. In that role, I’ve been able to call him at any hour of the day for his advice as we’ve tackled this once-in-a-generation pandemic. His commitment to the work is unwavering, and he does it with an unparalleled spirit, energy, and scientific integrity.
Dr. Fauci has served under seven Republican and Democratic Presidents during his career, beginning with Ronald Reagan. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 under President George W. Bush. For almost four decades, he has served as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, helping our country navigate health crises ranging from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. Because of Dr. Fauci’s many contributions to public health, lives here in the United States and around the world have been saved. As he leaves his position in the U.S. Government, I know the American people and the entire world will continue to benefit from Dr. Fauci’s expertise in whatever he does next. Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work. I extend my deepest thanks for his public service. The United States of America is stronger, more resilient, and healthier because of him.
During the worst of the covid crisis - and there could be future worsts ahead - Fauci, the world’s scientists, the world’s medical staffs and several pharmaceutical researchers pooled their collective brainpower to learn about a new virus on the fly. This required the capacity to shift priorities, to conduct experimental treatments, to properly test treatments and emerging vaccines and to dispense information quickly based on constantly updated data. It meant some early best guesses were bound to be wrong, which new data would demonstrate.
It’s how effective science works: the best information evolves under additional testing and review.
Fauci was unprepared for the strength of the public backlash from a vocal minority that was largely based on the celebrity worship of our strangest president, DJ Trump, and he and his family faced threats to their lives and still do. Because Trump has always used his bully pulpit to gain political and financial support by asserting the possession of superior knowledge over that of any trained and experienced expert in any field, be it scientist, general, doctor, academic, intelligence agent, economist, judge, business owner, journalist, etc.
The Omnipotent Trump - like the Omnipotent Wizard of Oz - is demonstrably a complete sham. And Dr. Fauci - while trying to limit any politicization of the agency he headed - did a great job overall.
His resignation has drawn catcalls from the worst Trump minions as they threaten to jail him and/or execute him. That’s what foreign and domestic terrorists try to do.
Stephen Bannon used his podium today to call Dr. Fauci ‘demonic’. That appears to be the new political ‘in’ word from Trump’s coven of cons as it echoes what Stephen Miller said about Pennsylvania Senate candidate, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, last week.
It’s a call to arms of the religi-con wing of the GOP. And like pumpkin spice flavors that start appearing this time of year, we can soon anticipate the annual claims that everyone else is engaging in a War on poor old Christmas. The demons are everywhere!
With my tiny podium, my readers understand that I try to condense vast amounts of news to zero in on topics I feel are the largest and most impactful to the human race. In my editorializing, I’ll use satire, open mockery and undiplomatic approaches to try to make my points.
There’s virtually no profit motive in my news and op-ed delivery. My motivation is to help build better results for people across the globe. And when confronted with a very strange man like Trump, my intent has never been to promote gloom and despair. Of course Trump and his minions can be deleted at the polls. He’s merely a fresh challenge to our sense of order and civility. We wish solutions came faster but with patience, our efforts should bear fruit.
My biggest worry has always been the expansion of presidential power till it becomes autocratic. What if someone gets elected with the criminal aims of Trump but is far more adept and competent at pushing the levers of power? Right now I’m more worried about the aims and destructive potential of Ron DeSantis, in his current presidential understudy role. He’s playing the Censor-In-Chief gig to the hilt, trying to limit what students can read or hear, what business owners can support or oppose, and could easily move the country from incompe-fascism to functional fascism if he wins the 2024 presidential election.
Trump? In September, his bosom buddy’s trial begins, for selling us out to Middle Eastern Big Oil interests. Trump’s financial misdeeds will be detailed in a NY courtroom while some of his worst election attempted theft misdeeds while be getting additional scrutiny in a Georgia court. Of course the January 6 committee will be digging out fresh misdeeds simultaneously. His declining support and declining cred has drawn the critique of Mitch McConnell, who groused about the poor quality of Senate candidates Trump has endorsed and today, Trump was firing back at Mitch and his wife, Elaine Chao, Trump’s former transportation secretary. The Trump motto has become “if it breathes, it’s an anti-Trumper.”
Post November any federal interests in prosecuting Trump will become apparent, as well as a civil trial that will test the claims of a women claiming Trump raped her, over the winter. All the King’s whores and all the King’s yesmen are unlikely to put Trump together again after the waves of evidence erode his gossamer-and-chewing-gum defenses.
But DeSantis? Longtime columnist Will Bunch of the Philly Inquirer has the same concerns about DeSantis as I do:
With more than 100 protesters outside, DeSantis told a packed downtown Pittsburgh hotel ballroom, in a lame, whiny echo of Winston Churchill: “We must fight the woke in our schools. We must fight the woke in our businesses. We must fight the woke in government agencies. We can never, ever surrender to woke ideology.” The use of a cadence that opposed Nazism in 1940 to instead attack American citizens as the enemy was obscene.
Just the fact that DeSantis, the head of a state with a large Jewish population, thought it important to endorse Mastriano — despite the shocking revelations about the Pennsylvanian’s ties to the website Gab, a cesspool of anti-Semitism that inspired the 2018 mass murderer of 11 Jewish people at a synagogue just a few miles from where he spoke — was a powerful illustration of a political party’s downward spiral into madness.
The column’s title was “The barely hidden fascism of Ron DeSantis makes a Pa. pit stop on a race to ’24 “ and deserves your full attention, since Trump will be there by Labor Day, hawking for Mastriano and the chameleon carpetbagger, the Lizard of Oz.
Here’s Keb’ Mo’