Zero Tolerance for Criminal Behavior
If you want to know how screwed the United States is at this point, you don’t have to look too much further than this.
Tagged with: Zero Tolerance for Criminal Behavior
Illegal Search and Seizure
The meme here reminds me of an incident when my kids were young, and loved to have my wife and me take them to one of the many beaches along the Southern California coast.
Apparently, the particular spot on the sand we chose that day had a local statute that prohibited the possession of alcoholic beverages, and so many beach-goers brought opaque coolers to hide (and chill) their beer.
I watched a guy deal with a pair of armed policemen as they asked him, “May we look inside your cooler?”
He responded, “Of course. I mean, you do have a warrant, right?” When they admitted that they didn’t, the guy said, “Well, I’m sure you folks understand the U.S. Constitution, in particular the Fourth Amendment that prohibits illegal search and seizure. If you come back with a warrant, I’ll happily open up my cooler.”
“Have a nice day,” one of the officers said, as they walked on to bust who knows how many Constitutionally-ignorant people.
For my wife and the kids, this was a teachable moment in the life of the Constitution–a document that actually used to mean something.
Tagged with: Illegal Search and Seizure
The Bravery of True American Patriots
If the average American had even a small fraction of the bravery, not to mention eloquence, of the patriot in this video, we wouldn’t be living in an authoritarian state right now.
Tagged with: True American Patriots
President Trump Is the Perfect Christian?
Over the past few years I’ve read some really deep analyses as to what’s happened to the United States that draw off the works of philosophers like Hegel and Rousseau.
Bullcrap.
The problem is that you and I live among people whose power to reason and observe is so poor that one of them composed the meme at left.
And don’t doubt it for a second: this authoritarian regime, like all others, hates education. All intelligence and erudition is a threat, which is why they’re trying so hard to feed Harvard University to the wood-chipper.
Tagged with: President Trump Is the Perfect Christian
In a Parent’s Response to His Kids, Is the Word “No” Enough?
All I can say on this subject is that it never was my style. I didn’t have a problem saying, “Sorry, we can’t do that, because …. (e.g., we’ll be late for school).
Being an authoritarian for no real reason is demeaning to kids. It teaches them that might makes right, and that reason and civility are not required.
Obviously there are exceptions. If the house is on fire, you won’t be explaining that burns can be painful, etc.
Tagged with: Authoritarian
Los Angeles Mayor Responds to the National Guard Invasion
Anyone who thinks Trump cares about the “basic principles of safety” in the communities of Los Angeles is a true moron.
Tagged with: National Guard Invasion
ABC News Suspends Journalist Who Says Trump and Steven Miller Are “Haters”
ABC News has suspended its Senior National Correspondent based in Washington, D.C. for the tweet he posted at left.
Before the suspension, Moran covered national politics and policy, reporting from the White House, the US Supreme Court, and the campaign trail for all ABC News programs.
It would be interesting to know what all this is really about. Obviously, Moran’s words are his opinions, and not “news” per se. Having said that, almost none of what we read/see is “news” in the strictest sense.
Tagged with: Trump and Steven Miller
Protests in Los Angeles
I met a woman the other day who expressed her hope that the protests against Trump’s sociopathic criminality would not become violent. At first I thought she was kidding, but I soon realized that she was simply a Trump supporter who believed that anyone protesting against the president must be a lunatic, capable of great harm.
I tried to reassure her, making it seem that I was taking her seriously: “I’ve been associated with protestors from the days of Nixon and Vietnam to the rights of women, black lives, the use of science in policy-making, climate change mitigation, all the way up to Donald Trump. These are the most peace-loving people imaginable.”
Tagged with: Protests in Los Angeles
Sorry, But Sometimes It’s Impossible to Avoid Comparing Hitler to Trump
Unless requested to do so, I don’t make comparisons between Hitler and Trump. But, since a reader sent me the piece at left, here are a few thoughts.
A minor point: Unless you’re extremely wealthy, you will actually pay higher taxes under Trump than you did under his predecessor. Not that I expected it, but a little honesty would have been a nice touch.
Far more importantly, it will be very interesting to see how many people actually will die as a result of:
• Removal of healthcare and nutrition programs for tens of millions of Americans and their children.
• Hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, loss of land masses and biodiversity, ocean acidification, and other effects of climate change.
• Gunshots.
• The lies and preventable missteps associated with COVID-19 and its variants. We can all hope for no further outbreaks, but there are no guarantees.
• Violence associated with rounding up and deporting immigrants.
• Our support of atrocities against the Palestinians.
• The financial devastation that is wreaked upon huge numbers of Americans due to tariffs and trade wars with former allies like Canada.
• Our nation’s retreat from NATO, and support of the murderous Putin regime, inviting Russian aggression further westward in Europe.
• Reduction in the robustness of air safety and other aspects of our infrastructure.
In addition, there are important though impossible-to-quantify aspects of Trump’s leadership that will ultimately result indirectly in many deaths. Though this is all speculative at this point, we are facing a likely end to American democracy and reliance on rule of law. Trump tried to violently overthrow the legitimate government of the world’s most powerful nation, and has ended all attempts to hold him criminally accountable. What happens, as a consequence, when the status of United States is globally downgraded, just like its Treasury bonds were last month?
Btw, Trump didn’t “hurt my feelings.” In fact, he did nothing whatsoever to hurt me personally. I’m a white male who’s not gay, poor, uneducated, uninsured, Muslim, Latin American, or young enough to have his life disfigured by climate change. My kids are grown, meaning that they won’t lose their lives in school shootings. The only problem I have with Trump is that his insanity and criminality is hurting millions of innocent people around the globe.
I don’t like that, and you shouldn’t either.
Tagged with: Comparing Hitler to Trump
Does Fixing Immigration Require Savagery?
Maybe it was inevitable that the ultra-right-wing underclass in the United States would somehow find a way to turn our cities into war zones.
Most of us were hoping for better, but maybe that was just a dream we had.
Tagged with: Fixing Immigration
