It’s becoming clearer to Americans by the day that Trump is, in fact, a danger to the United States.  That’s what these 70 Republican national security officers are saying, and it’s the message 9.855 million Americans received in last night’s “60 Minutes,” where Leslie Stahl presented a segment on the Lincoln Project, a huge group of Republicans doing everything it can to unseat Trump.

Expect increasingly unhinged behavior as desperation sets in.  What to make of his despotic orders to indict his present and past political opponents on baseless charges?  What’s next?

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Part of the damage that our president has done to this country is creating the illusion that everybody is as selfish and mean as he is himself.  As indicated at left and below, this is simply not true.  (more…)

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This is funny, but let’s take a serious look at where we are and where we need to be.  In particular, where would we be right now if Trump were not president?

A pandemic largely behind us, jobs not going overseas, and job growth post-COVID, environmental stewardship, the U.S. honored and respected internationally, race-related hatred and violence assuaged, a career criminal indicted, convicted, and imprisoned.

First things first.  Vote.

 

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The rank and file Trump supporter doesn’t understand the ridicule with which the United States is now regarded abroad, and wouldn’t care even if he did.

We can only hope that this will be over soon.

As my friend David Leebron, president of Rice University and former Dean of the Columbia Law School, said on a Zoom meeting yesterday, “A large part of the power of this country, in addition to its economic might, is its values.  Historically, we’ve stood for honor and decency, and even countries that generally resent us respect us for that.”

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We’ve seen our top military people, our scientists and doctors, our journalists and public intellectuals all endorsing Biden.  Trump, on the other hand, is endorsed by every single white supremacy group, and now, wait for it, the Taliban in Afghanistan.   (I thought this was a joke, but no, it’s not.)

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According to the American Energy Society, here’s what’s happening in Africa with respect to oil exploration and extraction:

Uganda, Kenya and Total are building a pipeline to carry Ugandan oil to the Kenya coast.

South Africa’s offshore Luiperd Block might be larger than 500 million barrels. (more…)

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Even when my kids were young, I didn’t knock myself out with Halloween decorations, but I certainly admire this guy’s creativity and sense of gallows humor.

Let’s face facts: these are some pretty bad times for the world as a whole, and especially the United States–and keeping a good attitude through this is vital.  The powers that are lined up to harm the world’s people so that they themselves may profit are counting on driving us into a kind of resignation and apathy.

Let’s not let it happen.

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Are Democrats categorically against any future president like Donald Trump?  Isn’t that a bit closed-minded? Rigid?  Doctrinaire?

At least sometime down the road, shouldn’t the U.S. elect another pathologically lying, criminal, aspiring tyrant?  Don’t we need an occasional four years of fast-spreading fascism (and perhaps more disease, job loss, racial violence, global embarrassment, etc.) to keep us mentally alert and focused on our game?

I guess not.

Say what you will about Fox News, but I’m afraid they’ve nailed this one.

 

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If all the actions Trump’s taking weren’t right out of the wanna-be dictator’s playbook, we’d all be much more comfortable.  But that’s not the case, as we’re seeing: playing to people’s strongest fears and points of anger, discrediting the media as “the enemy of the people,” remaking the party that brought him into power, calling for the unjust arrest of this opponents, and removing traditional institutions’ ability to rein him in.

Trump is giving this everything he’s got; we need to do the same in response.

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Liberal pastor John Pavlovitz irritates far more conservatives than I ever will, but between the two of us, I’m willing to bet I’m the only one who’s been called a “cockroach” on a syndicated live radio show.

A caller wanted to share his opinion of me, after I presented a bit of climate science to the audience, resulting in this insect metaphor, on the basis that I was scaring Americans into believing a hoax.

I chuckled, and responded, “Look, my job is to interview scientists and to boil down and present their findings to large audiences of people who, generally, don’t have a great deal of scientific training.  This is what I do for a living.  If that makes me a cockroach, I really don’t know what to tell you.”

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