Civil War

Donald Trump Insured Of Being Ranked Worst President Ever, As He Totally Fails In Crisis Management!

Ronald 21 Comments

The issue of Crisis Management is a crucial one in judging Presidential leadership, as what matters more than that in judging a President, or a governor of a state or a mayor of a city, all executive positions where the population depends on the abilities, skills, compassion, and empathy of such leaders.

So on that factor alone, Donald Trump is insured of being ranked the worst President ever, as he totally has failed in the present CoronaVirus Crisis, which may end up considered the greatest crisis since the Great Depression, World War II, and the Civil War!

Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were unable to handle the issue of division between the North and the South over slavery in the 1850s, helping to lead to the Civil War.

Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding were totally incompetent in dealing with the issue of political corruption in the 1870s and the early 1920s.

Herbert Hoover was unable to resolve the crisis of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, as economic conditions worsened every month.

Andrew Johnson in the 1860s, Richard Nixon in the 1970s, and George W. Bush in the 2000s presided over governments that were highly inept and corrupt in so many ways.

But Donald Trump has been horrendous in all these way—inability to unite the nation in a crisis as with Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan; personally engaged in corruption in a wider way than Ulysses S. Grant, Warren G. Harding, and Richard Nixon; disastrous policies on so many issues as with George W. Bush; and total ineptitude in a difficult time in national life, as with Andrew Johnson and Herbert Hoover.

So Trump, without any debate possible, will rank as the absolute worst President we have ever seen in American history! Let us hope that the nation will overcome the CoronaVirus epidemic in decent shape, without too much loss of life, and that no foreign foe takes advantage of our weaknesses to present a threat on the scale of September 11. 2001 or December 7, 1941!

Nine Months To The Most Urgent Election In American History!

Ronald 9 Comments

Nine months from today, November 3, is the most urgent election in American history, as America will never be the same if Donald Trump is reelected to a second term in the White House!

Yes, there have been other crucial elections, including 1860 (Abraham Lincoln); 1932 (Franklin D. Roosevelt); and 1940 (FDR).

These elections centered around the upcoming Civil War; the tragedy of the Great Depression at its lowest moment; and the upcoming US involvement in World War II.

But while the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II were all massive crises for America, we now face a true demagogue out of control after an impeachment trial in which much of the evidence and essential witnesses to the wrongdoing of Donald Trump were not permitted to be included, due to the corruption and abandonment of the oaths taken by Republican Senators to uphold the Constitution and rule of law.

The Republican Party has besmirched the historic reputation of the US Senate for all time, and have lost all credibility as a viable political party.

It is essential for the party to be soundly defeated in as many House and Senate races as possible, and for the total repudiation of Donald Trump, who will go down in history as the worst and most dangerous President we have ever had, having abandoned all common decency and respect for the law!

Donald Trump needs to be held accountable for his transgressions, and for accountability under the law when he leaves the White House, having worsened the lives of tens of millions of Americans with his vindictive, lawless, and uncaring agenda!

Donald Trump Comparing Impeachment Probe To Lynching Is Totally Disgraceful And Reprehensible!

Ronald 21 Comments

Donald Trump has the gall to compare the impeachment probe going on in the House of Representatives to a lynching, demonstrating his total lack of the history of lynching, and his lack of concern for the racism that he continues to display incessantly!

Lynching went on for a century after the Civil War and reached its peak in the post World War I years, with thousands of African Americans, and some Hispanics, Jews, and Catholics also being tortured and murdered and set on fire in a brutal fashion, that was long covered up.

But now there is a Lynching Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, called the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum, and there are other Civil Rights Museums that demonstrate through horrible photographs and contemporary accounts the obscene abuse and lack of concern for human life in the American South and much of the Midwest and even California, as well, where African Americans were seen as less than human.

The photos are hard to look at, and the realization that children and large crowds often witnessed these miscarriages of justice, cheered it on, and took human flesh as souvenirs of the “sporting event” they had just participated in or lost all sense of morality, ethics and religiosity by not caring about the suffering of thousands of mostly men, but also some women.

Donald Trump comes across more every day as a totally obscene, disgraceful excuse for a human being, who has no concern about the human suffering that goes on around him in America and in the world at large.

If there was ever a President as deserving of impeachment, conviction, and imprisonment for the crimes he has conducted or endorsed by his incendiary, reckless rhetoric, it is Donald Trump, as no one else, not even Richard Nixon was anywhere near as evil as the 45th President of the United States!

And for Senator Lindsey Graham to defend Trump’s comment is beyond belief, and John McCain would be furious at his former friend for defending Trump!

Constitution Day: A Day To Commemorate, And A Warning Of Our Potential Future

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Today, September 17, is Constitution Day, the day that the Constitution was signed by 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.

It has survived 230 years since it went into effect in 1789, and has weathered the crises of the Civil War, the Great Depression, the two World Wars, the Cold War, Watergate, and now the Donald Trump threat to the enforcement of the Constitution.

We are in a constitutional crisis, the greatest since Richard Nixon, but in many ways, far more massive, and all efforts must be taken to insure that Donald Trump does not destroy our Constitution, which he is so intimately involved in trying to do as we go about our business every day of supporting our families, and trying to insure a long term future for our children and their children.

The Constitution is not perfect, and needs reform over time, but the idea of calling for a new Constitutional Convention is horrifying, as it would open up the possibility of abolishing the Bill of Rights and transforming the nation into a full scale Fascist dictatorship, with right wing forces wishing to destroy all of the reforms that have made America a more equitable and decent society within the last century from Theodore Roosevelt onward through Barack Obama.

How Will Reparations For Slavery Resound? Compared To Japanese American Reparations

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In 1988, the American government officially apologized to the Japanese American community for the mass internment of about 110,000 people of Japanese ethnicity, who had been denied their civil liberties from February 1942 to late 1945 during World War II.

It was the proper and moral thing to do to recompense the 50,000 survivors of those internment camps with $20,000 compensation for each survivor.

But no payment was made to the offspring and later generations of Japanese Americans who had not lived in the camps.

Now a movement has begun to call for reparations for African American slavery, and it is making steam among many Democratic Presidential aspirants.

There is no question of the horrors and abuses visited on 4 million African Americans, who were born slaves, emancipated at the end of the Civil War, and suffered segregation, lynchings, denial of civil rights, and economic exploitation.

An attempt was made to provide “40 acres and a mule” for each black family after the Civil War, promoted by the Republican Party, but it never really got off the ground.

That was an historical wrong, and compensation similar to this brief attempt should have been pursued in the late 19th century, but sadly it was not done.

But all those who were in slavery are long dead, and many of those who suffered under segregation, lynchings, denial of civil rights, and economic exploitation are also gone.

The African American experience has put that community at a disadvantage, but how can anyone figure out how to, in theory, compensate people who were not directly the victims of past wrongs?

Who would qualify, and how would one decide what an appropriate response in economic terms would be? It could lead to every ethnic and racial group demanding the same, and there is no way the US government could implement such a compensation plan, and not alienate those groups that would feel they were being blamed and assessed for something they had no role in bringing about.

Certainly, economic opportunity and new civil rights enforcement should be provided, but to have a compensation package in money terms would be an endless situation subject to much fraud.

So the answer is NOT to provide any specific compensation, because for the victims of slavery and segregation, their lifetimes have passed, and instead work on promoting fair and equitable treatment for all those whose ancestors were so shabbily treated.

This would include compensation for marijuana drug convictions for possession, and compensation for those imprisoned for years on the basis of failure to provide for a fair trial on various other charges, as often has happened in many states, particularly in the South.

Donald Trump Engaged In War Against Federal Government Agencies And Workers, Pleasing Vladimir Putin

Ronald 7 Comments

It is becoming clearer by the day that Donald Trump is engaged in a full scale war against federal government agencies and workers, with his refusal to end the federal government shutdown, harming hundreds of thousands of workers and innumerable agencies.

He is promoting anarchy and division unlike any time since the Civil War, and this pleases Vladimir Putin manifestly.

He has, since he took the Presidential oath, refused to fill many high government positions, and now has shown his total disrespect for federal workers, including denying them pay raises, as well as furloughing many, and others forced to work, but with no pay.

This will soon cause an economic crisis, and many workers will lose their homes or apartments, their autos, and their health, as well as cause great psychiatric stress. Many businesses that work around federal agencies are losing their business, and will disappear, and many workers will leave and go to the private sector, causing great shortages of personnel in key security, law enforcement, and other areas of the federal government.

And the closure of national historical sites, museums, and other tourist locations will harm those areas economies, and disappoint many who had planned tourist trips to these sites, in particular in Washington, DC, but also all around the country.

With so many people living paycheck to paycheck with little funding in reserve, the lives of ordinary Americans will be harmed, and now for the first time, even those whites with only a high school education are finally starting to turn against Trump, as they are now seeing the destruction and damage he has wrought.

Learning that Trump is now seen as clearly colluding with Russia, and took the translator notes from the summit in Helsinki with Putin away from the translator and any other government officials, who have no idea what happened at that summit in July, makes the constitutional crisis we face very more terrifying.

Mueller Investigation Proves Donald Trump Has Committed Impeachable Acts, But Trump Denies Everything

Ronald 2 Comments

The Robert Mueller investigation, as of Friday, has proved that Donald Trump has committed impeachable acts, but Trump denies everything.

The next two years, clearly, will see a constant battle over Trump, as he clearly has no intentions of leaving office.

The 2020 election seems more than ever a battle for the Constitution and American democracy.

The fireworks we have seen in two years of Donald Trump are just the prelude to the most tumultuous and dangerous moment in American history, far surpassing even the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II, and Richard Nixon and the Watergate Crisis.

With a divided Congress, impeachment seems likely, but absolutely no possibility of the Republican controlled US Senate doing the right thing, and moving to convict and remove the President by a two thirds vote.

It is clear that Donald Trump cares more about himself than he does for the nation, and will stop at nothing to divide us, and attempt to win a second term.

It would seem highly unlikely that he could possibly win a second term, but in theory, he could cobble together a combination of states and electoral votes and pull another victory out, even with public opinion polls unlikely to ever show a majority support him.

One even has to wonder if he lost reelection, whether he would accept defeat and leave office on January 20, 2021, and how the government bureaucracy would conduct itself in such an eventuality.

By comparison,  Richard Nixon looks so much more principled and respectful of the Constitution, while Donald Trump is clearly of a totalitarian mind, and somehow, he must be stopped and removed from office.

One Hundred Years Since End Of The First World War: Nothing Learned From Sacrifices Of That War, And Danger Of Another World War

Ronald 3 Comments

It has been precisely one hundred years, a full century, since the “Great War”, the First World War, ended on November 11, 1918. About 18 million military and civilians died in that war, as well as about 125,000 Americans, the second highest loss of life in America after the Civil War, and until the Second World War surpassed it, at least doubling the American loss of life in the First World War.

What Woodrow Wilson called “the war to end all wars” did anything but that, leading within a generation to the Second World War, followed by many other regional wars, and the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union from 1945-1991.

Now we have the age of world wide terrorism, and growing danger of another world war, and Donald Trump is in the midst of creating the conditions that would lead to this third World War.

America and the world have not learned from the sacrifices a century ago, as politics, religion, and egotism continue to cause conflict, and we are now moving closer to authoritarianism in the world than we have seen since the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago.

And Trump has disgraced the commemoration in France this weekend by failing to travel to a cemetery that contains many Americans and others who sacrificed for our nation a century ago.

And his promotion of extreme nationalism over patriotism has been rebuked appropriately by French President Emmanuel Macron.

This is a President who has not yet gone to a combat zone, as every other President has done, and is working to privatize the Department of Veterans Affairs, which would be a true disaster, and hopefully will be stopped by the 116th Congress, with a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.

The Growing Danger Of Further AntiSemitic Attacks In America, Precipitated By The Right Wing White Supremacists And Religious Extremists

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America is in a major crisis, now clearly the worst domestically in a half century, and the growing danger of further attacks on American Jews is alarming.

We have a President who consorts with white supremacists, and overlooks their antisemitic acts and utterances.

And there are right wing religious extremists, whose goal is to convert American Jews to their warped brand of Christianity.

The hatred that the Pittsburgh Massacre assassin possessed was encouraged by the hate filled websites on the internet, fueled further by the refusal of Donald Trump to hold many of his followers accountable for their hatred, and his actual encouragement of violence against the media, which he calls “the enemy of the people”, because they have the nerve to hold him responsible for his words and actions.

Face it, Donald Trump is a pure right wing demagogue who hates our democracy, and would love to persecute any minority and any individual which stands in his way of wanting absolute power.

There is no truce possible when a President, unlike any in American history, has declared war on our institutions and our traditions, so no one who feels Donald Trump is a menace can sit on the sidelines and just figure the future is preordained, as it most certainly is not so.

Resistance and opposition must continue for the preservation of the traditions and institutions of America to survive into the long term future.

We have not come through the trials of the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the Cold War to allow any mentally unhinged person to take away our future!

Domestic Terrorist Bomb Threats Against News Media, Democratic Presidents And Others Caused By Donald Trump Rhetoric

Ronald 15 Comments

Donald Trump is guilty of promoting domestic terrorism against the News Media, past Democratic Presidents, and others, through his reckless use of incendiary rhetoric, which encourages unstable followers to commit violence.

We are under danger as a nation from a person or persons who wish to commit political assassination.

And last night, Trump continued to attack the news media and his critics, making fun of the need to be careful in his rhetoric, and then unleashing more of his condemnation of his critics. And this morning, Trump is calling the reports of threats as “Fake News”.

All law enforcement agencies are on alert and doing the work needed to uncover who the culprit is in the domestic bomb threats against George Soros, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, John Brennan, Eric Holder, Maxine Waters, Robert DeNiro, and CNN, with fear that more such bomb threats are to be found, and hoping that no one will be a victim of these bomb threats.

When Americans have to face this threat, and realize that our President makes light of it, and that most Republicans and conservative talk radio and Fox News nighttime hosts make it out that the Left is as dangerous as the Right, one perceives that our division is indeed the greatest since the Civil War.

The nightmare we are living through must somehow come out with a calm and a determination that those of us on the Left will not provoke violence, and that somehow, this crisis will pass.

But with the midterm elections now 12 days away, and hints that Trump will claim fraud if the Democrats make major strides toward a majority, at least in the House of Representatives, one has to wonder what the days after November 6 will be like.

Will law enforcement and the intelligence agencies make Donald Trump and his followers accountable and intervene if needed to keep our democracy alive, if Trump decides to assert martial law and suspend the Constitution?

This is a very scary time to live in America, but we cannot allow the destruction of our democracy!