Why is this man so angry?
HIS HAIR’s-ON-FIRE. A Morality Tale.
Author Archives: MeridaGOround
TRUMP, A DANGEROUS, DESPERATE LOSER
Photo by PATRICK SEMANSKY / AP / from TheAtlantic, online (fair use)
Standby, ProudBoys ? Scary, and desperate !
This bear, “Putin’s puppy” is now cornered in his cave, and he will do anything to remain in office rather than risk a New York prison sentence, including inviting social meltdown. (It is likely that he will soon be indicted by NY DA, Cyrus Vance, Jr, and/or NY Attorney General, Leticia James.)
He is suspected of so much fraud in New York State that he knows his only safe perch is the White House. (He can’t commute a NY sentence from there, but he might forestall arrest.) And we can imagine that he cares zero about whomever might be harmed in the process of retaining his cushy fortress, as he calls for chaos in the streets.
We watched as the Soviet Union collapsed in the blink of an eye. Get ready for an instant replay invited by an unstable dunce who can’t restrain himself long enough to honor debating rules to which he agreed — someone without a conscience, according to his co-author for The Art of the Deal.
Pulitzer-winning journalist Nick Kristof said: “The second way in which Trump damaged our country was by seeding further doubts about the election. He served as a mouthpiece for Russian-style propaganda about the illegitimacy of American democracy and laid the groundwork for postelection upheaval and violence. Here’s what Trump said: “As far as the ballots are concerned, it’s a disaster …. This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen …. It’s a rigged election.”
So, Trump, who urged voters in North Carolina to vote twice – and such urging is a felony, as is voting twice – complains about the rigging of our election which he himself has rigged! The man is unAmerican! I call upon honest Republicans to denounce him before he corrupts our democracy! — before this captain sinks the ship of state while attempting to save himself! So much for his “law & order” claims. He’s a felon on the run.
Costa Concordia. Foto by Horacio Arevalo, Wikimedia Commons, IMG_0263, 12 February 2012
¿¿ DO WE KNOW THIS GUY ??
H e e e e r e ‘s D O N N Y ! ! ! . . .
Maybe we should feel sorry for him? All those hours he spent as a teenager studying the life and career of Johnny Carson, and modeling himself after that man’s wit and presence. Yes, Johnny was fun; and kids long for role models. This kid even became a reality-TV star. Yet I would argue that he’s a misfit for his current position, with severely limited leadership and business skills. He has failed as a leader, calling a pandemic “a hoax which will disappear soon”, instead resulting in the deaths of over 200,000 Americans — that’s like 66 attacks of 9/11!
Photo from Snopes dot com (fair use)
And then there’s THE PRESIDENT’S TAXES, a story from the front page of New York Times, telling how the man has failed as a businessman, but succeeded in bilking real taxpayers out of more than $72 million in a tax refund, for failing! Here’s a quote from the first few lines of the article, and a link:
From the back seat of a stretch limousine heading to meet the first contestants for his new TV show “The Apprentice,” Donald J. Trump bragged that he was a billionaire who had overcome financial hardship.
“I used my brain, I used my negotiating skills and I worked it all out,” he told viewers. “Now, my company is bigger than it ever was and stronger than it ever was.”
It was all a hoax.
Months after that inaugural episode in January 2004, Mr. Trump filed his individual tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses from his core businesses for the prior year. The red ink spilled from everywhere, even as American television audiences saw him as a savvy business mogul with the Midas touch.
Note: this photo is not from NYTimes, and I can’t find out about it, but it looks troubling to me, yet it could be innocent. Don’s friend, Jeffrey Epstein, might know more, but he’s no longer on the planet to explain.
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When someone shows you who they are, believe them; the first time. ~Maya Angelou
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Don’s a killer. His father taught him there are only 2 choices: killer, or king.
Don’t rehire a failed CEO !!!
Official Presidential Portrait, Government Printing Office, 2017
Twitter @realDonaldTrump, Nov27, 2019 (fair use) TheGuardian
False Prophet
Excerpts from The Atlantic, by McKay Coppins, April 15 2020:
On February 28, Donald Trump stood before a crowd of supporters in South Carolina and told them to pay no attention to the growing warnings of a coronavirus outbreak in America. The press was “in hysteria mode,” the president said. The Democrats were playing politics. This new virus was nothing compared with the seasonal flu—and anyone who said otherwise was just trying to hurt him. “This is their new hoax,” Trump proclaimed, squinting out from behind a podium adorned with the presidential seal.
Six weeks later, the coronavirus has killed more than 25,000 Americans, the U.S. economy has been crippled—and Trump is recasting himself as a pandemic prophet. At Monday’s White House briefing, the president responded to questions about his handling of the crisis by dimming the lights and playing an Orwellian campaign-style video: “THE MEDIA MINIMIZED THE RISK FROM THE START,” the onscreen text read, “WHILE THE PRESIDENT TOOK DECISIVE ACTION.”
This flagrant recasting of recent events wasn’t a fluke. For the past several months, I’ve been reporting on the “disinformation architecture” that Trump’s coalition of partisan media, propagandists, operatives, and trolls are relying on [ . . .] “I knew it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” the president boasted last month. “I knew everything,” he reiterated a couple of weeks later. Asked to assess his response to the virus, he responded emphatically, “I’d rate it at 10.” [. . .more. . .]
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by Darrin Bell – King Features, (fair use)
Dave Whamond, Copyright 2020 Cagle Cartoons. (fair use) .
I’ve shared these reports and views as a citizen-journalist and US Navy veteran, who cares deeply about community. ~MeridaGOround
!! WOE to the NATION which REVERES PERSONALITY !!
from the website of the President of the Russian Federation; licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. June 2019
Robert Reich asks a powerful question about our nation:
Who’s the pinko in the striped tie, and why is Putin smirking? If you recall much about American history, you will remember an era when Senator Joe McCarthy was rabid about evicting communists from our government and our society. McCarthy’s mentor and bulldog, Roy Cohn, later became a disbarred lawyer, and Donald Trump’s mentor; yet the game has changed, and Trump is in bed with them now. There’s even a scary movie, worth watching, based on a Trump quote: Where’s my Roy Cohn?
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Reich’s essay is also worth pondering. Whenever nations idolize a leader, they are often inclined to fail shortly thereafter, especially if said leader has divided the citizenry. America, BEWARE.
“REVERED LEADERS” Whitehouse photo, via Wikimedia Commons.
TRUMP’s DEMENTIA . . . LEAKED
Screenshot from Mother Jones. (fair use) >>CLICK here >>
Sept 18. Mother Jones has now obtained the full video of Trump’s deposition [from Trump University suit]
When Forge asked, “Do you believe you have one of the best memories in the world?” Trump replied, “That I can’t tell you.” Forge noted that Trump had previously stated he indeed possessed one of the best memories in the world and referenced an NBC News report from the previous month in which Trump had declared he had “the world’s greatest memory.” Trump said, “I don’t remember that.” Here it is [on tape, in his own words, and more] . . . Scroll to paragraph /video titled Trump’s Memory: Best in World then click to play. Watch his eyes.
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!! USE A REAL STAMP !!
IF you must vote by mail, use a real stamp! A slow free ride could cancel your ballot, according to post office’s top lawyer!
“Multiple states received communications from the USPS general counsel outlining standard mail delivery times and prices leading up to the November election and warning secretaries of state that election laws established by the states would not necessarily guarantee that mail-in ballots will be received in time to be counted. [. . .]
“USPS General Counsel Thomas Marshall wrote to California’s secretary of state that there is “a significant risk that some ballots will not be returned by mail in time to be counted under your laws as we understand them.’.
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“The letters suggest election mail be sent by first class mail, at a higher rate than the nonprofit rate most states use, an obstacle for cash-strapped states dealing with the pandemic.”
!! DON’T VOTE BY MAIL !!
SHOW UP. PROTECT YOUR BALLOT. GET COUNTED !
BE BRAVE ! DON’T LET BULLIES SNUFF YOUR VOICE !
Did you know that over a half million mail-in ballots were rejected this year in primary elections, in just 23 states? Was one of those ballots yours? (The coming general election could dwarf this number.)
Because Republicans say they will disproportionately vote in person, Donald Trump could well lead the vote tallies on election night, when most voters are glued to their screens and in-person vote totals are released. If Democrats disproportionately take the absentee route, as anticipated, Joe Biden might begin to overtake Trump slowly, as those ballots get counted in the following days.
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The mainstream media will preach patience, as they should. But they will be preaching only to the choir. Trump will likely try to proclaim that the vote is being stolen; cable and social media allies will quickly amplify that message; efforts to stop the counting of absentee ballots will erupt in election offices and courts; and the scenarios could only get worse from there. Whichever side of the country loses will struggle to accept the outcome as legitimate.”
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So : VOTE IN PERSON. Avoid rejection if your signature of twenty years ago doesn’t match the mailed ballot. IF you must vote by mail, ask a friend for help, by witnessing your ballot being HAND CANCELLED at a US Post Office. Defend our Nation ! Don’t be casual with your ballot. Machine cancellation is often illegible, justifying rejection.
Hand cancellation by rubber stamp with time and date. Wikimedia Commons photo by Lerdsewa
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The US Consulate in Merida offers to forward ballots — BUT WAIT. They won’t be hand cancelled !!! If you drop your ballot into the maelstrom, er, the mailstream, your voice may be drowned ! (I hope you will share this blogpost.) This election is being stolen at the post office, with help from the Postmaster General. Don’t vote at this graveyard ! :
Postal graveyard. Photo by Brian Snyder, Reuters. (Fair Use)
> > ABOLISHING THE US SENATE < <
Cartoon by Tom Toles, Washington Post (fair use)
There’s a viable plan here. Please consider how to take back our governance:
Excerpt, from essay by Thomas Geoghegan, at The BAFFLER :
At a time when we are disoriented by everything happening around us, we are disoriented all the more by our relationship to our federal government because we cannot recognize ourselves in the strange fun house mirror of the “United States” as it is represented in the Senate. It is not just that the U.S. Senate represents a distorted version of the United States but also that it deprives the real United States—the people as they truly are—of acting in its best interests. And in doing so, it deprives us of the full measure of our citizenship and leads many of us not to bother with being citizens at all.
Filibusted
Because of the U.S. Senate, which denies the principle of one person, one vote, it is unsurprising that we have one of the lowest voting rates in the world—far lower than other democracies, whether in Europe or Asia, whether rich or poor. For all the rage over vote suppression in the red states, the Constitution itself is a form of vote suppression. The vote suppression built into the Constitution by frustration of majority rule just makes more tempting the overt suppression of which we justly complain. By design, every single American has a different and arbitrarily weighted vote, by virtue of the Senate structure laid out in the Constitution. Understanding that the odds are against their self-government, it’s easy to see, in part, why 100 million Americans choose not to vote, which in turn makes each vote even more arbitrarily weighted. [ Continued . . . ]
source : https://thebaffler.com/salvos/abolish-the-senate-geoghegan
Book : : The UNWINDING : An Inner History of the New America, by George Packer
Each of us has arrived on Earth with a sacred rear-view mirror. This blessed feature of being human enables us to learn from our mistakes by watching instant replays of the past. Some of them are etched in our memories for decades. And some of these get viewed with a preface If only I had . . .
This ability to learn from our mistakes requires peering into that mirror, as much as it may discomfort us. Yes, some of us are quicker than others to catch on. But pain is a patient and persistent teacher.
Photo by John Pollard, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
George Packer understands this : We live in stories, and thousands of instructive stories dwell inside of us. Learning to squeeze juice out of them is key. Too often we glory in our own retelling, rather than extracting the lessons for application today.
Packer has paid close attention to the events of the past 50 years of American history. He’s a brilliant storyteller, using an unusual approach — close-up accounts of the lives of (mostly) regular citizens. Yes, there are a few “great men”/great women who people his historical tellings, but he’s inclusive, and uses a full-spectrum palette, His real life characters present a slow-motion train wreck of the country’s recent past, with hope for the future. As we approach our next presidential election, Lincoln Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians would likely find THE UNWINDING entertaining, edifying, and informative., refreshingly without polemics. (Published before Trump was nominated originally.) National Book Award, nonfiction, 2013. (A shout out to friend Jeff for lending me his copy!) There’s a forward-looking article by Packer about America’s dawning opportunity in the October issue of The Atlantic, online.
THERE IS NO “LESSER EVIL”.
America has been hijacked by Big Money. Until we wake up to this fact, we are merely watching a puppet show inside Plato’s cave, and refusing to come out into the light. Yes, do vote for Joe Biden, who gave us Clarence Thomas and denounced busing in Delaware to prevent school integration. Yes, forget that Joe is a puppet, and Kamala is an enabler of the police state — if you really think it will make a difference to elect them. It can’t be worse than what we’ve got. But wake up to the fact that it is not real community, not real change,
Photographer unknown. Internet. Fair use.
Nothing will change until Little Money, from many small donors evicts the owners of the casino’s puppet show (Congress) where “money is speech” and donations somehow are not bribes. We need to demand an end to gerrymandering — in the street, if necessary — by which politicians of both stripes game us, and own our electoral system. We need to defeat the Big-Lie propaganda spewed by Fox, CNN, NYT, Facebook – with our own truth-telling. Today, All politics is digital, and you are the agent of change. Be the change you wish to see! Pull back the curtain, and yank down the wizard’s pants! Let go of tribalism, and join genuine community.
EXCERPT, below, from CaitlinJohnstone dot com – see especially the embedded link :
If you are an American who is dissatisfied with the presidential choices you are being offered in election after election, consider focusing your energy on the status quo itself. Consider taking the energy you might have put into talking about Donald Trump and Joe Biden and putting it into waking up your countrymen to the fact that the political class is there to rob them and the media class is there to deceive them on behalf of their oligarchic owners.
What prevents real change from coming to the most powerful nation in the world is not the fact that the “lesser evil” loses elections, it’s the fact that everyone’s being manipulated into buying into a fake performance that is wholly owned and operated by a single oligarchic force which benefits directly from oppression, exploitation and mass murder. It’s that there is no “lesser evil”.