Thursday Reads: Trump In Blunderland

Posted: September 10, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

I’m sure we’ve all thought at times that living in Trumpworld was like being down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass. Well, it turns out Jared Kushner thinks that’s a good thing. According to a Washington Post article on Bob Woodward’s soon-to-be released book, Rage:

Kushner advised people that one of the most important guiding texts to understand the Trump presidency was “Alice in Wonderland,” a novel about a young girl who falls through a rabbit hole. He singled out the Cheshire cat, whose strategy was endurance and persistence, not direction.

From CNN: Why Jared Kushner suggests reading ‘Alice in Wonderland’ if you want to understand  Trump.

Woodward quotes Kushner paraphrasing the Cheshire Cat as a way of making sense of Trump’s chaotic style of management, saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there.”

Woodward describes Kushner as an “ever-loyal cheerleader and true believer” of the President, but also someone who has intimate knowledge of how and why Trump makes decisions. While former top Cabinet officials describe Trump’s style as chaotic and dangerous, Kushner views his constant reversals as “an asset.”

Woodward writes, “Where others saw fickleness or even lies, Kushner saw Trump’s constant, shifting inconsistency as a challenge to be met with an ever-adapting form of managing up.”

“With the president, there’s a hundred different shades of gray,” Kushner is quoted as saying. “And if people try to get a quick answer out of him, it’s easy. You can get him to decide in your favor by limiting his information. But you better be sure as hell that people with competing views aren’t going to find their way to him. And when that happens, he’s going to undo his decision.”

Again, Kushner thinks this is a positive description of Trump’s blundering (mis)management style. Woodward writes that Kushner recommended.

…four texts people should “absorb” if they want to truly understand the President. Woodward writes the texts do not paint a flattering picture of someone who is both Kushner’s boss and father-in-law.

The first text Kushner recommends is a 2018 opinion piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. Noonan’s assessment of Trump: “He’s crazy… and it’s kind of working.” Noonan also calls Trump a “circus act,” and “a living insult.” [….]

The second text Kushner points to is “Alice in Wonderland.” [….]

Woodward writes, “Did Kushner understand how negative this was? Was it possible the best roadmap for the administration was a novel about a young girl who falls through a rabbit hole, and Kushner was willing to acknowledge that Trump’s presidency was on shaky, directionless ground?”
The third text Kushner suggests is from author Chris Whipple’s book “The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.”

Whipple writes, “What seems clear, as of this writing, and almost a year into his presidency, is that Trump will be Trump, no matter his chief of staff.”

The final text Kushner offers is “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter,” by Scott Adams, creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip. According to Adams, Trump employs a technique called “intentional wrongness persuasion,” and “can invent any reality” because “all you will remember is that he provided his reasons, he didn’t apologize, and his opponents called him a liar like they always do.”

It was clear to Woodward that none of this was meant to criticize Trump, just as a way to help understand him. That said, Woodward was surprised and writes, “when combined, Kushner’s four texts painted President Trump as crazy, aimless, stubborn and manipulative.

Is it possible that Kushner was simply trying to explain why he has been so successful in manipulating Trump? I can see Jared trying to show Woodward how clever and savvy he is.

Of course the big “news” from Woodward’s book was that Trump knew all along that the coronavirus was deadly despite his insistence for months that it was no worse than the flu and that it would magically “go away” without the federal government doing anything. We sort of knew that though. We knew that Trump was told about the dangers of a pandemic in March. Yesterday we learned that Trump actually knew plenty in January and February. From The Washington Post:

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, agreed. He told the president that after reaching contacts in China, it was evident that the world faced a health emergency on par with the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

Ten days later, Trump called Woodward and revealed that he thought the situation was far more dire than what he had been saying publicly.

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis.

Trump also told Woodward early on that he knew children were just as vulnerable to the virus as adults, as he insisted that schools should be fully opened. Is anyone really surprised by this? It’s shocking to hear the Woodward’s recordings, but we already knew Trump didn’t give a shit how many Americans died as long as he could keep bluffing long enough to get himself four more years in the White House. What’s actually kind of surprising is that Trump would be stupid enough to talk to Woodward about all this on tape.

John Harris at Politico: Woodward Interviews Shallow Throat.

For years, President Donald Trump and his allies have warned about his adversaries in the “Deep State.” The phrase evokes images of anonymous officials with hidden motives buried deep in the government.

Recent days have made it clearer than ever that the real hazard to Trump is actually the Shallow State.

The people saying mean things about Trump aren’t lurking in the shadows. They are well-known names whom Trump recruited to work by his side. Their motives aren’t mysterious. They are obvious: A transactional president encourages transactional behavior in his midst. These sources have shocking stories to tell, but no longer any genuinely surprising ones….

The entire notion of the Deep State rests on soil tilled by Hollywood, in decades of movies and television shows in the genre of the paranoid thriller. In these conspiracy dramas, the plot tension flows from a slowly building, creepy realization that Things Are Not What They Seem.

Woodward, based on Wednesday’s barrage of publicity for next week’s official release of “Rage,” has once again delivered the goods with plenty of news-driving revelations. But these scoops are like so many in the Trump years: They reveal that things are pretty much Exactly What They Seem.

It seemed last winter and spring that Trump was prattling on with a lot of happy talk that he couldn’t possibly believe about how the coronavirus wouldn’t be that serious—even as his own government officials were warning that it would be—because he was desperately trying to create reality by proclamation. Months later, Woodward has confirmed that to be true.

What’s more, his source was not a latter-day Deep Throat skulking around garages on behalf of the Deep State. The most damaging source for Woodward is on the record and on tape: Trump himself.

It had previously seemed that Trump, despite his constant attacks on the “Fake News” media, had a compulsive fascination with establishment media figures and the coverage they give him. Now the president has confirmed that to be true, giving 18 (!) interviews to Woodward. Think of him as Shallow Throat.

Read the rest at Politico.

Trump also told Woodward about a top secret weapons system that, thanks to Trump, is no longer secret. Forbes: Trump Claims To Have Built A New, Secret Nuclear Weapons System.

President Donald Trump claimed to journalist Bob Woodward that he had overseen the creation of a new U.S. nuclear weapons system, saying, “We have stuff that you haven’t ever seen or heard about,”as the two discussed tensions between the United States and North Korea.

It’s not clear what Trump was referring to, but Woodward writes in his new book Rage that he later confirmed with sources that the U.S. military indeed had a secret new weapon system, and the sources said they were surprised Trump had disclosed the information, according to The Washington Post.

It’s possible that Trump was referring to the W76-2 warhead, according to the defense publication Task & Purpose.

That weapon was announced in Feb. 2018 as a relatively “low-cost” addition to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and has a smaller explosive yield than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

CNN reports that those around Trump are freaking out: ‘Calls without us knowing:’ Aides point fingers in wake of Woodward’s latest book.

Furious he didn’t speak with Bob Woodward for the first book he wrote on his presidency, President Donald Trump determined full participation with the follow-up would provide the best chance of securing a positive take on his rollicking tenure….

Yet instead of outmaneuvering the journalist famous for exposing Nixon’s Watergate scandal, Trump appears to have become a victim of his own confidence. And instead of a glowing portrait of a successful presidency, Trump is facing another damaging account two months before the election.

The fallout has caused internal strife at the White House as aides assign blame for allowing the taped interviews to proceed. Fingers have been thrust at ex-press secretaries, longtime confidants and old friends.

But people familiar with the situation say it is Trump himself who ultimately determined at the outset he could talk Woodward into writing a positive portrayal of his administration, reckoning the powers of salesmanship that have sustained him his entire adult life would yield another unlikely success.

So confident was Trump he could generate a favorable depiction that he provided Woodward with his personal cellphone number, eager to speak with a man whose long record of interviewing his predecessors has not exactly produced flattering results.

In phone calls late at night from the White House residence, Trump spun his tenure as one of historic successes and unparalleled victory.

The Daily Beast: Trump Was ‘Ecstatic’ About Talking to Woodward—Until He Wasn’t.

President Trump was “ecstatic” about the prospect of sitting for interviews with Woodward, according to a White House official, and relished some of his conversations with the famous Washington Post journalist.

Ultimately, Trump spoke with Woodward 18 times for the book. And at some point along the way, he had a change of heart, becoming convinced that Woodward was using him. Trump then began rage-tweeting the very reporter with whom he was so psyched to go on the record.

“The Bob Woodward book will be a FAKE, as always, just as many of the others have been,” the president tweeted, seemingly out of the blue, last month. Later that month, Trump logged back on to blast the veteran reporter as a “social pretender” who “never has anything good to say.”

It is unclear when, exactly, Trump decided that the Woodward book could prove harmful. According to a person with direct knowledge, Trump privately said before sitting for interviews with Woodward, that one reason he was looking forward to doing so was because of how “fair” the journalist was to him on the issue of “Russian collusion.” However, late last month this source recalled the president complaining unprompted that the then-upcoming Woodward book would be filled with “fake stories,” and that the author was a “big phony.” The source did not recall Trump bringing up any of the stories or quotes he directly gave Woodward.

Apparently, Lindsey Graham pushed Trump to talk to Woodward. I wonder how soon they will be golfing together again. Read all about that and more at the Daily Beast.

What will today bring? Who knows? I’m just going to stay hunkered down and trying to stay healthy and sane. Take care of yourselves today, Sky Dancers!

Tuesday Reads: Multiple Trump Tell-All Books Releasing In September

Posted: September 8, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | 12 Comments

Two Women at the Table, August Macke

Good Morning!!

Two Trump tell-all books came out today: Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump, by Michael Cohen and Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump, by Peter Strzok. Here are the latest revelations from the two books in the press:

NBC News: Cohen calls Trump a racist ‘cult leader,’ says he disparaged Obama, Black leaders, Chicago.

Cohen spoke with NBC News’ Lester Holt ahead of the release Tuesday of his new book, “Disloyal: a Memoir,” which discusses his experience working for Trump.

“In the book, obviously, I describe Mr. Trump as a cult leader, and I was in this cult,” Cohen said.

“So one of the purposes of writing the book is really from one former cult member to the current ones,” he continued. “I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Open your eyes as I have. And I want you to appreciate that Donald Trump cares for no one or anything other than himself.”

In the interview, Cohen mentioned several instances in which Trump made remarks that Cohen considered racist, one of them when he was driving with Trump through a predominantly Black Chicago neighborhood and Trump said, “Only the Blacks could live this way.” [….]

After former South African President Nelson Mandela died in 2013, Cohen said, Trump “asked me if I had known of any country that’s run by a Black that’s not an s—hole.” [….]

Cohen also spoke about Trump’s “hatred” for former President Barack Obama. Cohen said the disdain “basically starts and with the fact that he’s Black and that he was the first Black president in this country.”

None of that is particularly earth-shattering news at this point.

Three Women at the Table, by August Macke

Also from NBC News: Michael Cohen explains why Trump likes Putin and what Trump really thinks of his supporters.

Cohen said Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign because he assumed he would lose and wanted to make sure he could borrow money from Russian sources for his real estate empire.

As previously detailed in court records, Trump also had dispatched Cohen to try to build a Trump Tower Moscow, a 120-story building in Red Square with a free penthouse apartment for Putin.

“The whole idea of patriotism and treason became irrelevant in his mind,” Cohen writes. “Trump was using the campaign to make money for himself: of course he was.”

It wasn’t a new concept, Cohen writes. When a Russian oligarch bought Trump’s mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2008 for nearly double what Trump paid for it — a $50 million profit — Trump believed Putin was secretly funding the deal, Cohen writes….

With Putin, it wasn’t just self-interest — Trump genuinely admires the Russian leader, Cohen says.

Trump worships wealth and power, Cohen writes.

“Everyone other than the ruling class on earth was like an ant, to his way of thinking, their lives meaningless and always subject to the whims of the true rulers of the world,” he writes.

“The cosmic joke was that Trump convinced a vast swath of working-class white folks in the Midwest that he cared about their well-being. The truth was that he couldn’t care less.”

I expect Peter Strzok’s book will be more substantive than Cohen’s, but it is getting much less attention so far. A couple of reports:

Associated Press via Market Watch: Peter Strzok says he saw Trump as counterintelligence risk while at FBI — and still does.

Strzok said he intended for his book to lend insight into the Clinton probe, Russian election interference and, “first and foremost, the counterintelligence threat that I see in Donald Trump.” [….]

Painting by Richard Diebenkorn

As the investigation progressed, Strzok came to regard the Trump administration’s actions regarding Russia as “highly suspicious” and the president as compromised by Russia, including because of what Strzok says were Trump’s repeated efforts to mislead the public about dealings with Moscow.

Those concerns deepened after Trump fired James Comey as FBI director and bragged to a Russian diplomat that “great pressure” was removed. That interaction was like a “five-alarm fire,” Strzok says, and the FBI began investigating whether Trump himself was under Russia’s sway.

“I hadn’t wanted to investigate the president of the United States,” Strzok writes. “But my conviction on that point had been eroded by Trump’s continued suspicious behavior with the Russians and his ongoing attacks on our investigation.”

Even now, including in an interview Monday with MSNBC, Strzok is of the view that Trump poses a national-security threat. “Without exaggeration,” he said, “President Trump’s counterintelligence vulnerabilities are exponentially greater than [those of] any president in modern history.”

Read more about Strzok’s revelations at the link.

NBC News: FBI agent who helped launch Russia investigation says Trump was ‘compromised.’

Despite the cinematic title, Strzok reveals no new evidence that the president acted as a tool of Russia. But his insider account provides a detailed refutation of the notion that a group of anti-Trump denizens of the deep state cooked up the Russia “hoax,” as Trump likes to call it, to take down a president they didn’t support.

To the contrary, as he tells it, career public servants inside the FBI and the Justice Department were gobsmacked in 2016 by what they uncovered about a presidential campaign that seemed to find unlimited time to meet with Russians, practically inviting exploitation by a foreign adversary.

“I was skeptical that all the different threads amounted to anything more than bumbling incompetence, a confederacy of dunces who were too dumb to collude,” Strzok writes, summing up his view of the case for a Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia before he was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in July 2017 over his biased texts. “In my view, they were most likely a collection of grifters pursuing individual personal interests: their own money- and power-driven agendas.”

Edvard Munch, At the Coffee Table

But he also believed, he wrote, that even if Trump didn’t formally conspire with the Russian election interference operation, the president was badly compromised. He was compromised, Strzok writes, because of his questionable business dealings, the hush money paid on his behalf to silence women, shady transactions at his charity and, most importantly, “his lies about his Russia dealings,” including his secret 2015 effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow even as he told the world that he had no business with Russia.

“Putin knew he had lied. And Trump knew that Putin knew — a shared understanding that provided the framework for a potentially coercive relationship between the president of the United States and the leader of one of our greatest adversaries,” writes Strzok, who was deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division.

Trump is tweeting madly this morning, trying to distract from the latest insider books, but he’ll have a lot of them to deal with this month.

Next Tuesday will bring the release of Bob Woodward’s latest book Rage. Trump made the mistake letting Woodward interview him 12 times, and Trump or someone else gave Woodward Trump’s love letters to and from Kim John Un.

On September 29, Andrew Weissmann’s book Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation comes out. Weissmann was a top prosecutor during the Russia investigation. On September 22, Washington Post reporter Devlin Barrett’s book October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election wbe released. That should be embarrassing for James Comey as well as Trump.

In other bad news for Trump, his campaign appears to be running out of money.

The New York Times: How Trump’s Billion Dollar Campaign Lost Its Cash Advantage.

Money was supposed to have been one of the great advantages of incumbency for President Trump, much as it was for President Barack Obama in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004….

By Edward Hopper

His rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was relatively broke when he emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee this spring, and Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee had a nearly $200 million cash advantage.

Five months later, Mr. Trump’s financial supremacy has evaporated. Of the $1.1 billon his campaign and the party raised from the beginning of 2019 through July, more than $800 million has already been spent. Now some people inside the campaign are forecasting what was once unthinkable: a cash crunch with less than 60 days until the election, according to Republican officials briefed on the matter.

Brad Parscale, the former campaign manager, liked to call Mr. Trump’s re-election war machine an “unstoppable juggernaut.” But interviews with more than a dozen current and former campaign aides and Trump allies, and a review of thousands of items in federal campaign filings, show that the president’s campaign and the R.N.C. developed some profligate habits as they burned through hundreds of millions of dollars. Since Bill Stepien replaced Mr. Parscale in July, the campaign has imposed a series of belt-tightening measures that have reshaped initiatives, including hiring practices, travel and the advertising budget.

Under Mr. Parscale, more than $350 million — almost half of the $800 million spent — went to fund-raising operations, as no expense was spared in finding new donors online. The campaign assembled a big and well-paid staff and housed the team at a cavernous, well-appointed office in the Virginia suburbs; outsize legal bills were treated as campaign costs; and more than $100 million was spent on a television advertising blitz before the party convention, the point when most of the electorate historically begins to pay close attention to the race.

Read the rest at the NYT.

Supposedly, Trump is thinking about putting his own money into the campaign. I’ll believe that when I see it.

Bloomberg: Trump Weighs Putting Up to $100 Million of His Cash Into Race.

President Donald Trump has discussed spending as much as $100 million of his own money on his re-election campaign, if necessary, to beat Democratic nominee Joe Biden, according to people familiar with the matter.

Maxim Bugzester, Five Women Talking Around a Table

The billionaire president has talked about the idea with multiple people, though he hasn’t yet committed to any self-funding, according to people briefed on internal deliberations. Though Trump personally contributed $66 million to his 2016 campaign, it would be unprecedented for an incumbent president to put his own money toward winning a second term.

President Donald Trump has discussed spending as much as $100 million of his own money on his re-election campaign, if necessary, to beat Democratic nominee Joe Biden, according to people familiar with the matter.

The billionaire president has talked about the idea with multiple people, though he hasn’t yet committed to any self-funding, according to people briefed on internal deliberations. Though Trump personally contributed $66 million to his 2016 campaign, it would be unprecedented for an incumbent president to put his own money toward winning a second term.

The Trump campaign and the RNC still have not released their fund-raising numbers for August. I wonder why?

More stories to check out today:

NBC News: Kamala Harris meets with Jacob Blake’s family in Wisconsin.

CNN Politics: Trump launches unprecedented attack on military leadership he appointed.

CBS News: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is out of coma and responsive after suspected poisoning, hospital says.

CNN: Trump is parroting the Kremlin line on the Navalny poisoning.

The New York Times: Trump Emerges as Inspiration for Germany’s Far Right.

Vanity Fair: “He is Throwing Gasoline on a fully Raging Fire”: Trump’s Kid-Glove Handling of White Supremacists Could Create a Home-Grown Crisis.

Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post: Trump is shouting his racism. He must be stopped.

Adam Serwer at The Atlantic: For the First Time, America May Have an Anti-Racist Majority.

The Washington Post: Records shed light on online harassment of Jamal Khashoggi before his killing.

The Washington Post: House Oversight Committee will investigate Louis DeJoy following claims he pressured employees to make campaign donations.

The Guardian: Julian Assange warned by judge after outburst during extradition trial.

Labor Day Reads: Labor is Life

Posted: September 7, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, worker rights | Tags: , , , | 22 Comments

Happy Labor Day Sky Dancers!

Today is the day we celebrate the American Worker and the Union movement that brought us so many benefits and work safety enhancements that we should all appreciate Organized Labor.  The day also serves as reminder of the continual fight to maintain what they earned for us through several centuries of labor movements and resistance. Republican elected officials still try to dilute all these laws that serve to protect workers and the safety of the work environment as well as dilute the right to organize.

I’m actually just going to do a tribute to the labor movement and to workers lost unnecessarily because of the greed, unsafe work places, and horrible working conditions suffered even by small children until the Labor Movement left them free to be children.  I’m really not interested in spending the day on what usually serves as a kick off to the Election Season because we need a break today from all of that!

I also would like to make tribute to the indigenous people and to the slaves stolen from Africa whose human and natural resources were used to build this country.  They had no pay, no thanks, and slavery for working and living conditions. They lived under religious mission systems,  were sent on forced relocation to barren lands, and were bought by the Confederacy that supported ownership and torture of human beings. Their children and grandchildren continue to fight for the rights of full citizenship and recognition.  I also make tribute to the diasporas and hopeful immigrants who come here to face often desperate conditions to become part of what we offer up as the America dream.  We are here to form a more perfect union and organized labor makes that possible

Each of us deserve dignity, safety, and fair compensation for our work no matter who we are.  Who we love, what reproductive organs we were born with, the color of our skin, and our religious and ethnic heritage should not influence the rights we have as workers.  Equal Pay for Equal Work.  PERIOD.

The History Channel maintains documents on the history of our Federal Labor Day Holiday.

Labor Day, an annual celebration of workers and their achievements, originated during one of American labor history’s most dismal chapters.

In the late 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks in order to eke out a basic living. Despite restrictions in some states, children as young as 5 or 6 toiled in mills, factories and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts’ wages.

People of all ages, particularly the very poor and recent immigrants, often faced extremely unsafe working conditions, with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities and breaks.

As manufacturing increasingly supplanted agriculture as the wellspring of American employment, labor unions, which had first appeared in the late 18th century, grew more prominent and vocal. They began organizing strikes and rallies to protest poor conditions and compel employers to renegotiate hours and pay.

Labor Unions are more crucial than ever. States have taken more steps to pass so-called Right to work laws that are really just used to destroy the ability of people to negotiate their work environment and wages. The argument is that workers cannot be “forced” to join unions. However, this is just a disguise to defund unions and to stop the large amount of influence they used to be able to command in my states because of huge union numbers. Businesses have actively worked to dilute the ability of people to unionize and the service industry frequently uses illegal tactics to stop unionization in many ways.  This is from a 2015 HuffPo article.

(Contrary to popular opinion, no worker in the U.S. can be forced to be a full dues-paying, card-carrying member of a union. But they can be compelled to pay so-called “agency fees” — the portion of dues that goes expressly to bargaining and representation costs, as opposed to, say, political campaigns. Right-to-work guarantees that workers do not have to pay these fees.)

On the right, proponents of right-to-work argue that the laws make states more competitive and attract business. On the left, opponents of right-to-work argue that the laws drive down wages and fail to create jobs. What few would deny is that right-to-work laws can be crippling for organized labor As workers bow out of unions, the remaining workers must bear a larger share of the costs associated with representation and organizing. And if the union becomes less effective, workers have even more reason to leave, creating a downward spiral.

Republicans in Michigan passed a right-to-work law there in 2012, despite the state’s storied labor history and the presence of the United Auto Workers union. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has already revealed a drop in union density in Michigan. Last year, the estimated number of union members dropped by 48,000, despite the fact that the state added 44,000 more workers to its economy.

Whatever their feelings on labor unions’ role in the workplace, many Republicans have a political interest in passing right-to-work legislation. By weakening organized labor, the laws indirectly hurt the Democratic Party, as unions remain a critical piece of the party’s base. It’s worth noting that the very phrase “right to work,” with its positive connotations, constitutes a linguistic coup for the right. (Unions have sought, with much less success, to brand the legislation as “right to work for less.”)

Like other legislative attacks on collective bargaining, the proliferation of right-to-work laws plays a large role in organized labor’s ongoing existential crisis. Right now, not even 7 percent of private-sector workers belong to a labor union, down from a peak of about 30 percent in the post-World War II years. More right-to-work laws will likely diminish that density further.

You can read about the 30 Victories for Workers’ Rights won by Organized Labor here at Stacker.  The first American Union formed in 1794 and was the Shoemakers.  This is a truly interesting list of the history of US Labor and Labor Law.

Today, American workers have a host of rights and recourses should their workplace be hostile or harmful. While the modern labor movement works to continue to improve the working conditions for all with big efforts around a fair minimum wage and end of employer wage theft, the movement has a history rich with fights and wins. It put an end to child labor, 10-to-16 hour workdays, and unsafe working conditions. Today, every wage-earning American today owes a debt of gratitude to organized labor for the 40-hour workweek, minimum wage (such as it is), anti-discrimination laws, and other basic protections. Far from basic, those protections were, until fairly recently, pipe dreams to the millions of American men, women, and children who labored endlessly in dreadful conditions for poverty wages.

The gratitude is owed mostly to the unions those nameless and disposable workers organized, which they did under the threat of being fired, harassed, evicted from company homes, beaten, jailed, and, in many cases, killed. In 1886, for example, over 200,000 railroad workers went on strike to protest an unjust firing. In 1894, over 250,000 workers walked out of the Pullman Palace Car Company factories to protest 12-hour workdays and wage cuts.

The 2018 Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME established that public-sector workers who are protected by unions—of which there are five times as many as private workers—but don’t wish to join, no longer have to pay fees on behalf of the union’s collective bargaining. This dealt a blow to public-sector unions, though it didn’t result in the mass exodus union detractors had hoped for. Overall union membership in the U.S. in 2019 was at 10.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. While that’s a historical low rate, some industries—like digital media, museums, and non-profits—are making inroads with new unions.

While we’re on the subject of hard work
I just wanted to say that I always was a man to work

I was born working and I worked my way up by hard work
I ain’t never go nowhere yet but I got there by hard work
Work of the hardest kind
I been down and I been out
And I’ve been busted, disgusted and couldn’t be trusted
I worked my way up and I worked my way down

I’ve been drunk and I’ve been sober
I’ve had hard times and I got hijacked
And been robbed for cash and robbed for credit
Worked my way into jail and outta jail
And I woke up alotta mornings and I didn’t even know where I was at

But the hardest work I ever done is when I was trying to get myself
A worried woman to ease my worried mind

So, I’d just like to wish you a happy labor day!!!   Be safe!  Be kind to yourself!

FDR Labor Day 1941

Image

What’s on your blogging and read list today?

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: September 5, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 38 Comments

Otto Moller: White Red Black Cat

Good Morning!!

We’re heading into the long Labor Day weekend, as schools around the country prepare to reopen and flu season approaches. Schools that have already opened are fighting coronavirus outbreaks. In other words, a covid-19 perfect storm could be approaching.

The Washington Post: Coronavirus updates: Labor Day could fuel another rise in infections if people aren’t cautious, experts say.

Local officials and health experts say they worry that gatherings during Labor Day weekend — the first long weekend for students who have returned to classrooms across the country — could lead to a repeat of the national surge of coronavirus infections that followed Memorial Day if people don’t follow health guidelines.

This weekend presents challenges that didn’t exist earlier this summer, including schools resuming and a wider spread of infections overall, said Thomas Tsai, a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who partnered with Google to publish a forecast model for infections.

The Old Actress, Max Beckman

“In some ways we’re entering Labor Day with a more volatile mix than we did before Memorial Day,” he said. “We have masks and treatment, but we’re starting with a much higher base of cases, and we’re still seeing new hot spots rise across the country.” [….]

Infections swept through the Sun Belt after Memorial Day, straining health-care systems in Texas, Florida, Arizona and other states as record numbers of people fell ill in those places. Tsai said the rise was attributable to a rushed reopening in Southern states where testing and contact tracing weren’t yet in place, inconsistent mask mandates and increased travel due to the holiday.

The Washington Post: Covid-19: A bad flu season colliding with the pandemic could be overwhelming.

Doctors and health officials are urging Americans to get vaccinated against influenza in record numbers this fall to avoid a dreaded scenario: flu colliding with a raging coronavirus pandemic.

They worry that tens of millions of ­flu-related illnesses could overwhelm hospitals, doctor offices and laboratories that test for both respiratory illnesses.

Symptoms of flu and covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, are similar.

“When someone presents to a physician with fever, cough, malaise, unless it’s one of the few things peculiar to covid-19, like a loss of smell, it’s hard to tell them apart when both are circulating in the community,” said Benjamin D. Singer, an assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and a pulmonary critical care specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

It doesn’t have to be this way. If people wear masks and follow social distancing recommendations, we could even reduce the number of flu cases.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Still Life With Cat

“This fall and winter could be one of the most complicated public health times we have, with the two coming at the same time,” Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a recent interview on the JAMA network.

“On the other hand, I’m an optimist. If the American public heeds the advice that we said about face covering and the social distancing and the hand-washing and being smart about crowds, this could be one of the best flu seasons we have had,” Redfield said. “And particularly if they do one more thing, and that is to embrace the flu vaccine with confidence.”

Unfortunately, we’ve already seen that many people–particularly Trump cult members and some young people–aren’t going to bother with these prevention strategies.

The Washington Post: Experts project autumn surge in coronavirus cases, with a peak after Election Day.

Infectious-disease experts are warning of a potential cold-weather surge of coronavirus cases — a long-feared “second wave” of infections and deaths, possibly at a catastrophic scale. It could begin well before Election Day, Nov. 3, although researchers assume the crest would come weeks later, closer to when fall gives way to winter.

An autumn surge in covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, would not be an October surprise: It has been hypothesized since early in the pandemic because of the patterns of other respiratory viruses.

“My feeling is that there is a wave coming, and it’s not so much whether it’s coming but how big is it going to be,” said Eili Klein, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine….

By Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Respiratory viruses typically begin spreading more easily a couple of weeks after schools resume classes. Although the pandemic has driven many school districts to remote learning, there is a broad push across the country to return to something like normal life.

The Labor Day holiday weekend is a traditional time of travel and group activities, and, like Independence Day and Memorial Day, could seed transmission of the virus if people fail to take precautions. And viruses tend to spread more easily in cooler, less humid weather, which allows them to remain viable longer. As the weather cools, people tend to congregate more indoors.

I plan to continue staying home most of the time and wearing my growing collection of masks anytime I leave my apartment. That’s not difficult for me, because I enjoy solitary activities like reading and I’m past the days when I enjoyed going to parties or otherwise mixing with large groups of people. But I’m worried about what is going to happen when kids return to school and bring home the virus to the older people they live with.

The fallout continues from the Atlantic article about Trump’s disrespect for the military. A couple of examples:

Bess Levin at Vanity Fair: Donald Trump, Human Parasite, Has Also Said Soldiers Missing In Action Should Be Left For Dead.

…shortly after The Atlantic story was published, the Washington Post reported that a former senior administration official confirmed that Trump regularly made disparaging comments about veterans, in addition to this choice take on soldiers missing in action:

In one account, the president told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Also, he thinks he deserves a badge of honor for making up a foot injury to get out of the draft:

Trump believed people who served in the Vietnam War must be “losers” because they hadn’t gotten out of it, according to a person familiar with the comments. Trump also complained bitterly to then Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that he didn’t understand why Kelly and others in the military treated McCain, who had been imprisoned and tortured during the Vietnam War, with such reverence. “Isn’t he kind of a loser?” Trump asked, according to the person familiar with Trump’s comments.

Girl with cat, by Paula Modersohn-Becker

NBC News: Trump often sees an American landscape of ‘losers’ and ‘suckers.’ Analysis: The Atlantic’s report that the president callously dismissed dead American soldiers stands to reinforce his past disregard for sacrifice.

It’s believable because Trump has called so many of his fellow Americans, including military veterans, suckers, losers and the like. The story challenges Trump’s political narrative that he is a winning deal-maker who is so infuriated by the sacrifices Americans have been forced to make — in misbegotten wars and bad trade deals — that he gave up his own comfortable lifestyle to stand in and fight on their behalf. In this telling, they are good people who deserve a selfless champion like him.

Giving up his private life netted Trump the most powerful office in the world. He characterizes that as sacrifice, but the personal payoff was huge.

If it’s true that Trump believes people who sacrifice the most for causes greater than themselves — soldiers who laid down their lives — are losers, what does he think of the many hardworking American doctors and nurses who rushed into hospitals to treat coronavirus victims? What does he think of the police officers whose public service he commends so often? What does he think of farmers who kept putting on “Make America Great Again” hats when his trade war with China squeezed their profits and forced the government to give them subsidies to continue operating?

Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat and Harvard graduate who served in a Marine infantry battalion during the Iraq war, said Trump simply doesn’t get the concept of sacrifice for the greater good.

“The man has no honor, and can never understand the millions of men and women that serve with honor for their country,” Gallego told NBC News. “I served with and buried men that even in a thousand lifetimes Trump couldn’t come close to matching their honor, courage and commitment.”

Peter Strzok has a book coming out next week, and I think I might want to read it. The New York times: Ex-F.B.I. Agent in Russia Inquiry Says Trump Is a National Security Threat.

A former senior F.B.I. agent at the center of the investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email server and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia defends the handling of the inquiries and declares President Trump a national security threat in a new memoir, while admitting that the bureau made mistakes that upended the 2016 presidential election.

Harijs Ebersteins, Portrait of an Elegant Lady with Her Black Cat

The former agent, Peter Strzok, who was removed from the special counsel’s team and later fired over disparaging texts he sent about Mr. Trump, has mostly kept silent as the president and his supporters have vilified him.

But Mr. Strzok’s new book, “Compromised,” a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times ahead of its publication on Tuesday, provides a detailed account of navigating the two politically toxic investigations and a forceful apologia of the bureau’s acts. Mr. Strzok also reveals details about the F.B.I.’s internal debate over investigating the president himself, writing that the question arose early in the Trump presidency and suggesting that agents were eyeing others around Mr. Trump. Mr. Strzok was himself at first opposed to investigating the president.

But in a scathing appraisal, Mr. Strzok concludes that Mr. Trump is hopelessly corrupt and a national security threat. The investigations that Mr. Strzok oversaw showed the president’s “willingness to accept political assistance from an opponent like Russia — and, it follows, his willingness to subvert everything America stands for.”

Mr. Strzok’s insider look serves as a counter to the efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to discredit the Russia investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr has appointed a veteran prosecutor to review the conduct of the F.B.I., Mr. Strzok and others for possible misconduct and bias.

The Justice Department inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, found the bureau had sufficient reason to open the inquiry and found no evidence of political bias.

Anne Applebaum interviewed Strzok at The Atlantic: ‘Who’s Putting These Ideas in His Head?’ The former FBI agent Peter Strzok worries that Americans will never learn the full story about Trump’s relationship with Russia.

Strzok has always argued that he, James Comey, and the rest of the FBI tried, from the beginning, to treat both of these cases apolitically: They were focused on following the law. But after the Department of Justice released some private texts in which he was critical of President Donald Trump, he was accused not just of bias, but of seeking to deliberately discredit the president. Strzok, who also worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team in its early months, became a hate figure for everyone who sought to distract the public from the facts about Russia’s intervention and the Trump team’s eager embrace of it. “I have devoted my adult life to defending the United States, our Constitution, our government and all our citizens,” Strzok writes in the introduction to Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. “I never would have imagined—could not have imagined—that the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, would single me out with repeated attacks of treason, accusing me of plotting a coup against our government.”

Woman with a Siamese-Catm by-Kees Van Dongen

As I read Strzok’s book, I found myself unexpectedly angry, because his narrative exposes an extraordinary failure: Despite multiple investigations by the FBI, Congress, and Mueller’s team, Americans have still never learned the full story about the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia or Trump’s own decades-long financial ties with Russia. Four years have passed since the investigation began. Many people have been convicted of crimes. Nevertheless, portions of reports produced by Mueller, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and others remain redacted. Investigations are allegedly ongoing. Details remain secret. Meanwhile, valuable FBI time and money were spent investigating which email server Hillary Clinton used—a question that, as it turned out, had no implications for U.S. security whatsoever.

Strzok himself was not exactly reassuring: He does not believe that Trump’s true relationship with Russia was ever revealed, and he now worries that it won’t ever be. It’s not clear that anyone ever followed up on the leads he had, or completed the counterintelligence investigation he began. He doesn’t say this himself, but after speaking with him I began to wonder if this is the real reason the Department of Justice broke with precedent in his case by not just firing a well-respected FBI agent but publicly discrediting him too: Strzok was getting too close to the truth.

Head over to The Atlantic to read the interview.

Have a safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend, Sky Dancers! Let’s hope Trump goes off to one of his golf courses and leaves us alone for a few days.

Friday Reads: Too many Crises to Count

Posted: September 4, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , | 25 Comments

Alexej von Jawlensky – Child with doll c 1910

Good Day Sky Dancers!

It’s getting difficult to keep track of all the atrocities committed by the Trumpist Regime. There are so many, in fact, that we lurch from headline to headline while forgetting some of the most important violations of human rights still happening.

I am a proud daughter of a Veteran of World War 2.  Great Uncles of mine fought in World War 1.  I had a cousin who fought in Vietnam in a swift boat. My family fought in the Civil War for the Union and many of my relatives signed the Declaration of Independence and fought for the Continental Army.  I am outraged what the US Commander in Chief says about those who answer the call to defend the country.  He pardons the few that do not honor the uniform.  He damns the ones that died for it.

However, our country is actively suppressing votes of its citizens, sending military equipment to local Police gun to down our citizens in the streets, and we still cage children.  It’s hard to keep all of these headlines on the front page.  It’s difficult to understand a US President who has turned our US priorities into Putin’s policies with a huge side of grifting the country for all the money the regime can grab.  He runs a crime syndicate and we are all are targets.

This is the year we decide what kind of future children in the United States will have and if it will be based on rule of law and democratic values. All of our children should grow up knowing they have access to liberty and justice.  They have the right to the American Dream and should not fall prey to the Trumpist Regime’s installation of the nightmare of American Carnage.

1921 Otto Dix, Two Children

This is a headline from Harlligen, Texas where children have been detained by ICE during the Pandemic.  This decision could happen today.  “California judge on Friday could sanction ICE for detaining migrant children during pandemic.”

A California judge on Friday could issue harsh sanctions against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for not adhering to a court order to release detained migrant children who are at-risk for being held at family detention facilities in close quarters during the COVID-19 pandemic.

California Judge Dolly Gee, who oversees the Flores Settlement Agreement — a 23-year-old class action lawsuit settlement that put restrictions on how long and under what conditions minors may be held in immigration detention facilities — could rule from the bench on Friday and issue broad reaching remedies to force the government into compliance after the agency failed to meet a July 27 court deadline that ordered the release of the children due to health risks from coronavirus, migrant advocates said Thursday.

On Aug. 7, Gee ruled the government has been in breach of the Flores Settlement and said she is inclined to impose a remedy. Friday’s hearing will be held at 11 a.m. PT in the U.S. District Court Central District of California Western Division.

This is from the Tampa Bay Times and it discusses a tactic used by a local sheriff to determine who might just be a criminal on something other than evidence.

Doll, Cat, Child – Gabriele Münter 1937 German 1877-1962

This is the basis of a futuristic dystopian society and deeply mimics the 1984 concept of “thought crimes”. It seems straight out of the Soviet past.

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco took office in 2011 with a bold plan: to create a cutting-edge intelligence program that could stop crime before it happened.

What he actually built was a system to continuously monitor and harass Pasco County residents, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.

First the Sheriff’s Office generates lists of people it considers likely to break the law, based on arrest histories, unspecified intelligence and arbitrary decisions by police analysts.

Then it sends deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime.

They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.

One former deputy described the directive like this: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”

In just five years, Nocco’s signature program has ensnared almost 1,000 people.

At least one in 10 were younger than 18, the Times found.

Some of the young people were labeled targets despite having only one or two arrests.

And that’s not the only story out of Florida today that should worry us.   This especially targets the health of children and their families which may be multigenerational.

This is truly the act of a fascist state.  What other reason is there to hide public health data than to protect D’oh Hair Furor?  This is from The Orlando Sentinel.  

Local health officials are barred from releasing detailed information about new COVID-19 cases in public schools because of privacy rules, a local health official said Thursday.

The number of students and school staff who are infected — or whether infections are being transmitted in classrooms ― will no longer be released by health officials, Dr. Raul Pino, the state’s health officer in Orange County, said at a Thursday briefing.

That’s a departure from earlier this week when Pino released the number of cases associated with schools as well as the number of students and staff under precautionary quarantine and a list of affected schools.

On Monday he noted that the health department was investigating its first potential case of student-to-teacher transmission, critical information for parents as they decide whether to send their children to face-to-face classes in the midst of a global pandemic. But on Thursday, Pino said he couldn’t disclose any more details about that case and whether the health department had drawn a conclusion about how the transmission occurred.

It’s easy to be disturbed by the daily onslaught of headlines of the daily outrageous Trumpist statement. However, we should never lose track of the malevolent actions these statements detract from.  The Washington Post editorial board goes straight for the click bait we get every day Trump opens his mouthy or every story uncovered by a reporter of Trump’s oral barfings to his staff.  “Presidents are expected to set the national tone. What we got with Trump has been catastrophic.”  Yes, but more importantly Presidential policies and actions should jive with our national values, priorities, and rule of law.   His minions are actively destroying US Institutions and US rule of law.  The puppets are entertaining but pull away the curtain to see what the hell is going on in the background!  We’ve always known he is not capable of rising to this:

President of the United States is a special office. Unlike the constitutional monarchs or prime ministers of European and other systems, the president is neither head of state exclusively nor head of government, but performs both roles — fusing two aspects of national leadership, symbolic and substantive, in a single person.

The Founders of this country anticipated, in short, that the president would not just execute national laws but also set a national tone. They understood that obedience to written laws could only do so much to perpetuate a republic; citizens would have to follow unwritten norms of civic virtue as well, and would be more likely to do so if their leaders modeled them. They designed the presidency with their epitome of personal integrity and decency, George Washington, in mind.

The great fear of these early Americans was that the presidency could fall into the hands of a demagogue: someone like the current incumbent, Donald Trump, whose impact on the nation’s political culture over the past three-plus years has been, if anything, more damaging than his impact on public policy. Where past occupants of the office have at least paid lip service to its inspirational aspects, and where both of his immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, actively campaigned on themes of unity, Mr. Trump lives by a different credo: “When someone attacks me, I always attack back . . . except 100x more.” This is a formula for upwardly spiraling conflict. Consistent with it, Mr. Trump has used the bully pulpit — magnified by social media — to debase public discourse.

Otto Dix (German artist, 1891-1969) Mother and Child

The media has to stop debasing the discourse by covering the side show instead of the big tent acts where damage continues to our environment, our national park systems, our nation’s endangered species, our nation’s indigenous peoples, our nation’s immigrant and minority population, our nation’s women and girls, our nation’s rule of law, our nation’s treasury, our nation’s economy, our nation’s public health and our nation’s trust in our institutions … and I could just keep adding things here … transgender service people … religious minorities … the first amendment….

This is the truly astounding headline to me instead of the repeated knowledge that Trump inherited  his father’s propensity to hate on soldiers and the military. That’s a sideshow compared to this headline from the AP: “Pentagon orders shutdown of Stars and Stripes newspaper.”

The Pentagon has ordered the military’s independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, to cease publication at the end of the month, despite Congressional efforts to continue funding the century-old publication.

The order to halt publication by Sept. 30, and dissolve the organization by the end of January, is the latest salvo in the Pentagon’s move earlier this year to cut the $15.5 million in funding for the paper from the department’s budget. And it is a reflection of the Trump administration’s broader animosity for the media and members of the press.

Members of Congress have objected to the defunding move for months. And senators sent a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper this week urging him to reinstate funding. The letter, signed by 15 senators — including Republicans and Democrats — also warns Esper that the department is legally prohibited from canceling a budget program while a temporary continuing resolution funding the federal government is in effect.

“Stars and Stripes is an essential part of our nations freedom of the press that serves the very population charged with defending that freedom,” the senators said in the letter.

And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in a separate letter to Esper in late August, also voiced opposition to the move, calling Stripes “a valued “hometown newspaper” for the members of the Armed Forces, their families, and civilian employees across the globe.” He added that “as a veteran who has served overseas, I know the value that the Stars and Stripes brings to its readers.”

In the memo, the department says that Esper has decided to discontinue publication of the paper as a result of his department-wide budget review. Signed by Army Col. Paul Haverstick, acting director of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Activity, the memo said plans to shut down the paper are due on September 14, and the final newspaper publication will be on September 30.

Stripes ombudsman, Ernie Gates, told The Associated Press on Friday that shutting the paper down “would be fatal interference and permanent censorship of a unique First Amendment organization that has served U.S. troops reliably for generations.

Notice that the paper is “independent” and doesn’t produce the kind of propaganda the Trumpist regime demands in its monarchical fealty to all things Trump.  And it’s a sad day when I have to headline an Arnold Schwarzenegger share.

From Reuters: “Southern U.S. states have closed 1,200 polling places in recent years: rights group”. This can only be targeted to stopping Black Americans from voting. It’s full on Jim Crow.

States across the American South have closed nearly 1,200 polling places since the Supreme Court weakened a landmark voting-discrimination law in 2013, according to a report released by a civil-rights group on Tuesday.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights found http://www.democracydiverted.org that states with a history of racial discrimination have shuttered hundreds of voting locations since the court ruled that they did not need federal approval to change their laws. The report did not have comparisons with polling places in other regions.

The report comes as Republican-led states impose a range of other restrictions, from shorter voting hours to photo-ID requirements. As turnout has surged in recent elections, voters in cities like Phoenix, Arizona and Atlanta, Georgia, have endured hours-long waits to cast their ballots.

Seven counties in Georgia now have only one polling place, the report found.

Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, areas with a history of voting discrimination – such as requiring African American or Hispanic voters to pay a poll tax or pass a literacy test – had first to convince the U.S. Justice Department or a federal court that any election changes they wished to make would not have a discriminatory effect. The Supreme Court struck down that portion of the law in 2013.

The law covered a swath of southern states stretching from Virginia to Texas, along with Arizona, Alaska and a few counties in states like New York, North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, South Dakota and California.

The high number of poll closures in these regions shows that Congress needs to restore the protections that were previously in place, said Vanita Gupta, the group’s president.

So, that’s my rant for the day.  Make sure what’s going on in the Big Tent gets the focus and not the click bait.  Trump is incapable of empathy. He only thinks of himself and possibly some of his family but only in terms of how they reflect on him.  He only cares about money and power and getting on the good side of Putin. We must get rid of him.  If not for ourselves, for the future of our children.

Please stay safe and be kind to yourself!  Check in!  We care about you!  And most of all, think of the children!!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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