Get ready for what's coming

Before I get into this week's blog, let me clear up a thing or two.

After my blog from two weeks ago ("Autopsy"), where I gave brief observations as to why I thought  Kamala Harris lost her bid for the presidency to the adjudicated rapist and convicted felon (say that to yourself a few times just for effect because the reality of that fact seems to have evaded many voters) Donald Trump, I apparently raised a hackle or two.

Let me be clear: just because I oppose Trump and nearly everything he stands for doesn't make me a hater.

Just because I didn't vote for Trump doesn't mean that I love my country any less than you do, nor does it make me any less of a patriot, and how dare you think otherwise? In fact, as Trump attempts to tear down the administrative state piece by piece, I consider myself to be more of a patriot now than ever.

I'm old enough to remember when those who opposed the administration in power were considered to be the "loyal opposition." Now we are told we are the enemies of the state, or the enemy from within. Good God, and you wonder where the divisiveness comes from? Seriously.

Get a grip and learn the difference between hate and dissent. Dissent gave birth to this nation. As far as I know, dissent is still protected by the First Amendment. I will continue to dissent as long as I'm allowed to in my effort to nurture the Madisonian democracy and values that I cherish.

Moving on...

Welcome to Project 2025, the right-wing Heritage Foundation's published 900-plus page Republican manifesto that Trump denied knowing about (what, do you think he lied to us?) but who is now in the process of putting into effect.

Forthwith are some of Trump's nominations for his second administration:

• Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense: A combat veteran with two Bronze Stars and with degrees from both Princeton and Harvard, Hegseth appears at first glance to be an appropriate choice for the position. But he's also been a host on FOX since 2014 (a disqualifier, in my world) and if his nomination is approved, he's a white guy who promises to end what he considers to be diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) and wokeism in the military. He wants women removed from combat roles. He also wants to fire and/or court martial top generals, including chiefs of staff, for their roles in exiting Afghanistan. As you can see, the military could be the next domino to fall in Trump's authoritarian takeover.

• Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence: A former Democrat who served in the House, Gabbard has zero experience with deep intelligence. I'd leave it at that, but she's also something of a Putin apologist. Therefore, I can't see where any of our allies in the international community would have any confidence in her, especially when it comes to intelligence sharing. She only makes us more vulnerable, in my opinion.

• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: the newly created Department of Efficiency: Two guys for one job? That ought to tell you something right there. Anyway, it seems to me a government department of efficiency is something of an oxymoron at best. And now we'll have two oxymorons in government playing together in a made-up job. What could possibly go wrong?

• Kristi Noem, Director of Homeland Security: She's the governor of South Dakota who shot her pet puppy and goat because they irritated her. During the height of Covid-19 in 2020, South Dakota under her leadership (she supported an anti-mask policy) suffered the tenth highest death rate despite being one of the least populated states in the nation. That's all you need to know about her character. Feel secure now?

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Director of Health and Human Services: Great. We'll probably soon have an HHS director who is a conspiracy theorist and an anti-vaccine proponent. This is chilling. Will he suspend research on future vaccines? Will we be safe from the next pandemic? Will children still be required to be vaccinated before attending school? Too many questions for where no questions previously existed. Does anyone here believe in science anymore?

• Matt Gaetz, Attorney General: I think this nomination is Trump's joke on the rest of us. He's trolling us. He's trolling his supporters. Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl (fits in with the Trump legacy, no?), illicit drug use and accepting improper gifts. There's respect for the law right there, huh? Word is that at least 30 Republican senators are opposed to his nomination, so that's something.

There are others, of course, but these are enough to mull over.

I wonder if Trump voters knew they were getting this kind of incompetence when they told us Harris was an awful choice. But awful is a relative term, especially when comparing these two candidates. It seems to me those voters not only chose Trump, but Project 2025 as well. 

Let's see how well Trump and his cabinet perform. As of today, the inflation rate is 2.6 percent, which is fueling a strong economy. The national murder rate is 5.5 per 100,000, down from 6.3 in 2023. It was 7.8 in 2020, Trump's last year in his first administration. The stock market, which often is influenced by international pressures, has the Dow Jones at a near-record 43,950.  Border crossings were 53,900 in September, down 7 percent from August and down 75 percent from September 2023. And gas prices, which presidents can't control but are usually considered to be an economic marker by the consumer, are $2.95 a gallon where I tank up. Let's see where Trump takes us in a year, especially if he unveils new import tariffs that many economists say could lead us into a recession.

In the meantime, let's hope we don't become sicker, dumber, poorer and more violent as a nation under Trump's proposed regime of retribution.

Autopsy

After listening to Kamala Harris' concession speech Wednesday afternoon, I was shaken with the look of despair on the faces of many of the young women in the crowd.

In the despair of adjudicated rapist and convicted felon (but not for long) Donald Trump winning a second term as President of the United States, it's little wonder tears were falling. In the wake of the demise of Roe v. Wade by an extremist Supreme Court, women's healthcare has become a top priority.

Even now, as we speak, women are finding adequate OB/GYN care to be difficult, if not impossible, in states that have imposed severe anti-abortion restrictions. Doctors are simply leaving those states in fear of being arrested for providing abortion-like treatment.

Women are dying.

Consequently, I thought the abortion issue would carry Harris and Democrats to victory, making her the first female president in the country's history. About time, I thought.

Instead, the abortion issue was a distant third, behind the economy and democracy in voter concerns. The women who lifted the Democrats in previous off-year elections – and the general election that put Joe Biden in office – simply vanished in the face of other concerns.

What happened?

I'm only a humble observer here, not anywhere close to being an expert, but it seems that Trump was able to establish a coalition among the working class that crossed nearly all demographics. The country took a decided turn to the right.

I originally thought misogyny and racism were behind this: Harris is a Black-Asian woman married to a white Jew. In any epoch of the American story, that's three strikes against you right there. No matter how well you thought Harris conducted her remarkable 107-day campaign, her battle essentially was lost before it even began.

But even that observation, while an obvious factor to me, is too simplistic.

Harris simply couldn't divorce herself from what was perceived as uncontrolled inflation. It didn't matter that inflation was world-wide and created by the pandemic, it was just that the Biden/Harris administration was seen as unable to control the high cost of eggs and gas, among other things. The real cost of living, in other words.

Never mind that inflation today is 2.4 percent. Butter still costs too much. She couldn't separate herself from Biden (and "Bidenomics") and paid for it with her loyalty.

I also thought the role of misinformation (deliberate falsehoods) and disinformation (outright lies) was critical. For a born liar like Trump, this was his ace card. His most egregious campaign ad – and his most effective – was the ad showing that Harris supported gender assignment surgery for inmates at the expense of taxpayers.

It turns out this was a bill signed during the Trump administration and it affected only two inmates. But the ad ran 30,000 times during the NFL season and it was aimed at a male audience, and it worked. The Democrats hardly ever responded to the misinformation and suffered for it.

Side note: Transgender people are just one percent of the population. Seems to me there are deeper issues facing us than reassignment surgery.

There's no doubt the Democratic Party has to  undertake massive self-assessment and find a way to reach the common working man, who thought the Dems were mostly elites. Democrats proudly talked a lot about their ground game during the election. Now they're going to have to show us an updated version that learns what the electorate really wants.

And right now, it's not a female president. It's been tried twice, and twice defeated by the willing voters of a misogynist.

As of today, a resistance movement is already underway. The ACLU is currently making preparations to slow Trump's attempts to circumvent the Constitution. Lawyers across the country are also preparing for action. I expect demonstrations to sprout across the nation by those disaffected by his election.

But as Trump prepares to take the White House for a second time, we're still in troubled waters. We already know what one Trump administration looked like with chaos swirling about like dust devils in a gutter. This time there will be no guard rails. If we are to believe what Trump already has told us, incarcerated January 6 prisoners will be freed. Muslim bans will return. Child separation will be back. There will be detention camps and deportations. Police will be given free reign to ignore the Constitution that hasn't been reduced by 10 or 12 amendments  as he finalizes his vision of the authoritarian state. His words. He can do it because SCOTUS says he has immunity.

Welcome to Trump's America? Maybe. We'll have to wait and see. But for 51 percent of you, don't be surprised. This is what you voted for.

On the precipice

With less than 60 hours remaining before the close of polls in this year's general election, there's probably little use to make another plea at this time to save Madisonian democracy in the United States.

Either we will, or we won't.

Convicted felon and adjudicated rapist Donald Trump could very well regain the presidency he lost to Joe Biden four years ago, and if you can sort through the sewage that has spewed from his mouth the past few years, we clearly know that he would have no issue suspending the Constitution (see here). He actually proposed that unAmerican abomination several years ago.

He had four years to correct the border issue and the best he could do was separate children from their families. His solution this time around – in addition to the resurrection of his child separation policy – is to to build detention camps for the millions of migrants he plans to deport. Detention camps. Let that sink in.

He has an economic plan to increase tariffs while lowering taxes. If all you see is "lowering taxes," you missed the part where tariffs would raise the price of everything this country imports by 20 percent. Nearly every creditable economist in the country has indicated Trump tariffs would lead to a recession within the year of his administration See here.)

Women's health care is on life support after Roe v. Wade was repealed. If Trump is defeated on Tuesday, it will be because women have revolted on the assault of their reproductive rights.

A few weeks ago, Trump denigrated the city of Detroit while campaigning in Detroit. I'm still trying to figure out the strategy behind that. But then in another campaign rally in New York less than a week later, the island of Puerto Rico was described as "garbage." I wonder how many votes that got him in Pennsylvania, which has a large Puerto Rican population?

In an interview with Tucker Carlson  on Thursday in Arizona, Trump talked briefly about Liz Cheney, the congresswoman who served on the House select committee and helped investigate Trump's role in the Jan. 6 riot. During the interview, Trump called her a "war hawk," whatever that is.

"She's a radical war hawk," Trump told Carlson. "Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?"

Holy crap. I don't care how that statement gets spun and  interpreted by the right, it's still describing a firing squad. This takes on further color with Trump's latest description of his opponents as "the enemy from within."

As Cheney pointed out, statements like this "is how dictators destroy free nations." 

This is how democracy's die. And keeping our democracy is the true issue here – the only issue, in my view – for which we are voting on Tuesday.

God help us all.

Be aware

Early voting for this year's general election is underway in most states, and it's occurred to me that many have already voted for rapist and convicted felon Donald Trump – now 78 years old and in obviously questionable mental health – for a second term as president of the United States.

If you voted early and voted for Trump...

• You voted for a racist. You can jump up and down and shout all you want in denial, but Trump has an obvious history of racism behind him. As a young man, Trump was sued by the Justice Department for violating the Fair Housing Act in 1973. Evidence shows his management corporation refused to rent to Black tenants. Then there was the Central Park Five incident in 1989, where Trump called for the execution of five innocent men of color for an alleged rape of a jogger. Even more recently, during the pandemic, Trump called Covid-19 the "China" virus. The evidence just goes on and on, too numerous to list. Look it up yourself.

• You voted for a convicted felon. Why he hasn't been sentenced four-and-a-half months after 34 convictions for fraud is beyond me. A two-tiered justice system? You bet. And it favors Trump. Who else gets to wait more than four months for sentencing? He should be in jail.

• You voted for a rapist. More than a year ago, a jury found Donald Trump guilty of sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll. A federal judge, Lewis Kaplan, said Carroll was digitally raped by Trump, which, in any meaning of the word "rape," is still rape. It was a civil case so no jail time was involved. Trump was fined $5 million for that, and then later fined $83.3 million for denials Trump made in his defamation countersuit. Clearly, presidential material.

• You voted for an insurrectionist. Trump rallied (fooled) his followers into assaulting the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to block certification of the vote that elected Joe Biden to office. Not only were members of Congress threatened with their lives, but more than 140 Capitol police officers were injured in the most treasonous action since the Civil War. You not only voted for an insurrectionist, but for a fascist. Or, in simpler terms, you voted for the most unAmerican president in American history as he attempted to subvert the will of the people.

• You voted for a pathological liar. The Washington Post has documented more than 30,000 lies, untruths or misleading claims during his four years in office. My rule of thumb: whenever Trump speaks, believe in the opposite of what he says because that is most likely the truth. I also love how most of his lies are either admissions or projections.

• You voted for an evil heart. Trump had his own four years to "fix" the southern border, but all he came up with was the separation of children from their parents. To this day, there are more than 1,000 children who are seeking to be reunited with their families. To me, this is the most egregious episode in the most profane presidency in American history. And now, if elected, he wants to create detention camps for illegal aliens. Pick up a history book and see if you can find something similar in world events. It won't take long. Our own country had internment camps for Japanese citizens during World War II that ultimately resulted decades later in $1.6 billion in reparations for those interred or their offspring. And then there's those camps in Nazi Germany. Don't talk to me about border issues when Trump was a spectacular failure during his own administration. How's that wall coming along, by the way?

• You voted for a misogynist. Trump managed to stack the Supreme Court with enough of his lackeys to overturn Roe v. Wade, thus inciting a war against women and their reproductive freedoms that should be nobody's business but their own. Women are dying now because of this. They're being arrested for miscarriages. They are being punished by men who feel themselves losing power.

• You voted for a murderer. Okay, I might be splitting hairs here. But it seems to me when Covid-19 first appeared in this country, we had all those refrigeration trucks filled with corpses and not enough ventilators to keep afflicted people alive. Remember those days, or is our memory so short? Although Trump did come up with Operation Warp Speed to quickly develop a vaccine for Covid, he almost immediately downplayed its effectiveness. And people died. Republicans who listened to him died. This pandemic was so mismanaged that, yes, I think I can say he murdered those people.

I know my rants about Trump the past few years mostly have fallen on deaf ears for those who need to hear them. That's OK. It's just the way it is. But I feel good writing them. I know they are the truth.

And the truth shall set us free.

The last thing I need...

Including today, there are only four Sundays remaining before election day.

So the last thing I need to hear is adjudicated rapist and convicted felon Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president of the United States, telling me that the FEMA response to Hurricane Helene is a disaster when his idea of hurricane relief is tossing rolls of paper towels to a small crowd of Hurricane Maria survivors in Puerto Rico in 2018.

Trump then waits three years before he releases $13 million in relief just before the 2020 elections. It's estimated that 2,600 persons died within a year as a result of the hurricane.

The last thing I need to hear is Trump criticizing current hurricane relief efforts when, after Hurricane Matthew in 2017, the Trump administration allocated just 1% of the aid North Carolina requested primarily because the state was run by a Democrat, Gov. Roy Cooper. Childish immaturity for all to see as people suffer.

The last thing I need  to hear from Trump is how poorly the border is being handled by the Biden/Harris administration when in fact, Trump built only 80 miles of new border wall during his term as president. And Mexico did not pay for it as he promised.

By contrast, the Obama administration built 128 miles of wall where none had existed before.

Trump already had a four-year term (2016-20) to solve the border question, but all he managed to do was separate children from their parents as administrative policy. A revised estimate claims that 1,300 children are still waiting to be reunited with their families.

The last thing I need to hear from Trump is how a presidency under Kamala Harris would destroy the Constitution when Trump himself has threatened to suspend the Constitution and that he would be a dictator on the "first day" of a potential return to the presidency.

The last thing I need to hear is Trump talking about a "Biden crime family" when he is the one convicted of 34 charges of falsified business records.

The last thing I need to hear is how great the economy was under Trump when he inherited a booming economy from the Obama administration. Economic growth under Obama was 2.4 percent. The average quarterly growth under Trump was 2.5 percent.

The last thing I need to hear from Trump is his concept of plans for health care. When Covid arrived in 2019-20, more than 400,000 people died during his administration because of conspiracy theories, mismanagement and incompetence ("Maybe we can inject bleach").

Covid brought with it supply chain issues and ultimately world-wide inflation and loss of jobs. All of those issues can be brought to Trump's incompetence. Don't even start with me.

The last thing I need to hear is Trump talking about rebuilding the military when it's already the most effective fighting force in the world. I especially don't want to hear him call our troops "suckers" and "losers." Why would any veteran vote for this insult? 

The last thing I want to hear is Trump deriding President Biden's mental acuity when his own early onset dementia is evident with every campaign speech he gives.

The last thing I need is another four years of Trump.

Lying liars

I didn't know we could control the weather. Did you? How'd I miss that one?

But Georgia Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene insists that the devastation caused by the remnants of Hurricane Helene in the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee 10 days ago is the result of weather control. 

And, specifically, by Democrats.

Hmm. Let me wade through my cognitive dissonance and lack of critical thinking skills to look at this a bit closer.

Apparently, in 2001, there was a patent application submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office by an Andrew Waxmanski of Chipley, FL, for a hurricane and tornado control device.

Weather control patent.

 Well, so far, that makes sense. A guy in Florida wanting to control hurricanes. I'll buy that.

But his idea incorporates the use of sound waves set at a certain frequency which in turn are supposedly used to affect the formation of a storm. 

Or to move the storm to a desired location. You know, to cause havoc and chaos by one political demographic to gain influence over another, or perhaps to make certain members of a certain political party look foolish – or maybe even heroic and informed – to their followers.

Well, don't worry. There was no way in hell this device was going to work and the patent application was abandoned in 2003.

And yet, the hurricane and tornado control device story was resurrected after Helene stormed through the mountains. The hurricane, manipulated by man, was designed and executed by Democrats to prevent Republicans from voting in next month's presidential election. Or so goes the accusation.

As if the Democrats don't have enough to do trying to win an election. Now they're creating hurricanes in their spare time to disrupt Republican voters. It's so outlandish that this doesn't even qualify as Artificial Intelligence (AI). More like Zero Intelligence.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene supports it.

There is plenty of misinformation to go around in this disaster. Former president and convicted felon/adjudicated rapist Donald Trump suggests the Biden administration is diverting funds from FEMA to aid illegal migrants. claiming that FEMA has no money remaining for hurricane relief. So far, the only president to ever do that is, umm, Trump. Back in 2019, Trump took $155 million from the FEMA disaster fund and used it to pay for detention space for immigrants seeking asylum.

Trump is out of office. How would he know how much money FEMA has? Good grief, the man never even read the daily presidential briefs unless they contained pictures. And that was when he was in office.

Some have criticized the Biden administration's response to this disaster, claiming the National Guard hasn't been alerted or that crucial supplies are not reaching impacted areas.

But according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, 1,500 National Guardsmen have been deployed, along with 775 FEMA personnel.

Biden actually approved emergency relief two days before Helene made landfall. 

One thing I think we must keep in mind is that we're talking about the mountains here and not the coastal plain. Roads have been washed out. Landslides and tree falls are still possible. Remote areas will be inaccessible for a long time. Weeks may go by before we think we see progress. A person living in one area of the disaster field likely has no clue what is happening somewhere else.

There are just too many false claims out there, most of them politically oriented, for me to address. 

But you can do what I do. Check with trusted news sources, especially the Associated Press. And Heather Cox Richardson. Use logic instead of conspiracy theory to sort through the information and draw your own conclusions.

It's the kind of relief that could help everybody.

Disaster

 You don't expect hurricanes in the mountains.

Mast Store Annex in Valle Cruces.

But the remnants of Hurricane Helene absolutely devastated western North Carolina and parts of eastern Tennessee on Friday when her unlikely path of destruction brought a trail of misery from the Florida gulf to deep within the mountains of the Blue Ridge.

You expect blizzards to bring the mountains to a standstill. Not tropical storms.

And yet nearly two feet of water have inundated and isolated historic Asheville; rock slides have taken out portions of I-40, maiming a critical transportation artery for perhaps months; and cell towers have collapsed in the face of 60 mile per hour (or higher) gusts, shutting down communications. Power is gone for hundreds of thousands.

All roads in western North Carolina are closed. Asheville, at one point, was approachable only by air.

It could take years for recovery.

In 1989, Hurricane Hugo took a similar path after making landfall, only much closer to Charlotte. By the time it reached us, it, too, was a tropical storm, but I remember trees down all over the place. I mean, heck, we lived on a street called Woodsway Drive.

The Village of Chimney Rock.

 But we also lived on a hill, so flooding was never a problem for us. It was mostly the cleanup and power outages, as I recall. It might have been different for others.

It looks to be considerably worse for western North Carolina. As of Saturday morning, emergency crews in Buncombe County responded to more than 5,000 calls and performed more than 150 swiftwater rescues.

In Asheville, the largest North Carolina town in the mountains, flooding from the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers clobbered Biltmore Village and the River Arts District. In Boone, home to Appalachian State University, famous King Street was turned into a torrent of water.

Chimney Rock Village, a popular and scenic destination location, has been washed off the map.

The Lake Lure Dam was close to imminent failure for up to nine hours before Rutherford County engineers lifted the warning to evacuate.

There is also a political angle to this story. Helene was created in the gulf by unusually warm waters and intensified into a Category 4 hurricane when it made landfall in the Florida Bend area. The heated gulf waters added more moisture to the storm, causing heavier rainfalls than previously recorded

One element of Project 2025 – the Republican blueprint and its proposed agenda should it win the general election in November – is to defund FEMA, an agency critical in aiding natural disaster victims. The Project is also looking to shut down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service for no other reason than I guess they don't believe in science.

And yet, the empirical evidence we have to keep these agencies is in our own backyard.