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Women's health care is on life support after Roe v. Wade was repealed.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.

Jim

I figure the first time I ran into Jim Lippard was probably sometime around 1977. I was an export from Pennsylvania grasping how to be a sports writer for The Dispatch. I'd just arrived a few months earlier – in the middle of football season – and I was still learning the local ropes.

I can't say precisely how or when we met, but I can take a reasonable guess. I bet I was at a baseball game, and more precisely, an American Legion Post 8 baseball game at Holt-Moffitt Field.

Jim Lippard and the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.

In addition to covering the game while keeping score and taking notes, I also had to occasionally take pictures. Serious camera work was unfamiliar to me, but there was this guy out there, working inside the fence, snapping away with his Nikon. I assumed he was from another newspaper and I thought nothing of it. Turns out, Jim was the Post 8 photographer and he was as much a familiar part of the game as a well-worn glove or a favorite baseball bat.

And I bet you a dime to a dollar, he's the one who came up to me and introduced himself. I know there was a smile in that introduction and a friendliness in his personality that simply embraced you. He made you feel comfortable almost immediately.

Over time he taught me little tricks that he'd picked up about shooting baseball games. If there was a runner on first, focus on second in case there was a steal or the start of a double play. If there was a runner on second, go ahead and focus on home plate for a potential play at the plate. Stuff like that.

Within a few years, Jim became the Post 8 athletic director and we saw more and more of each other. Then he became Post 8 commander, and after that, Area III commissioner. Meanwhile, I'd become the sports editor for The Dispatch, and our paths seemingly crossed all the time as fortune favored both of us.

There was another reason our paths crossed: my expanding waistline. By 1984, Jim had opened his own tailor shop on East First Avenue and it seemed like I was always going in for alterations. Or maybe it was for the conversation, I don't know. His shop, in fact, was a meeting place for hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of patrons and his outgoing personality seemed boundless. I think his personality alone would have provided him with a comfortable living, but geez, he was a damn good tailor, too. And pretty much self-taught.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Jim had a vision: after deep research, consultation and hard work, he founded the Davidson County Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. I always thought the Hall of Fame was an important element in the county's sports culture and it warms me to this day to know that Jim was the driving force behind it. I think this creation of his may be his lasting legacy.

By 2000, he was inducted into the North Carolina American Legion Baseball Hall of Fame and in 2009, he was inducted into the very Hall of Fame he created. Then, in 2015, he received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest honor a civilian can receive in North Carolina.

But of all of his achievements, the thing I think he was most proud of was his family. He adored his three daughters – Jamie, Lisa and Julie – and was forever in love with Ann, his wife of 67 years. It just never got better than that for him.

The other day, Kim and I were taking our daily walk when my cell phone rang. The caller ID told me it was Jamie and even before I answered, I caught my breath. I could guess what was coming. And then, "Daddy died today."

Jim was 88.

I reflected on all of this the past few days and as I thought about it, I realized my friendship with Jim was one of my oldest, spanning more than 40 years. How could I ever know that would happen back in 1977?

It's been said that in our essence, we are stardust, nurturing the basic elements of the universe within ourselves. Goodness. Kindness. Vision. Charity. Friendship. Family.

Stardust. Jim was all of that, and for that, I am forever grateful.

The evisceration

Almost immediately after Kamala Harris' takedown of adjudicated rapist and 34-times convicted felon Donald Trump following their presidential debate Tuesday night, one of the first things I thought was how easy it seemed for her to politically undress and expose this incredibly weak and immoral blowhard.

The second thing I thought was why couldn't this have been done eight years ago? Why did this nation have to endure for so long Trump's lethal incompetency while he was president and his hateful poison when he was out of office?

I guess it was because eight years ago, Harris wasn't available back then for the evisceration. She was honing her skills as a U.S. Senator, not as a presidential candidate.

But on Tuesday, Harris cut through Trump like a hot knife through butter. No, wait. Too cliché. Like a weedeater through dead grass. No, wait. Like a Shakespearean soliloquy through a vacant soul. Something somewhere along those lines.

It looked too easy. Harris, the former prosecutor, set the bait all night long and Trump, a true narcissistic simpleton, just couldn't resist. Herewith: his campaign crowds are small and bored; he has no healthcare plan ("I have the concept of a plan"); his immigration policies are criminal. And so is he.

You could almost physically see her digs burrow under his thin skin and see his orange makeup turn white around his mouth and eye sockets like a sorry clown. It was incredible television.

No wonder Trump doesn't want to debate her again. Coward. Must be those bone spurs acting up. As each minute of the debate passed, he became angrier and more rattled. She became, well, more presidential.

The absurdist moment came when Trump insisted Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of people living in Springfield, Ohio. The planned attack, inspired by neo-Nazis, serves nothing more than to illustrate his innate racism, particularly against black and brown-skinned people. His xenophobia knows no bounds. How is this presidential?

Why is this cockroach even allowed to run for office?

I have no idea how the election is going to turn out 51 days from now. Republicans in power in key states are doing their best to purge voter rolls and other acts of voter suppression reminiscent of Jim Crow days.

But Harris seems to be building momentum.

Can she do it?

There are two inherent strikes against her: she's Black. And she's a woman. In this country, where it took women 131 years to get the vote after the Constitution was ratified, gender politics is still a thing. And so are the politics of race where the vestiges of America's Original Sin (slavery) still lingers in the air like lingering swamp gas.

Moments after the debate ended, the Trump campaign was delivered a blow when megastar pop singer Taylor Swift announced her endorsement of Harris for president. In the real world, star-powered endorsements are nice to have but usually don't move the political needle one way or the other.

This might be different. Within 24 hours of her announcement, there were more than 300,000 newly registered voters in the books.  And most likely, they were probably voting age females, which is significant in a world where women have lost their constitutional right to an abortion after the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

As a side note, I'm going to take a guess here. Swift is from Pennsylvania. West Reading, in fact. I'm guessing her endorsement of Harris could coalesce a bloc of young females from Allentown to Harrisburg and maybe push Pennsylvania and its critical 19 electoral votes toward Harris.

We'll just have to wait and see.