What the polls say

I was always taught that even if you disagreed with the current presidential administration, you still showed at least a modicum of respect for the office.

After all, presidential elections come every four years, which is this country's built-in Constitutionally guaranteed revolution. If we didn't like a president, we could vote him out of office and try a different direction. An electoral uprising, as it were.

That was the genius of our Founding Fathers. We could change our leadership without anybody getting hurt, with the point being that you respected the office, if not the man, because if the president was successful, then the country was successful.

Donald Trump changed all of that, of course. His Make American Great Again (MAGA) philosophy of government was/is the theory (perhaps conspiracy theory) that a deep state (a hidden, camouflaged shadow government cabal that actually ran things). He was going to come in and drain the swamp. Tens of millions of voters, aggrieved (or motivated) by foggy perceptions of socialism and other assorted misinformation, voted for him.

We can measure presidential popularity – and thus a president's effectiveness –  through polling. The first known straw polls came in 1824 and they were basically regional and informal. By 1916 –  with World War I raging in Europe – the first national poll was conducted by The Literary Digest. Twenty years later, George Gallup conducted a poll using statistical survey methods, predicting that Franklin Roosevelt would win the election, which FDR did. The Literary Digest blew that one and hasn't been seen since.

And now we're here with polls for measuring everything. 

For the third time in this country's history, we have a president who is a convicted felon. The reason he hasn't been sentenced is because a friendly Supreme Court has ruled that he is immune from sentencing and thus is the only American who is above the law. Given that kind of permission, Trump has unilaterally imposed (without the consent of Congress, as instructed by the Constitution) illegal tariffs, illegal deportations of brown skinned people whose only crime is having brown skin), illegal acts of war on the high seas and alleged acts of pedophilia as suggested by the current revelations of the Epstein files so far released, where his name is said to appear at least 1,200 times. While the wealthy are receiving tax breaks, the common citizen is being buried by high prices for groceries and a stubborn inflation rate that is fueled by those illegal tariffs.

The polls are reflecting this. You can take issue with polls as much as you want, (dealing with numbers is tricky stuff) but I think they still reflect the beating heart of the nation.

So when the current polling shows Trump an approval rating of just 39 percent in CNN's Poll of Polls (an amalgamation of several independent polls), we can't help but feel the nation senses that it's on the wrong track. The Associated Press has Trump with a 36 percent approval rating. Other polls are hovering around the same numbers.

Trump is at 67 percent disapproval in his handling of the economy; 65 percent disapproval in healthcare; and 57 percent disapproval in his immigration policy. He's basically under water in every major issue.

We want a president to succeed. But we don't want incompetence in the office. We never have.

 

 

A bit of hope

I try not to get too excited about these things, because I've been disappointed enough before.

You know, like  President Trump being convicted 34 times of felony in the first degree for falsifying business records and yet not being sentenced to any jail time at all. Like being declared immune from prosecutions by the Supreme Court which apparently found in our legal system that at least one man is above the law.

But after Tuesday's off-year elections, which saw an incredible blue wave sweep across the country in repudiation of early everything the felon Trump is doing, well, I felt a little bit better.

In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill became the first female Democrat of that state to be elected governor, winning by 13 percent over three-time loser Jack Ciattarelli. In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger was the first female to be elected governor of that state, winning by 15 percent over Winsome Earle-Sears. In Pennsylvania, three liberal state supreme court justices were given 10-year extensions to their terms to preserve swing state control. In California, voters approved a new House map to counter the Republican gerrymandering of districts in Texas. In New York, a Socialist Democrat (not a Communist. Learn the difference), Zohran Mamdani, was elected mayor. In Maine, voter ID and absentee ballot restrictions were defeated. In Georgia, Democrats flipped two seats on the state's Public Service Commission.

The sweep was a loud rebuke of anything Trump. Reasonable people are tired of ICE violations by severely untrained and unfit masked agents and illegal roundups of innocent brown people; people are tired of drones blowing up speedboats of alleged drug runners in international waters because we'll never know who they really are if due process isn't served; people are tired of the tacky gold trim in the White House; people are tired of Trump's unilateral actions without the consent of Congress, which is how fascist monarchies are run.

Tired? Just look at the polling. Trump, the felon, is under water in nearly every category.

And now we're tired of Trump's government shutdown, primarily because about 42 million Americans – many of them Trump supporters – will go hungry as funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program runs dry.

On Friday, Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made an offer to the GOP, saying Democrats would agree to a one-year extension of the expiring premium tax credits that support the Affordable Care Act. Without those credits, healthcare coverage will suffer for millions of Americans as the cost of premiums will skyrocket. About 75 percent of Americans want the credits to continue.

But the GOP rejected the offer outright, which put them in the position of rejecting the reopening of the government. They own the shutdown now, as if there was ever a question of who was responsible.

And just who is responsible for this immoral chaos? Trump refuses to engage with the Democrats in ending this disaster. Meanwhile, he's in Mar-a-Lago for another golf weekend as he defies constitutional duties.

And, oh yeah, release the Epstein files. 

 

 

SNAP! Crackle! Pop!

It's unbelievable to me that the current felonious Trump administration is playing games with peoples' lives.

Trump's failure to fund SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program  (food stamps) that provides food aid for approximately 42 million Americans is illegal (according to two federal judges), insensitive, invalid and immoral (according to me), especially as the country endures Trump's government shutdown.

SNAP provides assistance through monthly rechargeable credit cards. About 1 in 8 Americans are served by SNAP in what is considered a major social safety net. It's what government does for its people when government works well.

Until now. So for the moment at least, we have hungry Americans. Hungry children. Who could have thought?

"The administration is choosing not to feed Americans in need, despite knowing that it is legally required to do so," said U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture committee that oversees SNAP.

She's right. Massachusetts judge Indira Talwani ruled the US Department of Agriculture has to pay for SNAP, writing that the suspension is unlawful. She ordered the government to advise the court by tomorrow whether it will use emergency reserve funds to provide reduced SNAP benefits during the shutdown.

A family of two can qualify for up to $536 a month in food aid.

"...suspension of SNAP payments was based on the erroneous conclusion that the Contingency Funds could not be used to ensure the continuation of SNAP payments," she wrote on Friday. "This court has now clarified that Defendants are required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program."

In Rhode Island, judge John McConnell ruled that SNAP must be funded using at least the contingency funds. He asked for an update on Monday as well. 

So I guess we'll learn something tomorrow about the cold, beating heart of Trump.  SNAP or not to SNAP?

Meanwhile, Trump is apparently enjoying himself, thinking he can shift the blame for the shutdown and any subsequent horrors on the Democrats.

That would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Republicans control all three branches of government. That means in order to break the 60-vote filibuster (they only have 53), they have to negotiate and compromise with Democrats. So far, nada from the GOP.

Trump wasn't even in the country last week. He was wandering aimlessly through review halls in Japan accomplishing very little except further embarrassment. And when he did return to the United States, he held a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party for his wealthy donors at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida. Talk about tone deaf.

This trip to Florida cost the American taxpayer $3.4 million, bringing the total to date to $60.7 million that taxpayers spent on the 76 golf outings (so far) in his second term.

But he can't find the funds to feed his own citizens? 

And it gets even more ridiculous. There is, of course, the $350 million destruction of the East Wing. He announced that the Lincoln bathroom in the White House has also been renovated.

And the man who so desperately wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize because, heck, President Obama did, is blowing up speedboats suspected of smuggling fentanyl, and doing it without due process or congressional approval. That makes at least 64 people who have died in these strikes. Trump is committing murder and needs to be in prison.

Not only might we be on the verge of a shooting conflict with Venezuela (Trump wants to overthrow the Nicolas Meduro regime), but also with Nigeria because he's claiming they are killing Christians.

Americans going hungry because of a cruel president. Others dying in international waters because of a heartless president. When did my country shift to some alternative reality where you can hear people joyfully claim, "That's what I voted for!"

 Where am I?

 

 

 

 

East Wing debacle

Kim and I were hoping at some point in the new few years to make another trip to Washington DC and behave like tourists. 

You know, take in the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and other sights. Including the White House. It's been decades since we last did that.

But the recent razing of the historic East Wing by convicted felon president Donald Trump has dampened our enthusiasm for such a trip. The White House campus just won't be the same as we remembered, what with his proposed 90,000 square foot (two acres), $300 billion ballroom looming over the South Lawn like some irritating bully.

Artist's proposed conception of Hell No.

 And it happened so suddenly. We woke up on Monday and the next thing we knew, the East Wing was being assaulted by bulldozers and dump trucks. By Thursday, the building that served as offices for First Ladies since World War II was gone. A memory. An American memory, mind you, pulverized into dust to make room for the felon president's vanity project. I don't even remember anybody even talking about the need for a White House ballroom prior to this travesty.

MAGA world promptly went into defense mode, rolling out story after story about how previous presidents added their own imprints to the White House. What you don't hear from MAGA is how Trump destroyed a portion of The Peoples' House without Congressional review or consent. He simply bulldozed his way through the entire process, ignoring the National Capital Planning Commission that is designed to oversee federal building construction. The NCPC even has priority over Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which exempts the White House, the Capitol and the Supreme Court from review. But the White House is still subject to review from the NCPC as well as the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

Codes and permits have been ignored in the razing process.

MAGA insists this entire scheme is different because it is being funded by private donors and not tax dollars, but that just raises another issue: is the ballroom being built with bribe money? Consider this: because of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, Google gets an $18 billion tax break, Amazon gets a $16 billion tax break, Microsoft gets a $12 billion tax break and Facebook gets an $11 billion tax break. Meanwhile, the country is enduring Trump's government shutdown as federal employees – those still remaining after the DOGE cuts – find themselves nothing more than pawns in a political game of his undertaking.

It's been said that the proposed ballroom – which will make the existing White House 55,000 square foot building look like the add-on – is in reality nothing more than a monument to corruption. It likely will be Mar-a-Lago North on the White House campus. 

Game? The latest horror came Friday when the felon president said that while the government is in shutdown, it would not use any of the $6 billion held in reserve by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) upon which 42 million Americans depend to put food on the table.

This is unparalleled cruelty. I always thought government was designed to help its citizens to a path of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Meanwhile, Trump somehow finds $40 billion to prop up Argentina. So much for America First.

The destruction of the East Wing has become something of a metaphor for Trump's presidency. Because the East Wing is gone, so, too, is the symmetry of the grounds. The White House itself features a neoclassical architectural style that draws from the ideals of democracy and government from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The uniquely American influence offers us the Federal style that suggests the simplicity and balance of our nature as opposed to the European monarchies. from which we separated.

The assault on the East Wing is an assault on all Americans. It's an assault on our history, on our collective memory, on our democracy, on rule of law, on fair play and on the virtues we thought made us Americans.

 

 

 

 

No Kings, again

It's incredible how easy it is to get some MAGA people wound up these days. All you have to do, it seems, is take to the streets to exercise your First Amendment right to assemble, speak freely and protest, and suddenly you've become an ignorant clown who is suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome for a laughable cause.

 

We add our First Amendment voice.*

Some of that blowback came our way after about 200 of us participated in the utterly peaceful No Kings demonstration held at the Old Courthouse on the Square Saturday. While the local crowd appeared to be a bit smaller than the Hands Off/No Kings demonstration held in June – an estimated 300 folks took part in that one – yesterday's event was tied to the larger national protest that drew an estimated seven million participants.

Seven million. It was the second largest political demonstration in American history. The largest gathering was the first Earth Day in 1970, when 20 million citizens gathered to create awareness of the Earth's fragile ecology. Earth Day was soooo woke that it appeared to us in an era before wokeness was a MAGA target of derision. In fact, Earth Day was so woke we didn't even know we were woke back then. It took Trump Republicans to tell us what wokeness is. And diversity, equity and inclusion, too. The old hippie in me thought wokeness and DEI were good things – righteous things, Christian things – to be, but apparently not in Trump world, where the cruelty is clearly the point.

A sample of No Kings day in Lexington.

 Why else would you separate immigrant children from their parents (an estimated 1,300 children are still missing from the first Trump administration's attempt to discourage asylum seekers from entry into the country)? Why else would you create concentration camps and deportation centers in America? Why else would you create a paramilitary agency like ICE to literally sweep brown people off the streets by denying them due process? When did that become the American way?

Why are we picking a fight with Venezuela? Why is Argentina getting $20 billion from us but we can't fund healthcare? Why are National Guard troops encamped in peaceful American cities when state governors – under whose control they belong – have not asked for them? Why are we blowing up boats (and killing people) in the Caribbean without the Coast Guard boarding them with due process?

When did we become lawless? 

MAGA tried its best to downplay No Kings day, responding mostly with retorts that we don't have a king in this country and so what exactly are you protesting, fool?

That response misses the point of the symbolism behind No Kings day, of course. Trump, the convicted felon who has been given a free pass from sentencing (and perhaps prison) by his buddies on the Supreme Court, has been busy centralizing the power of the presidency in his second term per Project 2025. Among numerous other violations, Trump has:

• Invoked capricious tariffs, which by Constitution only Congress can do.

• Impounded congressionally appropriated funds from federal agencies in violation of the law.

• Fired federal employees in violation of the law.

• Signed unconstitutional executive orders.

In other words, Trump is trying to seize the powers of Congress. As envisioned by the Founding Fathers, a president can make treaties with the approval of the Senate; veto bills and sign bills; represent the nation in talks with foreign countries, enforce the laws that Congress passes; act as Commander in Chief during a war, and call out troops to protect the nation against an attack. Those are the constitutional powers of the presidency.

Any other perceived powers Trump has of the presidency actually make him more like a monarch than an executive with limited powers. Hence, a king – exactly what we rebelled against in 1776.

The Founding Fathers struggled with the idea of a president as leader. They didn't want an all-powerful individual in charge, which is why we are a federal democratic republic with a division of power that is theoretically protected by a brilliant combination of checks and balances which gives the power to the people. If they can keep it. If they want it.

I want it. I want to keep it. It's why I protest against a king governing this country. 

*Photo by Kristi Thornhill. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MTG, my newest hero

The last thing I ever expected to find myself doing was to defend wacky Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extreme right-wing Republican Congresswoman and conspiracy theorist who believed secret Jewish space lasers were responsible for starting the devastating California wildfires a couple years ago, and who once told us in 2022 that the "gazpacho police" were guarding the Capitol building.

Yes, the cold soup police. She meant Gestapo, of course, even though I doubt she knows of the horrors they committed in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s. 

Yet here I am agreeing with MTG as she tries to create some space between her and convicted felon president Donald Trump, who is allowing his current government shutdown to continue. 

Welcome to the Resistance, MTG.

She is primarily concerned with the rising costs of healthcare that are on the cusp of spiraling out of control under the Trump administration, who would rather pay for tax cuts for bazillionaires than help the average American stay healthy, many of whom voted for Republicans. She even cited her own adult children as being unable to afford  the projected rise in healthcare premiums.

She's making more sense now than she ever has. Proof, I guess, that some people can grow.

She's speaking out against the administration, and primarily House Speaker Michael Johnson, who has kept House members out of session since Sept. 19. Say what? By keeping the House out of session means its members cannot work on the budget, which, by extension, means they are not working to find a way to extend healthcare premium tax credits.

It also means there is no swearing in of Representative Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who won a special election on Sept. 23. She represents the 218th vote on a discharge petition that would release the Epstein files, which nearly every person in American – well, except those with the last name of Trump and those committed to protesting the Trumps – are clamoring to see.

Johnson keeps postponing the swearing in so we don't get to see the proof that Trump is a pedophile. Why else keep postponing?

Republicans are working hard on one thing, though, and that is trying to blame the Democrats for the shutdown. But considering that the GOP controls the House, the Senate, the Presidency and, in essence, even the Supreme Court, that accusation is as transparent as it is laughable.

Meanwhile, Trump continues with his childish but dangerous retribution campaign against perceived political opponents instead of actually governing the nation. ICE rounds up brown-skinned people without due process using agents that cover their faces with masks and wearing no name tags, acting like Gestapo.

Even MTG can see this. 

 

 

The week to come

I have a website bookmarked on my laptop called "The Drudge Report", which is a website that basically collects the https's of various news sources for easy acquisition. Created by Matt Drudge in 1995, it was once considered by some to be a conservative outlet, but not so much anymore. I mean, if you want quick access to The New York Times, go to Drudge.

Best of all, it's a collection of websites from all over the world. You can access The Daily Mirror in England just as easily as you can Die Zeit in Germany or The China People's Daily. It's a pretty handy tool to have if you want to take a peep at differing points of view.

So I took a quick look this morning, and the first story to hit my eye is "Trump ordering troops to Portland...Authorizes Full Force."

Uh-oh. Here we go again. Our convicted felon president is sending troops to yet another American city to quell rioting that doesn't exist except in his mind. Oregon Governor Tina Kotek hasn't asked for troops (it's unclear if the troops will be National Guard or general military, like the Marines or the U.S. Army). Neither has Portland Mayor Keith Wilson. This looks more like performative theater by Trump to satiate the MAGA faithful.

One of the things the Founding Fathers feared most was a standing army. That's mostly why the military is under civilian (Congressional) control. Plus, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 limits the role of the military in domestic law enforcement. So what Trump is doing here, without Congressional approval, is probably illegal.

Kind of like raising tariffs without Congressional approval.

And what does "full force" mean anyhow? Is he laying siege to an American city? You good with that?

Anyway, right next to the Portland story is this headline: "USA Preps Military Strikes in Venezuela."

What? I don't think planning military strikes on sovereign nations bodes well for any Nobel Peace Prize considerations, which is something Trump is desperate for. You know, because Obama has one. You'd think blowing up Venezuelan speed boats without issuing due process would be enough, but I guess not.

Drudge is usually timely with its news collection, but with a government shutdown looming for Tuesday, I can't find anything right now. Maybe I will later in the day as the news cycle refreshes.

In the meantime, maybe I'll check out "MAGA Coming for the WNBA."