History lesson

I was gifted a book not too long ago by a friend of mine titled "The Road That Made America." It's about the Great Wagon Road (or the Great Trading Path), written as a revealing first-person account by North Carolina author James Dodson.

This was an intriguing read, mostly because of what I knew about the Great Wagon Road dealt primarily with my Moravian heritage. The road, which began as a single-trail transportation artery in the 1700s, gradually evolved to become, as the book flap describes, "America's first technology highway" and became a precursor to the nation's Industrial Age.

Moravians, who founded Bethlehem, Pa. on Christmas Eve in 1741, used the trail to travel south to a tract of land called Wachovia and established Bethabara on Nov. 17, 1753. Bethabara eventually spawned Salem, and then Winston-Salem.

The road is nearly 800 miles long, ranging from Philadelphia to Augusta, Ga.

Dodson found himself shadowing the trail in a multi-year quest to find more details on his family history, and this is what his book is about. He speaks with museum curators, historians, B&B owners and anyone else who has a sublime knowledge of the road. There are discussions about the Conestoga wagon, McCormick's thresher, Woodrow Wilson and other facets of interest along the road. It's great stuff.

Then I came to a chapter entitled "The Past Cannot Be Unremembered." Look, I like to think of myself as pretty well-read on American history. It's hard not to be when you've lived most of your life in the cradle of the country's democracy and traveled the Great Wagon Road numerous times myself without even  knowing I was on it.

But this particular chapter was eye-opening. It was about the Slave Trail of Tears.

I never heard of the Slave Trail of Tears. It was never taught to me in school or in college. It is not to be confused with the Trail of Tears, that 1830s abomination created by President Andrew Jackson to relocate approximately 60,000 Native Americans, mostly from the Cherokee tribe in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, to what is now modern-day Oklahoma. Essentially, it was a government-approved program of ethnic cleansing in the United States.

But the Slave Trail of Tears is something completely different. Google it. According to what Dodson learned, the Slave Trail of Tears is the greatest migration of a peoples in American history. Dodson quotes an excerpt from a narrative written by Edward Ball for Smithsonian Magazine in November 2015.

Now I'm quoting it:

"The Slave Trail of Tears is that great missing migration – a thousand-mile-long river of people, all of them Black, reaching from Virginia to Louisiana. During the 50 years before the Civil War, about a million enslaved people moved from the Upper South – Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky – to the Deep South – Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama ... [a forced resettlement that was] 20 times larger than Andrew Jackson's "Indian removal" campaign of the 1830s ... bigger than the immigration of Jews into the United States during the 19th century and even the wagon-train migration to the West, beloved of American lore. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900."

What? What? How come this doesn't get into the classrooms? How come this isn't seen on roadside historical markers? Smacks of the sanitation of our history by a bunch of white... oh, wait. Never mind.

Then Dodson digs up another quote from Ball (a White man), detailing the role the Great Wagon Trail had here:

"The gang headed down the Great Wagon Road, a route that came from Pennsylvania, already some centuries old. ... Along the way, the coffle (a coffle is usually a group of enslaved people chained together) met other slave gangs, construction crews rebuilding the Wagon Road, widening it to 22 feet and putting down gravel. They were turning out the new Valley Turnpike, a macadam surface with ditches at the side. ... Today the Great Wagon Road, or Valley Turnpike, is known as U.S. Route 11, a two-lane road that runs between soft and misty mountains and pretty byways. Long stretches of Route 11 look much like the Valley Turnpike did in the 1830s – rolling fields, horses and cattle on hills. ... Today, a few plantations survive. I stop at one of the oldest, Belle Grove. ... Relatives of President James Madison put up the stone mansion of Belle Grove during the 1790s and it lives on as a fine house museum run by historian Kristen Laise. ... Thanks to Laise, Belle Grove is not a house museum that shorts the story of slaves."

Then Ball ends his narrative with the sentence, "The past cannot be unremembered."

I can't believe I'm in my seventh decade and never knew this stuff.

I bring all of this up – the Great Wagon Road and some of the history behind it – because of where we are in our own moment of time. We're about to celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation, which was theoretically (and ideologically) built on the principles that all men are created equal.

And yet, we're a nation that had to endured one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever in Dred Scott in which African-Americans were declared non-citizens. We're going through court-approved gerrymandering that diminishes the strength of the Civil Rights acts and Black representation in government. We're seeing a rewriting of American history that would love to wipe out any mention of slavery. In the meantime, the American demographic is turning browner and browner, which apparently frightens a lot of white people who are afraid of losing power and control over them.

We are at a crossroads on our own Great American Trail. 

 

 

 

 

 

The eyes have it

"Basically, you have two options," explained Dr. Charles Richards, an opthalmologist at Piedmont Retina Specialists in Winston-Salem, after a brief exam of my wife's, Kim, right eye.

"We can do nothing for several months," he said, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Or we can operate."

Operate? Wait. You mean, like eye surgery?

You could have scraped me up off the floor. I'm pretty squeamish about eye stuff. I don't even do eye drops very well.

Kim immediately after surgery.

 "You don't have to decide right now," said Dr. Richards. "Take the weekend to think about it. If you decide to have the surgery, call us next week and we'll set up an appointment."

The surgery was for something called macular pucker, the child's primer description for those of us who are not opthalmologists. As Dr. Richards explained it, macular pucker is when the retina develops a wrinkle on the membrane, a result of the aging process. It can cause blurry or fuzzy vision in the eye. "There are no drugs or drops to treat it," said Dr. Richards. "Surgery is the only way."

I got up off the floor and raised my hand.

"Yes?"

"Is it laser surgery?" I asked, hoping to calm Kim's anxiety. And mine. She's squeamish about eye stuff, too. Laser surgery didn't sound too invasive. I mean, this is her eye we're talking about.

"No, it's mechanical," replied Dr. Richards and I immediately had thoughts of little hammers and chisels and scalpels at the ready as if we were still living in the Paleolithic Period of medicine.

"Oh, OK," I said, nodding my head like I knew what he was talking about. There might have been further conversation at that point, but I'm not sure. I really didn't hear anything after the words "eye surgery."

Kim 24 hours after eye surgery.

 On the drive home, Kim and I tossed around the idea about having the procedure. Finally, Kim kind of surprised me.

"Let's go ahead," she said. "I just want to get this behind me. But don't tell anybody. I don't want the attention."

So of course, the first thing I did was tell everybody I knew. One of them was Larry Lyon, my former editor at The Dispatch who, in mid-life, became a Presbyterian minister. He's retired now, but his advice was sage. "Be calm for Kim," said Larry.

I have no idea how he knew by that point I was running wildly through the house screaming "Eye surgery! Eye surgery!" while waving my hands in the air. I was a mess. But I did settle down after that.

So we made the appointment. On Wednesday, we checked into Medical Park Hospital in Winston-Salem at 5:15 a.m., where the procedure would take place. By 7, we were called into the pre-op, where we met the attending nurses and the anesthesiologist. Then Dr. Richards came in with some soothing words.

We were set to go.

I had a book with me and I was prepared to knock off a chapter or two, but about 20 minutes later the waiting room monitor came up to me. "Kim's back and she's waiting for you."

Huh? Already? My colon surgery several years ago took more than three hours.

Dr. Richards came into the post-op cubicle and told us that everything went well. "She did great," he said.

Kim later told me that she never felt a thing, even though she was under a conscious local anesthesia that was delivered intravenously. She remembers having a bit of a coughing spell during the procedure and hearing Dr. Richards tell her, "Let me know when you're done coughing so we can continue."

Oh, my.

When I got into her cubicle, she was awake and, well, smiling. She was wearing a protective eye shield held on to her face with yards of medical adhesive tape. She looked like a pirate. Shortly thereafter, we were discharged.

We were home before lunch. What a morning. Kim promptly went to bed and slept for several hours. That gave me time to think about what had just happened:

My wife just had eye surgery, the first surgery she's had of any kind. She was at times nervous, scared and afraid. In spite of all this, it was her decision to proceed. She confronted her fears and conquered them full on. I thought she was incredibly brave.

She's my hero. 

 

Send in the clowns...

 "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you."

               – Jules Winnfield, a fictitious character reciting fictitious Bible verse remotely based on Ezekiel 25:17 in the movie Pulp Fiction.

               –  Also, Pete Hegseth, erstwhile Secretary of Defense, reciting fictitious Bible verse during a Pentagon prayer service last Wednesday.

 "And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them."

               – Ezekiel 25:17 (KJV) 

 So this is where we are.

Pete Hegseth, our pompous, self-righteous, full-of-himself Secretary of Defense, is now leading Pentagon officials in prayer by reciting a passage from the movie "Pulp Fiction" when he actually thought he was quoting Ezekiel 25:17.

A quick scan of the room showed some uniformed officials with heads bowed, eyes closed, as if Hegseth knew what he was doing. I don't know. Maybe he did.

The context for the actual scripture is said to deal with foreign nations who gloated over the destruction of Judah. It's supposed to emphasize God's role in executing justice. Hegseth somehow thinks this verse – either the cinematic or the Biblical – justifies the United States' current military misadventure in Iran.

Meanwhile, as this Hegseth nonsense continues, there are reports that the U.S military is dealing with morale issues, specifically a lack of proper rations aboard several ships deployed in the region. The U.S. Navy denies these claims, but just the suggestion that troops are being poorly fed might raise concerns about morale. The military, after all, marches on its stomach.

Navy chow. Yummm. (USA Today).

 Complicating matters is that the U.S. Postal Service has indefinitely suspended mail delivery to 27 military ZIP codes after the attacks on Iran, so for the time being, military families can't even send care packages to their relatives in uniform.

I guess you can believe Hegseth when he tells us there are no issues with morale, but I have a hard time believing anything this arrogant clown says. So do I believe there are substandard meals being served to sailors and Marines on the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli? I do.

 While all this mess (pun intended? Maybeeeee) is going on, we have the Vice President of the United States J.D. Vance warning Pope Leo XIV (warning?) that he, the Pope, should be careful when talking about theology.

OMG.

Vance apparently is upset that the pope is not in alignment with the administration's war of choice against Iran. You know, the war where children are blown to bits in their elementary school and civilians are killed by the thousands. Instead, Pope Leo responded with Blessed are the Peacemakers and pointed out that Jesus "is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs."

Vance, citing World War II as an example, said, "I think it's very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology."

This statement got a rise out of Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune. "When he (the pope) talks about matters of theology? Isn't that his job?"

Indeed.

The week didn't let up. We also learned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, continued his fascination with road kill. In a new book titled "RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise," revealed in a diary entry that he stopped his car on a New York highway in 2001 to cut out the genitals of a dead raccoon for further study, all while his kids waited patiently in the car.

So here's Kennedy, the vaccine denier who holds the very health of the nation in his hands (I hoped he washed them first), adding another chapter to his dead animal fetish. He's fascinated by dead seagull corpses. He once severed the head of a washed-up deceased whale. And he confessed to dropping a dead bear cub off in Central Park make it look like it was killed by a bicyclist (who I assumed would be pedaling as fast as he could in the opposite direction).

Then we learn that FBI Director Kash Patel's alcohol problem has staffers concerned about his well being. Apparently, according to a story in The Atlantic, Patel has dealt with bouts of excessive drinking, at times allegedly locking himself in a room.

These are the leaders of some of the most important departments in our government. All of this should make my head explode. Except that it already exploded several years ago.

Only 198 days until midterm elections.

Release the unredacted Epstein files. 

 

 

 

 

God's Acre, again

By the time Palm Sunday comes around, Kim and I usually have a serious decision to make: Are we going to the Moravian Easter Sunrise Service at Old Salem this year?

Although we have a week to think about it, it usually turns out to be a game-day decision with several critical considerations involved, such as: What's the weather going to be? And do we really want to get up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready for the half-hour trip to the cemetery? And what do we do about breakfast?

This is important stuff because the Sunrise Service at Old Salem is a big deal, sometimes drawing upwards of 10,000 people from all points on the compass. It's one of the most inspiring services I've ever attended and it's been going on every Easter morning since 1772. That's 254 years. Older than the country.

This service almost always grabs me by my own Moravian roots and shakes me to my core in something of a spiritual cleansing, so our final decision whether or not to go often comes down to how contrite do we feel?

Years ago, we found an equally moving moment. We go to God's Acre the day before the Sunrise Service to watch hundreds of people scrub and clean the flat marble gravestones of their deceased ancestors. It's a neat tradition.

A marker gets ready for Easter.

 Believe it or not, this can be a remarkably contemplative moment, too. At least two small brass bands were on hand to practice yesterday, with one of them in the bell tower of the bordering Archie K. Davis Moravian Archives building, while the other was on the cemetery grounds itself giving response.

We saw one group of about 20 people or so clustering around a marker. A child or two was doing some animated scrubbing, followed by "good job" and then a moment's reflection as a person in the gathering spoke a few words about the departed. Sometimes there was light laughter and sometimes there was quiet reflection as they celebrated the deceased. It was both joyous and solemn all at once. And then they'd move on to another gravestone, another relative.

This seemed to be happening all over God's Acre.

I don't have any family buried here, but I do know a couple of people here and we annually look for their sites. It sometimes takes my breath away when we do find them because there are more than 7,000 people buried in these grounds.

And then I give them my pause. 

Because this is the day before the actual service, and it's likely that we are not going to get up at 4:30 to make the trek over here, I conduct my own service in my mind's eye. I feel the sun breaking through the clouds. I see the people scurrying about. I hear the music as it bounces off the hills.

I am admittedly a lapsed Moravian, but I am deeply grateful for my Moravian upbringing, which I hold on to whenever I can. So I ponder the morning sun, the rolling landscape, the rows of white marble stones and contemplate the Easter message as I become my own pastor to my own soul. 

 

 

Round 3

Well, Kim and I did it again.

For the third time within a year's span (going back to last June), we participated in a No Kings protest rally. We joined about 200 other protestors on the Square in Lexington Saturday morning, braving the breezy 45-degree temperatures to display our homemade signs.

Employing the 1st Amendment.

 We figured the turnout wasn't bad for ruby-red Davidson County, especially when you consider far larger protests were being held nearby in Charlotte, Salisbury, Winston-Salem or Greensboro which could have lured otherwise local protestors to those locations.

But it felt good to take part in what was another national movement. Early estimates indicate that this was the largest of the three demonstrations so far with somewhere between eight and nine million participants. That would be about 2.3 percent of the nation's total population sending a message to the stumbling Trump administration of would-be autocrats. That's not an insignificant number and it represents one of the largest demonstrations in American political history.

Based on the two previous demonstrations here in town, I'm sensing a subtle shift in momentum. There seemed to be more horns honking in support of our protest from passing vehicles this time than from people flipping us the bird, which might be their most eloquent way of showing their disagreement from the seat of a gas-guzzling pick-up truck ($3.79 per gallon. How's that additional $35 per tank per week working for you?). 

To me, the social media detractors are amusing. Try as they might, there's a seemingly desperate effort to downplay the significance of the No Kings movement. Some have called it cute. Some say it's sheer idiocy and why waste your time? Others have glibly tried to point out that we have no kings in America and have not had any since 1776. (To be technical, the Treaty of Paris of 1783 formally ended the Revolutionary War and thus ended the reign of King George III in this country). This totally misses the point.

As protestors, we know there are no kings in America. What we are protesting is the deterioration of our rights to an ever increasing authoritarian regime.

Let me ask:

• Are you OK with the current war in Iran? Trump started the war without Congressional approval. He ignored the Constitution.

• Are you OK with an illegal war that is costing this country $1 billion per day? Where's the money for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)?

• Are you OK with Trump raising tariffs? The added high costs passed on the consumers have raised food prices, car prices, all prices. His actions are closing down some small businesses and hurting farmers. He raised tariffs without Congressional approval. He ignored he Constitution.

• Are you OK with the suspension of due process? ICE agents are breaking into private homes and businesses without warrants. That's unconstitutional. 

• Are you OK with dismantling federal agencies like USAID without congressional approval? That's unconstitutional.

• Are you OK with his attempt to end birthright citizenship for children of non-citizens? That's in violation of the 14th Amendment. That's unconstitutional.

• Are you OK with war crimes? Dropping a Tomahawk missile on an elementary school in Iran might constitute a war crime. The same with blowing up civilian motorboats in the Caribbean, especially without due process, especially when you make a second attack on survivors in the water.

Many of Trump's actions have been implemented by executive order without regard to the Constitution, and thus can be challenged by the courts.

Trump is a convicted felon. Trump is an adjudicated rapist. Trump is all over the Epstein files. Trump is a compulsive liar. 

We are either a country of laws, or we are not. 

The current administration's agenda is choking us. 

And that is why we protest. 

Even deeper

Just when you think he can't sink any deeper...

I must have written that lead dozens of times in the past few years, but the pace seems to be accelerating.

I'm talking about our convicted felon president, who displayed the wasteland of his soul Saturday immediately after learning that former FBI director Robert Mueller had died at the age of 81.

"Robert Mueller just died. Good. I'm glad he's dead. Now he can no longer hurt innocent people."

This coming from the guy who wears MAGA baseball caps to the dignified transfers of deceased military personnel who apparently gave their lives to protect a pedophile. This coming from the guy who evaded the draft in the Vietnam era by claiming bone spurs – five times. This coming from the guy who has disrespected Gold Star families and who has suggested those in the military are suckers and losers.

Mueller, of course, was the special counsel who was handpicked by Trump to investigate possible ties with Russia during the 2016 election, which Trump won. Mueller did not find any connections, but he did indicate numerous obstruction of justice violations by Trump, which in normal times would mean some jail time.

Trump, a grifter, a pedophile, a convicted felon, has yet to spend a single day in prison. I guess this moment gives him plenty of opportunity to speak ill of the dead.

So we sink deeper.

Get this. On Friday, the Treasury Department said it responded to rising oil prices as a result of Trump's illegal war with Iran (that hardly anybody in this country wanted) by temporarily lifting the years-long oil sanctions against Iran.

By doing so, Iran can refill its coffers in order to purchase (or produce) more weapons to carry on its fight against the United States. In other words, the United States is now helping Iran to finance its war against ... the United States.

Trump has also dropped oil sanctions against Russia, meaning that Russia is now refilling its coffers to help finance its war against Ukraine. 

All of this is coming from the president who ran his election on the promise of no new wars. How's that working for you?

I can't help but think that this country is about to mire itself in a quagmire. Even though the Vietnam war ended in 1975, memories are still fresh. The North Vietnamese – who never won a linear battle against the Americans – fought an asymmetrical war in which it used unconventional strategies to fight. The Americans were more linear, using strategies dating back to World War II as well as costly technology that was basically useless.

We might be looking at something similar where Iran, even with its military depleted, can still be an effective foe with asymmetrical strategies that affect the economic health of the world (think oil). Even if Trump were to stop the war today, do you think Iran will cooperate? We've bombed school children, destroyed infrastructure and killed thousands of Iranians .

We might be in too deep already. 

  

 

Ghastly miscalculation

I'm trying my best to keep current events in perspective, but then I realize I don't know how to measure perspective.

I thought my high school civics classes would help, and then I thought dabbling in the humanities (the interpretation of human expression) in college might offer some guidance. It's one reason why I ended up with a degree in Liberal Arts English. I wasn't a particularly serious student in college (much to my current regret), but I did enjoy my Shakespeare class, as well as those art history and introductory music history classes (I once wrote a paper on The Beatles classic Abbey Road album. I wish I had it now, just for laughs). And, of course, I relished all my critical and creative writing classes.

Dad ended up being a Moravian minister, so whatever theology might have rubbed off on me became a part of my overall exposure to the humanities. Hopefully, I learned how to think, to communicate and to do so with empathy.

The humanities are usually course curriculum because they are designed to help a person gain perspective into points of view other than his own. It might be why I still carry elements of the hippie movement with me, which I also fostered in college. Make love and not war is never a drag, man. In fact, it's far out.

Humanities is also why I find myself in my particular conundrum today.

Why is our country in an illegal war against Iran? Did Vietnam not teach us anything? Or is it because the baby boomers  – whose war in Vietnam defined a generation – my generation – is aging and dying off without passing on the bloody history? It was a forever war. It had no purpose outside of feeding the military industrial complex. It killed, maimed and poisoned many of us.

This time, we're being led by into a war by an egomaniac – a pedophile president who is a convicted felon – with no end in sight. The only real conclusion we can logically make is that he is trying to distract us from the Epstein files, where his name appears many thousands of times. In fact, how much have you heard of the Epstein files the past couple of weeks? I rest my case.

I don't know what the answer is. Even if Trump ended his military misadventure at this hour, I suspect Iran is pissed off enough to continue an accelerated terror campaign against this country. Will we feel safe in our high-rises? Or crossing bridges? Or flying to distant destinations? Or even breathing the air?

Talk about a forever war. What a grievous miscalculation this was.

"Cry 'Havoc!' And let slip the dogs of war." – Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1.

"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." – "The End", The Beatles, Abbey Road.

 

 

 

 

Children in charge

There's a lot that gets me wound up about this completely unnecessary war with Iran. You can start with convicted felon president Donald Trump first, because he can't construct a clear, incisive yet simple sentence together without sounding like a 12-year-old seventh grader trying to deliver a report for school.

And I don't mean to insult seventh graders. Sorry.

But the war briefs we are getting from him are absurd propaganda and you get a sense that they are lies anyway. That could have something to do with the character he's shown us the past decade or so (Epstein files, adjudicated rapist, fraudster).

Rght now one of the worst is Pete Hegseth, a graduate of both Princeton University and Harvard Law School (pretty elitist there for somebody who often disparages the elite set), as well as a major in the Minnesota National Guard who served as a counter insurgency instructor in Afghanistan for eight months.

Last year he was appointed by Trump to be the Secretary of Defense, but Hegseth, in all of his misguided arrogance, has renamed his office the U.S. Department of War with himself as the Secretary of War (methinks you need Congressional approval to do that, but this administration seems to think the Constitution is a list of half-baked suggestions instead of actual law.

In Hegseth's latest press briefing from the Pentagon on Thursday, he sounded like an entitled child. Six American soldiers have died in the conflict, three American F-15 fighter jets (at $90 million apiece) were lost to friendly fire, and put us in a conflict that is costing this country – get this – a million dollars a day.

Sorry, but we have no money for health care. Check back later. 

Since hostilities began, the Strait of Hormuz has been closed, through which 20 percent of the world's oil passes. We are seeing the results at the pump, where gas at one local station jumped to $3.09 (from $2.79) in the morning and then to $3.19 in the afternoon.

At least a dozen nations have been attacked by Iran in response to Trump's war as the conflict spreads. Did the administration see that coming? Oops.

Meanwhile, Hegseth burped, "The dumb, politically correct wars of the past were the opposite of what we're doing here. They had vague objectives with restrictive, minimalist rules of engagement. No more. Our authorities are maxed out. Our capabilities are overwhelming and gathering still, as are those of our Islraeli partners. Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad, which means our timeline is ours alone to control as long as it takes..."

Holy crap.

First off, what is a politically correct war? Seems to me Vietnam started off as a politically correct war, and look how that turned out with 58,000 American lives lost. And what exactly was accomplished other than seeding doubt in our own government. Were the two Gulf wars politically correct? Was Afghanistan?

One wag suggested the use of "politically correct" and "war" in the same breath were oxymorons, delivered by a moron.  

Secondly, what is the objective of a war with Iran? To stop its nuclear capability? I thought we did that last June. To effect regime change? I thought we didn't do regime change. Now Trump wants to be able to pick Iran's next leaders?

And what does Hegseth mean when he says "No more" to "restrictive" rules of engagement? No rules of engagement? So it's OK to commit war crimes? I guess that makes blowing up a girls' elementary school early in the conflict nothing more than collateral damage. Surely it's not a war crime.

Clearly, Hegseth is trying to control the narrative.

"When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front-page news," said Hegseth. "I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step." 

Here we go again. Blame the press. But Hegseth's statement is highly offensive to the families of the six service members who died. In fact, it's pretty offensive to any service member who's died in any conflict. Somehow, Trump has managed to make this conflict about himself because the deaths make him look bad.

Like wearing a stupid baseball cap during the dignified return of the bodies. 

This is a souless administration that lacks dignity. Or compassion. Or intelligence.

 

 

 

War president

OK, let me get this straight.

The pedophile/rapist/liar/convicted felon who is serving as our president woke us up Saturday morning –wearing a decidedly unpresidential baseball cap – to tell us that he just bombed the crap out of Iran, ostensibly to make the world safer by decapitating the murderous and horrific Khamenei regime.

Remarkably, Iran's nuclear program – which Trump declared obliterated in last June's airstrikes – somehow managed to resurrect itself in less than a year and needed further tending to. Not so obliterated, apparently. 

Soooo, in the midst of current negotiations over Iran's nuclear program – which seemed to be making some headway – Trump couldn't resist from unleashing the huge military buildup he'd assembled in the Mediterranean and ordered the surprise airstrikes Saturday morning. He did it without Congressional approval, a violation of the Constitution. Bombs away. One of the first things destroyed with all this precision weaponry was a girls' school. Reportedly, more than 50 children were killed.

Yes. I feel safer now.

Trump has advertised himself as the "peace president" and claims that he has (arguably) resolved eight wars in the past year and thus can't figure out why he can't win the Nobel Peace Prize without cajoling one from a rightful recipient. Meanwhile, if you're keeping count, Trump has bombed seven countries – Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela – in the past year alone. End a war, start a war. Peace president, my ass.

Repercussions are already here. Iran has retaliated with missile strikes against Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, Dubai, Jordan and Kuwait City. The strategic Straight of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil passes, is now closed. All that $1.98 gas Trump talked about in last week's State of the Union Grievance Address is fantasy now, or soon will be. 

There's a lot of talk here about a through line to the Epstein files and an apparent cover-up that seems to be growing every day in an effort to protect Trump, whose name is mentioned at least 38,000 times (if not more) in the files. Is the attack on Iran just another distraction? Could be. Trump once said that Obama would start a war in an effort to get elected. Now here we are just months from midterm elections and Trump is dealing with plummeting poll numbers. If Democrats gain control of the House of Representatives, Trump is likely facing another impeachment. Or at least investigation.

The big social media debate right now is: So what if Trump didn't have Congressional approval? Obama bombed the crap out of people, too (Obama Derangement Syndrome arises). 

I walked myself through a mental exercise yesterday, wondering if Trump acted without Congressional approval, then would the military be following illegal orders to execute this attack? One friend suggested that it might require a Judge Advocate General (JAG) to make that decision. It'll probably ever come up, but I though it was an interesting idea.

Here's the deal. A president can authorize military strikes without the approval of Congress under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which designates the president as Commander-in-Chief and allows him to direct the armed forces to defend the U.S.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 allows for urgent and limited actions, but requires the president to report to Congress within 48 hours. Unauthorized action is limited to 60 days.

Having said the above, presidents generally don't have authority for prolonged, full-scale war without Congressional approval. 

Here's where it gets a little dicey. The Department of Justice has argued in the past that a president can bypass Congress if the military operation does not rise to the level of "war." So a definition is required here. Constitutionally, what is war? I suspect the Supreme Court might get called in at some point.

Whatever it is, I think we're in the process of regime change in Iran. That's pretty clear with the death of Khamenei. What's not so clear is where do we go from here? Do we set up a provisional government? Install our own leaders? Institute a democratic republic instead of a theocracy?

What are the unintended consequences? What have we unleashed? 

More to the point, I don't think you complete a regime change with airstrikes alone. It usually requires boots on the ground. And that usually means body bags.

Are we ready for that? 

 

 

 

 

 

The astounding arrogance

I knew going into Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee hearings that there would be fireworks, but I didn't expect the explosion.

Or was it an implosion?

Attorney General Pam Bondi (center) ignores survivors.

 Attorney General Pam Bondi was grilled by a bipartisan panel of lawmakers about the Department of Justice's handling of the Epstein files. Playing to a crowd of one, Bondi tried her best to be evasive and, I think, deliberately contentious as she attempted to cover up the DOJ's obvious cover up over the mishandling of the release of the files.

Mishandling?

Not all of the files have been released. There is said to be at least three million more files still to be seen. Many are still redacted without explanation. All of this defies a recently-signed law to release the files in full by felon president Donald Trump, whose own name may appear more than a million times in the files.

So there's your motive for a DOJ cover up. That's especially true when you consider the DOJ is now working for Trump and not the American people.

The DOJ has yet to prosecute a single person related to the Esptein files. Meanwhile, Epstein survivors – some of whom were underage when they were being trafficked – are treated more like criminals than victims.

At times, the hearings turned into unbecoming screaming matches between Bondi and the lawmakers – especially toward the Democrats on the panel. Bondi would occasionally smirk, or laugh, or insult the members in a shocking display of uncivility. Her strategy, it seemed, was to deflect and obfuscate each five-minute segment of questioning from each lawmaker without giving a straight answer.

She had no answers. 

She even brought with her a "burn book" to which she could reference each (Democrat) questioner, bringing to the surface yet another potential scandal. Bondi and the DOJ are being accused of spying on the lawmakers as they reviewed the unredacted files on the DOJ's computers, which they are allowed to do. It's not clear if this surveillance of elected officials is legal or not. Even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson thought the DOJ's actions could be inappropriate, adding, "although it probably wasn't intentional."

Pfft. 

Perhaps the most dramatic – and disturbing – moment of the day came when Representative Pramila Jayapal asked Bondi if she would apologize to the 10 or so Epstein survivors who sat behind her during the proceedings. They have yet to meet with the DOJ after years of humiliation and pain.

Bondi, behaving more like a petulant child than a 60-year-old adult, would not even look at them. She then tried to shift blame to Merrick Garland, President Biden's attorney general and then theatrically told the panel that she "would not get in the gutter for her (Jayapal's) theatrics."

At one point in the hearings, Bondi absurdly referred to how well the Dow Jones stock market was performing under Trump, suggesting perhaps there was something more pressing to talk about than rape, pedophilia and human trafficking.

I'm not sure the survivors waiting for Bondi's apology would agree. 

 

 

Unhinged

Now what?

A day or two after convicted felon president Donald Trump suggested that maybe it's a good idea to federalize elections in a dozen or so blue states – which would violate Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution – he tries to evict the African American living perpetually rent free in the back of his brain by posting a racists meme.

It was pretty vile. It took me a moment to find it on Facebook because 12 hours after he posted it on his Truth Social (Untruth Anti-Social),platform, the meme came down. But I did find it. It was a picture of President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle – both African Americans – with pictures of their heads transposed over the images of apes.

It doesn't get any more racist – or vile – than that. Trump said the image that a staffer – but not he –  posted was that of Trump as the King of the Jungle full of Democrats and that it should not be taken out of that context. Why post it at all? 

And that he won't apologize for it. He knew what he was doing. 

A few weeks ago an apologist for Trump dared folks to find anything at all racist about Trump, as if Trump was the squeakiest clean person ever. But this particular meme by Trump is nothing more than a racist trope with roots dating back not only to Jim Crow, but to the era of slavery and beyond.

Part of the autocrat's playbook is to dehumanize your opponent to make them look weak or subservient. Equating them with animals is a time-tested way to do that.

There are other glaring examples of Trump's racist tendencies. In 1973, Trump and his company, Trump Management, were sued by the Department of Justice for housing discrimination against African American renters. Trump settled the case, but the stench lingers. Then there's the Central Park Five case where Trump said five African American teenagers were responsible for the 1989 rape of a white woman, even calling for their execution even after they were exonerated.

And here comes Obama again, living in Trump's brain, when he basically invented birtherism, claiming falsely that Obama was not born in the United States and thus was Constitutionally prohibited from serving as President.

As if that wasn't enough, Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign in a speech where he said Mexico was sending criminals to the border, bringing drugs and crime with them. Scare tactics.

Then I started to think a little more about what's going on here, and how interconnected all of this stuff might be.

Everything – and I mean everything – serves as a distraction for Trump as he tries to justify his administration's mostly anti-Constitutional impulses.

There are a number of things Trump doesn't want to discuss, most prominently the Epstein files, in  which his name appears at least 38,000 times and thus implies he was engaged in pedophilia. So create a distraction. How about annexing Greenland? Striking Venezuela and seizing its oil? Or maybe nationalize the vote? Better yet, maybe invoke the Insurrection Act in response to the ICE protests in order to declare martial law? How about the government-sanctioned murder of protestors to distract from the Epstein files?

Could Nancy Guthrie's kidnapping be connected to the Epstein files? After all, her daughter, Savannah – who is an NBC co-anchor of Today – has been involved in covering and interviewing survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. Anything is possible, I suppose.

None of this is normal. None of this is a reflection of the American soul or of the American essence, even in our faults. We are not perfect. But we generally know what's right and what is wrong. We make our course corrections. It's in our DNA. 

Just not in Trump's.

 

 

Lemon aid

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

                                    – The 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution

 

When I first heard Friday morning that journalist and former CNN anchor Don Lemon had been arrested and taken into federal custody for covering an anti-ICE protest in a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, my immediate thought was, "Uh-oh, here we go. Trump is going after the media big time now."

I don't think I'm wrong. 

Lemon and another independent journalist, Georgia Fort of Minnesota, were indicted by a grand jury on charges of interrupting a religious service at the Cities Church in St. Paul, where the pastor happens to be an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. More on that later.

Lemon and Fort were once co-workers at CNN from 2017-2023. Both pleaded not guilty to the charges and released on their own recognizance.

Lemon was charged with one count of conspiracy against the right of religious freedom and one count of violating the FACE Act for interfering with the exercise of religious freedom. The indictment says Lemon physically obstructed a pastor and intimidated congregants. It also claims he planned the protest.

(The FACE Act of 1994 is the acronym for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances. It was enacted to prevent violent or threatening conduct that hinders access to reproductive health services or religious institutions).

If you've seen the video of Lemon in the church, it becomes obvious how flimsy the charges really are. Lemon, an independent journalist, followed a group of protestors into the church where the protestors interrupted a service. Lemon, clearly announcing he was not part of the protest but there only to cover it, began interviewing participants about what was happening.

He was practicing journalism, as per the 1st Amendment, asking legitimate questions and nothing more. He was hardly an agitator.

Another indication of how weak this case is, is the fact that United States Attorney General Pam Bondi went through two prosecutors who refused to press charges before finding one who would. Bondi, a minion of president Trump, isn't practicing law. She's practicing her boss' retribution campaign.

What has amazed me throughout this episode is how a certain percentage of the population is celebrating the arrest of Lemon. I don't get it. Without the freedom of the press, how are you going to be an informed voter? Who is going to seek accountability from those in office?

It's also amazing to me how many people are suddenly experts in journalism without ever having tracked down a story, dealt with uncooperative subjects, or faced pressurized deadlines. Just because a story may not align with your own agenda doesn't mean it was faulty or malicious journalism. It's probably more likely that you are not open to different perspectives.

In Trump's retribution campaign, there's other stuff going on. Lemon and Fort are both independent Black journalists, an easy target for the convicted felon president because those journalists don't have the legal resources of a large media firm behind them. It's following the anarchist's blueprint to chip away at the foundations of our democracy.

Nevertheless, Trump is still attacking the 1st Amendment here in his painfully obvious Project 2025 shift toward autocracy and fascism. Although the case appears to be flimsy at initial glance, it isn't really the point. Instead it's Trump sending a chilling message to all media that the Constitutional protection provided to journalists (journalism is the only profession actually named in the Constitution. See "of the press") might only be a chimera. 

It's an attempt to stifle dissent.

It's a threat. On purpose.

•   •   •

When I learned that the pastor of Cities Church was also an ICE official,  the first thing that went through my head was "how can that be?"

What church actually supports deportation? Christian Nationalists?

I'm the son of a Moravian minister. And while I've admittedly lapsed in my devotions and Daily Texts, I still lean on some of the things I was taught by my parents as well as by the church. And one of the things I remember is that Jesus taught us to welcome the stranger.

I'm not a Bible thumper, but you can read all about it in Matthew 25:31-45. It's the passage where Jesus, speaking from the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem, teaches that welcoming a stranger is equivalent to welcoming Him. 

 "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

Jesus then admonishes those who did not feed and clothe the stranger.

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." 

And here's a kicker for you: Jesus was a refugee from Egypt as a child.

I suppose in Trump's America, Jesus – a laborer (carpenter) with brown skin who doesn't speak English, and thus who fits the ICE profile – would be asked for his papers and deported anyway.

I wonder what it is they teach at Cities Church? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Again

Maybe that convicted felon in the White House is right after all. Maybe we can't believe what we see with our own eyes.

Because I swear to you by all that's holy that I thought I saw guys pretending to be federal agents push a woman to the ground. And then I thought I saw a guy come to her rescue, first to help her back to her feet, and then to serve as a barrier to further assault.

And for this act of gallant honor, he was pepper sprayed by the collection of masked goons that was coming to the aggressor's aid. And then the guy was wrestled to the ground by four or five of the ill-trained knuckle draggers from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), who apparently don't understand the concept of de-escalation. Or the constitutionally protected right to free speech and assembly. They said it was obstruction, although they were the ones who were bull rushing him for attempting to help the woman. One of the pretenders took the gun the now subdued man legally owned under Minnesota's carry and conceal laws, which unarmed him.

Then they shot him. Five times. Some said it was 10 times.

His name was Alex Pretti, and he was a 37-year-old ICU nurse working for the Veterans' Administration and an American citizen. 

So, yeah, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. 

Now here we are, two weeks after the murder of American citizen Renee Good by a federal agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), not believing what we are seeing with our own eyes. In America. In 2026.

I'm concerned to where all of this is heading. The Constitution is our (the citizens) protection from government overreach, but it only works if the government respects the law. Right now, that's an idea that's not easy to accept when the head of the government is a 34-time convicted felon who is also an adjudicated rapist. His chief subordinate is a wanna be anarchist named Stephen Miller who idealogically resembles Heinrich Himmler, the head of Nazi Germany's horrific SS.

So, yeah, that's where we are if we're murdering our own countrymen. 

Under the convicted felon, we've become the country that attacks it's own house of government. We've become the country that ignores due process in order to disappear immigrants, both documented and undocumented. We're the country that tries to seize the territory of sovereign nations. The country that pirates oil shipping. The country that blows up suspected drug runners in the Caribbean without evidence, and then murders any survivors.

We're losing our allies.

We're losing our dignity. And our honor.

And when we murder our own, we're losing our country. 

 

 

(Inner) Peace Train

At first, I thought I had missed my opportunity.

We were in Winston-Salem Sunday morning trying to beat the wintry weather forecast and consequently, I resigned myself from any hope of seeing the 20 or so Buddhist monks come through Lexington during their incredible 2,300-mile Walk for Peace pilgrimage.

Monks walk for peace in Lexington.

 Somehow, their route from Ft. Worth, Texas, to Washington, DC, penciled its way through little ol' Lexington.

"Not a big deal," I rationalized to myself, figuring how could I feel bad about missing something that I'd never see in the first place?

But when we got back home a little after noon, we were astonished to see cars parked everywhere, especially near the J. Smith Young YMCA. It looked a bit like a mini barbecue festival. The monks were scheduled to take a rest break at First Lutheran Church next to the Y and to offer a message of peace, comfort and tranquility to the assembled. A fairly large crowd was milling around on State Street in front of the church. Several police vehicles were flashing their blue lights.

"They're still here," I said. "I'm going."

A half hour later, I was standing in front of the Army-Navy store on Main Street, along with thousands of others lining the way. Many folks were from out of town. 

An hour passed by as temperatures dipped to 38 degrees. Then another hour passed as a sporadic wintry mix of snow and rain fell from the clouds. As spectators, we'd become monks ourselves, exercising our own brand of patient discipline through the inclement weather.

Then, around 3 p.m. – "They're coming!"

 I made my way to the Square. The moment was indelible.

The monks, walking in single file – some carrying bouquets of flowers and wearing their signature orange robes – smiled or bowed their heads as they passed by. It might have been at this point where I remembered their mission and it sent a shiver of humility through me.

The monks follow the Vietnamese Buddhist tradition and are affiliated with the Huong Dao Temple in Ft. Worth. The mission of the Walk for Peace, inspired by the teachings of Gautama Buddha, is to raise awareness of "peace, loving kindness and compassion across America and the world."

There is also an emphasis on inner tranquility in their message. 

The walk has had its challenges. In November, several monks were injured when their support vehicle was struck by a truck, near Dayton, Texas The impact pushed the support vehicle into some of the walking monks, injuring three. One of them suffered a traumatic injury that ultimately required having his left leg amputated.

Their journey is funded through donations through platforms like Zelle or Zeffy, or directly to the Huong Dao Temple. Also, the Youth Peace and Justice Foundation is committed to sponsoring elements of the pilgrimage.

The monks tend to sleep outdoors in tents or in hosted venues such as temples or churches. Two of the monks practice the dhutanga discipline in which they do not lie down. They can assume only one of three postures:walking, standing or sitting – even when sleeping.

We live in precarious times and it could be easy to be cynical about the message propelling the Walk for Peace. I can't help but think we need a moment like this right now, to see the potential that lies within each of us to be better.

 

 

 

 

. 

Imagine that

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

                 Imagine - John Lennon, 1971

 

It was brought to my attention last week that perhaps the tragedy of Renee Good's murder in Minneapolis, MN, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent could have been avoided if only there hadn't been that thoughtless open borders policy under the Biden Administration.

I don't know. Open borders may or may not have been the case. Or at least a contributing factor.

Me in 1973 - a long-haired hippie.

 What I do know is that the issue of immigration has been problematic for every presidential administration dating back to Eisenhower – and probably longer. Eisenhower had his own deportation initiative horrendously stamped "Operation Wetback." About 250,000 people were "returned" to Mexico under the program.

Which got me to thinking. Back in my college days – back in the early 1970s – I pretty much embraced the idealism propelling the hippie movement of love and peace. Most of my thinking at the time was generated by the war in Vietnam, which was consuming the lives of America's youth at a prodigious cost.

I think it was around this time when I began thinking that if we lived in a truly righteous world there would be no countries. If there were no countries, perhaps there would be no wars. 

Like I said, idealistic. That was never going to happen. War, I think, is forever in our DNA.

Then "Star Trek" came out in the mid 1960s as a by-product of the hippie movement, showing us that Earthlings had solved their petty prejudices by the 23rd century. When former Beatle John Lennon imagined no countries in 1971, I thought I had found a fellow traveler.

No countries. It's still an intriguing concept. Why can't people move across the planet without restriction? Who's bright idea was borders anyway? If you're a believer, do you think borders is what God had in mind for us?

But as humans, we are separated by differences in languages, in cultures, in politics. I suppose those barriers are in our DNA, too.

But the war against immigration fluctuates over time. In some eras, it's almost invisible. In other eras, it's a political flash point. Most countries (countries!) have problems with immigration, but in the United States, over the course of the past 250 years, our white Anglo-Saxon forebears have shown discrimination against the Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese (or Asians in general), Catholics, Jews and people with brown or black skin. Prove me wrong. Our history as a nation of immigrants is littered with this travesty.

In recent years, the demographics of this country are palpably shifting. There will be more brown-skinned people within our borders (borders!) than Whites. Right now, it's the policy of the current administration to remove (deport) non-Whites, both documented and undocumented.

It's a horrible policy that's hurting the country.

There's a bitter irony here. Undocumented immigrants legally pay billions of dollars in taxes (an estimated $96.7 billion in 2022, including $34 billion in social security), yet are ineligible for social security or Medicare benefits themselves. Don't forget to say thank you.

Deporting undocumented immigrants seems self-defeating to the economy to which they contribute as a whole.

And guess what? Undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens. This flies in the face of the Trump administration, which preys on white fear that immigrants are rapists and criminals (the president himself is a convicted felon). Trump's promoting of immigrants as undesirables is more of a way to control the general population than it is to control the flow of immigration.

It's stupid policy.

Instead of funding ICE with a budget greater than most of the world's armies ($37 billion), perhaps we should be finding ways to better assist those seeking entry into the U.S., including those seeking asylum from their own oppressive governments.

Imagine that. 

 

 

Deadly ICE

Since Wednesday's news of the shooting and killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, both Kim and I find ourselves a bit distracted, a bit disturbed and fully appalled by what's happening in this country.

Armed and masked federal agents are shooting and killing the citizenry. 

By now, as you are probably aware of yourself, video of the incident has been analyzed relentlessly from numerous angles and you have already formed your own opinion. Those on the right of the political spectrum feel as though Good was trying to evade federal agents by using her vehicle as a weapon and thus caused her own death. Those on the left feel like she was murdered by an overzealous and troubled gunman who resorted to deadly force way too quickly.

Investigations will provide some answers, although even that is suspect since the Federal Bureau of Investigation, by order of the Trump administration, is now the only agency charged with handling the matter. The state of Minnesota is currently blocked from sharing collected information with the FBI. This highly unusual action in itself stinks of a coverup and it's barely just begun. Pulling down the shades on transparency is an element of a fascist society. Truth is always the first victim.

Just for the record, according to WBAL-TV out of Baltimore, there have been 16 shootings by ICE agents since Trump began his second term as president last January. Four people have been killed and at least seven have been injured. And according to The Trace, an organization that tracks gun violence in America, there could be even more injuries since not all shootings are reported.

Three of the four deadly shootings have come in the last month. And here's something to think about: in December, an ICE agent shot at a man driving an SUV in St. Paul, Minnesota, after the driver struck two agents with his car. The driver was uninjured, but the incident, still fresh, may have put ICE agents in Minneapolis on edge – and perhaps made them trigger happy.

Which begs the question: what the hell is ICE doing in Minnesota anyway? What exactly is the mission when you have to shoot women in the head?

The Trump administration has given ICE a budget ($37.5 billion. Yes, billion) larger than the military of many countries in an effort to deport a million illegal aliens per year. That many deportations means quotas. That means innocent people, including native-born citizens, sometimes get caught in the net.

Consequently, ICE has been recruiting more agents – some who are former military, some who are former law enforcement and some with no training at all – to meet those quotas. Subsequently, in a rush to meet those government-sanctioned deportation numbers, training has suffered. Twenty-seven weeks weeks of training in some cases has dwindled to eight weeks. Here's your gun, Bucky, go get 'em.

Not too long ago, ICE agents wore blue windbreakers with ICE printed across the breast as an identifier. Now agents are masked (purportedly to protect them from doxing) and dressed out in full military gear, including body armor and automatic weapons. If masking is so crucial to ICE, then why aren't municipal cops wearing them as standard issue? I know why. ICE is in the business of intimidation. Local law enforcement is in the business of serving and protecting.

Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Good, had been involved in a previous incident six months ago when he hooked his arm into a car window that was driven by an alleged fugitive who sped off. He was trying to unlock the door. Ross required multiple stitches in his arm and leg.

Which raises another question: was Ross suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) linked to his June incident or perhaps from his service in Iraq? Why was he even in the field just months after his June episode? 

One of the first things I thought was that perhaps he was a misogynist because it appeared so easy for him to put three bullets into her head. His own video of her just seconds before murdering her has her saying, with a smile on her face: "That's fine, dude. I'm not mad at you."

He was mad at her, though. She was in control of the moment. Damn woman.

Then he shot her. Three times. On a busy street clustered with surprised colleagues and spectators. While taking video of her with one hand and a gun in the other. What the hell? When did that become law enforcement procedure? It all seems pretty reckless. And arrogant.

It's quite possible he ignored correct law enforcement protocol when approaching Good's vehicle from the front, and there are any number of case histories that address this:

• Barnes v. Felix  (May 2025). Supreme Court rules 9-0 that courts can no longer excuse a police shooting just because the officer was "in danger of the moment" if the officer created that danger himself. If an officer puts himself in harm's way – like stepping in front of a car or jumping on to it – they cannot automatically claim deadly force was reasonable.

• Abraham v. Raso, 183 F.3d 279. An officer cannot rely on "split second" framing of their own actions.

• Kirby v. Duva, 530 F.3d 475. Deadly force may be unconstitutional (1) if the officer fired into a moving vehicle; (2) if the officer could have stepped aside and did not; (3) a fleeing car is not automatically a deadly threat.

•   •   •

One of the more disturbing outcomes from all of this is how Good – the victim – is being portrayed by some elements as a paid political agitator and a sorry parent who lost custody of two of her three children because of child abuse.

So far, there is no evidence of either. And yet, some elements are joyfully proclaiming that she "fucked around and found out." Or FAFO, in case you're seeing a lot of that lately and not sure what it means. FAFO has trickled down from the White House as its latest motto. It's even been used to describe the recent capture of Venezuelan president Nicholás Maduro. He FAFO.

I'm not sure how FAFO aligns with the Christian-Judeo principles that founded this country. I'm pretty sure FAFO is not in the Ten Commandments. But we sure are hearing it a lot these days.

But the bigger picture from the ICE episode seems to point to unchecked state power that appears to becoming even bolder by the day. Federal agents are working with little transparency or accountability. People have been swept up off the streets, placed in vans and taken to detention centers out of the country. No due process to be found. Unless we resist, we are slowly being driven into compliance by a president who says he can only be stopped by his own morality (I wonder if he meant mortality?). Maybe even martial law. How do the midterm elections look now?

Meanwhile, there's the Epstein files. Part of the bigger picture, I think.

 

 

 

Peace president strikes again

I'm trying to process how it feels to live in an aggressor nation.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  There was a time when President Obama bombed the poop out of Libya (March 2011) to pressure dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Obama then essentially did something similar when he ordered American military to fly over Pakistani airspace to kill Osama bin Laden (May 2011) as a response to the Al Qaeda leader's attacks of 9/11. Both actions were carried out without congressional approval, although Obama did have the cover of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, a joint resolution approved by congress in 2001 immediately after 9/11.

In June of 2025, convicted felon president Donald Trump bombed three Iranian nuclear sites without seeking congressional approval. No protection from AUMF on that one.

Later in the year, Trump began blowing up Venezuelan speedboats on the unproven accusation that they were carrying drugs to the United States. Again, there was no congressional approval for this action. More than 100 people have been killed in these strikes so far. Absurdly, all while this is unfolding Trump is publicly pining for a Nobel Peace Prize.

You can go back to 1989 and review the parallel capture of Panama president Manuel Noriega, who had declared war on the United States. That declaration gave American President George H. W. Bush the legal ground he needed to execute the operation.

Maybe I should be used to the United States being an aggressor nation. But when I woke up Saturday morning and turned on the television, the first thing I saw was images of Caracas, Venezuela, being bombed. The chyron running across the bottom of the screen told me that Venezuelan leader Nicholás Maduro and his wife had been captured and were being brought to the United States to face charges of cocaine trafficking and narco-terrorism.

Congress was taken by surprise. Extradition by force of will, if not by force of law. We are not at war with Venezuela, a significant difference from the Noriega affair. And yet, while no American lives were reportedly lost in the operation, perhaps as many as 40 Venezuelans were killed.

People keep dying under Trump.

And there's more.

Trump said in a news presser later in the day that the United States "would run the country (Venezuela) until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition."

Holy shit. Now we're taking over sovereign nations because we don't like their leaders? When did we start doing that? And what does he consider to be "proper" about all of this?

Oh, yeah. I forgot. Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserve. Trump alluded to that in his news presser, mentioning over and over the American oil companies that could help ignite the Venezuelan economy. So there it is, right out there in the daylight: oil. It's always been about the oil. He said it himself. It's never been about drugs. That's why he can pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was prosecuted in the U.S. on multiple counts of drug and arms trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Jeez. Maybe Maduro can get a pardon, too.

The corruption is astonishing. 

And wait. Wouldn't "running the country" require American boots on the ground? How's that going to pan out? Maduro is a very bad man, but a significant percentage of Venezuela still supports the Maduro regime. If the American military ends up in Venezuela, won't American lives be in jeopardy? At least the American military has gained critical experience in occupation after being sent to quell those non-existent riots in Los Angeles, Washington DC and other American cities. You know. Like they were a training ground.

Does this Venezuelan operation set a precedent for China to attack Taiwan? How about giving Russia's Vladimir Putin license to abduct Ukraine's Volodymir Zelenskyy? 

Suddenly the world seems less safe.

This entire Venezuelan operation reeks of distraction. It costs money to sail all those ships, fly all those helicopters and launch all that ordnance. I guess we paid for it with tariff monies. Or maybe Elon Musk chipped in. He's already promising to help fund Republicans in their midterm campaigns.

Congress returns to session on Tuesday, Jan. 6. Does J6 ring a bell? Think there might be some coverage there that a convicted felon president who pardoned all those J6 convicted felons might like to avoid? Oh, yeah. What about affordability? What about measles making a comeback? What about tanking poll numbers?

What about the Epstein files?

There's no better distraction from your failures than dropping bombs and shooting guns.

Process that.