Countdown to 2022

A Blue Wave is Coming!

Law Students Call For Hawley and Cruz To Be Barred From Practicing Law

The fallout from the white supremacist terrorist attack on the Senate continues.  By now unless you have been living on Mars for a week you’ve seen the shocking images, watched the news and/or read on line about the assault on our nation’s capital  on 1/6/21.

All major news sources have chronicled the events that resulted in the deaths of five people including two Capitol Police officers who would still be alive were it not for this insurrection.  There is enough blame to go around and too many people deserving of it.  At the top, of course is the inciter-in-chief Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States.  But next in line (ignore for the moment McConnell, Graham, Fox News and other day-one Trump enablers) are two Senators:  Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX).  Read about the role these fascists played in the attack on Democracy here and here.

Hawley and Cruz have defiantly withstood public condemnation, the outrage (some of it fake) by their peers, and the censure of supporters, mentors and donors.  Their luck may have run out though.  A group of law school students collected 4,000 signatures within 48 hours of students, faculty and alumni to bar Hawley and Cruz from practicing law.  Forever.  Read about the petition here,and here.

I agree.

Hawley and Cruz took this Oath of Office for the Senate:

Read More

OSHA Fines Meat Plants $29,000 For Violating CoVID Safety Measures

OSHA fined two meat packing companies  $29,000 total for three violations of  CoVID-19 safety measures as reported here and here.  There are more than 494 meat packing plants in the US.  Only 2 were fined.  OSHA has received more than 10,000 CoVID related complaints from workers, unions and whistle blowers across industries in 6 months but has found only three violations.  203 meat plant workers have died since March.  Last year’s combined revenue  for the two companies OSHA fined exceeded $65 billion dollars.

This is both shameful and ridiculous.  A $29,000 fine for 203 dead Americans deemed essential workers because you and I must have a hamburger instead of  a PPJ sandwich for lunch while we work from home.  203 essential workers for whom essential measures were not taken to provide a safe work environment.

If ever we needed an example of how little regard America has for the lives and well being of its most vulnerable citizens, here it is.

We are witnessing in real time the weaponization of the entire Federal bureaucracy to keep Trump in power.  The intelligence community, the postal service, the CDC, Justice, the military, NOAA,  DHS,  DOE, EPA, FDA, the Federal Reserve, now OSHA an so on down to the smallest agency.  There is no end to it.  In only 3 1/2 years Trump has exploited  with great success the hypocrisy, greed, fanaticism, pseudo-religiousness and hate in many bosoms.  How else do you explain the rapidity with which so many have abandoned every tenet of the democracy they professed to cherish and took an oath to serve?  Far from Making America Great Again Trump has shown us and the world that America was Not So Great After All.  We are now just one more country ruled by a corrupt despot  propped up by the state apparatus.

Trump Extorts a Foreign Government For Dirt on Biden

Trump asked the Ukraine to interfere in our elections by digging up dirt on the likely democratic nominee, Joe Biden, in exchange for military aid.  Let this sink in.  Trump used his office and the threat of withholding aid to be reelected.  Do a deep dive or a quick read to find out more.  The White House denied the charge and released a summary of the conversation between him and the head of the Ukraine government.  

This is what you get when the full resources and assets of our nation is weaponized in service of a corrupt, fascist regime that will do anything to stay in power and evade punishment. As damaging as this is it: a) is only a summary not the verbatim transcript; and b) has certainly been doctored to hide the most damaging portions of the conversation. In other words this is the least damaging version of the call Trump could come up with that acknowledges that which could not be denied or contained. It is not happenstance that they released a “summary” of a transcript and not the tape

Read More

Will our democractic institutions survive Trump

A very good friend and I are at opposing ends of the question of whether our democratic institutions will survive Trump’s presidency assuming that it is only one term.  After the election, he took the optimistic view that however he got there, the democratic institutions upon which our nation was founded would survive his term.  After all, it survived the civil war, Nixon’s impeachment, opposition to the civil rights movement, conflict over the Vietnam War and two costly (in lives lost) world wars.  I hold the view that in two years Trump in an all-out assault on these institutions has damaged them irreparably.  And we are only two years into his first term!

Read More