A Bad Political Move That Ended the Political Career of a President, and Destroyed His Political Party

"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  George Santayana, from "The Life of Reason, 1905"  

It seems strange that, out of the 47 different Presidencies in the history of the United States, one of its founding fathers who served as President would be evaluated as one of the worst Presidents in history.  Someone who helped Thomas Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence, who was known as one of its primary supporters, who served in the Continental Congress, and as a diplomat representing the United States in Europe during the latter years of the Revolutionary War, and who was the author of the Massachusetts constitution, which was a model for the United States Constitution, should have been a staunch patriot, a believer in American idealism and a successful early leader of his people.  

John Adams was a great man, a great patriot, and he did a lot for the United States of America, except serving as one of its more effective Presidents.  The one thing Adams failed at was serving as President.  He failed to discern, at a critical point of impending crisis, the necessity of maintaining the principles of the Constitution, specifically the limits it placed on government and the guarantees of individual liberties that it provided.  His actions prompted the passage of a set of four specific laws, three of which were open violations of most of the Bill of Rights, known as the Alien and Sedition Acts.  

These acts opened the door to the repression of civil liberties of free speech and freedom of the press, justified by nebulous threats to "national security" which Adams perceived as a result of a dispute with France, that included attempts by the French government to become involved in political subversion in order to push the Congress toward passing the kinds of laws and economic policies favorable to them.  So Adams signed these acts into law.  Maybe your recollection of this part of history is a little cloudy, so here's what these acts were designed to do: 

• The Naturalization Act increased the requirements that were placed on those individuals seeking to become citizens of the United States, especially those who were resident within the country but who were not citizens.  There were still a lot of resident foreigners in the United States following the Revolution who had come from places other than Great Britain.  
• The Alien Friends Act gave the President of the United States the power to imprison and deport foreigners without due process, simply because they were not American citizens.  
• The Alien Enemies Act gave the President power to detain foreigners during time of war, invasion or predatory incursion.  Though modified, this act remains on the books. 
• The Sedition Act criminalized criticism of the President or the Federal Government, especially statements determined to be false or malicious.  

The reaction of a majority of Americans was swift outrage.  Led by the articulate Thomas Jefferson, who was Vice-President under Adams, and founder of the new Democratic-Republican party, which found its base among the common people, everything Adams had done came under criticism.  He was accused of being too favorable to the British, and too hostile to our loyal ally, France, too thin skinned to accept criticism, and too aristocratic and out of touch with the common people.  He was not able to come to grips with the fact that civil liberties and the constitution can't be even temporarily suspended or repressed in the interest of "national security."  

The results were disastrous for both Adams and the Federalist Party which had supported him.  Adams lost the election of 1800 to Jefferson, and the Federalist Party came apart at the seams, never to be a political influence in the United States again.  

History is Repeating Itself 

Though the American people, through their legislators and ultimately through the courts, rejected all but one of the Alien and Sedition Acts, on Constitutional grounds, and have established that national security does not trump the Bill of Rights under any circumstances, we see the echoes of the same level of lack of discernment, fear of criticism and lack of comprehension of the limits of government in the Constitution when it comes to civil liberties of the people, coming out of the Trump White House.  The sitting President is putting himself in the same bad position as Adams, whose historical reputation of being one of the worst Presidents in history rests on his support for the Alien and Sedition Acts.  

What we have is a sitting President whining and complaining openly, doing everything he can to supress and shut down the free press, and free speech, desiring to jail, or execute, politicians who are critical of his incompetence, displaying his pathetic--and inexcuseable--ignorance of both American History and the United States Consitution.  He is, with his own words, indicting himself, and making a case for being compared to one of the worst Presidents in history, and for being evaluated as one of the worst.  

It is inexcusable, and should be intolerable, for any President of the United States not to have more than just a rudimentary, basic knowledge of American history, and of the working of the Constitution.  And yet, the evidence of this President's ignorance pours out of his Truth Social media site by the hour.  But what is even worse, is the fact that there are somewhere around 70 million Americans  who also demonstrate inexcusable ignorance about history, and about the limits placed on government by the Constitution.  

They voted for him.  

An Educated Electorate is an Informed Electorate

I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who once claimed that an educated electorate was the key to the preservation of Democracy.  So let's be honest.  I wonder how many of those reading this article actually remembered the Alien and Sedtion Acts from their own history classes?  We should, at leaat, that's a reasonable expectation.  The people essentially ended Adams' poltical career the consequence of that being the dissolution of the Federalist Party.  

Trump, with his gaslighting, and with his blatant, violence-advocating attacks on polticians he considers as personal enemies, has set the Democratic party up for major gains in Congress during the upcoming mid-term elections.  If the Democrats get a majority in the House, a one-seat majority in the senate puts an end to the Trump administration two years early.  But that only moves the needle back temporarily.  There's already a lot of damage that has to be fixed, and the level of misinformation and ignorance is so high, we have already seen so much anti-American, anti-Constitutional behavior from this President, can we even hope that the aftermath will be the dissolution of the reshaped MAGA Republican party? 

We've seen this President get away with dozens of acts displaying bigotry, hatred, ignorance, and incompetence, all of which would have brought anyone down if the electorate were not equally or more bigoted, hateful and ignorant than he is.  It's going to take a lot more than angry voters at one mid-term election to bring about the demise of the MAGA GOP and end its influence.  The free press must be rebuilt, the corporate media destroyed, and our educational system massively reformed in order to reset American politics in order to preserve our Democracy.  

And we must remember our history in order to avoid repeating it once again.

Almost a Year After America's Biggest Electoral Mistake, Is the Reality of What Happened Finally Sinking In?

My afternoon commute home from work gives me a good forty minutes to listen to liberal talk radio.  It's a refreshing end to the day, and the program that's on as I'm driving home is actually called "Driving it Home with Patty Vasquez," on Chicago's WCPT.  One of the things I've learned over years of listening to "liberal talk radio," which I first discovered on a Pacifica network station in Houston, is that there's a personality involved in the programming which is missing in most talk stations.  The hosts and their guests share their feelings, they don't cover them up or put on the stone face to avoid revealing their feelings.  

Well that works for me.  As we have gone up and down this political emotional roller coaster, one of the most comforting things to me has been the reflection of some of the exact same feelings of frustration, anger, incredulity, fear, and occasionally hopelessness that has resulted from this country's biggest electoral mistake.  So the variety of guests Ms. Vasquez brings to her show tend to be a random sample of various levels of Democratic party politics in the Chicago area, and you get some real honesty from some of them.  

The emotional ride that's come along since last November has been reflected multiple times on the show, by the host, as well as most of her guests.  I find myself sitting in the car in my driveway long after I've arrived just to hear the end of an interview where someone has said something that just made an instant connection.  Her guests have expertise, but they also have personal experience and most of them are in positions where they can look around and give a pretty good analysis and offer some reasonable, and hopeful, solutions.  

So where are we, at this point?  What conclusions have I drawn from sharing similar emotional reactions to our common political experience? 

1.  There seems to be widespread consensus, after the initial emotional reactions of disbelief, grief, professional analysis and response to the events that have transpired, that for good or for bad, we must resign ourselves to the fact that Trump will be President for three more years of attempted destruction and dismantling of American Democracy.  

The Constitution has left us surprisingly few options to correct a major electoral mistake.  That's kind of strange, considering that the founding fathers who wrote it did not place much trust or faith in the electorate, but initially devised a system whereby the more elite, wealthy, formally educated members of society had an outsized voice in choosing who would serve in Congress, the Presidency and the judiciary.  

The options that were left, such as impeachment and removal from office, depended on a level of integrity existing in any kind of partisan, political party or movement that would have control, at least in part, over who gets elected.  That integrity no longer exists, which means that the party in power which first arrived at a critical crossroads moment of having to choose between doing the right thing and protecting their own political interests did exactly what Washington warned against in his farewell address, and gave up integrity for their own interests.  

Aside from that, there is no Constitutional way to get rid of a President whose election has proven to be a major political mistake.  The fact that someone so untrustworthy, dishonest, and incompetent made it to the White House is a corruption of the values that were in place when this Constitution was established and ordained as the law of the land.  The fact that, after four years of demonstrating that incompetence, and corruption, this unqualified bastard was re-elected is the sign of a serious deterioration of the social fabric of the population.  The inability of our public education system, the free press, and the religious institutions of this country to prevent someone as incapable, corrupt and inept as Trump from being re-elected is a clear sign of major deterioration of the kind of values necessary to preserve, and benefit from, American Democracy.  

I don't always agree with some of the experts I hear on Vasquez's show. Some of the more frustrating comments come from political educators, a political science professor at a local university, or a Democratic party analyst, who tend to be cynics, lack optimism and seem to have had their senses dulled by too much partisanship and not enough real world experience.  And there are a few who just don't seem to have any sense at all when it comes to considering Trump as under multiple felony criminal indictments, and as an existential threat to American democracy.  Seems those in educational institutions have a tendency to categorize everything into chapters, and they just don't really get that this is not politics as usual.  

Education, especially what is available in the public sector, is one of the instutitions that has failed to provide the kind of informed electorate necessary to avoid the election of demagogues and criminals.  So when I hear a professor of political something pontificating on causes of the problems and solutions for the future, I tend to be skeptical.  One set of midterm elections will be a temporary fix.  That will finish Trump, but what's to keep the remnants of the extremist MAGA GOP from nominating another anti-patriotic, anti-American values candidate like J. D. Vance, Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, or some flaming racist bigot like Nick Fuentes? 

2. There is considerable confidence exhibited in those who are involved and engaged in direct resistance movements, expecially in the Chicago area, and in Illinois and the Democratic Party strongholds of the upper Midwest.  

One of the major contrasts I observe between Illinois Democrats and those in other places is the willingness to invest time and resources into resisting Trump.  I watched as Rachel Maddow, in a speech she made aired on MSNow last night, I believe, declared Chicago's victory over Trump on the issue of National Guard presence to reduce the crime rate, and to carry out his anti-American immigration reform.  It's not easy to gaslight Chicagoans with off the top of his head lies about crime statistics and law enforcement in the city.  The crime rate in Chicago is down, no thanks at all to Trump, thanks to the Biden Administration, the Pritzker Administration and the city council.  

What we saw here was the epitome of Trump ineffectiveness.  National guard, untrained for either law enforcement or as a support force for immigration authorities, piddled around for a month, spending taxpayer dollars, using up their employers' time off for service, and accomplishing little more than trash patrol.  Ultimately, the Supreme Court upheld the Constitution in declaring that the President had no basis for calling them out in the first place, and shut the operation down without any benchmark of success to declare.  Billions of taxpayer dollars will be spent on bogus executive orders that can't possibly achieve their objective, because the objective, based on a Trump lie, does not exist.  

The real problems are getting resolved by decisive leadership at the state and municipal level.  And as multiple guests on Driving it Home report, there's a sense of unity and cooperation that has been involved.  There appears to be a consensus which attributes things moving in the right direction to the most competent gubernatorial administration we have seen in Illinois for a long time.  

3.  People are getting involved and doing things.  No one here is sitting around complaining that we can't do anything because we aren't the party in power.  Almost every weekday, there is a guest on this particular show that comes from some active segment of resistance to Trump, in their own place and time.  

Every day that goes by will be a day that some American value or principle in the Constitution will come under attack from the Trump administration.  If we accept the reality that he will likely be there for three more years, then throwing up hands and whining about it will mean that regardless of whether or not the opposition succeeds in taking power out of the hands of the MAGA party, it will take much more money and effort to restore things than it would if the resistance keeps itself moving forward, countering bad moves with good ones where it can, and blockading as much damage as is possible.  

Every afternoon, I listen to a whole array of guests who are running for office, or already serving, on school boards, in the state legislature, on library boards, city councils, across northeastern Illinois, southeastern Wisconsin, in the Minneapolis area.  I invested time in both 2020 and 2022, as health permitted, to cross the state line into Wisconsin to knock on doors in Kenosha County to get out Democratic voters and elect Democratic candidates, and the needle moved to the left in both years.  I think that the success of Democrats in holding the governor's mansion, picking up legislative seats and turning the Wisconsin Supreme Court to the left, and keeping it there, has a lot to do with the efforts made by the Illinoisans, including a large number motivated by Driving it Home, in the southeastern part of the state.  

Holding many of these lower level offices and supporting those who are in them is a key to success for any resistance to MAGA power grabbing.  And promoting these normally obscure politicians is a big key to their success in being able to win and hold office.  

4.  Is there collective awareness that 2024 was a major political mistake, and that voters staying home over petty partisan differences is never acceptable.  

I think there is.  

In spite of the lack of conclusive evidence that Harris lost because she was a woman, or because she didn't have enough time to campaign, or any one of a dozen other excuses, the problem, reflected time and time again by the guests on Vasquez's show over the past year reflects the same problem that has plagued Democrats for decades, and that is the inability to discern the narrative, and then latch on to it and make it the theme of their campaign.  

It was affordability, inflation, prices going up and incomes stagnating, that was the theme which kept just enough voters at home to make the difference.  Three states, as it turns out, the same three that won it for Biden in 2020--Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, would have made the difference and we've heard, on the level, exactly what it was that kept people at home.  Every afternoon, just after 5:00 p.m. , callers and guests give their realistic perspective, and affordability is the theme that works its way to the top.  

Confirmation is coming in polling data that is showing a much bigget shift back to the left than the electorate took in 2024.  But in those very random conversations with callers and guests every afternoon, the confirmation is clear in that Democratic and anti-Trump politicians are experiencing success by travelling along those themes.  

I'm not hearing that the Epstein files are going to be some sort of silver bullet politically for Democrats.  If Trump's support from the GOP depended on his morality, ethics and integrity, he'd never be where he is now.  They don't care about any of that.  The bottom line is, as it has been for a couple of centuries of American politics, is how will what the government does benefit me personally in a financial way.  And the Democrats and Trump opponents seem to have lined up under something that resonates with the majority.  Keeping the ACA funded will be a huge factor, not whether Democrats win the midterms, but how many seats they will gain as a result of their support.  

I look forward to see how this political theme will generate success for the Democrats, enough to win the mid-terms, if we can stop the massive MAGA effort to try and cheat, and translate into the first real step taken to save the nation from disaster.

Reclaiming Our Democracy Will Be More Difficult Than We Realize

Carville: Democrats Have to Add States, Expand Supreme Court to Save Democracy 

The beginning of 2021 seems like such a long, long time ago.  Emerging from the fog of pandemic, the results of a sitting President being booted from office by voters, which included a seditious attack on Congress, prompted by this same President in order to avoid being forced to leave office, were just settling in.  Personally, I thought this would be the end of Trump, but then, I thought when he insulted the disabled reporter, in front of cameras that have replayed the incident thousands of times, that would be the end.  

I thought that conservative Evangelicals, who were just then coalescing around the adulterous, worldly, lying, deposed President would never put up with the kind of inhumane behavior, immoral lifestyle and complete lack of any kind of dignity or manners expected in a President, would abandon him in droves.  I was sure wrong about their bottomless naivete and the greed and power-hungry lust of most of their leaders in continuing to support him.  

But, as a Democrat, I was celebrating the fact that we had majorities in both houses of Congress and we had the White House.  It was time to use the power we had to prevent Trump, whom party leadership correctly identified as being a danger to American democracy and a potential destroyer of the Constitution.  And I thought they really believed that, and really meant that they were going to take deliberate steps to stop this demagogue from getting back into public office, and in fact, to have him indicted, tried, found guilty and arrested for his crimes.  

I missed my guess on that, too. 

We Didn't Have the Court

The biggest obstacle to preventing Trump from putting himself in position to destroy the constitution and dismantle American democracy is the Supreme Court.  His three appointees, the most unqualified justices ever appointed, and the most ideologically unsuited to serve on a court as a judge, were the major obstacle to stopping the dismantling of American democracy.  And it seemed that most Democrats knew this, and accepted it.  

So there are limited solutions to making changes here.  One is to wait it out, and hope some of the older Republican appointees drop dead while Biden is in office and has a favorable senate.  The other is to take advantage of the interesting constitutional provision regarding how many judges can sit on the court, and amend the Judiciary Act to create several new seats, so that Biden could appoint the most liberal judges he could find, to neutralize the incompetence and make progress toward reform necessary to keep Trump from destroying the country.  

Doing so would have been a matter of making sure the justices that were appointed, along with the current Democratic appointed minority, would take several steps.  One would be to overturn the Citizens United decision.  Another would be to overturn the ridiculous Presidential immunity ruling pushed by John Roberts, which puts the President above the law.  A third action would have been to take the pending court cases for which Trump was under indictment, namely the incitement of the attack on the Capitol and the stolen documents case, out of the hands of Eileen Cannon, and into the chambers of one of the liberal justices to strike down the motions and expidite the trials to verdict and ultimate disqualification of Trump's ability to run for public office.  

And of course, they could have saved Roe. 

To do so would have required breaking the notoriously undemocratic senate filibuster.  There were a lot of voices rising up from Democrats in Congress to move this forward and get this done.  The President was aware of it, because he commented on it more than once.  He and some of the old heads among the Democratic party leadership were not in favor of it, for whatever reason.  I think they were just flat out short-sighted in their approach, unable to see how dangerous things would get and unwilling to take the bold risks that would have been required.  

And yet, at a time like this, bold risk taking by those in leadership is exactly what we need.  That's what I vote for.  

And so here we are.  

Carville is Now Suggesting That We Pack the Court, Without Acknowledging Democrats' Failure to do so in 2021

James, my friend, you are late to the table.  

Where were you when those of us who saw what needed to be done were advocating for it back in 2021?  We needed shrill voices to convince party leadership, especially the President, the Senate Majority Leader and some of the reluctant old-school old heads, who think the filibuster is the best thing since sliced bread.  

So the pathway has been unnecessarily made so much more difficult, and perhaps nearly impossible, in that we must now place our faith and hope in restoring our democracy in a midterm election victory in which the other side is going to try to rig, and then, in whatever can be done by that Congress until we manage to win the Presidency back in 2028.  And there will be court rulings that will be issued to knock down whatever progress we might make, because these incompetent judges are still on the bench.  

This must also take place with the realization that somewhere north of 70 million Americans, 70 million, are so ignorant, hoodwinked and deceived that they do not see anything this lying demagogue does as wrong.  Their values have been skewed by the justified selfishness that right wing Christianity has introduced into their minds.  

We also have to convince a segment of the Democratic party, mainly some of its leaders already in Congress, that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy.  Not all Democrats believe that, either.  Some of them are opportunists, seeing that they have managed to get themselves elected and that now guarantees them some personal power, prestige and income stream that they would rather protect than try and restore democracy in America.  That's a fact that we must recognize and with which we must come to grips.  

We have to win enought of these elections to get back into Congress as a majority and to get the Presidency.  And I'm not voting for any candidate for office who is not committed to breaking the filibuster in order to pack the court.  That is what we need to do, and those are the kind of people we need to elect.  We don't have the time to wait for these Republican appointed judges to kick the bucket.  We need to make sure they are not a majority at the first opportunity we have to do so.  

So while I'm disappointed that Carville didn't use the voice he had when this came up in 2021, at least he sees what is necessary.  I'm glad he is using it now, and adding it to those of Bernie Sanders, AOC, Gene Green, and others.  We need to get this done.  We have wasted enough time.

It's not going to be easy.  We need leaders committed to the people, and to preserving and protecting the Constitution, not to protecting their turf and their own interests.    

"And the Lies Just Keep On Coming!"

We have a liar in the White House, and his name is Donald Trump.  

Well, we've known this for a long time, long before he ever became President.  I got frustrated with a good friend of mine once who was trying to defend him in a conversation in which I was pointing out lies and he was trying to deflect, make excuses, deny the evidence, and defend the guy.  I said, "Name one thing that Donald Trump has ever said as a politician that was the truth."  

There was some risk in that, because, as they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.  To make his point, of course, he had to search and find evidence.  And he couldn't.  

I cannot stand to hear the man's droning, monotone, sing-songy voice with his pinched-together lips, mispronounciations, bad grammar, mis-use of words or beady eyes that say, "I'm lying through my teeth."  So I did not listen to his Wednesday cascade of lies that clearly embarassed most of his conservative media and political allies with its astounding incoherence.  No matter the makeup or the drugs, he looks bad.  His knowledge of American civics isn't good enough to pass a citizenship test.  Most Americans don't watch, are bored with politics, ignorant of their own history and government themselves, and will miss all of this, which is why they don't care.  

So, for those of you who missed out, and go about your business not knowing that the President of the United States embarassed this country, himself, and you as one of its stakeholders, here's a recap of the same old same old.  

Joe Biden handed off one of the most stable, prosperous economies under his presidency in over 60 years.  

That's a fact.  

We have not had a four year stretch of low unemployment or continuous growth in GNP since the Kennedy-Johnson era.  We did have inflation, something that Biden anticipated in the COVID recovery, and did everything possible to keep it from being worse, which he succeeded in doing.  Americans did not experience inflation the way Europe or Asia did, and just like Biden said, it would take time but the measures they put in place would bring it down, slowly, but in the right direction.  And that's exactly what happened.  

Then along came Trump, his craziness and lack of any plan, his vengeful declarations of tariffs, and we are back in the inflation  business with an economy turning south, which he owns and will own.  

Trump hasn't done anything to reduce prescription drug prices.  If they had gone down 600%, which is what he said, our prescription medications would be free, and the pharmacy would have to issue a refund check when we pick them up.  

If this is true, then the President owes me a lot of money.  Since he took office, the same medications that cost me about $80 a month during the last couple of years of the Biden administration, when I first went on Medicare, now cost me $120.  Insulin has gone up.  Diabetic testing supplies have gone up considerably, and the pen needles used to inject insulin suddenly doubled in price in October, as a direct result of Trump's tariffs.  The test strips, made in Mexico, have quadrupled since January.  

And of course, any other news media source will have a list of where grocery prices now stand, compared to December of 2024.  Even bananas have gone sky high.  

As far as gas goes, it's down in some places, but not much from where it was when Biden left office, and it's still higher than it was at the low point in the Biden administration.  Noting that during the first year of Biden's presidency, my corner market gas station had it at $2.49, which was, of course, a COVID demand decrease, and it's now $3.39 at that same station is an interesting comparison.  Demand is down again.  That's why.  

Trump's claim that he has secured $18 trillion in investment contradicts his own administration's published figure of $9 trillion, which is still an exaggeration.  

And there's not one in a hundred Americans who can tell you anything about what that means to them, anyway.  Trusted economists say the figure is somewhere around $5 trillion, and at any rate, all but the $18 trillion falls below both Biden and Obama administration figures.  

"I've Settled Eight Wars in 10 Months" 

And the lie detector is pegged to the max.  

There was no "war" between  Egypt and Ethiopia, which he claims to have settled, over the placing of a dam on a Nile tributary.  No shooting was involved, it was a business dispute, and Trump's role in settling it is dubious, since it would likely have been settled anyway.  The war he claims to have settled between Serbia and Kosovo did not take place during his presidency, but he cited it falsely anyway.  He claimed to have settled a conflict between Congo and Rwanda, but the fighting has grown worse, and the peace deal that Rubio helped negotiate was never actually signed.  

The armed conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, which is also on Trump's list, has flared up again.  So if you want to give any weight to Trump's list of settled wars, he's 0 for 5, and 8 is just a figure he pulled out of the air.  Neither he nor Rubio have participated in any negotiations in eight wars.  Seven tops, if you can consider their participation in the Gaza War, or in Ukraine, as an effort to make peace. 

The biggest lies told are about immigration.  

Look, for stupid people, let me explain something.  If there's no citation of any source to back up the number, then the number is an exaggeration and an outright lie.  Joe Biden did not allow 25 million people to come into the United States illegally.  That's false, and he obviously knows that he has no credibility, so he will make it as bad as he wants.  

The Republicans in the House, who are also liars to the 10th power, came up with an alleged investigation figure of 2.2 million who came in and did not get caught and either deported or detained by immigration authorities during the Biden administration.  That's fewer than in Trump's first four years.  Their figures note that 80% of those who were encountered here illegally were deported.  And the clearest evidence of Trump's lack of credibility on this subject is simply found in the answer to the question, "Where are these 25 million people?"  

People have to eat, they need shelter, they would have to work, and there's no evidence that any of that is happening on the kind of scale that would produce visible evidence if the numbers were that high.  And if they are here, doesn't that demonstrate the total and complete incompetence of the Trump administration, in even being able to keep track of where they are?  

The lie that countries have emptied their prisons and sent those people to the United States is, perhaps the most egregious falsehood he's told.  Even his own administrations published figures show that the crime rate among immigrant communities and among those in the US seeking asylum is well below the population in general.  If emptying prisons and sending criminals to the US were happening, then these foreign countries have found the greatest solution to prisoner recidivism rates in the history of the world because they apparently have completely reformed before arriving in the US, where they are no longer committing the crimes that got them into prison where they came from.  

He's lied to the coal miners for almost a decade now. 

Study Estimates Projected Catastrophic Losses in Population in West Virginia's Coal Producing Counties

I worked as a door-to-door book salesman in Mingo County, West Virginia, during the peak of the coal production there.  It was a summer job and as a college student, it was a great way to make a lot of money in a short period of time.  Business was brisk, in the downtown area of the county seat of Williamson, a town of 6,000 people that straddled the state line with Kentucky, and sat at the center of a trade area claiming 100,000 people, the sidewalks were busy and traffic lined up to cross the brige over the river, and to find places to park. People were friendly, open their doors and bought the products I offered for sale at a rate that helped me pay a year's worth of college tuition and expenses. 

I was in Williamson about six years ago.  Most of the storefronts downtown are empty.  Wal Mart is still open, on the Kentucky side of the river, but the big grocery store at the end of the downtown area, I think it was a Piggly Wiggly, is boarded up.  The hospital closed four years ago, and it was a major struggle for a local physician, with help from the Biden administration, and nothing at all from Senator Moore-Capito, to get it back to being at least partially open.  The Wal Mart in neighboring McDowell county is closed, and the downtown area of the county seat there, Welch, is also empty and decaying.  

The population of McDowell, Mingo and Logan counties is steeply declining as the coal business is all but drying up.  McDowell, which had 100,000 people in 1950, dropped under 20,000 in 2020, and is now under 17,000.  Mingo County has dropped frm 32,000 in 1980 to 23,000 in 2020, and 20,000 in 2024.  And Logan County has dropped from 50,000 in 1980, to 32,000 in 2020, to under 30,000 currently.  Of course, the number of Trump voters here has declined, simply because the population has dropped, though the percentage of the vote he got here in 2024 was less than he got in either 2020 or 2016.  

So, Trump lied to the people of West Virginia when he said he was going to revitalize the coal industry. Unfortunately, he won't keep that promise.  Technology has made coal as fuel obsolete, and there aren't enough people, or enough contributors of money, there for it to matter to him.  

So how stupid will we continue to show ourselves to be? 

I guess ignoring the truth and living in a fantasy world can be mentally and emotionally soothing, though at some point, it's going to come to an end.  But this particular set of remarks from Trump, watched by one of the smallest audiences in recent history for a Presidential address, didn't really even look or sound "presidential."  He is clearly struggling to have the mental capacity to form words and communicate ideas.  He obviously goes way off script, and when he does, along with being pompous and silly, he appears to be unhealthy, struggling to form sentences, slouched, unfocused, occasionally trembling, using the same tired hand gestures and repeating the same adjectives.  His left hand has a tremor.  

My parents were not big on trust for politicians, out of their personal experience.  "They're all liars," my mother would declare.  I always thought that she was just too busy to care, and I found out, when I was a teenager, that it was much more related to the fact that she never went to school past the sixth grade, and she was, from any practical perspective, illiterate.  That was something that she had hidden from me for most of my life, and lived in fear of being exposed.  I tried to help her regain some interest, without seeming to be a smart-alek, and she would ask questions, but would never engage with peers in political discussions.  I think a lot of Americans are like her, they don't have the kind of education it takes to be discerning when it comes to the lies politicians tell.  

And we happen to be living in a time when the biggest liar is in the White House. 

 

Falling From Grace: Once Idolized as a Christian Icon, Kirk Cameron is Now Blasted as a Heretic

Baptist News Global: Heads Spin as Kirk Cameron Gives Up Eternal Consciouos Torment 

Kirk Cameron, the actor who became famous for his role as the incorrigible Mike Seaver in the television series Growing Pains, and who then, because of his fame, salvaged his career after a highly publicized conversion to Christianity from self-proclaimed aetheism by acting in a series of Christian-produced movies, and peddling his faith testimony among the conservative Evangelicals who were willing to pay for it, has suddenly found himself outside the good graces of the Evangelical leadership who once embraced and used his fame for their purposes.  It might be obvious that I tend to be skeptical of these kinds of "conversion" experiences, especially when they become the primary occupation and marketing strategy of the convert.  

Ultimately, while trying to avoid being judgmental, I generally avoid buying their books, videos and productions.  The legitimacy of my faith does not depend on celebrity endorsement of it.  There's already plenty of profit to be made in the packaging and selling of everything religious, especially among Evangelical conservatives who make idols out of their leaders.  

In spite of their approach to "evangelizing" the "lost," and a period of growth back in the post-World War 2 era which they used to claim legitimacy, while mainline Protestants were beginning to experience decline, conservative Evangelicals are now experiencing a tailspin of membership and attendance decline that now rivals the losses mainline denominations experienced a couple of decades back.  And what's happened to Kirk Cameron is a good illustration of just why this disastrous decline is happening. 

No Soul Freedom Allowed

While caustically critical of ecclesiastical connections and doctrine determined by church clergy councils, claiming to offer their members the abilty to interpret and apply the principles of the Bible according to their own spiritual discernment, there is a hard line of established dogma, based on a singular, literalist interpretation of the Bible that leaves zero room for dissent or personal application.  Much of it is contradictory to any reasonable, historical and contextual interpretation of the Bible, especially the revelation of the gospel directly given by Jesus, whom they claim was the Son of God.  

If that's the case, then wouldn't the revelation he preached be exactly the words that God initiated, and therefore the interpretive filter for everything everyone else ever wrote that made it into the canon?  And yet, the gospel is not considered in most Evangelical doctrine or practice.  They define "gospel" as any single verse picked out of a verse by verse rendering of the text, and what it says when it stands alone.  So they wind up denying the core principles that are essential to Christian faith and practice. 

So even when a celebrity who has become an idol among the faithful deviates from the accepted dogma, they become the enemy, the apostate, the fallen.  And so, in the flash of an eye, another celebrity idolized by the conservative Evangelical community because of his fame and because he was one of them is no longer one of them.  He dared to think for himself, stop parrotting the party line and draw his own conclusion about a Biblical interpretation.  And those who have prided themselves on believing in the Bible's inerrancy, and in this principle of soul freedom, something they condemn mainline Protestants for not believing, have taken this privilege and freedom away from one of their own.  

And they aren't able to see how that makes them hypocrites.  

Conservative Evangelicalism is an Absolute Mess of Confrontation and Condemnation Over Petty, Minute Doctrinal Arguments

If Jesus Christ did return, he would not recognize Evangelicalism as anything having to do with the gospel he preached and taught.  There are so many litmus tests of orthodoxy, and finely tuned "distinctives" which are used to brand those who are outside of the carefully constructed theological and doctrinal fortresses built by ego-driven megachurch pastors and televangelists as heretics, that most of their followers can't answer simple questions about what their church believes.  

Part of the problem is based on the use of an ancient text, written in a completely different era of human history, referencing contexts that have long since disappeared and are not recoverable, to establish evidence for supporting these theological and doctrinal systems.  Simply declaring the text of the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible as "inerrant and infallible in their original autographs," or declaring the King James Translation as "the preserved word of God in English" does not produce an accurate interpretation of words which require extensive knowledge of the history and culture in which they were written.  In fact, the literalistic approach of Evangelicals precludes any genuine understanding of the meaning of the text, because the contexts are completely ignored in favor of the way a translator has rendered the text.  

That's why there is such incongruity between the theology, doctrine and practice of Evangelical churches, and the message conveyed in those words recorded by three apostles and one gentile physician that have survived as being the very words of Jesus the Christ. The biggest problem with declaring the Bible inerrant, and then interpreting it literally is that opens the door to literally hundreds of contradictions in interpretation in which all of the sides can be equally supported by scriptural evidence.  They appear because there is no context present to provide an interpretation that fits the words which were used.   

Kirk Cameron endeared himself to the conservative, Evangelical branch of American Christianity by blending his fading fame as the star of a popular television series with a dramatic conversion experience and an embrace of Evangelicalism.  There are those who see him as just one more person who retrieved some of their fading relevance and fame by hitching their wagon to Evangelicals who helped him recover part of his former income stream.  I won't make that judgement, but his fame and his image was certainly used, willingly, to promote the Evangelical perspective of Christianity.  

And for all of what he did, getting blasted because he has openly embraced a particular doctrinal point that isn't shared by the majority, and has once again used his fame and reputation to promote it, is just one more example of how far away from authentic Christianity Evangelicals have moved.  He's not the only one.  Rejecting heretics, ruining careers and chasing after dollars is a hallmark of American Evangelicalism.  And it provides a lot of insight as to why they are completely and totally deceived when it comes to Trump.  They are used to the distortion of facts and to avoiding reality by creating an alternate universe.  That allows them to put any interpretation they want on something, and deceive themselves into thinking its true, because "there's a verse" that supports it.  

Ilhan Omar is a Patriot and Trump Isn't and That's Why He's So Angry

Trump's name calling episode involving Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, and the small community of Somali-Americans is, of course, a sign of his ignorance, and possibly his mental failure.  His statements display total ignorance, about Representative Omar and about the community of Somali-Americans in Minnesote, and in the United States.  Trump, of course, lies about everything and then asserts that his lies are true in order to justify his unjustifiable actions.  He is a person who exemplifies nothing at all when it comes to personal character and morality, or any kind of values, especially American values.  

Ilhan Omar has, on four occasions, won the trust of a significant majority of the voters in her Congressional district, and Trump's recent comments, labelling her, along with other Somali-Americans "garbage," in his inartucluate, stunted vocabulary of hate, are not anywhere close to an accurate representation of who she is.  In Minnesota's fifth congressional district, she is twice as popular as Trump has been among voters. 

And that's saying something. 

The fifth congressional district is made up of almost all of the city of Minneapolis, one of the more progressive, educated and, I don't mind using this term, sophisticated cities in the country.  It also includes large swaths of the suburbs to the west of the city, an area where the population is economically healthy for the most part, above average in educational level and quite diverse racially and ethnically.  It actually has lower crime rates than comparable large cities and suburbs elsewhere, though it is not completely without its problems and issues.  But then, neither is any other large city.  Still, the community atmosphere there is a credit to the state's and city's political leadership, who happen to be majority Democrat. 

Representative Omar is part of that political community that has been relatively successful in its representation of the people.  Obviously.  The voters have spoken.  And the fact of the matter is that while the small community of Somali-Americans lives within her district, the number of them who are eligible to vote and who might be most likely to support her are not anywhere near enough to dominate the district.  She has, with hard work, education and getting out and doing the job of a member of the House of Representatives, earned the trust of the voters.  She is a patriot, in every sense of the word.  

Muslims who get involved in politics are often accused of having the ulterior motive to "establish Sharia law in the United States."  That's a fear tactic more than it is a reality. But Omar, who is most definitely a liberal Democrat, is a true representative of the people. And there hasn't been a hint at pushing for Sharia law in anything she has done as a member of Congress. She's opposed to the Gaza War, and her policy on Israel is to make them accountable before getting aid from the US, rather than a desire to see them destroyed.  But her views on Israel are similar to mine, and I'm not Muslim at all.  

Clearly, approval of her politics and her representation of the district goes well beyond the fact that she is a Muslim, and a naturalized American citizen, eligible to be a member of Congress and trusted by the voters to represent them on issues they consider important.  And that's what seems to get under Trump's skin, prompting comments that are insulting, offensive, false, and unpatriotic.  

But this is what the man has done for decades.  He's an immoral, unprincipled bigot, lacking self-respect, and frankly, just basic courtesy and manners that should be major expectations of the conduct of the President of the United States.  His caustic comments, tweets, or whatever you call the drivel that pours out of his social media posts, mark him as unworthy of the Presidency, disrespectful to the country and lacking the moral and intellectual restraint to curb his disgusting, childish, anti-American, anti-Christian behavior.  Most of what he says lacks factual support, which is a nice way of saying he's a liar.  

In fact, I find myself in agreement with most of her politics, and none of what can be identified as his politics, if there's even a coherent way to understand a man who just tweets out garbage and governs by the seat of his pants, issuing meaningless and ineffective executive orders for the courts to simply fold up and let blow away.  No wonder he's upset with her and is subjecting her to the same kind of drivel that he does to all his enemies, especially toward  women who demonstrate they are much smarter than he is.  And she is not only smarter, but she's more of a patriot than he is.  

Author's Note:  And there's more reaction to Trump's unwise comments posted on social media regarding Rob and Michelle Reiner's death.  The man demonstrates an inability to live and comment in the real world, and that should frighten us.  He's a walking billboard that screams, "I'm not smart enough to be President, I'm not socially acceptable enough to be President and I can't imagine why anyone would be so stupid as to vote for me for President."  

He's a convicted felon, a rapist, a seditious insurrectionist, and a hater of the United States and everything it stands for.  And these kinds of statements that he makes is all the proof we need.  

The Stephanie Miller Show Deserves Recognition as a Primary Source of Truth in Politics

My heart goes out to Stephanie Miller this week.  It's been a difficult time.  First, she was hit with the news that a former associate and current friend, Jim Ward passed away.  Yet, she came on the show that morning and managed to get through, giving him an on-air recognition of his life.  It was obvious to hear her grief in her voice, and I think she deserves a lot of credit for going ahead with it, in spite of her grief, and what she was feeling.  She shared that openly with her audience because, well, that's the kind of person she is, and it was the right thing to do.  Then this morning, it sounded for a minute like we were right back in last week, as she mourned for friends Rob and Michelle Reiner, stabbed to death yesterday by their son.  

But this is the kind of show that Stephanie Miller gives to us.  She shares her feelings, her heart, and the facts, and makes it lighthearted and funny most of the time.  It's the highlight of my commute to work every morning, partly because it is so entertaining, but mostly because she is one in a shrinking pool of political comedians who still tells the truth, insists on being factual, and who actually cares about her listening audience enough to make sure she is straightforward and reliable.  

This kind of programming is important, because the current Presidential administration and the party in the majority in Congress are baldfaced liars.  Yes, indeed, they certainly are.  We need people in the media, like Stephanie Miller to chase them down, and call them out with factual information, pointing out their contradictions and lies, which has become a full time job.  

Not that what we get every day from her isn't real, but the show last week when she could have stayed home but came out to talk to her listeners about Jim Ward's life, as a way of remembering and honoring him was quite a tribute to his career, and to who he was.  And today, it was the same with the Reiners.  What a tribute her sincerity and her program was to them today.  I'm sure it was difficult sitting there, recalling the past and at the same time, trying to come to grips with what had happened.  Then, to have to deal with the disgusting, inhumane, insane response from Trump, yet another example of how totally evil and demented he is, and maintain composure.  

Stephanie Miller is a class act.  And she's an absolute cornerstone of American Free Press right now.  I sure hope she, and her program staff, remain safe and secure and continue to do exactly what they now do every day, and call out the fascist evil that has taken root in the White House.  We are going to save our democracy, so she says just about every day, and she will be one of the main reasons why we will be able to.  And as much as they stay safe, I also hope that they prosper, growing their audience as they call out the single most incompetent anti-patriot we've ever had as President.  

She is already one of the reasons so many Americans seem to be up to this task.