Mississippi Memories

In Gulfport, Mississippi, 1998, you could depend on the gracious hospitality from whites and blacks alike, a haircut for just $3 -- and perodic proof of an uncanny racism.

It's hard to relate how bigotry on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was any different from racial indifference you might experience in say, Philadelphia or New York City.

But during my two and half years living on the coast, covering a burgeoning casino industry for the local daily newspaper, driving a cab and fronting the Rockin' Daddy Blues Band, I experienced that unmistakable undercurrent of engrained bigotry.

Listening to the supremisct rhetoric from Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi) who rallied in Biloxi/Gulfport Monday for today's Mississippi Senate runoff with Democratic challenger Mike Espy, reminded me of such things.

As an east coast white, yankee boy
lover and player of the blues, I was pretty much naive about the south's present day racial tensions. Hadn't the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gone a long way towards repairing the divide? 

My first night at the newspaper in Biloxi, making calls to find a place to stay, my future landlady asked me over the phone, point blank: "You're not black are you?"

I remember being taken aback. Up north they wouldn't put it so bluntly, and yet so smoothly.

For some folks, definitely a minority, it's like distrust, maybe hate, for the African American race is encoded into their DNA.

On the psuedo-melting pot of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, these bigotries didn't seem as manifest as in the heart of the "deep south," but at times they felt as present as any southern charm.

Cold indifference could seep to the surface of conversations and flow from the mouths of the bigoted as if they were casually asking you to pass the butter at dinner.

I was the only white boy in the blues band. 

On my band's first road trip gig north up Highway 49 to a backwoods joint just off the highway, in between Gulfport and Jackson, the scars of Mississippi's oppressive past and lingering present were evident on Guitar Bo's face.

Guitar Bo, a black man and Mississippi native in his early 60's, was an exceptionally versatile guitar player and genuine good soul. And he was intimately acquainted with the Magnolia state's hateful prejudices.

Bo, surveying the woods-enclosed shack of a bar as we arrived, stopped me outside the bar entrance.

"Now Kevin, you best make sure it's okay for all of us to order drinks from the bar," said Bo.

"What do you mean?" I asked baffled.

"Well, you don't know how some folks still think about black folks in parts of Mississippi," said Bo, his normally light-hearted demeanor, gravely serious.

I told him not to worry and after I ordered a pitcher of beer at the bar, awkwardly ensured there wouldn't be a problem with black band members ordering from the bar.

There were no issues. The owners were gracious. But the visceral concern that Guitar Bo had about open racism, and this, just prior to the turn of the new century, has stayed with me.

I couldn't fathom an east coast establishment on the cusp of the millennium, outright refusing to serve a person due to his or her skin color.

Another time, on a crowded night outside Grand Casino in Biloxi, three older white men agreed to share the cab I was driving with a younger black man.

On the way to the next casino, we all talked, mostly about sports. They were smiling and laughing.

But, after I dropped the black man off first, one of the white guys said concerned: "That boy wouldn't have been speaking so freely 10 years ago, I'll tell you that." 

Huh?

The guy was miffed just by the fact that the black man felt comfortable in my cab speaking freely in the company of white folks?

And I'll never forget how casually the older white-haired, balding barber dropped the n-word as he snipped away at my hair; it just oozed out the way you'd say: "It's a lovely day." 

The barber was ranckled over how somebody on the beach, probaly a kid, threw a seashell at a seagull and killed it. Referring to a story in the newspaper, he made it sound like a mob of blacks ganged up on the poor bird.

I thought of the irony and said little.

It wasn't until later, I realized Mississippi was 130 years behind most states in ratifying the 13th Amendment, and the Emancipation Proclamation Act, outlawing slavery.

Mississippi ratified the amendment in 1995, just a year prior to my arrival on the Coast. But even then, due to some unexplained oversight, the state never officially notified the U.S. Archivist.

It wasn't until Feb. 7, 2013, that Mississippi officially ratified the 13th Amendment, according published reports.

In retrospect, through my brief and amittedly mild encounters with racism in Mississippi, it's easy to imagine the machinations behind such delays.

With Mississippi finally officially on the books supporting the 13th Amendment, what better time for the state with the largest population of blacks than any in the country, to finally get a true representative?

If I could, I'd be voting today for Democratic challenger Espy for the Mississippi Senate.

With a demagogue President, inciting and dividing daily, this Mississippi senate race holds implications not just for the state, but for our nation.

The Pigs

As appears in Counter Punch
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/23/trump-and-his-loyalists-are-animal-farms-pigs

NOVEMBER 23, 2018

Trump and His Loyalists are “Animal Farm’s” Pigs

by KEVIN MCKINNEY

They are the Pigs in Animal Farm, preaching righteousness, peddling preposterousness and hoarding all the “milk and apples” for themselves.

If the demogagic President Donald Trump and his greedy loyalist Republican abettors had their way, the American citizenry would be consigned to a life of Farm-like drudgery.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” becomes the leader pigs’ contorted “Commandment” to the rest of the farm animals by the end of Animal Farm.

As Trump, in a grand Christmas tree ceremony outside the White House yesterday, bestowed more reverence to a harvested tree than he has recently to our fallen war heroes, American lives lost in California’s wildfires or our democratic rule of law, it’s more evident than ever that Trump and his loyalist enablers consider themselves “more equal” than the rest of us.

No brazen lie is too ludicrous. No insensitive criticism is too ugly. No bigoted, alarmist incite is too inflammatory. No obstructive meddling with our justice system is out of bounds.

In the face of Trump’s grotesque persistent disregard for truth, justice and human decency, Republican head hogs led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan offer nary a snort nor a squeal of objection.

But, our Conservative leaders’ hero masks are slipping – and their snouts are starting to show.

George Orwell’s 1945 Animal Farm primarily was a dystopian fable on early 20th Century Soviet Communism’s bloody ruthlessness, but Orwell himself, indicated that his simplistic foreboding fairtale held “a wider application” about “power-hungry people.”

“I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert..” Orwell writes Politics magazine founder Dwight Macdonald in a 1946 letter.

“What I was trying to say was,” Orwell continues, “‘You can’t have a revolution unless you make it for yourself; there is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship.’”

Disillusioned Americans, who weren’t so much “alert” as they were desperate, clearly were swindled by Trump’s disingenous populous revolution of sorts.

Now, in the flotsam wake of the midterm election’s Democratic blue wave — demonstrating a new found citizen alertness that will flood the House in January — the mistake of ever allowing a Trump Presidency, is coming into sharp, unsettling focus.

Oppression is oppression. Greed and abuse of power produce essentially the same result whatever the misanthropic ideology – Communism or Fascism or some other hybrid demagogic “ism” to which Trump and his loyalists aspire.

If Washington D.C’s plutocratic pigs had their druthers, Americans would be so dumbed down by the con-in-chief’s exhaustive lies and grating vitriol, endorsed by congressional majority party Republicans, that we would have about as much say in our Republic’s affairs as Animal Farm‘s befuddled barnyard animals had on the farm under the pigs.

“Napoleon is Always Right"

Trump is akin to Farm’s ruthless ruling pig, Napoleon, a Berkshire boar who, Orwell writes, has a knack for “getting his own way.”

Napoleon counted on his propagandist pig, Squealer, who “could turn black into white” to brainwash the farm animals with lies about their tyrannical leader’s supposed benevolence.

Even Clover the mare, who notices the changes the pigs sneakily make to Animalism’s Commandments, eventually is lulled into a sense of complacency, convincing herself that she must have “remembered it wrong.”

As the Farm animals work harder for less, the beloved, but dim-witted carthorse Boxer declares, “I will work harder” and routinely motivates himself by extolling the pigs’ most controlling lie of all: “Napoleon is always right.”

To advance his doubtless premeditated assault on truth and civility from the start of 2017, President Trump has employed his own tag team versions of Squealer – in imaginative mouthpieces Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sanders, White House press secretary, seems eternally lost in an alternate reality where if President Trump “says it, it must be true” – just as Farm’s animals were programmed to parrot of Napoleon, no matter how absurd the lie.

According to Sanders: Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe is a “hoax,” the President wants to protect pre-existing conditions afterall and, despite her boss’ constant maligning of the media as the “enemy of the people,” Trump actually favors a free press.

And we Americans, like Farm‘s flock of mindless sheep taught by Squealer to obediently bleat “Four legs good, two legs better,” are supposed to believe it all.

In the disturbing aftermath of pipe bombs mailed to Trump’s outspoken opponents and horrific hate-fueled mass shootings last month, we were expected to accept that Trump’s relentless fear-mongering of “the other” has had no destructive effect on the American psyche.

Republicans feign ignorance when it comes to explaining the disturbing spike in United States’ hate crimes that coincides with Trump’s exhaustive, malice-spewing 2016 presidential campaign.

The President’s most loyal sycophants – Senator McConnell, Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Lyndsey Graham and House leader Kevin McCarthy and their like – even stumble out of their way to defend Trump’s unrepentant childish outbursts and destructive autocratic impulses.

In the meantime, Trump bungles, connives and insults his way across the American landscape, leaving a destructive path of Reality TV rubble for us to clean up.

He tries to bury a probe into his criminal malfeasance by inserting an unqualified apologist as U.S. Attorney General, snubs our WWI fallen, strong arms The Press and increasingly blathers banalities.

Obstruction — A Majority Party Privilege?

With the looming threat of special counsel Robert Mueller’s “Trump-Russia” investigation wrapping and a blue wave crashing, President Trump, more and more over the past six weeks, has been lashing out like a cornered wild animal.

In the month leading up to the Nov. 6, 2018 midterms, Toronto Star Reporter Daniel Dale reports, Trump made as many “false claims” — 815 of them in 30 days — as he did in his first 286 days as President.

The day after Americans, in effect, voted (in the midterms) to preserve our democratic freedoms, Trump took the gloves off; he went rogue at a White House press conference, revoked CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass (reinstated by a federal judge Friday) and savaged the U.S. Justice department.

Any last vestiges of his mask, or by way of their largely complicit silence, Republican leaders’ disguises, fell away that day.

As if obstructing justice were just another majority party privilege, Senate leader McConnell refuses to allow a vote on a bi-partisan bill that would protect the integrity of special counsel Mueller’s investigation.

McConnell baselessly insists there’s no need for alarm over Trump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to replace him with his controversial inside man Matthew Whitaker, a vocal critic of Mueller.

Of course, Trump’s klutzy move to preserve his own hide by snubbing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has overseen the Mueller probe from the start, smacks of the authoritarianism abuses Orwell called out incessantly in his lifetime and creatively alerts us to with Animal Farm and his later novel, 1984.

Meanwhile, in America, despite the abject swirl of controversy befitting a crime boss encompassing Trump, the autocratic programming advocated daily by Trump apologist “news” outlets like Fox, even at this late date has so many citizens convinced that if Trump “said it, it must be true.”

As the pigs did in Animal Farmand Vladimir Putin does in Russia, Republicans, led by an authoritarian President, are advocating censorship, increased wealth to the powerful and suppression of the people’s democratic rights.

Pigs Hoarded Milk and Apples; Repubs, Tax Cuts For Rich

Just as Farm‘s pigs reason early on that they need all of the farm’s “milk and apples” to lead the rest of the animals, Trump and his complicit Republican chums insisted at the outset that billionaires’ tax breaks are the key to economic revival for all.

Never mind that Reaganomics trickled down – and out, decades ago. Never mind that corporate profits are soaring, while workers’ wages have stagnated.

And that now, in order to pay for corporate big wigs’ tax cuts, Republicans contrive to carve up the people’s Medicare and Medicaid, while sinisterly eyeing social security benefits.

Who is the real “enemy of the people”?

“The turning-point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk and apples for themselves,” Orwell writes in the 1946 letter to Macdonald, published in  George Orwell: A Life In Letters, 2013.

“If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then,” Orwell continues, “it would have been all right.”

At the first sign of feebleness, Boxer, the farm’s hardest worker — instrumental in the farm’s success from which the pigs alone capitalized — is hauled off to the slaughterhouse.

Despite the animals’ increasingly desperate circumstances on the farm, Squealer’s barrage of untruths ultimately convince the lowly, overworked animals that “things were getting better.”

Think of Trump’s grandiose claims of new plant openings and soaring jobs numbers. When Fox News’ asked him this past weekend how he would grade his job as President so far, Trump offered, “A plus.”

And look no further than Trump’s scripted, dictator-esque, brainwashing rallies, where gullible Reality TV “fans” pathetically worship a snake oil salesman, cheering on command and smiling idiotic smiles.

Which is Which?

In Farm’s last pages, the pigs have rewritten Animalism’s “Seven Commandments” to suit them, embracing the ways of the animals’ sworn enemy humans.

“Comrade Napoleon” and his fellow privileged porkers have moved into overthrown (Manor Farm) owner Mr. Jones’ farm house, are dressed in his clothes and are walking upright on their two hind legs.

By then, the incoherent sheep under the absolute sway of Napoleon’s propagandist pig Squealer, no longer are sounding off on command: “Four legs good, two legs bad,” but rather, “Four legs good, two legs better.”

Animal Farm leaves us with the animals peering through the farm house dining room window as the pigs inside schmooze and toast mugs of beer with neighboring farmer, Mr. Pilkington and his associates.

The pigs and humans end up squabbling over a card game in which Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington each play an ace of spades.

Who is cheating?

In the novella’s last line, the baffled animals at the window look from face to face, from the humans to the pigs, but: “It was impossible to say which was which.”

Anymore, whether it’s in the company of dictators Trump keeps or among the multi-millionaires and billionaires that our purported Capitol Hill representatives mingle with at home and abroad, it’s becoming increasingly harder to tell “which is which.”

To what degree, weeks from now, the new Democratic House majority protects the Mueller investigation’s imminent findings and gets actionable results, may just hinge on the vigilance of the same Americans who made the midterm blue wave a reality.

There’s no time for typical post-election complacency. The real battle to reclaim our Republic from a manifestly unstable President and his gluttonous cohorts clinging to power, begins now.

And victory is likely to depend not only on our federal courts and newly elected legislators, but on “we the people” sticking to the fight — demanding loud and clear, our fair share of the milk and apples.

Thankful This Thanksgiving

I'm thankful this Thanksgiving. 

I'm thankful to be alive, for this imperfect life that ultimately through its trials and tribulations brings me closer to the knowledge of a creator, The Creator.

I'm thankful for family and friends, for the love for and of my fellow man. (And I think of the souls lost in recent tragedies and pray for their families.)

I'm thankful that Democrats won the House, to give us Americans a shot at reeling in destructive recklessness.

I'm thankful for the work for my hands -- for being able to work along side the Creator's wonderous works -- the ocean, in a seaside village of a town, breathing the seasalt air and listening to the waves crash on the sandy shore.

I'm thankful that God sticks around even when we snub him. He never leaves us, never forsakes us.

Even the darkest days hold a silver lining particularly as we "Trust in him with (our) whole heart." Psalm 3:5

I'm thankful that I know which side I'm on. And I'll always try to stand up for justice as Jesus Christ instructed.

And if I screw up, I'm thankful that His "mercies are new each morning." Psalm 103

And I'm thankful for the hope in knowing that ultimately God is a God of love and justice. And that justice indeed will prevail when it's all said and done.

A thankful heart truly does go a long way. Peace. Happy Thanksgiving.

I See a Storm .. and Blue Waves Crashing

Just so happens that from my work vantage point on the beach this landmark midterm election day, I see, appropriately enough, a storm coming.. and blue waves crashing on shore.
 #BlueWave https://t.co/jAlztjW0Im

A Vote For Republicans is A Vote For Trump

A vote for Republicans translates as a vote for Donald Trump. And we already know how that turned out.

Trump admits he's not on the ballot, but he's sort of running. He's sort of right. 

Reminds what I wrote two years ago and why it's so important to vote Democrat:

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/304042-the-danger-in-voting-for-trump

Vote With Conscience

(As appeared in the Cape May County Herald, Wednesday, October 31, 2018)

All this talk about "tribalism" tearing Americans apart, and how we need to "come together" as a nation only oversimplifies and masks the truth about our nation's present-day unrest.

It should be no surprise that such simplistically packaged sound bites, along with a barrage of hypocritical policy decisions that are severely destabilizing our democratic ideals, are coming largely from the right.

These guys are good.

Here's a political party, one of the most demonstrably morally bankrupt in the United States' 242-year history, which has given their unprecedentedly disingenuous, divisive, demagogue president a blank check to wreak havoc on the Republic, and they self-righteously suggest that it's just politics.

This growing popular sentiment that each side must have equally worthy stances or agendas is garbage. It seems to me, we Americans don't need so much of a coming together as a waking up.

Republicans and Democrats aren't suddenly coming together for warm group hugs, not without first identifying and admitting to the entrenched root of our animus.

Such feigned affection would merely be mimicking and perpetuating the exhaustive insincerity that has plagued our country in an unprecedentedly visceral way for the past three years.

Often when trying to warn about the divisive, destructive demagoguery of President Donald J. Trump, I've been dismissed as "being political."

As a Christian, certainly now more than ever, I don't consider speaking out against the blatantly un-Christ like behavior of Trump, a not so cleverly concealed wolf in sheep's clothing, as "political."

I consider it being spiritual. And, those who won't listen to legitimate concerns about a reckless, lying president, are in fact the ones "being political."

As I've been saying for some time, we need honesty. We need to break out of the bubble, find our better selves and embrace the truth.

Christians have been owned by the Republican Party for so long that their unquestioning allegiance to the party of conservatives has become an idol.

And it's time to wake up.

The former "moral majority" party has hoodwinked Christians for decades primarily on the singular issue of abortion to otherwise exploit all other "life" issues of the struggling masses.

If my fellow Christians truly want to win souls for Jesus Christ in these dark times, we're going to have to distinguish ourselves from the deceptions of President Trump.

Scripture warns us of false prophets, wolves in sheep's clothing and deceivers of all manner.

Ephesians 5:6 forebodes: "Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience."

It's gotten so bad that the Republican base, including many Christians, ignores and even embraces the policies that hinder the poor, the sick and the elderly, the same folks Jesus taught us to care for.

So much is on the line, such as our environment.

The mid-terms next week are a chance to reel all that in. Vote with conscience.

The future of our Republic depends on it.

The Black Ops Republicans

Americans are smarter than this.

Republicans latest black-ops level ploy to attack the character of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and undermine his investigation into President Donald Trump's Russian Collusion appears so clumsily planned, painfully obvious and unbelievable, it's bound to fail miserably.

It's bound to result in an even bigger blue wave crashing down on Capitol Hill, washing all the seedy, greedy conniving Conservative shake down men from the corrupt corners they've backed themselves into.

Virginia-based lobbyist Jack Burkman, with a record as a dark operator of dark, character-assasinating deeds, is reportedly willing to pay big bucks, $20,000 at least, to any women who will claim that Mueller acted inapproapriately toward her, whether she ever met the Vietnam War hero Marine and former FBI Director, who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations. 

That's just par for the of course these days for the most morally bankrupt political party of our lifetimes.

And just another reason to get yourself, your family and friends to the voting booths this Tuesday, November 6th -- the most important election of our lifetimes -- and vote Democrat.

Wolf Crying Sheep

The boy who has been crying wolf, purposely inciting and dividing our nation for the past three years, suddenly, in an act of pure pathetic political opportunism, wants us all to come together.

For a few hours anyway.

The boy, a petulant, self-absorbed, manchild by the name of Donald J. Trump, puts on his sheep's clothing and wants us to come together at least for an hour or so -- before he appears again in front of one of his angry rally mobs to soak up the adoration fueled by ugly, bitter unadulterated hate.

Pipe bombs. Violence. Threats.

Trump's demagoguery is not only threatening the lives of his Democratic opponents -- but the very foundation of our Democracy.

And evidenced by his continued calloused comments tonight at another hate rally about his opponents and CNN, which received one of those bombs that fortunately didn't explode, Trump simply doesn't give a dam.

We must vote Trump's morally bankrupt Republican congressional enablers out this November 6. It may be the last chance to save our nation.

The Rot of Trump

It's gotten so bad that a mob boss president, starring in his own scandalous TV show, gets to handpick an embattled partisan judge to sit on the nation's highest court where he can shield his advocate from criminal prosecution and pursue dark money's anti-Democratic agenda.

It's gotten so bad that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell describes citizens exercising their First Amendment right by lifting their voices in protest -- as a "mob."

What would the Senator call the crazed, often angry "fans" at Trump rallies?

It's gotten so bad that a misogynist president mocks a sexual assault victim courageous enough to testify before the world, at one of his Hitler-like rallies and the deplorables all laugh.

It's gotten so bad that the FBI, an American institution typically trusted for its integrity in protecting the people, turned in a half-baked investigation into high profile assault allegations against a Supreme Court nominee, ignoring scores of witnesses actually asking to be interviewed.

It's gotten so bad that our Conservative "leaders" will stand before us dressed up as self-righteous dandies and with a well- practiced air, not only lie right to our face, but actually attack Democrats as the real culprits, the enemies of truth and justice.

Of course, this is Donald Trump's America. 

This is his doing.This is what he wanted. Division. Incites. Anger. Unrest. This is how he makes America great again.

He's that rotten apple at the bottom of the barrel, threatening to turn the whole barrel bad, to rot away our integrity, our rights as American citizens.

And the longer Trump remains insulated, protected by his fellow bad apples, his arguably criminal loyalist Republicans in Congress, the more damage will be done.

Trump's Inside Man

The one overriding concern with Brett Kavanaugh up for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court is that he’s President Donald Trump’s preferred inside man.

If Kavanaugh is confirmed, the fix will be in. 

There’s a reason dark-money propagating
Conservative entities like The Federalist Society and The Heritage Foundation, have promoted Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.

And there’s a reason Trump, abetted by his mystifyingly loyal congressional Republicans, has been trying to pile drive through Kavanaugh for confirmation.

Aside from advocating for all the often corrupt Conservative policy agenda perks -- like deregulation, that compromises our waters, air and economic stability -- Kavanaugh theorhetically could save Trump's hide from criminal prosecution.

Kavanaugh is on the record clearly favoring presidential powers that protect a sitting president from court subpeonas and indictment. 

And during the heated bi-partisan Senate Judicial Committee hearings two weeks ago, Kavanaugh repeatedly refused to say if he would recuse himself as a Supreme Court Judge if Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe findings came before the Supreme Court -- which they very well could.

What's to stop Trump's favored man, Kavanaugh, from smothering any serious legal repricussions for Trump?

Then we'd be stuck with a President surrounded by an endless swirl of controversy befitting a mob boss.

And that right there is all any truly patriotic American should need to know when considering whether Kavanaugh should be confirmed.

Now, that Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges Friday and agreed to cooperate with Mueller, the stakes are even higher.

The Kavanaugh hearings never should have been held to begin with.

Not when Republicans released only 10 percent of the judge's records, documenting a career that harkens back to the tumultuous years of the George W. Bush administration.

Obviously, "our" President, arguably the most inciting, divisive, hateful and dishonest commander-in-chief in the United State’s 242-year history, will stop at nothing to prolong the destructive nightmare of his unprecedentedly corrupt presidency.

That’s why any American citizen who loves his or her country and values its democratic freedoms should make their voices heard now on the eve of Kavanaugh’s potential confirmation.

But perhaps justice will be served in the Kavanaugh case, as California professor Christine Blasley Ford has come forward with sexual assault allegations dating back to the Judge's high school years in the 1980's. 

Thursday's scheduled judiciary committee vote has been delayed until after both Kavanaugh and Ford publicly testify under oath before the committee this Monday. 

If Republican senators on the committee still seem poised to confirm Kavanaugh after Monday, (there is some real doubt now) Americans should call the senators directly and urge them to vote "no."

If the senate judiciary committee still happens to approve Kavanaugh after Monday's hearing, the nomination goes to the full senate where a simple majority vote could approve Kavanaugh.

In that case, Susan Collins of Main (phone: 207-622-8414) and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (phone: 907-271-3735), at this point, are the two Republican Senators most likely to buck oppressive convention and vote against confirming Kavanaugh.

In that scenario, call Collins and Murkowski and urge them to vote “No” on Kavanaugh.

It would be the patriotic thing to do.

(This post was clarified and updated since original Sept. 14 posting)

Trump Legacy Hinges on Kavanaugh Hearings

The Kavanaugh hearings will be marked in history, on level with the Watergate hearings and may be the vehicle that causes many Trump lovers to finally question their misbegotten blind allegiance to the deciever in the White House.

In The Last Days..

My fellow Christians:

".. in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers..  Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers .. despisers of those that are good.

"Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."

 2 Timothy 3:4-5

#WednesdayWisdom

Beware Getting Hooked on Trump

(As appeared in Counter Punch https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/26/beware-getting-hooked-on-trump)

What would we ever do for kicks without President Donald Trump pressing our buttons?

Without Trump’s pathetic, childish, provoking trash talk tweets?

Or the President’s blatant, treasonous disparagement of our democracy just a forced wink and a phony smile away from Russia’s creepy, ruthless dictator?

It’s been three hellish, Twilight Zone-on-an-endless-loop years of this two-bit snakeoil salesman peddling his poison to disgruntled, disenfranchised Americans.

And still, the desperately gullible and politically opportunistic line up, demanding more.

We ain’t what we’ve cracked ourselves up to be for so bloody long. We’re so far from the United States of America.

But hell, step right up. Show of a lifetime, folks.

Never mind the featured sideshow freak has escaped the red-and-yellow circus tent, hi-jacked the crude, wooden barker’s box and is selling discount tickets for a peek inside an empty tent.

Really, is it any surprise?

How could we survive without getting up our ire at Trump monopolizing the nightly news in his twisted, Orwellian, Big Brotherish way?

Amidst his distracting, divisive chaotic swirl of constant lies, rescinding and reassertion of absurdities, Donald Trump, against all odds, is getting his way.

Gradually, as citizen outrage rises and quells only to spasmodically rise again, “we the people” are queerly, subtlety or not, being played, conditioned.

The truth gets muddled. The lines of division in our country get hardened. And the insidious behavior of presidential imposter Donald J. Trump, gets normalized.

The way any compulsive habit can lead to addiction — and then destruction, there’s a very real danger of hell bent, anti-Trump Americans getting hooked on Trump’s insanity.

Such are the inherent complex high-stakes risks of allowing an unstable person, demonstrably bereft of morals and utterly lacking in political diplomacy to be the United States’ commander-in-chief.

So, what do we do now?

We should know Trump feeds on the notion that any publicity is good publicity.

We must remember that ugly and murderous tyrants like Adolph Hitler shared those same sympathies.

And we must know that as long as Trump orchestrates his contorted, angry dance of incites between his loyalists and his loyal opponents, appealing to our basest emotions, he can control.

No, there are no simple answers here – not as the President would have us believe.

Of course, this was why it was so critically important the con man was never given the keys to the Oval Office in the first place.

Give him a chance, his believers said. Don’t worry. Hey, he’s a successful billionaire businessman. And there will be folks around to keep him in line.

George Orwell once wrote: “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims… but accomplices.”

But accusing or attacking the other side too vehemently, does us little good beyond simply inflamming verbal warfare.

Meanwhile, an enemy of the state has hi-jacked the highest office in our land and plots our possible destruction.

The question still begs: What do we do now?

We can’t simply tune out. That’s also what the reckless former Atlantic City casino proprietor, wheeler and dealer of human lives, would love.

No. Burying our heads in the proverbial sand would be so much worse. But we can choose when to tune in — and for how long.

If CNN had it’s way, Americans would be plastered to their TV’s 24/7 digesting a steady stream of “Breaking News” that regurgitates the same old, recycled downer Trump garabage.

And forget Fox News.

Rupert Murdoch’s alleged “fair and balanced” cable news station is Trump’s apologetic mouthpiece in the same way the early 20th Century, brainwashing Communist Party rag, Pravda, was for Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin, who would be responsible for the deaths of some 20 million Soviet citizens.

Certainly, we should be incredulous at Trump’s treasonous fawning over thuggish Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Helsinki a week ago.

And we need to let our voices of dissent be heard loud and clear — loud enough and clear enough so that Trump’s conspiring Congessional Republicans put their pathetic partisan allegiences aside and defend our country.

Now.

But we need to keep our wits. Now, more than ever, we need to stay cool and focused.

Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or at the corner drug store, we can’t respond to Trump or his sychophants with the same hatred and vitriol that our President espouses.

Then he wins. We lose.

And the divisiveness encouraged and perpetuated by this President since his fear-mongering bid for the White House three years ago, threatens our downfall by splitting us into hardened, tribal factions.

While the citizenry is polarized, at eachother’s throats, fueled by the President’s constant bombardment of inciting tweets, Trump’s myriad schemes get obfuscated.

Alert, surgical and insightful reasoning by the citizenry is called for.

Plainly, our best hope is the successful completion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Yes, the mid-term elections are key. But even the integrity of our elections remains in question — seriously threatened by widespread Conservative-backed voter disenfranchisement and Russia’s persistant emboldened cyberware attacks on our Democracy.

At this point, if we are to trust anyone it should be Mueller — a Vietnam War hero Marine, former FBI Director, and Republican who served in both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations.

And it’s up to “we the people” to ensure that Trump’s congressional enablers, our purported representatives, stop wavering in Mueller’s defense and start acting like Americans.

Kevin McKinney is a freelance writer and former daily newspaper journalist living at the Jersey Shore. His opinions have appeared in The Hill, Sacramento Bee, Knoxville News Sentinel and various McClatchy newspapers.

"Witch Hunt" is Right

Talk about a "witch hunt."

It wasn't just one or two Republicans.
But 11 House Conservative lawmakers who just distinguished themselves as enemies of the state.

The group of House Republicans, led by North Carolina Representative Mark Meadows, Freedom Caucus head, filed articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstien Wednesday.

Rosenstien is the key justice department official overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's interference in our 2016 presidential elections and possible collusion with the Donald Trump campaign. 

Trump's loyalist critics on the House oversight committee have been attacking the Mueller probe for months, contocting absurd claims of "lack of transparency" and questioning Mueller and the justice department's motives.

While Meadows' call for Rosenstien's impeachment appears to lack any broad support, it's still a pathetic state of affairs in light of Mueller's 32 indictments so far and the exhaustive known connections between the Trump administration and Russia.

By defending a President who treasonously fails to defend the United State's democratic sovereignty before a conniving Russian dictator, Meadows and company have clearly aligned themselves with America's adversaries.

And history will remember them that way.

Keep It On Ice

The National Football League should ice its player protest policy for good. 

The NFL recently froze it's new policy to fine NFL players who protest racial injustice by kneeling or sitting during the National Anthem, as the league continues to negotiate with the players.

Of course, it didn't take long for President Donald Trump, who arguably influenced the NFL's penalty platform, to absurdly tweet out his disapproval under the guise of patriotism.

And this from the guy who just sold out his country to a Russian dictactor in Helsinki. 

But this is still America, "the land of the free" and the "home of the brave."

And those brave enough to poignantly excercise their First Amendment freedoms, our flag represents and our war heroes died defending,
shouldn't be penalized.

Traitor Trump

There's no more wiggle room for doubt now.

None.

President Donald Trump is the authentic enemy of the American people.

Our alleged President in Helsinki just flatly sold out our "truth, justice and the American way" -- by embracing state enemy Russian dictator Vladimir Putin while dissing the entire U.S. intelligence community.

We just witnessed two cold, calculating, sinister minds -- well-practiced in the art of deception --performing the greatest illusion of Trump's presidency on a world stage. 

 "I don't see any reason why it would be the Russians," said the President, denying our intelligence community's findings that Moscow conducted a high-financed, multi-faceted, high tech manipulation of the 2016 elections for Trump.

Regardless of whether you bought the Trump snakeoil in the past, as an American you must decide if you are a true patriot who loves his or her country -- on the side of democracy and righteous justice.

And if you are a patriot, you must see Trump as the unequivocal enemy. And it's time we made sure our purportedly patriotic Republican representatives, abetting Trump for so long, do the same.

Let's Exercise Those Freedoms

So, this Independance Day feels different.

And it should.

True patriots won't be able to wave our flags and gaze dreamily at fireworks displays tonight without seriously considering how the treasured freedoms we celebrate today feel like they are slowly slipping away.

Never in America's 242-year history have our democratic ideals and Godly values faced such a genuine, visceral threat than now -- amidst Donald Trump's all encompassing, facist chaos.

I feel ambivalent. I want to embrace our liberties, but am hesitant to lap up the grand show, knowing such theatrics are so easily and effectively hijacked by the presidential imposter to placate the masses.

But today also can, and must be, a reaffirming time. A time to deepen our resolve against the destructive intentions of the enemy in the White House and his schophants in Congress.

If we want to hold onto our First Amendment freedoms -- free speech, freedom to protest, freedom of the press and so much more -- we, of course, must be prepared to defend them in whatever capacity is necessary.

As they say, freedom isn't free. Foremost,  pray and believe that good will prevail, that we as United States' citizens will find our better selves.

And then we must act, by speaking out, showing up, voting and letting our alleged representatives know unequivocally that it's time we started acting like citizens of the country we've long cracked it up to be.

The True Enemy of The People

The past few years of chaos perpetuated by demagogue Donald Trump will feel like child's play compared to the viciousness just on the horizon.

As America nears its mid-term elections in November, and myriad troubling and controversial issues intersect, be prepared for a firestorm of incivility, vitriol that will shake our democratic foundations.

The writing on the wall got larger and bolder yesterday during a scathing attack by Republican congressmen on FBI Director Christopher Wray and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstien, in questioning designed to discredit special council Robert Mueller's Russia-Trump probe.

The message was clear. Trump's plutocratic loyalists are amping up their game to comprise Mueller who is expected to wrap up his collusion and obstruction of justice investigation sometime this fall, before the mid-terms.

In the meantime, a separate heated battle is brewing between Democrats and Republicans on when to vote on replacing retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy -- before or after the elections.

That in itself is a distracting mess, as we learn that Kennedy's son, Justin, a Wall Street mover and shaker lent Trump $1 billion while employed with Deutsche Bank of New York.

Duestche was fined multi-millions of dollars by the federal government on a money laundering conviction just before Trump was sworn in as President.

On top of that, Vanity Fair recently reported how Russia's high-tech threats to manipulate our social media platforms and electoral systems are only escalating, with the mid-terms and 2020 elections as targets.

Connect the dots.

As the most divisive president in United States history attacks the press (as Adolph Hitler did) "as the enemy of the people" -- just days before a gunman kills five colleagues at the Capitol Gazette Newspaper in Annapolis, MD, the true "enemy of the people" has never been more plain. 

Trump and his "Companions of Thieves"

President Donald Trump and his loyal plutocrats have unmasked themselves completely through their immigration policy and agenda.

"Your rulers are rebels and companions of thieves; Everyone loves a bribe and chases after rewards. They do not defend the orphan, nor does the widow's plea come before them." Isaiah 1:23 NASB

Trump, his Republican apologists and his profit-minded corporatist pals indeed are "companions of thieves," chasing after "rewards" -- whether it's political points or lucrative contracts to build tent cities for kidnapped children.

Trump's "Zero Tolerance" immigration policy that has plucked some 2,300 children and babies from their parents at the Mexican border to cage them like animals, makes that clear. 

As does the lucrative deal his 2016 campaign supporters got to now build tent cities to house illegal immigrants, including lost and suffering children who may never see their parents again.

If Americans ever become okay with this, we are finished as a democratic, and more importantly, godly nation. 

Fireflies Arrive

How bout that? 

Lightening bugs came late this year. But tonight, June 18, is the night. I counted 12 greenish-yellow tiny flashes in a minute or so just as dusk fell over my tree-enshrouded cottage. And just in time. On summer's cusp. What would summer be without lightening bugs?

Dr. Evil's 'Space Force'.. Oooh

Donald Trump truly is Dr. Evil.

Now the delusional commander-in-cheat is promoting a really, super duper American "space force" of our armed forces.

Yeah, Baby Yeah.

Only thing missing is Trump touching the tip of his right pinky finger to the corner of his mouth.

Same old story. Anything to distract from justice closing in. Look up there. Look over here. Don't mind that wackadoo behind the curtain.

God please bless America.

American Patriotism or Facism? Let 'em Kneel

Telling National Football League players that they can't take a knee or raise a fist before the American flag during the national anthem, is like telling a man that he can't pray -- or that he must.

Contrary to reactionary cries, enflamed by a demagogic President, the protests, and the defense there of, have never been about disrespecting the flag or our veterans -- but honoring them both.

And NFL owners should have no say in whether a player decides to stand, sit or kneel during the anthem. Indeed, freedom isn't free. 

Hundreds of thousands of brave American men and women have fought and died on the battefield to defend our Democratic ideals of equality and justice, which were fundamental to the founding of this country 242 years ago.

By kneeling during the "Star-Spangled Banner," NFL players are exercising the very freedoms that same banner represents, and our war heroes died for -- purportedly, for all Americans. 

And any past or ongoing player protests (hence, the two Miami Dolphin players who took a knee on opening day) are demonstrating and preserving those treasured, professed values that our soldiers died to protect. 

One of those values is called free speech under the First Amendment. And one of the reasons "Old Glory" flies, is to protect that right.

Do we really believe in truth, justice and the American way?

What good are those Democratic ideals of equality that our American war heroes sacraficed everything for, if we, the people, just take them for granted? 

How can we Americans purport to embrace Godly values when standing before the flag, but then sit quietly by in the face of injustice? 

Now, more than ever, we should be treasuring those privelages spelled out in the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights -- particularly in light of President Trump's clear autocratic agenda.

"Black Lives Matter" arose after several video-taped cases of cops shooting unarmed black man found exposure on social media.

In 2015, police killed at least 104 unarmed black men in the U.S. -- five times the number of unarmed white men killed by cops.

The Washington Post reported that 34 percent of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2016 were black males, which make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population.

What the American flag represents is much bigger than the flag itself. Our fellow Christians should know this as well as anyone. The Bible instructs to be aware of "idols" or "false gods" that take the place of God. 

When honoring a flag becomes more important than defending the Godly values the flag is supposed to represent, it's an idol.

And the protesting NFL players kneeling in support of social justice aren't a bunch of spoiled rich kids. NFL players' salaries may be out of touch with most of ours, but it's not like they all were born with silver spoons in their mouths.

For many players, the NFL was their ticket out of the slums, where poverty, crime and drugs swallow up lives, daily. They know what racial profiling looks like first hand.

And if not high-profile citizens like the NFL players to give this crucial social issue a national platform at a time when much of America is watching, who will -- and when?

Do Americans truly stand behind the two most penetrating phrases of Francis Scott Key's 1814 "Star-Spangled Banner" -- "land of the free" and "home of the brave"? Many NFL players clearly do.

It's easy to go through the motions. It's easy to point an accusatory finger from the safety of the masses and ridicule a man whose heart has ached too long over blatant discrimination of his brothers and sisters.

Trump's periodic picking on mostly black NFL players for trying to shine the national spotlight onto one of the darkest, unresolved aspects of our country's past, should be concerning for the discerning.

United States citizens schooled in their history, should know that a country's flag can be a unifying symbol, particularly in war time, as well as a sinister means of control.

And the latter is how our 'so-called' President has been attempting to exploit the American flag and our anthem since his first attack on players and the NFL at the start of the year.

How many dictators have employed patriotism, and its accompanying symbolic flag, ultimately as a tool of oppression? The Furher Adolph Hitler's Nazi Swastika, in 1934, temporarily became the national flag of Germany, representing anti-semitism that would rally a war agenda and result in the Holocaust that killed six million jews.

America has an opioid epidemic, an unhealthy love affair with firearms and a long-entrenched lethal problem with systematic racism, particularly evident in cop's treatment of blacks.

Sticking our collective fingers in our ears and pretending that any of those societal woes don't exist, only exacerbates them. A disease first must be diagnosed, before it can be treated and eradicated.

Until we have a President that acknowledges that racism is running rampant, costing innocent lives across the homeland, our fight for equality and a social consciousness will only get more grating.

More people will needlessly suffer and die. And the bottled up, righteous anger of the oppressed will only build.

By demonstrating during the national anthem, NFL players are reminding us of who we are as United States citizens -- or, at least who, as "one nation under God," we are supposed to be.