Focus

The greatest and most imminent threat to our national security lies within our shores. In the past we have chosen to turn a blind eye towards the danger and chase squirrels instead. To avoid the obvious we’ve focused on the imagined risks Muslim refugees, the Squad, immigrants, Iran and North Korea pose.

It’s easier to sleep at night when you can blame your ails on “outsiders.” The time, however, has come for all Americans to wake up. America doesn’t have a Muslim, Black, Jewish or immigrant problem. It has an America problem. We need to do some internal soul searching of our own. An extreme vetting of our backyard. Identify the weeds before they take over the lawn.

Trump trounced on HRC for not saying the words radical Islamic terrorism. Let’s hear him call a spade a spade. Let’s hear speak about the rise of radical white Christian terrorism.

Better yet, let’s see our cowardly Comrade in Chief tweet about it. Sad!

Who is Keyser Soze

Ironically it was Kevin Spacey in a career making role who once uttered the words “The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

The following statements about a sitting President of the United States are not in dispute;

1) He is the subject of an ongoing counter intelligence investigation and has acted in ways previously unimaginable of the world’s most powerful man,

2) The majority of our citizenry strongly disapprove of the man himself, his agenda and his job performance,

3) There is credible evidence that he may not have been legitimately elected by and may not in fact be working for the American electorate,

4) Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent who has never once prior acted to advance America’s best interest, invested numerous Russian resources to help Trump secure the Republican nomination and win the ensuing presidential election,

5) Trump has passed along classified information and otherwise placed our nation’s security at grave risk due to his wanton disregard for classified information, intelligence assessments and diplomacy,

6) He has politicized the Department of Justice, attacked private citizens and threatened political opponents and regularly denigrates our free press and intelligence agencies,

7) He openly uses presidential platform and powers to commit obstruction of justice and to profit off the office,

8) Whether the acts themselves are condoned is irrelevant. Domestic terrorists and white supremacists are compelled to act in the name of and in honor of Donald Trump. Martyr themselves and murder and maim victims for the causes espoused by this caravan criminals and corrupt enablers.

Each of these statements in an of itself present an unprecedented risk to our Republic. They demand a proactive and unconventional response.

Perhaps it is I who live in a twilight zone but why legitimize the message and provide the theater that comes along with a traditional state of the union. How do we allow an unvetted sycophant to appear before Congress and make an open mockery of our Justice Department?

Why do we continue to confirm the nominees of a man who is unqualified to nominate them? This shouldn’t be political. It defies logic. It’s understandable that Democrats do not want to be perceived as bad guys or unwilling to compromise but there are times when good leadership requires just that. The willingness to do something bold and unpopular.

Donald Trump doesn’t play by the rules. He is willing to make up a phony national emergency, endanger our troops, divide this nation, incite a race war, go to who knows what length really if it means he gets to claim victory. You can’t give him the opportunity.

The constitutional crisis is here! We can’t afford to wait for the coffee cup to shatter to realize Keyser Soze sat before us this whole time. We must take bold action. Consolidate and form a real opposition. Lead the people in daily protest from the steps of the capital. Shut down all government business until such time Donald Trump is brought to account and Democrats are permitted to complete investigations unimpeded

The American Taliban

Our so called President is no longer an unhinged narcissistic asshole that deserves the majority’s moral condemnation. He is a clear and present danger to our very way of life. A direct threat on the very freedoms and ideals that define the American experience.

A rising orange tyrant surrounded by military hawks and Christian dispensationalist who believe their highest purpose in life is to usher in the preconditions of Armageddon. An immoral empty vessel propped up by a fringe fundamentalist bunch of gun nuts united in their hatred of all things Obama and steadfast in their belief that theirs is the only acceptable way of life.

In other words the head of the American Taliban now sits in the Oval Office of the White House.

Do you feel the greatness?

Kiss My Grits

If our leaders truly cared for our national security they’d figure out a bipartisan way to ensure each and every person in this picture of a domestic terrorist network never legally purchases another firearm in this country.

For let’s be unequivocal on this issue. There are not good people on both sides. The history of the Confederacy is not the history of the United States. The racist heroes of the GOP had the good graces and Southern decency to secede once they came to understand what “America” is truly about. They didn’t pretend to be something they weren’t, patriots of the United States of America, an immigrant nation whose diversity reflects off our shores to serves as the beacon of hope and freedom to the world’s oppressed.

If you don’t like that well as those Confederate heroes of yours would say, “Kiss my grits!”

Is It Soon Enough?

Virginia Tech University, Virgina: April 16, 2007 — 32 dead, 17 wounded – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Fort Hood, Texas: November 5, 2009 — 13 dead, 30 wounded – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut: December 14, 2012 — 26 dead, 2 wounded – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

San Bernardino, California: December 2, 2015 — 14 dead, 22 wounded – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Pulse Night Club, Orlando: June 12, 2016 — 49 dead, 58 wounded – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Las Vegas, Nevada: October 1, 2017 — 59 dead, 527 wounded – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Sutherland Springs, Texas: Nov. 5, 2017 – 26 dead, 20 wounded – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Parkland, Florida: February 14, 2018 — 17 dead, 19 injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Santa Fe High School, Texas: May 18, 2018 – 10 dead, 10 injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue, Pennsylvania: October 11, 2018 11 dead, 6 injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Thousand Oaks, California: November 8, 2018: 13 dead, several injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Sebring Sun Trust Bank, Florida: January 23, 2019: 5 dead, several injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Aurora, Illinois: February 15, 2019: 6 dead, 6 injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Virginia Beach, Virginia: May 31, 2019: 13 dead, 4 injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Gilroy Garlic Festival, California: July 28, 2019: 4 dead, 12 injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

El Paso, Texas: August 3, 2019: 22 dead, 24 injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

Dayton, Ohio: August 4, 2019: 10 dead, 27 injured – #GunReformNow we cried; Too soon they replied

“Too soon?” Too soon for whom exactly?

The tens of thousands of victims of gun violence who died waiting for the opportune time to speak? Cognitive dissonance aside, more like “too late.”

When exactly is the right time to have that conversation anyway? We’ve been waiting more than 10 years. Turns out there’s been a victim of gun violence each and every one of those days so apparently the time is never right. It’ll always be the opportunist liberals politicizing a situation.

Well let’s make this clear. This isn’t about politics. There are fanatics on all sides. No political party, religion, race or creed has a monopoly on crazy. What we must do is come together and devise common sense ways to keep instruments of terror out of the evil hands of domestic terrorists.

This is about common sense, free will, rationality, and basic human decency. There is never a need for a civilian to own an “assault” rifle. Never a point in legalizing the means to create fully automatic weapons of mass destruction. No justification for one individual to own dozens of firearms. Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We owe it to each other to act #NeverAgain

Where were they radicalized?

America has a domestic terrorism problem. We must confront that fact with the same urgency we rightfully demand of Muslim leaders. Whether we like it or not, the threat is similar. We need to take a hard look at what drives each new perpetrator to commit such heinous acts. What motivates these overwhelming number of young, white, males to have such blatant disregard for human life. We need to ask ourselves, “where were they radicalized?”

Behavior matter. This has nothing to do with politics. Look at Donald Trump’s words. Log into twitter and review his timeline of tweets. It is repulsive. You’d be ashamed of your child if that was the method they used to become class President let alone leader of the free world.

When you dehumanize people, treat them as less than human and threaten to “send them back” as if they are defective merchandise. When you use your platform to characterize people who live within our shores as “animals,” as unworthy of the basic inalienable rights bestowed upon all men, you create a culture of indifference. You birth a generation that is losing the ability to empathize. That sees targets and avatars in their crosshairs rather than sons and daughters. You create an expectation of violence and bloodshed. You spit on the vision of our founding fathers and blasphemy the words of our Declaration of Independence. The essential truths set forth therein.

When you draw false equivalents between those who protest for equality and freedom with those who represent hatred and ignorance. Who use tiki torches and strap assault rifles to their bodies to intimidate and snuff out those who seek progress. When you see the good in klansmen, neo-Nazis and white supremacists you give voice to the fringe of society. You enable their message of hate and violence. Allow those who hate for other reasons, who feel excluded, isolated and left out to rationalize their desires.

When you bow to the statues of confederate soldiers, display the hate filled flag on your pick up truck, and conflate the history of the Confederacy with that of the United States you deny the American dream. When you name call, cyberbully, race bait and shame people based on their looks you encourage our kids to do the same. To separate themselves from those they don’t like and humiliate them for it. When a pro- life agenda only includes the unborn, the living become expendable.

We reap what we sow. This is not a problem that can be prayed away. There are no alternative facts. The time for cognitive dissonance, for denial, is past. Save us the hypocrisy of lowering your flags to half mast. In fact, raise them Stars and Stripes high and proud instead. This is America! This is what we’ve come to accept as normal.

This is what we will remain until we elect leaders who understand, who as a nation we were founded to be. Who lead with the knowledge that the American identity exists. That the vast majority of us want the same things. That we share so many more values in common than we do ideas that tear us apart. That there is no “us” or”them”, “red” or “blue.”

From shore to shore America is comprised of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, young and old, Muslim, Christian, Jews, atheists and other, Irish, Italian, Asian, African, European and Native, scientists and clergy, gun enthusiasts and gun control advocates, men and women. We are the great melting pot. That diversity IS the American identity. We can’t change that anymore than a tiger can change its stripes. A list of all the great contributions immigrants and refugees have made to this country would dwarf a list of their misdeeds a million times over.

To solve school violence, immigration, terrorism, or even the opioid epidemic requires we all respect multiple views and ideas. It requires a change in Washington, DC. An understanding that we are a nation built on compromise, trust and acceptance.

Sending Out An S.O.S.

I’m not sure if it’s willful blindness, cowardice or complicitness but Americans, and more importantly our Democratic and opposition leaders need to wake up to a simple fact.

The American system of checks and balances is dead. The constitutional crisis is here.

Newsflash The GOP control the White House, the Senate and the Supreme Court!

You have zero chance of getting answers from the caravan of corrupt criminals and enablers who are already in control and occupy the three most powerful arms of the US government. Perhaps we’ve been too busy paying attention to the distractor in Chief to realize that an entire caste system has been legislated into existence.

More troubling is the entire judiciary has been transformed to enforce the values of white Christian America long past the point demographics would have otherwise allowed. To interpret “we, the people” to include JP Morgan, Halliburton, Monsanto, Bain, Amway and the Koch Brothers; but not JP Hernandez, Halil el Burtun, Juan Santos, LeBain Johnson, Anyone Gay, or the Koch Sisters.

All this time we spend focused on Donald Trump. Countless hours spent reporting on his every outrageous move, sound bite, and tweet. Wake up and smell the coffee! The man himself is not the story. He’s a means to an end, a pawn, a hairy arm to distract you fools. To give you something to talk about. Why on earth do you think nobody in the GOP will hold him to account?!?!.

To date, the McConnell led Senate has confirmed 146 Article III judges nominated by a man who REMAINS an active target of a counterintelligence investigation. This includes 44 judges to the US Court of Appeals and 99 judges to the District Courts, and 2 to Associate Justices to the US Supreme Court.

The majority of these mostly white men will be the ones to determine the limits of Executive Privilege and the House Democrat investigative reach. Do you trust them to stop this bloodless coup?

Rather than face this truth Democrat leaders march on and inspire us to vote Blue in 2020. They choose to take us down the path of traditional checks and balances, blind to the fact an unconventional threat looms. They bellow that our participation in the political process is the last great hope to restore our democracy! To remove the openly corrupt leader from our nation’s highest office and restore common decency!

Meanwhile, Rome burns. This isn’t a political fight. There is no political opposition only a consolidated faction of self interested criminals who seek to control the future of the greatest nation on Earth. To think our participation in the suspect and possibly rigged electoral system which placed the inept and unpopular buffoon into office in the first place is the key to his removal, ridiculous.

Does anyone think the way to remove a corrupt authoritarian from office is to vote him out in a free and fair election that he controls? In the history of the world has a single free and fair election been lost by an incumbent authoritarian in control of that country’s executive branch, and with absolute and penultimate legislative and judicial support behind them as well?

Seeing that Deranged Donald also knows a criminal indictment awaits him upon his return to civilian life and me thinks the Democrats have a better chance of surviving a round of Russian roulette than they do of taking back the White House.

It’s time to get our heads out of our asses and steer this ship away from the iceberg. If our current captains can’t do it than perhaps we need to look beyond the control tower for some help

A Peaceful Resistance Requires Sacrifice

We are a nation of informed consent. We must not be driven by our insecurities. Fear is a powerful motivator but we were founded on the belief that all people, regardless of race, religion, gender or creed are born with certain inalienable rights.

An organization takes on the personality of its leader. For better or worse the office of the President of the United States represents our values. We cannot continue to ignore the damage this caravan of corrupt enablers and criminals is doing to our reputation and pretend it does not define us as a nation. We, the people, are responsible for those actions and behaviors we observe each day and fail to condone.

The Women’s March, March For Our Lives, the Blue Wave, Congressional hearings and Mueller indictments are nice but ineffective in the larger constitutional battle ahead. They fail to reign in the worst impulses of our Comrade in Chief. While they may be effective mechanisms of protests that raise issue awareness or promote systemic change, they also do nothing to impact he status quo.

A snake slithers through the halls of our White House. Each day he remains in office affords him the opportunity to stack the deck and produce a manufactured counternarrative. To use his past television experience to craft a set of alternative facts that will marginalize, belittle, conflate, de-legitimize and, if necessary, squash any dissent and opposition.

Americans must learn from history and even the ongoing French protests. Understand that to force change you must commit to it. If we believe our will is not being followed and the government is no longer acting for the people then we must drive that narrative in ways that are impossible to ignore. We must take to the streets daily. Refuse to accept “many sides,” “who knows,” or “anyone could have done it” as an answer.

If America is a nation in which all people, regardless of race, gender, religion or national origin are free and equal than we must demand it be led as such. If the Bill of Rights that put the great American experiment in motion and guaranteed certain inalienable rights on all mankind are our guiding principle then we must demand it be respected. Must act to defend it when we see it being trampled upon.

Tick tock

It’s easy to bury one’s head in the sand and ignore the blatant patterns and lessons of history. To dismiss comparisons with the past as hyperbolic ravings rather than examine the similarities to present day America will certainly allow you to sleep better at night. Just don’t be surprised to wake up one day to find you live in a ghost town. Lifelong friends rounded up in the dead of night when their names appeared in an immigrant database.

Look around, look around; we sit here today and bare witness;

as refugee kids are separated and locked in cages separate from other family, as open air facilities are transformed into housing facilities and like minorities are packed like sardines into them concentrated into confinement, as an entire political party and its leader refer to these minorities in dehumanizing ways and echo policy that to protect our borders and working class jobs we need to “send them back,” only those with “merit” may return after extreme vetting takes place.

as walls and artificial barriers are erected to control populations and designed not just to keep those beyond our borders from coming in but also to keep those within from leaving, as a culture war rages in our cities and suburbs and white supremacists and civil rights protestors are given equal standing in the court of public opinion, as needless massacres take place on a daily basis and ordinary citizens no longer grow anxious and unsafe going to shopping malls, places of worship, playgrounds, or schools, as sweltering record temperatures scorch our lawns and near daily natural disasters of historic proportions wreak havoc on our infrastructure, as a bullish economy is artificially supported by tax cuts, trade wars, and deficits that will bankrupt future generations and secure a permanent caste system in this country.

as deputized ICE agents terrorize communities to round up our tired, our poor, and those who look like they may have one day dared cross into our border on the chance they’d grow up to be free, as international tensions rise, arms races heat up and beacon of hope that once lit our nation’s shore is dimmed our reputation transformed from peacekeeper to pariah and laughingstock, as a bullish economy is artificially supported by tax cuts, trade wars, and deficits that will bankrupt future generations and secure a permanent caste system in this country to serve the war machine to come.

Hitler rose to power in 1933. The launch of the pogroms, the mobilization of SS and Gestapo forces, and the wide scale round ups of Jews and other minority groups into concentration camps that all didn’t begin for five more years. Kristillnacht, the night of broken glass, during which Jewish communities were terrorized by Gestapo agents took place in November 1938.

“In two days and nights, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned or otherwise damaged. Rioters ransacked and looted about 7,500 Jewish businesses, and vandalized Jewish hospitals, homes, schools, and cemeteries.” In total 91 innocents massacred, their blood left to glisten in the shards of glass that littered the street.

That hatred and vitriol was not birthed over night. It was methodical. It took years of carefully orchestrated sound bites, slogans and fear mongering rhetoric produced to stretch societal norms to where such things became commonplace. To set preconditions for the cognitive dissonance that allows for a society to coalesce and systemically ostracize a minority segment of its population. To brand, scapegoat and force them to concentrate and live in squalid conditions while one time neighbors carry on as normal. It requires a coordinated assault and manipulation of one’s senses to the point where people are no longer viewed as such. Empathy is erased from one’s psyche and replaced by the primal instinct to protect the clan, to survive.

In time concentration camps beget forced labor camps beget extermination camps. Lest you think those are the same things those didn’t come about until 1942. It’s called “The Final Solution” because it followed a series of unsuccessful prior initiatives launched by Hitler…

to control the borders, apply extreme vetting and otherwise encourage German Jews to emigrate from their childhood and return to the native lands from which their kind came;

to erect new defenses that would protect ordinary Germans from the Jewish vermin and thieves who scheme to steal working class jobs and otherwise drain German resources;

to ostracize, brand, round up and concentrate Jews into camps while the legislature figured out how to solve the “Jewish crisis” and plague upon Germany.

History knows this story. We, the people, must now recognize what has become of America before we pass the tipping point. We must no longer allow this caravan of corruption that sit in the control room of the greatest nation to ever grace the map to play another round of Russian roulette with our democracy. Odds that the fatal bullet will eventually strike the heart of this nation’s democracy grow with each day our Comrade in Chief sits in office

The Ineptitude of No Deal

Donald Trump does not deserve any praise from walking away from a bad deal and leaving Hanoi. He deserves scorn and ridicule for showing up to Hanoi in the first place.

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump has achieved nothing of importance with Kim Un. In fact North Korea’s nuclear activities have only been allowed to further advance and grow without objection by the US for the past two years.

There was no indication North Korea was ever serious about denuclearization. Had The Dotard considered the consensus assessment of our intelligence agencies he would have known this to be the case long before his arrival at the summit. At a minimum he would have had American diplomats learn of North Korea’s position prior to boarding Air Force One. Seems like a basic due diligence would at least require the parties to at least agree to a definition of what “denuclearization” means, prior to putting on an international spectacle.

Instead much like he did with birthers and white nationalists, all Trump has done is legitimize another member who sits on the fringe of civilized society. In this case Kim Un, an unapologetic autocrat who starves his own people, orders the murder of his own family members and opposition members and who routinely threatens America and her Pacific allies.

In actions and words the leader of the free world has condoned all of this. Made clear that the freedom and inalienable rights of all humanity takes a back seat to the potential personal economic and political gains Trump may reap in a deal with “his friend” Kim. Once again we learn that there are good people on both sides.

More so in absolving Kim of any responsibility in the death of Otto Warmbier, an American citizen killed in North Korea custody, our so called President made clear where his loyalties lay. Putin, Crown Prince MBS, Erdogan, and now Kim Un; it seems our Dear Leader has more confidence in the words of notorious dictators and liars, known adversaries of America, than he does over America’s own leaders and intelligence officials.

This is a man who refused to believe the words of President Obama in regards to his own birthplace, but somehow believes we should now trust the word of Kim Un. Keep in mind the former Rocket Man once publicly referred to Trump himself as “mentally deranged” and a man “unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country, and he is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician.”

On second thought, maybe Kim is trustworthy. Those words seems eerily prescient and a credible way to describe our current American President