Category Archives: Politics

The State of Trump Address

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This is going to be a long one—as are all of the ones we publish after a major Trump serving of word salad.

We watched most of President Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. I confess that the longer it went on being Trump instead of being a President, the more I thought of finding something better to watch. I finally gave up after the one-hour mark and found an old cowboy movie on another channel, coming back at the end of it just in time for the Democratic Party response.

A few initial impressions:

He is still campaigning.

He is still lying.

I am sure he had some solid ideas. I am sure he had some less-solid ideas that are open to respectful discussion and compromise. I am sure he floated some ideas just to test political waters.  But his preoccupation with the 2020 and 2024 election, Democrats, and the immediate past-President buried them under his typical bloviating.

Never have a I heard a President spend so much time taunting the minority party. Until recent years, never had I seen members of Congress disrespecting the speaking President as I did last night. But in recent years, both sides of the aisle should have been spanked and sent to bed without dinner for their infantile behavior during the State of the Union speeches.

The place is starting to sound like the British Parliament during question time—except its manners are far worse.

If Trump had set forth his domestic and international agenda without attaching lies and insults to his statements, he would have saved us at least 45 minutes of our lives.

This was not a State of the Union speech.  It was a State of Trump speech.  And he’s pretty satisfied with himself.

I kept waiting for him to suggest something Congress should do.  But he carried on as if Congress doesn’t matter. Come to think of it, it doesn’t, as long as he can use his Magic Marker to make marks on a page that look like a badly-defibrillating heart monitor.

As is our habit, we’re going to turn to Daniel Dale of CNN for a comprehensive straight-out fact check.

But first, let’s look at some other reactions, at least some of which indicate how difficult it is to figure out how to assess what we watched the other night.

Satirist Andy Borowitz, who also writes pretty serious stuff, said in his Borowitz Report the next morning: “In what is being called a historic performance, on Tuesday night Donald J. Trump set a new world record for delivering the longest speech that did not include a single fact. Congressional Republicans were awestruck by their leader’s ability, at the age of 78, to give such a sustained fact-free oration. (House Speaker Mike Johnson said,) ‘To stand up there for 99 minutes and not accidentally slip up even once by saying something true? He’s still got it.’ Republicans contrasted Trump’s address favorably with the Democratic response of Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who spoke only briefly but whose remarks were riddled with facts.”

The New York Times Editor John Guida offered a more balanced approach the next day by asking some columnists and other writers for their assessments.

—Binya Applebaum: The speech was a “medley of fabrications, provocations, and insults.” Michelle Goldberg described Trump as “an autocratic thug gloating about stripping America for parts.”

Josh Barro noted Trump’s line about reducing immigration only required a new President instead of new laws, as advocated by Preisdent Biden was “an effective line on his strongest issue.”

Frank Bruni agreed that Trump was “on solid ground and in his comfort zone “when he talks about cracking down on illegal immigration” although he uttered lies about the issue.

Michael Schmitz: “Trump’s recitation of improbable-sounding expenses he claimed to have cut was funny.”

Farah Stockman praised the President for deputizing a child with cancer as a member of the Secret Service and telling the mother of a dead daughter that a wildlife area had been named in her honor.

Michelle Cottle thought the recognition of the chid was “a heartwarming plug for the President’s Make America Healthy Again agenda—and a clever way to gloos over the problematic views of his health and human services chief.”

Katherine Mangu-Ward said she has longed for a President who would dedicate “a significant portion…to cuts in the federal government.” But she was dismayed that the cuts he mentioned are small “and unlikely to withstand scrutiny from the courts or (as isn the case of his promises to stop Social Security Payments to 129-year olds fictional.”

Daniel McCarthy thought Democrats “set themselves up for the worst moment of the night with their jeering and heckling.”

Bruni grew tired of Trump proclaiming things were “like nothing that has ever been seen before,” and called such comments “juvenile, narcissistic and “exhausting—like his speech.”

Republicans in the chamber appeared to love every statement, every denigration of Democrats, every false claim. Democrats did themselves no favors with juvenile reactions when they should have been composing constitutionally-loyal opposition positions.

Was there an adult in the room?

Now, here’s Daniel Dale and his CNN fact-checking staff:

President Donald Trump made numerous false and misleading claims…The falsehoods spanned a variety of topics, including the economy, climate, immigration and more.

In his speech, just under one hour and 40 minutes, Trump also made a number of false claims about his predecessor, Joe Biden. Here is a fact check of some of Trump’s statements:

DOGE savings: Trump claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative led by Elon Musk, has “found hundreds of billions of dollars” in fraud.

This figure, which is uncorroborated, needs context.

As of the day of Trump’s address to Congress, DOGE claimed on its website that its work has saved an estimated $105 billion for taxpayers.

But it hasn’t provided evidence to corroborate a figure that high.

DOGE listed about 2,300 contracts it claimed to have canceled across the federal government for a total claimed savings of about $8.9 billion. It also listed nearly 3,500 grants it claimed to have canceled for a total claimed savings of about $10.3 billion, but it provided no links or documentation for those cuts. And it listed about $660 million in savings from canceled government leases.

DOGE’s public tally has been marred with errors, and it has been repeatedly changed in recent weeks to remove some contracts identified as flawed by CNN and other media outlets — including a previous claim that it had saved $8 billion by canceling a contract that was actually worth a maximum of $8 million. Its website’s so-called wall of receipts has included contracts that were canceled during previous presidential administrations.Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.

 

Bottom of Form

Musk and other Trump allies have claimed DOGE’s work is aimed at targeting waste, fraud and abuse. But DOGE has not released evidence that the contracts it has canceled were fraudulent. And at least some of the cuts have been reversed amid criticism.

From CNN’s Casey Tolan

DOGE and transgender mice: Trump falsely claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency identified government spending of “$8 million for making mice transgender.”

Between the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, the National Institutes of Health awarded a total of $477,121 to three  projects that involved administering feminizing hormone therapy to monkeys to understand how it may affect their immune system and make them more susceptible to HIV. Feminizing hormone therapy is a gender-affirming treatment used to block the effects of the male hormone testosterone and promote feminine characteristics among transgender women.

Transgender women are nearly 50 times more likely to be infected with HIV than other adults, according to one study from 2013 across 15 countries, including the US. It’s not clear where the $8 million figure came from.

From CNN’s Deidre McPhillips

Trump on the economy

Trump’s tariffs: Trump, promoting his tariffs on imported foreign products, claimed that “we will take in trillions and trillions of dollars,” and he added that “I did it with China.” This is misleading at best. Tariffs are paid by US importers, not foreign exporters, and study after study, including  one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission, found that Americans bore almost the entire cost of Trump’s first-term tariffs on Chinese products. It’s easy to find specific examples of companies that passed along the cost of the tariffs to US consumers.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby

Small-business optimism: Trump said that “small-business optimism saw its single-largest one-month gain ever recorded — a 41-point jump.”

This claim needs context. If Trump was referring to the commonly cited NFIB Small Business Optimism Index (his spokespeople didn’t respond to a previous CNN request to clarify), his claim about a 41-point increase appears to be a reference to one component of the index — the percentage of small-business owners expecting the economy to improve — rather than the index as a whole. That measure did soar a  net 41 percentage points from pre-election October to post-election November.

And Trump didn’t mention that the total index then declined in January to a level that is still high but lower than it was under Trump in  September, 2020 and Octoger 2020 – less than five years ago.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Egg prices: Trump on Tuesday made the misleading claim that former President Joe Biden “let the price of eggs get out of control.”

The avian flu has caused egg prices to rise because the United States Department of Agriculture requires the culling of entire flocks to stop the spread if the virus is detected. It’s a practice that occurred during the Biden administration, but also one that is continuing under Trump as the virus continues to infect flocks nationwide.

When Biden took office, the average price of a carton of a dozen grade A eggs across US cities was $1.47, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. By January 2023, as avian flu spread to flocks nationwide, a dozen eggs rose to $4.82 on average, a 228% increase. By the time Biden left office in January, a carton of eggs cost $4.95 on average, a 2.7% increase from a year prior. Due to short supply,  egg prices are projected to increase by 41.1%  this year, according to the USDA’s food outlook as of February 25.

From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, Elisabeth Buchwald and Vanessa Yurkevich

Trump on efforts to fight climate change

Trump and “the Green New Scam”: Trump claimed that he terminated the “Green New Scam.”

This claim is inaccurate in various ways. Biden didn’t pass the original “Green New Deal,” a nonbinding resolution   introduced by progressive congressional Democrats in 2019 that was never turned into law. Trump hasn’t yet terminated the major environmental law Biden did pass, which is what Trump might be referring to as “the Green New Scam.” Trump has previously claimed the policy cost $9 trillion.

Biden signed a law in 2022 known as the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA,  containging $430 billion in climate and clean energy spending and tax credits.Independent estimates later raised the cost of that law to over $1 trillion by 2032, but the IRA actually saved the government $240 billion because of its increased tax enforcement and prescription drug savings, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. And importantly, the IRA’s tax credits spurred companies to build new factories and solar and wind farms in the US, creating jobs with it.

Trump and congressional Republicans haven’t killed the law, although they are aiming to take parts of it out later this year. Trump has effectively killed other climate policies Biden imposed through executive order, but it will take an act of Congress to reverse the former president’s signature climate bill.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Paris climate agreement: Trump touted withdrawing a second time from the Paris climate agreement, claiming in his speech to Congress that the landmark climate deal was costing the US “trillions of dollars that other countries were not paying.”

This claim is inaccurate. Biden pledged to pay $11.4 billion per year toward international climate financing upon taking office. However, the US contribution to a global finance goal ended up being far lower because Congress appropriated far less money than Biden’s goal. Biden’s State Department  announced it had allocated $5.8 billion to international climate finance by 2022. US climate finance contributions have never reached trillions of dollars.

The US wasn’t the only laggard on its climate finance commitments; other nations have struggled to meet a collective $100 billion climate financing goal meant to help countries vulnerable to sea level rise and droughts.  China, the UK and the EU have all contributed. That goal  was tripled to $300 billion annually by 2035 at the most recent United Nations Climate Conference.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Trump on border crossings and migrants

Illegal border crossings: Trump claimed that, since taking office again, he has already achieved the lowest number of illegal border crossings “ever recorded.” That’s false.

He could have accurately said the number of Border Patrol apprehensions at the southern border in February – the first full month of his second term – is the lowest in many decades, at least if it’s true that the number was 8,326, as he claimed on social media in early March. But  official  federal statistics show there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants at the southwest border in various months of the early 1960s, as well as in various months of previous decades.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Devan Cole

Migrants coming from mental institutions: Trump repeated his familiar claim Tuesday night about how other countries have supposedly released people from their “mental institutions and insane asylums” into the US as migrants. There is no evidence for the president’s claim, which Trump’s own presidential campaign was unable to corroborate. (The campaign was unable to provide any evidence even for his narrower claim that South American countries in particular were emptying their mental health facilities to somehow dump patients upon the US.)

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Haley Britzky

Trump on former President Joe Biden

Weaponizing the Justice Department: Trump claimed that Biden used his office to “viciously” prosecute him. That’s false.

Trump’s two federal indictments were brought by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Smith was appointed in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, but that is not proof that Biden was involved in the prosecution effort, much less that Biden personally ordered the indictments. Garland had said that he would resign if Biden ever asked him to act against Trump but that he was sure that would never happen. For Trump’s part, he has never provided any evidence that Biden was personally involved in the federal prosecutions.

The two cases were dropped by Smith after Trump was reelected.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Devan Cole

Inflation under Biden: Trump falsely claimed in his address to Congress that under the Biden administration America suffered the “worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country, they’re not sure.”

Trump could fairly say that the year-over-year US inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that’s not “48 years” — and this 9.1% rate was not close to the all-time record of 23.7% set in 1920.. The rate in the last full month of the Biden administration, December 2024, was  2.9%. It was 3% in January, 2025, , a month partly under Biden and partly under Trump.

Trump did qualify the claim with the word “perhaps” and “they’re not sure,” but there is no basis for the claim regardless, and those numbers are certain: The Consumer Price Index data goes back to 1913.

Inflation’s rapid ascent which began in early 2021, was the result of a confluence of factors, including effects from the Covid-19 pandemic such as snarled supply chains and geopolitical fallout (specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered food and energy price shocks. Heightened consumer demand boosted in part by fiscal stimulus from both the  Trump and Biden administrations also led to higher prices, as did the post-pandemic imbalance in the labor market.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Alicia Wallace

Undocumented immigrants: Trump falsely claimed Tuesday that 21 million undocumented immigrants came into the US during Biden’s tenure.

Through December 2024, the last full month of Biden’s presidency, the country had  recorded  under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants during that administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country; even adding in so-called gotaways who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million, there’s no way the total is “21 million.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Devan Cole

Agricultural purchases by China: Trump repeated a false claim that he got China to purchase $50 billion worth of agricultural goods during his first administration and that the Biden administration “didn’t enforce it.” That is misleading.

China agreed to increase agricultural purchases by $12.5 billion in 2020 and $19.5 billion in 2021, as part of a trade pact signed with the US in January 2020. That did occur in 2020 but not in 2021, when US agricultural exports to China increased by $6.4 billion compared with 2020, according to US Department of Agriculture data.

Nevertheless, the pact never specified that China would have to continue to keep up such purchase levels beyond 2021.

Rather, it said, “The Parties project that the trajectory of increases in the amounts of manufactured goods, agricultural goods, energy products, and services purchased and imported into China from the United States will continue in calendar years 2022 through 2025.”

Even still, 2022 surpassed 2021 levels of $33 billion, according to USDA data. However, by 2023, US agricultural exports to China declined by $9 billion.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald

Trump’s other claims

Autism rates: In his address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump spoke of the recent rise in autism prevalence in the US, saying that “not long ago, and you can’t even believe these numbers, one in 10,000 children had autism, one in 10,000, and now it’s one in 36.”

Some of the earliest studies on autism diagnosis from the 1960s and 1970s estimated reported autism prevalence to be in the range of 2 to 4 cases for every 10,000 children, but that was many decades ago. While the diagnosis rate has increased steadily in recent years, it was already 1 in 150 children in 2000, 25 years ago, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was indeed 1 in 36 children by age 8 in 2020.

Experts say significant improvement in identifying and diagnosing autism is a key driver behind the rise in reported rates.

From CNN’s Deidre McPhillips and Daniel Dale

Military recruitment: Trump claimed Tuesday that the US military is having “among the best recruiting results ever in the history of our services” and that the US Army had its “single-best recruiting month in 15 years” in January, adding that “just a few months ago” the US “couldn’t recruit anywhere.”

This needs context. According to  the Defense Department, military recruitment was already up over 10% in fiscal year 2024 compared with the year prior, and the delayed entry program for the active-duty military was up 10% in fiscal year 2025. The delayed entry program is a way for recruits to join the military but not ship out until a later date.

And looking specifically at the Army’s recruitment, former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, who served until January 20, told FOX News that the uptick started before Trump was elected — and that the Army in fact started seeing increased numbers in February 2024.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Social Security benefits: In an extended claim, Trump said 4.7 million people who are at least 100 years old are still listed in the Social Security Administration’s database and that “money is being paid to many of them.” However, this claim needs context.

The vast majority of these people do not have dates of death listed in Social Security’s database. But that doesn’t mean they are actually receiving monthly benefits.

Public data from the Social Security Administration  shows that about 89,000 people age 99 or over were receiving Social Security benefits in December 2024, not even close to the millions Trump invoked.

The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Leland Dudek, who was elevated to that post by the current Trump administration, tried to set the record straight in a February statement.

“The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” Dudek said.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby and Daniel Dale

Aid to Ukraine: Trump repeated a regular false claim that the US has spent $350 billion, “like taking candy from a baby,” to support Ukraine’s defense while Europe has collectively provided just $100 billion in aid. That is not close to correct.

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks wartime aid to Ukraine, Europe – the European Union plus individual European countries – had collectively committed far more total wartime military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine through December 2024 (about $263 billion at current exchange rates) than the US committed (about $126 billion). Europe had also allocated more military, financial and humanitarian aid (about $140 billion) than the US allocated (about $121 billion).

The US did have a slim lead in one particular category, military aid allocated, providing about $68 billion compared with about $66 billion from Europe. But even that was nowhere close to the giant gulf Trump described.

It’s possible to arrive at different totals using different counting methodologies, but there is no apparent basis for Trump’s “$350 billion” figure. The US government inspector general overseeing the Ukraine response says on its website that the US had appropriated nearly $183 billion for the Ukraine response through December 2024, including about $83 billion actually disbursed – and that includes funding spent in the US or sent to  countries other than Ukraine.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Alicia Wallace

Panama Canal deaths: Trump delivered a slightly vaguer than usual version of his repeated false claim that 38,000 Americans died during the building of the Panama Canal. That figure is not even close to true, experts on the canal’s construction say.

Experts on the canal say it’s not even close to true that 38,000 Americans died during construction.

While the century-old records are imprecise, they show about 5,600 people died during the canal’s American construction phase between 1903 and 1914 – and “of those, the vast majority were Afro-Caribbeans,” such as workers from Barbados and Jamica, said  Julie Greene, , a history professor at the University of Maryland and author of the book “The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal.”

The late historian David McCullough, author of another book on the building of the canal, found that “the number of white Americans who died was about 350.”Thousands of additional orkers, perhaps around 22,000, died during the French construction phase that preceded the American phase. But Trump strongly suggested he was talking about American deaths, as he has explicitly said on previous occasions.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Great? 

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We have a place at the end of these entries for people to respond to them. I hope the Trumpers will do that today—

And explain how last week’s disgusting performance in the meeting with Ukraine’s President in any way makes America Great.

To whom?

Well, Russia thinks America is great.  Donald Trump thinks browbeating and bullying the president of a country fighting off takeover from a cruel, controlling, all-powerful despotic leader of a gigantically larger country makes our America great, at least in his own self-dominated mind.

HERE’S how American can be great—–but Trump’s own cruel, controlling, all-powerful self-image won’t let him do it:

Persuade his good friend Vlad to stop the invasion of Ukraine. Withdraw.  Offer Russia security protections against invasion from Ukraine.

He won’t do it. He can’t do it. He’s already speaking from Vlad’s pocket when he accuses Ukraine of starting the war.

Imagine if Roosevelt in 1939 had accused Poland of invading Germany; England of launching a blitzkrieg against Germany in 1940, Hawaii of bombing Tokyo in ’41.  Imagine if Truman accused South Korea of starting a war in 1950 by invading North Korea.  Or if George H. W. Bush had charged Kuwait with invading Iraq in 1990.

Just think how much greater we would be now if those presidents hadn’t made the mistakes Trump refuses to make today.

The greatness of America on the world stage is gone and it is becoming smaller in the international rear-view mirror.  It’s even growing smaller in our own rear-view mirror with every day of crude butchery of our own government, with every day that the faceless bureaucrats who try to make our government work for US are threatened with the loss of their jobs by people who have little appreciation for laboring on behalf of other people.

So tell me, Trumpers, in the dialogue box at the end of this entry, just how Trump is making our country great by doing the things to his own people that he is doing.  Look ahead, and tell me how our lives will be better a year from now.

Don’t send me an email.  My name is on every one of these entries. I expect those with differing opinions to have enough courage to stand behind their words with their names.

Make me think how great my country is today.  Make me proud of my president.  Make me sufficiently grateful.

Eyes on the Prize; Blind to Freedom 

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Making a deal with the Devil puts the Devil in charge.  Chickens making agreements with foxes soon realize the fox in the hen house always is hungry.

Freedom is not a business proposition. Those who try to make it so are less concerned with freedom than with ownership and exploitation. Acceptance of a business proposition by a battle-scarred country will an an acceptance of less independence by the people of that country and acceptance of less independence can only bring about a loss of freedom.

Ukraine is not a hotel, a country club, a casino, a university that can be run into bankruptcy while the person behind it walks away unscathed.  It is not a commodity such as coins, tennis shoes, and Bibles never read.  Freedom cannot be bought, sold, or traded.  There are no international bankruptcy laws that protect the freedoms lost by a people who become victims of a loser business man with an extensive record of deals gone sour.

And when a United States President asserts that an innocent nation minding its own business caused its own invasion by a ruthless despot is unforgiveable.

The freedom of Ukraine must be protected. It is too precious to be considered something that can be  bought or traded for. Once freedom has been achieved, it is worth fighting for even against overwhelming odds. Ukraine does not deserve someone who would force a devastated country to sell a major part of its economy in return for a peace without security or reparations.

And it is even more repugnant than that.

Anyone who would proclaim that Ukraine started the war with Russia and is willing to deal away Ukraine’s freedom as a business investment is an international disgrace, especially when representing a country that has been the shining example of freedom to the rest of the world.

It is betrayal of what this country stands for.

Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize. He envies Barack Obama for winning it. He thinks he can demand it for himself by forcing another nation to give up a large chunk of its independence to end an accused war criminal’s invasion.

To hear his incoherent and lying babbling about the victimization of Russia-–even his former media apologists at FOX News struggle to tolerate it—must raise questions about his mental state and the damage he is doing both internally and externally to   our country.

Yes, he won the election. But every day he demonstrates his disrespect for the history of the nation he leads and every day he sees himself less as a defender of freedom and more as a shady wheeler-dealer who cares only about power and possession.

Donald Trump is proving every day that he belongs in a padded room, not the oval office.

Contrary to the song, Freedom’s just another word for EVERYTHING left to lose. Too bad we have a President who doesn’t care who loses it whether it is the people of another country or people of his own.

The Meritocracy

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We are waiting to see the day the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion do two things.

  1. Proclaims Black History Month will not be recognized.
  2. Eliminate the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Black History Month began as “Negro History Week” in 1926 at the urging of one of our nation’s greatest Black historians, Carter G. Woodson, and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, with Woodson saying it was important to the cultural survival of Blacks within the broader White society.  The week was observed in the February week when the birth of Abraham Lincoln was celebrated.

He commented, “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated. The American Indian left no continuous record. He did not appreciate the value of tradition; and where is he today? The Hebrew keenly appreciated the value of tradition, as is attested by the Bible itself. In spite of worldwide persecution, therefore, he is a great factor in our civilization.”

The Black United Students group and Black educators at Kent State University proposed in 1969 that the week-long celebration become Black History Month.  The first observance was in 1970.

President Ford endorsed it as part of the national Bicentennial celebrations in 1976.

But with the arrival of the second Trump term, Black History Month appeared to be on somewhat shaky ground.  One of the first things Trump did when resuming office was to sign an executive order ending “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government.”

Within a matter of days, agencies were circulating memos, many of them announcing in terms similar to the line used by a Justice Department memo, “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”

To the surprise of some, Trump did sign a proclamation recognizing Black History Month at the start of February calling on American citizens and public officials to “celebrate the contributions of so many black American patriots who have indelibly shaped our Nation’s history.”

EEOC:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission exists but President Trump has rendered it useless, as he has the National Labor Relations Board.

Acting quickly after resuming office, he fired then-Chairman Charlotte Burrows, a Biden appointee who became the first chairman ever fired by a President. He also canned Commissioner Joycelyn Samuels, one of his own appointees from 2020, leaving only two members of the five-member commission. Trump appointee Andrea Lucas was named the acting chair. She is identified as a strong opponent of DEI programs, which she says promote reverse discrimination. The also is known as a critic of legal protections for transgender people. Her term expires July 1.

Failure to reappoint her or to name a successor will leave only Kalpana Kotagel on the commission.  Kotagel is an African-American employment attorney appointee of President Biden. Her term expires in 2027, potentially leaving the commission with no members.

Kotagel is doomed.  She’s the kind of person Trump loves to hate. As a private attorney, she specialized in DEI cases, particularly involving the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and has represented clients in other civil rights employment actions. Four years ago she worked with the Transgender Defense and Educational Fund when Aetna Insurance Company granted access to breast augmentation surgery for male policyholders who underwent surgery to become women. She also is a member of the Advisory Board Office of Equity and Inclusion at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trump criticized the EEOC in his first term as ineffective and took no steps to make it so. The commission’s staff has been cut by more than 40% by Congress.

About the same time he was ravaging the EEOC, Trump fired National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a Biden appointee, and Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB also with just two members and three vacancies, thus unable to do any business.

In place of these and other programs created to insure qualified people have equal chances to become employed, Trump trumpets the meritocracy, saying people should be hired on the basis of merit, not race or other factors. But he has dismantled the agencies that were established to make sure that everybody was considered on their merits.

And he has celebrated the month by firing a lot of Black American patriots—including, just last week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who are shaping our present.  Someday our present will be someone else’s past.  We hope those of the future are harsh in their judgments of our present and the President who is making it.

The Gulf

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It’s the Gulf of Mexico. Period.

And calling it the Gulf of America is as silly as some people got after the September 2001 terrorist attacks when France opposed our invasion of Iraq by deciding to call French fries, Freedom Fries.

The pettiness and immaturity of a 78-year old man with a superiority complex was played out a few days ago when he threw a tantrum and banished an Associated Press reporter from an Oval Office press conference dominated not by the old man but by his  hatchet man. The reporters was not banned because he asked an impertinent question of either of the stars of the event.

He was barred from the event because the Associated Press won’t call the Gulf of Mexico the presidentially-designated Gulf of America.

To begin with, Trump’s executive order on the Gulf shows his usual ignorance of and respect for maritime/economic law and the authority of individuals as well as countries to keep calling it the Gulf of Mexico.

But never trouble Donald Trump with facts or with respecting any system, nations, and cultures that long-ago legally or at least culturally designated names of places.

Renaming Denali, for example, is disrespectful of the Koyukon Athabascan people who have lived in that area for centuries and have called it Denali. Not until 1896 was it called Mt. McKinley, and not by any official action or decision by an international naming agency but by a gold miner who started calling it McKinley to support a presidential candidate. President Wilson signed a bill in 1917 making McKinley the official name.

But the state of Alaska asked in 1975 that the United States Board on Geographical Place Names make the official name to the traditional Denali. Ohio Congressman Ralph Regula blocked it because McKinley’s hometown of Canton was in his district and he didn’t seem to care what generations of natives had called the mountain long before he came along. Canton is a long ways from Alaska and surely Regula (who died a few years ago) could have found something closer to home with which to make a headline.

The Board of Geographical Place Names?

The King of Renaming Puffery apparently does not know, or does not care about, the existence of such a body that was created in 1897 and assumed its present status by federal law in 1947. The board, part of the Department of the Interior, tries to allocate place names based on local custom “as well as principles, policies, and procedures governing the use of domestic names, foreign names, Antarctic names, and undersea feature names,” as one source puts it. More than fifty other nations have similar national bodies.

Such organizations are necessary to avoid confusion about what is what and where that what is.

Then there is the United Nations Economic and Social Council  and its nine-member Group of Experts on Geographical Names that has been reviews things every five years, beginning in 1960. Having a commonly-used name of a place is important in domestic and international trade.

But we are learning that this President has no regard for federal agencies or international programs, especially when he decides to show his power by ignoring them with executive orders. And woe be unto anyone who does not worship his impulses.

Here’s the deal about the Gulf of Whatever—

The United States does not OWN the Gulf of Mexico.  The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea grants countries control of waters about twelve nautical miles from the country’s shores. That’s the closest this country has to owning a gulf, a sea, or an ocean.

There also is an “Exclusive Economic Zone” that covers 200 miles of offshore water. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the zone allows this country to “explore, exploit, conserve and manage natural resources” in that area. That zone overlaps similar zones for Mexico and Cuba. But they don’t count in inner Trumpworld.

So the Great Geopolitician is asserting authority over Mexico and Cuba with his MAGA-pleasing proclamation, something outside his and his country’s authority. The solution to his situation should be easy for him: Make Mexico our 52nd state and Cuba our 53rd.

Canada already is in line to become number 51. And that brings us to another issue for our President and our takeover of Canada.

What’s with this St. Lawrence Seaway thing?

It allows oceangoing ships to travel from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Duluth, Minnesota.  It’s named for the St. Lawrence River that links Lake Ontario to the Atlantic. We expect an executive order soon renaming the thoroughfare the Duluth Seaway.

And while we’re at it, why is it the Missouri River when there are so many other states involved?  We can’t call it the Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska-Iowa-North Dakota-South Dakota, Montana River.  Let’s simplify it and just call it The Trump River and make it a symbol of his success at bringing the county together.

And then—

The administration’s new Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum says the department is considering redrawing boundaries of our national parks and historic sites so there’s more room to drill, baby, drill—even though we understand the major petroleum companies are less enthusiastic about the increased supply that will lower the pump prices of gas and oil.  But as long as we’re tinkering with those parks and historic sites—-

Let’s add the scowling Presidential visage to Mount Rushmore although rock experts have told the National Park Service the remaining rock is unstable.

It might be the perfect place for a Trump sculpture after all

(Actually, increased drilling should be welcomed by consumers who will pay less for the fuel it takes to buy their more-expensive groceries.)

And while we’re talking about the Gulf of Mexico, why don’t we annex the Caribbean?

Now back to the AP reporter. Trump’s action constitutes a punishment for a news agency that reports the news in a way he does not like.  That’s been illegal since John Peter Zenger was accused of libel by the Royal Governor of New York because Zenger’s New York Journal published an editorial critical of Governor William Cosby.

Cosby issued a proclamation condemning Zenger’s newspaper for “divers scandalous, virulent, false, and seditious reflections,” a crude eloquence we won’t find on (Un)Truth Social. It doesn’t even have an exclamation point, a misspelling, and a capitalized word.

Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton—the father of Alexander—argued that truth is an absolute defense against libel. It took a jury only ten minutes to find Zenger not guilty, a judgment that established press freedom in this country.

Trump’s hissy fit because the AP recognizes the internationally-established name for the Gulf of Mexico, while not a libel, is an exercise of press freedom. The press is not obligated to print the party line or the individual declaration of anyone, including Presidents with a totalitarian attitude.

–or as the AP put it, “As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audience.”  The AP does agree to change the mountain to Mt. McKinley in its style book.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment advocacy group, commented, “President Trump has the authority to change how the U. S. government refers to the Gulf. But he cannot punish a new organization for using another term.”

Well, he did.  And he’s moving to punish news organizations who dare question his bloviating about any issue that pops into his head.

Someday, perhaps, we’ll get into a discussion of “America,” another word about which Trump is, shall we say, extremely uneducated.

Some General, Generally Biased, Observations

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We cannot help but reflect on the man whose birthday is today. You know, the guy who said in his second inaugural:

“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

We have a retread President who is 78 years old but acting as if he’s just seven and seems immune to rational thought (see Greenland, Canada, Panama, sh—thole countries in general  including Haiti, El Salvador, and all African countries), fawning about Putin, Xi, Erdogan, and North Korea’s Un and only, California wildfires caused by poor raking of leaves in forests, having the Army shoot protestors in the legs, claiming to be a Christian whose favorite Bible verse is “Two Corinthians,” a billionaire who wants to be like his idols—Musk and Bezos, etc., and so forth)

Forbes in 2023 listed him as only 420th on its list of 1490 billionaires, behind Republican whipping boy George Soros (410) various members of the Walton family, and well behind Charles Koch, who was 67th but who has a bottomless check book that he uses to influence political candidates—or buy them, as some suspect. Musk and Bezos were 1-2. Trump admires them for their wealth. Being around them makes him feel bigger.  He wants to be them.

A few days before his re-inauguration, he bragged that his administration already had hired 1,000 people some of whom will replace some of the THREE MILLION people who are federal employees now, about 2.3 million being full-time. The military makes up 775-thousand, the largest segment. Veterans Affairs involves another 476-thousand.

Adding one-thousand people while proclaiming he’ll make big cuts in the government payroll sees a little counter-intuitive. He and some of his acolytes want to eliminate the federal education department.  We recently checked and found doing so would eliminate about 4,150 jobs.,

Wow!  Our  billionaire president eliminates an entire department in which the average employee earns $130 thousand a year. Don’t think that’s excessive until you’ve read the real estate ads in the Washington, D.C. metro area yet.

In that same message he asked people quit referring people to him such as  “people who worked with, or are endorsed by Americans for No Prosperity (headed by Charles Koch), “Dumb as a rock John Bolton, “Birdbrain Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, disloyal Warmongers Dick Cheney and his psycho daughter, Liz, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, (General(?) Mark Milley, James Mattis, Mark Yester, or any of the other people suffering from Trump derangement Syndrome.”

What’s with the question mark next to General Milley’s name? He was just the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, capping a distinguished military career of 44 years, which is only about 44 years more than the question mark served.

At least he didn’t call Pence a traitor.  At least not this time. But the rest of it—the name-calling?

If you lack the intellectual capability to do anything else, you can always call somebody a name. “Poopy Head” is a good one for seven-year olds. When he was in office the first time, maybe he should have sent Poopy head Milley to serve in one of his famous sh—hole countries.

As for those who were endorsed by “Americans for No Prosperity,“ Charles Koch is worth about ten times more than lowly number 420.  But we doubt that he and most of the others—especially those higher than 420, have better things to do than sit at their computer all night dreaming up derogatory names of people who not only are far wealthier than he is, but in many cases probably better people.

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Having taken our retread President to task in the comments above, let us congratulate him for his brilliant idea that the Palestinians from Gaza should be sent to other places while he takes their damaged homeland and turns it into a beautiful place for the right kind of people.

His idea is very American.  And his plan was part of the original Make America Great plan.

It is uncomfortable for many who raise this point because they might be considered “woke,” and your correspondent realizes the risk he runs by reminding us of this proud part of our heritage—when good Christian people “helped” natives of another land move elsewhere after the systematic destruction of their cultures so the vacated land could be developed and inhabited by better people.

You might have heard of some of these places:

Navajo Nation, Uinta and Ouray, Thono O’odham, Standing Rock, Crow, Wind River, Pine Ridge, Fort Peck, and San Carlos Indian Reservations.

So don’t be critical of our President for suggesting natives go someplace else so others can turn their abandoned lands into profitable enterprises. He’s just continuing a cherished American tradition.

Let’s wrap up today’s spleen-letting with these two observations:

Given the nonsense that has emanated from the Trump Royal Golf Course in Florida, we suggest its name be changed to Mar-a-Liego.  And when his time in the White House is over and if there is to be built a place to hold and study his unclassified and classified papers, it would be appropriate to refer to it as the Presidential Liebrary.

     

 

The Portrait

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It is not hard to dislike Donald Trump, especially if one overlooks the idea that he is, was, and always will be an unconventional President, to grossly understate his description.  Or if one does not understate it.

The fact is that he pulled off one of the most remarkable turn-arounds, perhaps THE most remarkable turnaround in American political history—although it was not the landslide he brags it was (in terms of the popular vote; although the electoral college was equally landslidey to the whipping he took four years earlier from Joe  Biden) .

You obedient observer does not recall anyone asking Trump him, as one asks those departing from office, how he wishes to be remembered. Trump already has answered that question with his presidential portrait for his second term.

If he wants to be remembered for this glowering, angry, and threatening image for the next century or two or more (we hope), so be it.  From his standpoint, that’s who he is today.

It’s a far cry from the portrait for his first term, which is used by the Trump Presidential Library.

The two portraits contrast the different places that Trump’s life has taken him as he regains the White House. The first exudes confidence, health, vigor, and excitement about being in the oval office, a winner. It’s a friendly image. He was a robust 70 then.

The second image is of a bitter old   man, worn by four years of well-deserved legal proceedings, one of which made him a felon and the second of which has seen an escalation of damages to more than one-half billion dollars while he appeals the finding. It shows a man driven by revenge, a man comfortable with his reputation as a bully who does not forgive those who question his lies or a country that will not be intimidated by his threats.

It is reminiscent of his mug shot taken at the Fulton County, Georgia jail, the first criminal mug shot taken of any previous President.  Reprinting it on t-shirts made him a lot of money.

And yes, there IS a Trump Presidential Library. It’s a website run by the National Archives nd Records Administration, the very organization he did not want to give some of his records to.  It’s considered a placeholder until a brick and mortar library is put up.

He’s 78 now, battered and facing questions about his own psychological stability—the same issue that dogged his predecessor in the recent campaign.

HuffPost writer Kimberly Richards consulted with some body language experts about what the portrait says. One, Mike Bowden, says the portrait “conveys a sense of aggression…the impression of intense targeting or scrutiny, as if he’s locked onto a subject.” He thinks the portrait “echoes the defiance” we see in the mug shot and turns it into “a statement of power and control” and a “readiness to confront and dominate.”

The CEO of the Body Language Institute, Janine Driver, thinks the new image “conveys    authority and determination. The absence of a smile signals seriousness, perhaps an effort to project strength…Whether one admires or critiques him, it’s hard to deny the intentionality behind every element of this new portrayal.”

I hate to say it but—wait, I don’t hate to say it:

The new portrait looks more like a mob boss than a President.  It looks like a man totally wrapped up in himself, the general population be damned.

But best of all, it looks like Donald Trump and it is the image that will represent who and what he is for generations to come. It is an image he carried through his inauguration—

—and is continuing through the next four years.

If he wants to be remembered as this kind of person, we will respect one of his few demonstrations of a commitment to truth.

The VEEP

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Andy Borowitz is a New York-based humorist and political commentator who a few days ago posted this on The Borowitz Report:

MUSK’S DEPT. OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY CUTS POSITION OF VICE PRESIDENT

(WASHINGTON—The Borowitz Report) —Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has eliminated the position of vice president of the United States, Musk announced on Monday.

“The job of the vice president is to fill in for the president if he falls ill,” Musk said. “This seemed unnecessary since I’m in superb health.”

Musk added that he was inspired to cut the VP position “because JD Vance hasn’t been seen in weeks and no one’s missed him.”

According to sources within DOGE, Vance will immediately be reassigned as a used Tesla salesman.

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Well, is a Vice-President about as useful as a (fill in the blank)?

His or her main importance is that the Veep will become the Prez if the big guy is ruled incapable of continuing in office.

One of country’s best-ever syndicated political commentators, Jules Witcover, wrote a book that came out in 2014, The Americam Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power.  His column that came out on October 18, 2014, was headlined, “Come On, Joe, Being Veep Ain’t So Bad: The Virtues of the vice-president.”

We have a new Veep, one who seemed to disappear at some point in the recent campaign; not an unusual situation when the presidential nominee sucks all of the air out of a room or out of a campaign. But it’s likely he will become more visible because he’s likely to break a lot of votes, as he did a few days ago when he broke a tie to confirm a new cabinet member. We enjoyed Witcover’s column so much that we offer it now that  J.D. Vance has become America’s official second banana. .

The general public regard for the American vice presidency was once summed up by Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s standby, in the sad story of a man who had two sons. One was lost at sea, the other became vice president of the United States, and neither was ever heard from again. Wilson offered his own judgment of Marshall by once unguardedly referring to him as “a small-caliber man.”

The office of the vice presidency has never ceased to be the brunt of ridicule—even by its very occupants. Vice President Joe Biden at Harvard last week jokingly derided the office as “a bitch” before quickly insisting, perhaps less convincingly, that taking it was the “best decision I ever made.”

Not all vice presidents would say the same, especially most of the early, long-forgotten ones like Daniel Tompkins, George Dallas and William King. But despite Marshall’s and Biden’s gibes, most latter-day occupants of the second office have been significant—in some cases, essential—presidential partners in governing the country, attesting to the power of the role. Often, less-than-illustrious vice presidential performances have had less to do with the office itself than with the selection of running mates by presidents-to-be and how well, once elected, they made use of their seconds-in-command. If being vice president is like being lost at sea, it’s because, as history confirms, for too long presidents picked their VPs frivolously or carelessly and then left them to drift.

The first three presidents—George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson—had no say whatsoever concerning the identity of their vice presidents, as the Constitution stipulated that the runner-up in the balloting for president would get the job. The faults of this system were soon apparent. Adams, as Washington’s first veep, observed woefully, not unlike Biden, that “in this I am nothing, but I may be everything.” The second VP, Thomas Jefferson, used much of his four years in the office subverting his boss by creating what eventually became the Democratic Party, while publicly deploring “factions” in the young nation’s politics. (He once insisted, “if I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go at all.” Two centuries later, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was moved to observe: “Even Jefferson soon decided that, with the right party, he would be willing to go, if not to heaven, at least to the White House.”)

By 1804, when the Twelfth Amendment was ratified, it had become clear that the existing VP selection system meant members of rival factions might be forced to work together, imperiling continuity of policy if a vice president succeeded to the presidency. At first, the path to the vice presidency was often through the death of a commander in chief. Eight accidental presidents, from John Tyler to Lyndon Johnson reached the Oval Office through the death of their party leader (though Tyler opportunistically turned Whig once he was president), and Gerald Ford got there by way of Richard Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal.

Other Vice Presidents Who Hated Their Job

“Look at all the Vice Presidents in history. Where are they? They were about as useful as a cow’s fifth teat.” —Harry Truman

“Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice president of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again.”  —Thomas R. Marshall

“I go to funerals. I go to earthquakes.” —Nelson Rockefeller

“I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president.” —Theodore Roosevelt, before becoming William McKinley’s vice president

“I have no interest in it. Might very well turn it down, indeed, and probably would.” —Al Gore, before becoming Bill Clinton’s vice president

“The vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm piss.” —John Nance Garner

But in the modern era, seekers of the two top offices, for practical purposes, have run on the same ticket—and increasingly the president wisely has decided to make greater use of the second office in governance. For too many years, presidents basically ignored their understudy as they clung warily to their power and closely guarded presidential secrets. In 1945, when Vice President Harry Truman took the Oval Office after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he hadn’t even been told that the atomic bomb that would end World War II was near completion. Succeeding vice presidents were generally kept better informed, but 30 more years passed before they were employed in a manner commensurate to their experience and skills. Even Lyndon Johnson, master of the U.S. Senate prior to becoming John F. Kennedy’s second-in-command, was essentially kept on the sidelines as key Kennedy aides handled major legislative matters, to LBJ’s immense frustration.

Ironically, not until a Washington outsider named Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 was the vice president made a genuine presidential partner. Carter personally interviewed and chose running mate Walter Mondale, a U.S. senator from Minnesota, who, in alliance with the president, was most responsible for the evolution of the second office.

In a sense, the defeated 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern inadvertently played a role in the development of the Mondale model. After selecting Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his original running mate under the pressures of a contested national convention, McGovern dropped him upon disclosure that Eagleton had received electric-shock therapy for mental depression. The furor persuaded Carter four years later to conduct a thorough personal vetting of several running-mate prospects, including Mondale.

In advance of Mondale’s interview by Carter in Plains, Georgia, the senator’s chief of staff Richard Moe drew up a detailed memorandum on what Carter seemed to need and want in a vice president. Mondale and Moe then crafted a paper describing what Mondale could offer and sent it to Carter, who bought into it at once. When he met Mondale, Carter told him: “I want you to be in the chain of command—a vice president with the power to act in the president’s place.”

Once installed in the White House, Carter and Mondale together created the modern model for putting the vice presidency to work fulltime. Carter gave Mondale complete access to him in the Oval Office and to his inner circle, and made him his chief adviser in dealing with Congress, about which Carter had no experience, as was often revealed.

Since then, after a long history of idle and near-invisible occupants, the office has evolved into a vehicle of notable political power. Four of the last six vice presidents—Mondale, Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Joe Biden—have had major roles in governing the nation never envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Their power, to be sure, has been delegated by the presidents under whom they’ve served; the Constitution gives the vice president only two roles, as presidential standby and president of the U.S. Senate, without a vote except to break a tie. These four, however VPs, and to a lesser extent two others—the senior George Bush, who later was elected president in his own right, and his vice president, Dan Quayle—also had access to the president and freedom to weigh in on certain policy decisions.

The senior Bush, who first ran for president against Ronald Reagan in 1980 before becoming his VP, professed to abhor the vice presidency. When asked whether he would accept it, he repeatedly said: “Take Sherman and cube it,” referring to the Civil War general’s declaration that “if nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve.” But in the end, Bush took the job and kept a low profile, particularly as Reagan recovered from the 1981 assassination attempt that could have made his stand-in the president.

When Bush was elected president in 1988, for a sort of third Reagan term that distinctly didn’t turn out that way, he startled the political world by selecting the singularly unimpressive Quayle as his running mate. Presidential nominees always vow they will pick the individual most qualified to succeed to the presidency if destiny dictates, but Bush appeared to pick his own Bush as vice president—a youthful and pleasant enough fellow from a well-off conservative family who would happily serve in the shadow of the president. But the gaffe-prone choice was particularly baffling inasmuch as Bush himself, only weeks into his own vice presidency, had come within inches of the presidency in that shooting of Reagan.

Reagan followed the Mondale model in bringing Bush into the West Wing, but without the same regular access. Clinton in 1992 adopted the model with Gore but gave him specific areas of responsibility in government reorganization and cleaning up the environment.

George W. Bush also assigned his vice president specific areas of responsibility—in this case, in military and foreign policy matters—but went a step further. In 2001, the junior Bush allowed Cheney to set up what in some respects was a parallel staff of his own, with key former aides also placed elsewhere in the administration, assuring Cheney broad influence. In turn, Cheney took on roles in expanding presidential powers and wartime policies. His advocacy of intelligence-gathering and treatment of prisoners and detainees cast him almost as a de facto assistant president. Ironically, Bush had asked Cheney to help him find a running mate, and in effect he wound up finding himself.

Biden, after first telling Barack Obama he could better serve his country by continuing as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, agreed to be his running mate on Obama’s promise that he would always “be in the room” when major decisions were made. Like Mondale, Biden would serve as a general adviser without departmental or other limiting responsibilities, as both VPs had desired. In office, however, Biden has taken on some specific policy assignments such as overseeing the use of economic stimulus funds in the states and cities and being the administration’s voice for middle-class concerns—and, for good or ill, overseeing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

The most successful vice presidential candidates seem to be the ones explicitly chosen for their judgment and competence. Of course, even in recent experience, this yardstick is not always used. Beyond the senior Bush’s selection of the gaffe-prone Quayle, Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s gamble on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in 2008 confirmed that White House aspirants remain capable of yielding to purely political judgments of what may get them elected. Palin proved to be a charismatic running mate but was also one woefully ill-informed on matters that would come to a president’s desk, which might very well have contributed to McCain’s margin of defeat.

In most other cases, the vice presidency has not been much of a stepping-stone to the presidency. After Adams and Jefferson became vice president as runners-up in the soon-discarded presidential balloting, only two occupants, Martin Van Buren and the senior George Bush, ever have been elected directly from the second office—and both lost reelection. Three vice presidents, Mondale, Hubert Humphrey and Gore, did win their party’s presidential nomination, but were left outside the Oval Office looking in. Biden probably won’t even get that far.

Nevertheless, the vice presidency has come a long way, even since its lowest point in 1973, when Spiro Agnew was forced to resign as he faced conviction for taking payoffs from construction contractors as governor in Maryland and later in the White House. President Richard Nixon, himself imperiled in the Watergate scandal, at first regarded Agnew as his insurance policy. A 1973 White House tape caught Nixon telling aides: “Impeach Nixon? Well, then they get Agnew.” And later: “No assassin in his right mind would kill me. They know that if they did they would end up with Agnew!” On another occasion, Nixon considered removing Agnew from the line of presidential succession by appointing him to … the Supreme Court!

Fortunately, most recent presidential nominees have taken to heart their responsibility to choose VPs reasonably qualified to become president. But voters still look to the top of the ticket at the ballot box, leaving to presidents thereafter to make the most—or least—of who’s waiting in the wings.

Today, J. D. Vance, seemingly “the man who wasn’t there” during the latter weeks of the campaign and pretty much since then, has become the gentleman-in-waiting should the oldest person ever inaugurated in the presidency not make it to his political 18th green.

*Jules Witcover and I share the same birth day.  He is about 13-14 years older than I am but is an inspiration to the younger generation of political observers, of which I am a part.   I didn’t say WHICH younger generation, but younger.

Hearing a Speech Never Given 

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A few minutes before President Kennedy was to arrive at the Dallas Trade Mart on November 22, 1963, he was murdered.

Some of his planned remarks are useful for us to consider today. The text of the speech is available from numerous sources.

But what if he had lived to deliver it?

Well, we now have an idea of how it would have sounded.

A few days ago, I listened to  John Kennedy deliver that speech, in which he said, among other things::

“Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country’s security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

“There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable…

“We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will ‘talk sense to the American people.’ But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.”

As he neared the end of his speech he would have cited how American leadership through strength had blunted the Soviet Union’s expansionism.  He would have said:

“. There is no longer any doubt about the strength and skill of American science, American industry, American education, and the American free enterprise system.”

He would have warned, “In today’s world, freedom can be lost without a shot being fired, by ballots as well as bullets. The success of our leadership is dependent upon respect for our mission in the world as well as our missiles – on a clearer recognition of the virtues of freedom as well as the evils of tyranny.”

He would have concluded, “Our adversaries have not abandoned their ambitions, our dangers have not diminished, our vigilance cannot be relaxed. But now we have the military, the scientific, and the economic strength to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom…

“We in this country, in this generation, are – by destiny rather than choice – the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: ‘except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’

Artificial Intelligence can be monstrously good and monstrously evil, which is why it is so frightening to many of those who have seen past promises of peaceful and proper use of technology turned inside out by those who have exploited them.  So it can be with AI, which is alternatively exciting and frightening.

But AI also has given us John Kennedy’s voice giving the speech he never lived to give.  You can read how it was done and then hear the speech here;

JFK video: hear Kennedy’s ‘lost’ Dallas speech in his own voice

The technology is remarkable—-and it is just beginning its ascendency.  And while listening to how technology has woven words into speech, it is more important to focus on the words never spoken—

“We in this country, in this generation, are – by destiny rather than choice – the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint,”

AI has given us that speech. Will human intelligence let us appreciate it in these angry times?

 

Another Nasty Woman Speaks Up

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Trumpworld has had a spasm—as expected—to a religious leader who had the nerve to call on the President to be a real religious person, not just someone who uses faith as a political crutch.

It started with the President himself, who has proclaimed that God saved him from an assassin’s bullet so he could become the nation’s leader. Washington, D.C. Episcopal Bishop Marianne Budde looked at the President in a national prayer service the day after his inauguration and told him,  “You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”

She really stirred the Trumpian bladder when she continued, “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We’re scared now. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”

She also pleaded for him to be merciful to the LGBTQ+ community.

Trump can’t stand anyone who speaks truth to him, especially a woman. He was deeply offended: “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!”

Long on invective. Short on facts. Donald being the usual Donald. Another “nasty” woman had confronted him. And the several studies that show the crime rate among immigrants is well below the crime rate of native-born Americans are of no interest to him. But don’t expect him to respect any facts other than those he creates.

The cutaways during the service showed someone who probably preferred to be anywhere but there.

One of the offended  parties is Congressman Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma. We’re going to challenge an opinion piece he wrote in the wake of the well-deserved pulpit remarks and we are going to take them apart piece by piece.

As a believer, I attended the service for the purpose of praying for our nation, President Trump, the president’s family, and the success of his administration.

(He obviously fails to understand that is exactly what most of us pray for these days, although our definition of “success” will differ from his. He wants success for Trump while others want success for our nation—the two not being alike.)

I purposely left the prayer service early after realizing how the pulpit was being used for left-wing activism and not for true worship unto God, to seek His will and wisdom. Mr. President, what accosted you at the prayer service was political–not biblical.

(Oh, really?  This is in contrast to a President and his supporters who have used religion for his right wing political purposes,  peddles grossly overpriced reprints of a 17th Century Bible and claims it is his favorite book but seldom darkens the door of a worship center and shows inclination to do unto others what he would want to be done unto him or—better—the reverse.

Congressman Brecheen likes to cite Bible verses to support his assertions. That’s one of the Bible’s problems; it can be cherry-picked to support any position.

We have or are thinking of a series of verses with which he and other Trumpians appear to be ignorant or choose to ignore, verses that Contributor Annette Griffin has written for Biblestudymaterials.com are a “series of blessings highlighting the qualities and attitudes valued in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Matthew 5, 3-12:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the clean in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

That seem to pretty well cover all of the people President Trump doesn’t like.

The congressman is correct. The Bishop made the mistake of building her remarks on the Sermon on the Mount when she should have fallen in line and accepted the Psalm of J6.)

We wonder if the scowling super-Christian President who shills for his personally-endorsed book where these simple statements are found can quote any of the Beatitudes.  Wonder if he can even spell the word.

Brecheen goes on:

“When we tolerate lies, we are empowering a distortion of the truth. It is time for every believer to take a stand, get in the exit row, and walk out of services where the full counsel of biblical truth is being distorted.”

(This is an important observation oozing hypocrisy.  If it were carried out elsewhere as the congressman suggests happened in this service, Mr. Trump would have been speaking to empty auditoriums throughout his campaign, to an empty Capitol Rotunda during his inauguration, and to an empty room at the luncheon afterward—not to mention the his speech on January 6, 2021 to his tourists/hostages.)

Why didn’t the other believers walk out of the “service” on January 6?  Because they tolerated lies, distorted truth, and then they savaged the Capitol.

Brecheen might be excused for some of this because he was not among members of the House and Senate who fled for their lives while the tourists were paying a peaceful visit. He joined the House in 2023.

Many know of the faith of our Founders and the biblical influence on our nation.

(Such as the Pilgrims and the Puritans banishing Roger Williams and other Baptists from Massachusetts Bay because they weren’t Puritan enough to present Rhode Island, which he founded as a place where “liberty of conscience” was allowed. Or maybe we should emulate those Christians who murdered women branded as witches in Salem, etc.  And who can overlook the deeply Christian beliefs claimed by the Ku Klux Klan decades later?)

Brecheen:

Even as recently as the 1950s, President Eisenhower and Congress declared “In God we Trust” our nation’s motto and added “one Nation under God” to our Pledge of Allegiance. 

(We wonder if we aren’t dealing with a little toleration of lies and distortion of truth here., too. The Pledge was originated  by former Union Army officer George Thatcher Balch in 1885 not as a religious statement but as a way to teach patriotism to school children.  Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister—another trouble-making Baptists such as Roger Williams—is credited with modifying the pledge in 1892 to read most of the way we recite it today to promote the sale of American Flags. But here is something important to remember about Bellamy—he left out any religious references ON PURPOSE because he was an absolutist on the issue of church and state.

Bellamy was a self-proclaimed Christian Socialist, an interesting characterization in today’s political world.  But he might fit right in with The Gospel of Donald because he wrote, “Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock. There are races more or less akin to our own whom we may admit freely and get nothing but advantage by the infusion of their wholesome blood. But there are other races, which we cannot assimilate without lowering our racial standard, which should be as sacred to us as the sanctity of our homes.”

Trump could love this guy after all.

Religion was not added as the result of any 20th Century Great Revival. It was added to make sure Americans knew we are superior to the “Godless Communists” of that time.

Brecheen seems to think the words “Under God” were added during the Eisenhower administration because Eisenhower had two legs:

A man of faith, President Eisenhower’s heart was set on this path from a young age when prayer saved him from death after his leg became infected and required amputation. The Lord answered these prayers, saving young Eisenhower’s leg, and thus, our future president was set on the trajectory of attending West Point and becoming the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II. This would have never happened had President Eisenhower’s leg been amputated.

What that has to do with the creation of the phrase in the pledge, we don’t know. History tells us Eisenhower had nothing to do with creating the phrase nor was he the biggest advocate for it. He got behind the political movement to include it and signed the bill creating it.

Brecheen asserts that Eisenhower approved the change after finding the greatness of America in church: “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!”

That latter reflection seems to argue against the point Brecheen is trying to make. It’s pretty hard to see the harsh attitude toward immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community—or even to the Episcopal Bishop of Washington —as being  “good.”  And a strong argument can be made that making American great again is the opposite of the message Trump uses to gin up his base.

Brecheen continues;

Unfortunately, a day after President Trump promised that his administration “will not forget our God,” Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde distorted the truth and used her position at the National Prayer Service to seek political fame and selfish gain. By ignoring biblical teachings that God made humans distinctly male and female (Genesis 1:27), that we must go to someone in private before accosting them in public (Matthew 18:15-17), and that we must obey the law of the land (Romans 13:1-3), Budde ignored biblical truth.

(The truth was sitting right in front of her. I read the lessons of the New Testament to be positive ones.  Is it not true, or more true than Brecheen wants us to accept, that Jesus’s message was one of inclusion rather than exclusion?  Is not the story of the Good Samaritan a core lesson? Is not the story of Cornelius, a centurion becoming a Chrisian an extreme example of loving one’s enemy?)

In her sermon, Budde cited a Bible verse commonly used in left-wing arguments, that “We are to be merciful to the stranger.” To understand this verse, we must understand the word stranger in its full meaning, as taken from the original Hebrew language.

This particular Hebrew word is specifically used to describe a foreigner who fully submits to the customs and culture of their country of refuge. Illegal aliens are not submitting to the laws of the land–they’re defying them.

(There he goes again.  He chooses one word and used it to distort the truth of the Sermon on the Mount. And the facts show a far different view of whether illegal aliens submit to the laws of the land. If Native-born Americans committed crimes at a rate as low as those committed illegals, would country would be much better off.)

Ecclesiastes 8:11 warns us against ignoring laws being broken, saying, in effect: When the law is not enforced, the people’s hearts are enticed to do more evil. Let’s not forget the murders, rapes, and gang violence that the lawless southern border has perpetuated. 

(Maybe Brecheen needs to get his nose out of the collected, selected verses from Trump’s favorite book and read numerous reports by federal agencies and private researchers indicating that comment simply is not true. And we won’t comment on the pardons of 1500 tourists when it comes to someone “ignoring laws being broken.”)

The left frequently ignores such teachings, taking Scripture out of context and using half-truths to justify their politics. Do not fall into this trap! A half-truth is always a full lie.

(Is he preaching to himself or to Trump here? To us, the truth in his statement applies more to the Trumpian empire than it does to those hated people on “the left.” Using half-truths to justify politics is something St.Donald uses far more effectively than St. Paull ever did.)

The pulpit did not flame with righteousness during Budde’s sermon but instead promoted principles that inherently contradict biblical truth. 

(If the pulpit did not flame with righteousness, why do the President and his supporters feel burned?)

If we are to return our country to one nation under God, we must speak the truth in love. Love without truth is not real love. 

(Now, THAT is profound.  But if we turn to Trump’s favorite book, we find a more expansive definition of love:)

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,  but do not have love, I gain nothing.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

That’s from Paul’s first letter to the Christians at Corinth. Of course, the President says he doesn’t want to get into his favorite Bible verses because “its very personal.” He has modestly conceded that Jesus Christ is more famous than he is worldwide. He once did reveal that his favorite verse. It is the Old Testament’s “an eye for an eye.”

Brecheen:

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

(Who can argue with that?  The problem is that the “love” chapter of the Bible is in First Corinthians and the “liberty” verse is from “Two Corinthians,” as the Bible scholar/President puts it. The question for the writer of this sentence is whether the spirit of the Lord resided in the pew with the stony-faced attendee (we shall not call him a worshiper) or whether it resided that day in the pulpit.

When it comes to quoting scripture, perhaps Trumpworld and its leader should ponder this passage from the 11th chapter of Luke’s Gospel:

“Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.  So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.  They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

‘All their deeds are done for men to see. They broaden their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love the places of honor at banquets, the chief seats in the synagogues,  the greetings in the marketplaces, and the title of ‘Rabbi’ by which they are addressed.

‘But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.  And do not call anyone on earth your father, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.  Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.’”

Too bad Trumpworld lacks the compassion to recognize that we are all brothers (and sisters).

Trumpworld’s follow-the-leader response won’t change Bishop Budde’s mind or standing. She told the Associated Press, “I don’t consider him an enemy. I believe we can disagree respectfully and put our ideas out there and continue to stand for the convictions we’ve been given without resorting to violence of speech.”

THAT is the Christian.

Trump showed his sincerity as a Christian by skipping church, as usual, yesterday.

(The knee-jerk reaction of Trumpworld went far beyond thc Congressman’s reaction.  I suggest you check out Bryan Kaylor’s column for A Public Witness:  (7) After Viral Sermon, GOP Threatens Religious Liberty

Bryan is a minister following in the footsteps of earlier troublesome Baptists. He is the co-author with Beau Underwood, a Christian Church/Disciples of Christ minister, of Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism

(Editorial Cartoon is from the Tribune Content  Agency)