[ Posted Monday, June 15th, 2020 – 17:14 UTC ]
Conservative Republicans just chalked up another big defeat in their continuing losing streak in the culture wars. The Supreme Court ruled today that L.G.B.T. rights are indeed included in Title VII, which mandates equal treatment for all "on the basis of sex." Discriminating against someone because they are gay or transgendered (by firing them, for example) is just as unconstitutional as it is to discriminate against all women (or all men, for that matter). To put it another way, what could be called the final battle of the Sexual Revolution just ended, and the counterculture has now absolutely routed the field of conservatives.
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[ Posted Friday, June 12th, 2020 – 18:07 UTC ]
President Donald Trump seems to have settled on a theme for his campaign, as he doubles down on blatant racism. Think that's too strongly put? We don't. Consider the following, from just the past week:
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[ Posted Friday, June 5th, 2020 – 17:24 UTC ]
This week, an American president ordered the violent removal of peaceful protesters -- who were doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights to assemble, speak, and petition the government for redress -- from a public park so that he could then walk across the park and hold up a borrowed Bible for a photo opportunity with both the Secretary of Defense and (clad in battle fatigues) the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Afterward, the Trump White House immediately issued a propaganda video of the event. Later that evening, a military helicopter clearly marked with a red cross took offensive action against the protesters (which is banned by the Geneva Conventions, and is now under investigation). Later still, the president and all his enablers in the White House lied through their teeth about the entire incident, repeatedly. At week's end, we learned of another affront to the Constitution by the Trump administration, when it was revealed that federal law enforcement had unconstitutionally seized a shipment of cloth face masks created by a Black Lives Matter affiliate, and the only possible reason they did so was that the Department of Justice apparently didn't like the messages displayed on the masks (which read: "Stop killing black people," and: "Defund police").
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[ Posted Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – 17:23 UTC ]
General James Mattis has broken his silence on the presidency of Donald Trump -- in a big way. Current Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has also noticeably broken with President Trump on the need for active-duty military personnel to be deployed to American cities in response to the mostly-peaceful protests which continue around the country. Other military leaders, both retired and still serving, are speaking out about what their oath actually means. To be blunt, protecting the United States Constitution does not mean violently attacking Americans who are merely exercising their First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, and petition the government for redress. Quite the opposite, in fact -- the military is supposed to support and defend such activities, not subvert or quash them. And there's one very important step the Pentagon could take right now to show solidarity with the people protesting the treatment of African-Americans in this country, and that is to remove the names of Confederate military officers from Army installations.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020 – 16:24 UTC ]
After apparently sleepwalking through the first part of the week, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper woke up today and realized his responsibilities as the head of the Pentagon. Perhaps he got some pushback from the generals who are aghast at the thought that the vaunted U.S. military could become to be seen as a political force at the beck and call of a partisan president. Esper had apparently forgotten this bedrock tenet of American government earlier, when participating in Donald Trump's now-infamous "brandishing a Bible in front of a church" photo op. Esper not only walked back this participation (by stating he somehow had no idea it was about to happen), but he also openly contradicted the president's call to mobilize the military to crack down on protests in the streets.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 2nd, 2020 – 17:29 UTC ]
President Trump staged a photo opportunity yesterday that went horribly wrong, but the White House doesn't yet seem to have comprehended how bad a look it actually was. In fact, they proudly put up a video montage of the event that seems to strive for the impact of a Leni Riefenstahl production (watch it for yourself if you think this is overstating the case). The whole staged event is nothing more than a naked effort to counter the growing ridicule Trump has gotten for hiding in his bunker over the weekend during the protests, in fact. You see President Trump boldly striding away from the White House, crossing Lafayette Square, pumping a macho fist to all the militarized police standing around, and then appearing in front of a historic (and boarded-up) church where he awkwardly tries to hold a Bible up for the cameras. Trump then (according to the Riefenstahl clip) triumphantly strides back to the White House, to the adoration of all. Mission accomplished. Roll credits.
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[ Posted Friday, May 29th, 2020 – 17:16 UTC ]
Anyone "tired of all the winning" yet? Just asking....
In the same week America passed the grim milestone of 100,000 dead from the coronavirus pandemic, a black man was suffocated by a white police officer while three other cops stood by and either helped him commit this crime or did absolutely nothing to prevent it. Since then, there have been sometimes-violent protests in the streets of not only Minneapolis but in several other cities across the country. The dead man was accused of the crime of trying to use a fake $20 bill at a convenience store. The cops, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, provided him with a death sentence -- for the transgression of trying to pass a fake twenty.
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[ Posted Thursday, May 28th, 2020 – 17:23 UTC ]
President Donald Trump executed a double-reverse bit of irony today, by signing an executive order that he thinks will threaten social media companies like Twitter into allowing conservatives to spout whatever hate-filled or wildly inaccurate rants they wish to. However, as with many things Trump does, his executive order might just wind up giving companies like Twitter more incentive to police Trump's own tweets. In other words, by attempting to "fight back," Trump may in fact have just shot himself in the foot.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 27th, 2020 – 16:53 UTC ]
President Donald Trump is unclear on the basic concept of the First Amendment's "free speech" clause. This isn't all that surprising, since he's obviously never made it all the way through a reading of the United States Constitution. After all, the Founding Fathers didn't see fit to provide colorful graphics instead of boring blocks of text, and the whole thing just goes on for pages and pages and pages -- both of which absolutely guarantee Trump has never read it.
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[ Posted Thursday, May 21st, 2020 – 17:19 UTC ]
There's a very big question looming in the backs of many Democrats' minds; one so downright scary that few can even give voice to it. When they do, it comes out almost as a whisper, because the possible consequences are so frightening to contemplate that many feel it is a subject best left unsaid. But that doesn't stop the worrying, because nobody truly knows what Donald Trump will do if he loses the 2020 presidential election.
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