That time when empathy came home to roost

Today I want to write about empathy…as well as the lack thereof.

First, a definition: For the poorly-educated and other Trump supporters, empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” Truly empathetic people tend to “adopt” other people’s issues as though they were their own and look for ways to do something about them.

In other words, empathy creates awareness which leads to involvement which many times evolves into activism. Because they are aware of their surroundings, and can clearly see what’s happening around them, empathetic people are more likely to get involved with issues and concerns, and if they have means, they might even back up their involvement with goods, services or money.

For example: See a homeless man, buy him lunch and write a check to a shelter, or donate to a food bank. Find a discarded pet on a busy highway, take it to a shelter along with a couple bags of food and some toys. Care about wildlife, stop discarding plastic bags and straws. And so on…

The antithesis of empathy is narcissism compounded by antipathy, indifference and greed. That’s not to say that narcissists can’t see what’s going on around them. It just means that if it doesn’t benefit them personally in some way or another, then they simply do not care.

Recently, we’ve seen a number of examples where our current government and the entities it supports have cast empathy aside for the benefit of the wealthy. Specifically, a series of environmental protections have been trashed to enable corporations to make more profit, and our immigration policy has created turmoil at our southern border at the expense of human families.

Because they have no empathy, our government leaders want to open up national parks and wildlife refuges for oil and gas exploration, restore the use of deadly pesticides that are killing the bees that pollinate our crops, allow the slaughter of baby animals inside a wildlife refuge, discard the endangered species list and allow coal operators to dump mine waste into streams…and that’s just off the top of my head. I didn’t even have to google.

Most recently, in Florida, a “red tide” fed by runoff from Lake Okeechobee has poisoned 100 or so miles of the state’s southwestern coastline and killed thousands of fish and other aquatic animals. It is also making residents sick.

Red tide is the name given to toxic algae blooms which appear in the lake almost every year, promoted by stagnant water, high temperatures and nutrients from sources like fertilizers, and amplified this year by the effects of climate change, according to marine scientists. While it’s not conclusive that this year’s killer algae is being exacerbated by agricultural waste from the state’s sugar and citrus industries, scientists say that is one possible cause or at least a contributing factor.

“That lake is heavily impacted by citrus agriculture,” said Christopher J. Gobler, professor of marine science at Stony Brook University, so in effect, Florida is shutting down tourism at many of its beaches, killing animals and sickening its citizens so it can protect profits for its largest farms.

Empathetic yet? I never even got to the immigration crisis.

It may be easy to sit back and watch as our government rapes the environment, disrupts innocent families and ignores the needs of the needy, but what if something like this were to happen to you?   

What if the Acme Chemical Company came to your house and dumped truckloads of toxic waste in your back yard, which leached into your ground water, poisoned and killed your dog and cat and made you and your family very sick. They did this to save money on waste disposal, but at your expense. Would you be upset? Would you want to fight back?

Or, let’s pretend that the local police came to your house, kidnapped your children and carted them off to an abandoned animal shelter where they were placed in cages and left there for weeks. Meanwhile, they shoved you into a bus and drove you to another state, then forgot which state you were in and which children were yours, and then we learned that they had no plan to reunite you. Would that be a tragedy for you and your kids?

Or, let’s imagine that Bigazz Petroleum Company came to your town, set up shop in your favorite city park and started drilling for oil right between the swing sets and the merry-go-round. They blocked off the site so your children couldn’t play there and turned the park into a refinery. Would you be happy about that?

What if, the following week, Frank’s Fracking started drilling into the bedrock under your house, which shook the whole structure off its foundation and caused your drinking water to burst into flames?

I suspect that’s when empathy would finally come home to roost.

If you don’t vote, you don’t get to decide

According to the YouGov daily tracking survey for July 23, 78% of Republicans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president while only 35% of Independents and 10% of Democrats approve.

Conversely, 87% of Democrats disapprove, along with 49% of Independents and 18% of Republicans.

If you apply these statistics to the approximate number of registered voters – and factor in the percentage of them who identify with each political party – one fact becomes crystal clear: If every registered voter cast a ballot according to his or her opinion of Donald Trump, a Democrat would defeat the faux-president in a landslide.

I could fill up this essay with lots and lots of numbers, but for those of you who actually like statistics, here are a few:

* There are approximately 250 million Americans of voting age in the country, but only 231 million are registered to vote. Only 129 million (56%) even bothered to go to the polls in the last election.

* The Census Bureau says 31% of Americans identify as Democrats, 24% as Republicans and 42% as Independents.

* If every registered voter cast a ballot based on his or her approval or disapproval of Trump, and all who disapprove voted for a Democrat, Trump would lose by 119,819,700 to 84,361,200. That’s a margin of 35,458,500 votes. (Of course, the Electoral College would have to turn blue, too.)

In other words, Trump would get only 36% of the vote. That’s pretty consistent with his approval rating throughout his presidency, so it doesn’t really matter that nearly 80% of Republicans are backing him, because overall, that’s a fairly small minority of the voting public.

* In the last election, Hillary Clinton received 66 million votes (rounded off), which is only 29% of the number of registered voters, while Donald Trump received 63 million or 27%.

* Democrats outnumber Republicans 71.6 million to 55.4 million, but there are 97 million Independents who can ultimately decide elections. The winning party needs to court this bloc of voters.

* And finally, 19 million eligible voters – for one reason or another, and there are several – have not registered to vote.  

All of this means one thing to me: For Democrats to break through the Republican wall and reclaim Congress or the White House, the “voting public” will have to include the people who voted in the last election, plus the ones who didn’t vote and the ones who voted for Donald Trump and now wish they hadn’t. 

Or, as I consistently say, elections have consequences. The 2018 mid-terms and the 2020 presidential election could have a vastly different outcome than the 2016 election if the American people just do their job. It really is that simple.   

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YouGov updates its polling data daily. Click here for the latest results. 

Two stories emerge as Trump stumbles up to the world stage

There are two stories knocking around in my brain this week following faux-president Donald Trump's stumbling, bumbling, humiliating trip overseas.

Story No. 1:

Trump starts off his foreign policy nightmare by flying to Brussels, Belgium, where he trashes NATO, trashes Germany, insults other NATO countries and implies that they owe us money, when, in fact, nobody owes anybody anything. In truth, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have until 2024 to contribute 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) toward their own defense operations as part of their respective NATO commitments.

They do not owe Donald Trump anything, and never will, which proves that Trump attended an important NATO summit without even knowing how NATO works.

Then he goes to England, where he insults their prime minister, trashes the European Union, calls the EU our “foe,” disrespects the queen and tells a reporter that England “has many names,” including the UK, United Kingdom and Great Britain, proving that he doesn’t know anything about our longest and most important ally and can’t even read a map.

Then he doubles down on the stupidity by flying over to Scotland, where he claims to have “left the United Kingdom” despite the fact that Scotland is very much a member of the UK. He reportedly claims that everybody in the UK loves him, even as tens of thousands of people jam the streets to protest his racist, fascist, xenophobic, misogynistic and nationalistic policies.

To top it off, after a day of golf, he jets over to Finland where he cozies up to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, refusing to call out Putin for hacking into the 2016 presidential election and taking Putin’s side against his own intelligence community. He cuddles up to Putin like a frightened puppy dog cowering at the feet of its master, trashes the Mueller investigation and strays off into another recounting of his Electoral College numbers when asked during a press conference why he didn’t press the hacking issue with the Russian.

He gave Putin exactly what he wanted – domination over the United States in clear view of the entire world and a step toward regaining the status Russia lost after the breakup of the Soviet Union. If there was any doubt before today that Donald Trump was a Putin puppet whose campaign colluded with Russia to win an election, Trump has now erased all doubt.

Story No. 2:

While all of this is going on, Republicans in Congress don’t appear to care. Instead of condemning Russia after 12 Putin operatives were indicted for their election interference, all some conservatives want to do is impeach the assistant attorney general who had the audacity to deliver that news.

With the exception of a few brave soldiers and some members who are retiring this year (and thus have nothing to lose), the rest of the Republican Party is sitting back and doing nothing except watching the show. This is not patriotism, statesmanship or anything resembling integrity. It may not be treason by the strictest definition, but it’s a whole lot closer to treason than I ever thought I’d see.

Wanted: Unqualified sycophants to fill key positions for large governmental employer

If you set out to write a TV series in which a B-grade reality show performer accidentally became the president of the United States – and then filled his cabinet with people who were uniquely unqualified for the positions they were given – you couldn’t do better than what’s happening to our government in real life.

I previously wrote about EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and how the damage he has done to our environment was hiding behind his many ethical and legal scandals. Now that he has resigned, I’m turning my attention to Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s latest secretary of Homeland Security.

Time magazine reported last week that Nielsen – speaking to a convention of state secretaries of state in Philadelphia – said there are “no signs that Russia is targeting this year’s mid-term elections” with the same fervor they used to manipulate voting in 2016. She did acknowledge “some level of Russian interference” and told these state officials – who are in charge of elections in their respective states – to “remain vigilant.”

She stopped short of saying, “I am passing the buck over to you, state officials, so if something goes wrong in 2018, it’s going to be your fault.”

I see two things wrong with Nielsen's statements:

(1) First, this is somewhat contrary to what her boss keeps saying about his buddy Vladimir Putin. One year ago, Trump said Putin denied any involvement in the election tampering and that he believed him. This week, after 12 Russians were indicted by a special grand jury for hacking into Democratic email servers, Trump was asked if he would raise the issue in tomorrow’s one-on-one meeting with Putin in Helsinki.

He said he would, but suggested that Putin would probably deny it once again. “What am I going to do?” Trump asked. “All I can do is say, ‘Did you?’ and ‘Don’t do it again.’’’ That’s not much of a response from a narcissistic bully who claims to be so “strong” while pointing out how his adversaries (and some of our allies) are so “weak.”   

(2) But getting back to Nielsen, the second problem with her speech to the election officials is the suggestion that “some level” of Russian interference would be acceptable. No, Kirstjen, it is not. That’s like saying a little bit of cancer is okay as long as it doesn’t spread, or that it’s okay to steal a little bit of money from the bank as long as you don’t take it all.   

Russia is not a friend of the United States. It is well documented that the Putin government has been working for years to weaken American democracy, destroy NATO, separate us from our western allies, transition Germany back to a Berlin Wall-era satellite, reattach the Baltic countries it lost in the 1990s and manipulate elections in several countries to support Russia’s effort to become a dominating world leader once again.

Allowing Russia to have any level of interference in our elections is so far beyond acceptable that even saying those words out loud should disqualify someone from holding a position of authority in the government of the United States.

Moreover, this is far from the first time Nielsen has said something so stupid that it raises a question about her suitability for her office. Several such incidents have occurred in just the past few weeks:

* After the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Senate Intelligence Committee all concluded that Russia injected itself in our 2016 election to help Trump win, Nielsen testified in a May congressional hearing that she was unaware of such a conclusion. When the media and others wondered how the director of Homeland Security could be so “unaware,” Nielsen backtracked and said she agreed with the assessment.

* She was present at a White House meeting in which Trump famously referred to several African nations as “shitholes,” but was apparently the only person in the room who didn’t hear him say it. During a Senate hearing, she said, “I did not hear that word used.”

* During the same hearing, when she was asked whether Norway was a predominantly white country, Nielsen hesitated before answering, "I actually do not know that, sir…but I imagine that is the case.” Can you imagine that? Someone named Nielsen doesn’t know anything about Norway? Give me a break.

* Last month, Nielsen denied that the Trump administration had implemented a policy to separate migrant families at the Southern border, contradicting statements by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Chief of Staff John Kelly and senior adviser Stephen Miller. When she was asked the status of children who had been taken from their parents, she said she didn’t know where they were, but then added, curiously, that, “They are being well cared for.”

* On June 20, after repeatedly arguing that the administration could not sign an executive order to end family separations, she appeared beside Trump when he signed an executive order doing just that. Politico reported that Nielsen had privately pushed for this executive order behind the scenes while saying publicly that it could not be created.

* Finally, The New York Times reported in May that Nielsen wanted to resign after Trump berated her in front of his cabinet for “failing to secure the U.S. borders.” Nielsen denied that she ever threatened to resign, and since then has been parroting the Trump Administration talking points regardless of how ridiculous they may sound.

I looked her up before starting this essay, expecting to find out she had a background as a dog show judge, a trapeze artist or a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, and was almost saddened to learn she’s an attorney with considerable experience in national security-related jobs. She was special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for Prevention, Preparedness and Response on the White House Homeland Security Council.

Nielsen also served as John F. Kelly's chief of staff at Homeland Security before he became Trump’s chief of staff, and she followed him to the White House as Kelly’s principal deputy chief.

I guess that means in politics, you can rack up all the titles in the world and get appointed to lots of jobs without really learning how to do any of them. Either Nielsen is just another clueless Trump appointee who is over her head in her job, or she actually possesses the right qualifications but has stored them away somewhere in order to serve Commander Bone Spur and his runaway authoritarian regime.

I’m not sure which is worse.

One thing about fog…it never goes away forever

Today I read a June 22 article from Esquire magazine that suggests our long national nightmare, version 2.0, may be ending soon.

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that, and I’ll tell you why in a minute.

For those of you who have forgotten, our National Nightmare 1.0 ended in 1974 when, with those very words, President Gerald Ford was inaugurated following the resignation of Richard Nixon. A month later, Ford pardoned Nixon for the crimes that led to his resignation as he was on the verge of being impeached. 

Nightmare 2.0, of course, was the election of Donald J. Trump in November 2016. We’re still dealing with that one and we will be for some time, unless you believe the Esquire article, which puts forth this theory:

“The country’s head is clearing. The country’s vision is coming back into focus and it can see for the first time the length and breadth of the damage it has done to itself. The country is hearing the voices that the cacophony of fear and anger had drowned out for almost three years. The spell, such as it was, and in most places, may be wearing off at last. The hallucinatory effect of a reality-show presidency is dispersing like a foul, smoky mist over a muddy battlefield.” 

Heady stuff, that. A nice collection of words.

Now I hate to be that grumpy old man (again), but the fact is, I don't believe those words for one minute. To the contrary, I believe the 35% of Americans who still idolize con man Trump are even more empowered, more excited and more supportive than ever before...and growing stronger every day. And THEY turn out to vote.

Just today, for example, Trump went to Brussels with a roomful of our closest friends and instead took the opportunity to mock Germany and our NATO allies while cameras clicked and the whole world watched. I’ll spare you the details, but I could almost hear the Trumpeteers back home saying, “Oh, hell yeah. You tell ‘em, Mr. President. We love you. America first!”

These are the people who got him elected once which, in turn, got two far-right radicals appointed or nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court (so far), proving what I keep saying about elections and their consequences. We won't recover from Trump’s court appointments and the fallout that’s certain to occur from them for at least the next 40 years, if we ever do.

Meanwhile, Democrats still can’t decide who they are as a party. A lot of them think Bernie Sanders should be their next nominee for president, despite the fact that (1) he’ll be 78 years old in 2020 and (2) he’s not even a Democrat. So if they don’t sort themselves out pretty soon and develop some legitimate candidates and a platform they can sell – and if the other 65% don't get off their asses in every election and vote out the spineless Trump tagalongs – the Republicans will do it all again in the mid-terms and beyond and we’ll be screwed for at least another four years.

Democrats like to say there’s a “blue wave” coming this fall that’s going to sweep the trash out of Congress, and I hope they’re right, but in my mind, they’ve got to overcome blue apathy first. Color me hopeful but not optimistic.

Getting back to the Esquire article, it was written nearly a month ago when the crisis at the border was front and center in our media coverage. But things change. What’s the top of today’s news? Is it still the immigrant children? Or is it the newest Supreme Court nominee? Or a mentally deficient president overseas? Or some other shiny object?

Bottom line: Republicans have gotten frighteningly proficient at lying, cheating, stealing, gerrymandering, disenfranchising and obstructing their way into positions of power. They know the significance of packing the courts and they’re doing a damn fine job of it all around the country as well as on the SCOTUS bench. They are much better at low-ball politics than Democrats, who still think “going high” is the way to win.

Politics isn't bean bag, someone once said. I think it was a Republican who said that, but he was right. The Dems have to get tougher, smarter, more united and a little more creative if they expect to win over an election map that is blindingly red from top to bottom and down the middle. Winning little blue clusters in massively red states will get you popular votes but won’t ring the bell in the Electoral College.

And let’s face it. As my good friend correctly pointed out, the Electoral College is here to stay, because regardless of which party is in power, they will have gotten there because they collected the most Electoral College votes. There will never be an incentive to abolish it from the party that it placed in power, so we might as learn to live with it – and figure out a way to win it.

So when Esquire posits that the political fog is lifting and we can all see clearly now, I'd argue that I could see pretty clearly on November 9, 2016, when the shock of a Trump presidency hit me like a swift kick in the groin, and my vision hasn't changed at all since then. I can clearly see what's happening, where we've been and where we're headed, but unfortunately, they only allow me to vote one time each election, and my state is still ruby red. 

I'd also argue that in my experience, that "mist over a muddy battlefield" that Esquire talks about is likely to return at any given time...like, say, just before Election Day 2018. It's like any fog I've ever seen. Just because it's gone today doesn't mean it won't come back tomorrow. You just have to find a way to navigate through it to get where you want to go. 

2018 All-Star Game: Not exactly Aaron, Clemente and Mays

So when I was a kid, the baseball All-Star game was a really big deal.

Take, say, 1961 for example. Being a National League guy, what a thrill it was to watch a baseball game that could feature Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente in the outfield all at the same time, not to mention Ernie Banks and Frank Robinson, and infielders like Stan Musial, Maury Wills and Eddie Mathews.

Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron

Would you like to go into a season with starting pitchers that included Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale and a closer like Elroy Face?

Even the Yankee-heavy American League roster boasted names like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford, Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew and Brooks Robinson.

Fast-forward to 2018. The All-Star rosters were just announced, and of the 31 players on the NL squad, Bryce Harper is the only one I recognize as a legitimate star from the same galaxy as Mantle, Mays, Koufax and the rest. The AL has two or three such guys.

Back in 1961, on All-Star game day, the kids in my neighborhood would take magic marker to white t-shirt, scribbling a team name on the front and a number on the back. Mine always said “Giants” across my chest and “24” on the back for Willie Mays. Other kids came out with “Braves” and “44” for Aaron and “Pirates” and “21” for Clemente. Of course, the Pirate shirt would have the sleeves cut off the way they wore them back then.

We played our own baseball game in my neighbor’s side yard, went home, had dinner and waited anxiously for the game to begin. (At least I think the game was played at night. I could be wrong. I mean, I haven’t been 11 years old for a really long time.)

Today, I’m just old, and my interest in Major League Baseball is gradually fading away. What with free agency, team-hopping, multi-million-dollar contracts, poor player attitudes, taxpayer-funded mega-stadiums and worst of all, instant replay, it just isn’t the game I grew up loving.

Check that. I still love the game itself. Baseball was the only sport I could play with any degree of skill, and when baseball was no longer an option, I played slow-pitch softball well into my 40s. I still like going to Morgantown to watch WVU play in the spring and the Minor League Black Bears in the summer, but I don’t watch MLB on television much any longer.

It just isn’t any fun.

Oh, I’ll probably watch the All-Star Game because it’ll be Tuesday night and what else have I got to do, but please excuse me if I don’t get excited by a Crawford-to-Baez-to-Freeman double play or seeing Josh Hader pitch to Gleyber Torres or Salvador Perez.

I never heard of these guys, or 40 of their favorite teammates, and it just won’t be the same.

Trump as a possible Russian spy and a July 4 meeting in Moscow

I just read a very long article in New York magazine under the headline, “Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart – Or His Handler?” and subtitled, “A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion.” It was written as faux-president Donald Trump prepares to sail off into shark-infested water for a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin – a meeting that will be closed to everyone but the two authoritarian leaders themselves.

Long (and I do mean l-o-n-g) story short, the article lays out the proposition that Trump has been a Russian spy since 1987 because of various financial entanglements and his other possible blackmail-ready activities, and that his becoming the president of the United States was a bonus that Vladimir Putin and his government couldn’t have expected from their American asset back then but can now exploit to the maximum in 2018 and beyond.

You can read the article here.

Frankly, after investing the time required to read all the way to the end, part of me would like to believe that every word of this story is true, and that it is already known to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team investigating whether Trump colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election and whether he has attempted to obstruct the investigation. I want to believe that it will eventually force Trump and his regime out of the White House and into a federal prison somewhere, hopefully soon after Mueller makes his final report.

At least, the devil on my left shoulder wants that to be true.

The angel on my right shoulder, however, isn’t all that convinced. The article qualifies its own theory by stating up front, “The unfolding of the Russia scandal has been like walking into a dark cavern. Every step reveals that the cave runs deeper than we thought…. The cavern might go just a little farther, we presume, but probably not much farther.”

The “most likely outcome,” the article continues, is that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort “told Trump about a meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer after they were promised dirt on Hillary Clinton,” that Trump and Kushner “have some shady Russian investments” and that “some of Trump’s advisers made some promises about lifting sanctions.”

Then it teases, “But what if that’s wrong? What if we’re still standing closer to the mouth of the cave than the end?” And into its conspiracy theory it goes.

All of which leads me directly to Occam’s Razor.

For those not familiar, Occam's Razor is a problem-solving principle attributed to a Franciscan friar and philosopher which states that “when presented with competing hypotheses to solve a problem, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions.” In other words, the simplest solution tends to be the right one.

So with all due respect to Occam, I have concluded that the article is highly entertaining and worth a read, but may very well stretch some known facts into a wild fantasy that Liberals and anti-Trumpers will happily believe. Of course, it could also be accurate, in which case one of two things is probably true:

(1) Donald Trump is so stupid that he unwittingly allowed himself to become a dancing puppet at the hand of an ex-KGB officer who is good at manipulating the strings and, oh, by the way, stumbled into the jackpot of a lifetime when Trump decided to run for president, or

(2) That Trump is so stupid that he thought he could knowingly pull off this overthrow of the American government and global democracy and no one inside or outside the United States would notice. Sort of the “I alone can fix it” philosophy of a malignant narcissistic con man racist liar.

You can read the article if you’re interested and decide for yourself what is real, and whether Trump is Stupid 1, Stupid 2 or none of the above.

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Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be much of a blogger if I failed to mention the Republican Congressional delegation’s sojourn to Moscow for talks with Russian leaders that occurred on the Fourth of July. The trip came 242 years after the United States declared its independence from Great Britain and formed what became the greatest democracy in the history of civilization…and only 29 years since Republican saint Ronald Reagan took credit for defeating Communism by bringing down the Berlin Wall.

So that brings us to these eight guys who – instead of riding in Independence Day parades, cooking hot dogs for their constituents or attending fireworks displays – chose to fly over to Moscow and audition to become extras in Vladimir Putin’s new World Domination reality show. This is the same Vladimir Putin who continues to deny Russian involvement in the 2016 election, all evidence to the contrary, and kills people who don’t see things his way.      

The stated purpose of the holiday junket, according to Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, was to talk tough with Russian officials about that election interference ahead of Trump’s visit to Helsinki on July 16, but according to reports, they actually struck a conciliatory tone once there, striving to cultivate “a better relationship” with Moscow and not “accuse Russia of this or that or so forth.”

At least one member came home mulling over the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions against Putin and his government. Wow, what a surprise!

Clint Watts, an information warfare specialist and noted expert on Russian influence operations, tweeted, “Cannot believe GOP, once the party that stood strong against Soviets & only a decade ago sought to democratize the Middle East, is now surrendering so foolishly to Putin and the Kremlin’s kleptocracy – only two years after Russia interfered in U.S. election.”

I’ll say it a different way:

Seriously? You guys go to Russia on the Fourth of July of all days? Colin Kaepernick can’t take a knee during the national anthem without the president calling him an un-American son of a bitch, but members of Congress can cozy up to our greatest international enemy on our most patriotic of national holidays and talk about removing sanctions? And no one seems to care?

The world really is upside down, my friends, and I’m afraid that some of us will soon be falling off.

Instead of lowering flags, Trump lowers his pants and shows his ass

[UPDATE: It's being reported that the White House has changed its mind about lowering the flags to honor the Annapolis victims. Nevertheless, I stand by every word I wrote -- especially the second point. It was true when I wrote it and I believe it was Trump's first reaction, regardless what his flacks say now. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time they've lied, now, would it?]

* * *

I read a story on NPR news this morning that said our faux-president, Donald J. Trump, has refused a request to lower the nation’s flags to honor the shooting victims at the Annapolis Capital Gazette newspaper.

This story may not get the national attention of, say, a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin or Trump-imposed tariffs that are going to cost thousands of American jobs, but it points out two things that are inherently wrong with the administration of Commander Bone Spur.

First, it demonstrates as clearly as anything else how petty and petulant the faux-president can be. He has been beating up the news media since the day he oozed down the golden escalator to announce his candidacy for the world’s most important job. He has berated reporters at all of his rallies, called some of them out by name, sent his PR flacks to the press room podium to lie to them, insulted their work as “fake news” and most recently, declared our free press to be the “enemy of the American people.”

What better way to get back at those media bastards than to show them this level of disrespect?

“Oh, five of you were murdered by a crazed gunman? Too bad. You should have been nicer to me. No flag lowering for you.”

The second problem, according to the story, is the sentence, “The White House could not immediately be reached for comment.”  

What?

First off, the White House has a published telephone number. It’s 202-456-1414. It has been the same for decades. I have called it myself and spoken to people on the other end. You can call it right now and someone should answer. Suppose something terrible happened at 3 o’clock in the morning and you needed to call the administration. Do you suppose the phone would just ring and ring and ring? Or go to voice mail?

Second, I watched “The West Wing.” In Aaron Sorkin’s White House, an army of people including an entire press staff worked virtually around the clock handling the duties inherent with the office of the president. Someone called and they replied in one way or another.

(OK, I can hear what you’re saying: “But that was only a TV show,” to which I would reply, “Yes, I know. Have you been following this presidency?”)

Third, I used to work in public relations for a utility company. We had a rule that someone had to answer a ringing phone before it hit three rings. You’d think the office of the world’s most powerful person would have a similar guideline. Granted, after answering, the White House could issue a “no comment” or an “I’ll get back to you” or even tell a bold-face lie – like they frequently do – but not being available for comment is not one of their options. When the phone rings, someone from media relations has got to pick it up and say "hello."  It's their only job. What else could they be doing that's more important than what they were hired to do?

Most recently, Trump ordered the nation’s flags to be lowered after mass shootings at a concert in Las Vegas, schools in Florida and Texas and a Texas church, but has seen fit to draw the line with a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland. I can only draw one conclusion, and that is that we don’t lower flags when crazy people assassinate an “enemy of the American people” -- especially when it happens in a blue state.

I’d also add that the five people killed in Annapolis were, by all accounts, exponentially better human beings and far more beloved than the man who occupies our nation’s house. That being true, it’s also a fact that Trump doesn’t like to be one-upped by anybody.

That apparently applies to all persons -- living or dead.

If you want my vote, don’t be afraid to tell me who you are

[Click the highlighted links for source material.]

We have a U.S. senator here in West Virginia who was elected as a Democrat but thinks he has to run a pro-Trump campaign to get enough votes to be re-elected in a deep red state.

We’ve got liberals here and all across the country who are running away and hiding from their own agenda because they fear it’s a losing proposition in the age of Trump.

We live in a pseudo-fascist country now led by a narcissistic, authoritarian moron who wants to be president for life, but people slough this off as acceptable while declaring that “Socialism” is a dirty word.

And we have polls showing that Democrats believe their best chance to take back the White House is a former vice president and (twice) unsuccessful candidate who will be 77 years old when we vote again in November 2020 and 78 before he could ever take office.

For the love of god, man! It’s time for the Democratic Party to decide what it wants to be when it grows up.

A little background: I used to be a Democrat before I became a journalist, when I switched my registration to Independent to avoid the appearance of party favoritism. After I left the newspaper business, I switched back until 2008, when for two years the Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, yet failed to enact or even push strongly for the policies it claimed to represent in its official party platform.

Did they get us universal health care? No.

Did they get us sensible immigration policy? No.

Did they end wars in the Middle East? No.

Did they take actions to secure Medicare and Social Security for the long term? No.

Did they significantly increase the minimum wage? No.

Did they do anything they said they would do? Not much.

Why? Because their leaders were afraid that much of their agenda was “too liberal” for America and that their best option was to move everything to the center. Well, maybe it was too liberal and maybe it wasn’t, but we never found out, because they never really tried to get it approved. I lost confidence in Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and, eventually, I lost confidence in the Democratic Party as a whole. That’s when I became an Independent once again.

Now, the faux-president of the United States is a New York real estate mogul and financial con man who bankrupted five casinos on his way to becoming the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Let me say that again. A man who wasn’t competent to operate a casino now controls the American military and is in charge of our entire foreign and domestic policy.   

Are you thinking about this at all? I mean, have you ever looked at the casino business? How hard can it be to succeed in the casino business, where people go with the expectation of losing money…and usually do? For every person who makes a hit in a casino there are thousands who give up their money willingly, shake their heads and move on to the next game or machine with the full and complete knowledge that the games are tilted to favor the house...and that they will probably continue to lose.

I have a feeling that almost any idiot could run a casino and make millions of dollars, but we elected the one idiot who failed to do that five times. This is the guy the Democratic Party could not defeat in the most important presidential election of my lifetime, and now that guy is going to stack the Supreme Court with judges who will do whatever he wants done for the next 40 years or so.

Coming up in November is a mid-term election in which a “blue wave” is predicted to sweep Democrats into the House and Senate again. Forgive me if I say, “I’ll believe that when I see it," because I don’t know how you can have a blue wave when half your party is out surfing and the other half is sleeping on the beach.

A 28-year-old woman who was a bartender a year ago recently won a Democratic primary for House of Representatives in New York by running as a Socialist. She even said the “S” word out loud. She campaigned for universal Medicare, a federal jobs guarantee, immigration reform, elimination of ICE, fully funded public schools and universities, housing as a human right, justice-system reform, a “New Green Deal” to combat climate change and an overhaul of campaign finance rules. (Read her platform here.)

Sure, it was New York, one of the bluest of the blue states, but she beat an entrenched Democrat thought to be in line for Nancy Pelosi’s job if the Dems ever took back the House. I like her platform 100 percent, and I’ll vote for anyone who advocates those same policies and ideals, but by all means, if you want my vote, don’t be afraid to tell me who you are.

So here is my advice to Democrats: Figure out what you believe and do it quickly, before you lose another election to the worst presidential candidate in American history. Then, tell the rest of us what it is, and push your agenda hard right up until Election Day. Take a position and tell the voters how your policies will give them better lives. Don’t back down (or roll with him in the mud) when Trump starts tweeting insults and take your message to the people who count the most.

Don’t issue page after page of complex policy statements. Just come up with five or six good things that will benefit all Americans and make sure the people know about them in advance. Like an editor once said to me, "When you write a news story, it should tell more than just what happened. It should tell the reader why he or she should care." You’ve got to sell yourself to the people who always vote, the ones who sometimes vote and especially the ones who didn’t vote the last time around because they didn’t know who you were.

If you do that, you have a chance to win this election and other elections to come. If you do what I suggested and you still don’t win, it’s because the American people don’t want what you have to sell, and frankly, that’s how democracy is supposed to work.

If you’re not willing to go all in, then I suggest you save your money and don’t waste your time propping up candidates who are caught by their suspenders while sitting squarely on the fence. That approach won’t take back Washington, and honestly, I don’t even think that it should.