And Now -- Commuting Roger Stone's Conviction

Donald Trump showed that his real concern is not reelection in 2020 but avoidance of prosecution for criminal activity when he commuted the sentence of Roger Stone on 10 July 2020. Stone was convicted of lying to protect Trump. The sentence commutation is a bald statement that Trump knows he has committed crimes and he is desperate to put a lid on it. As Mitt Romney noted yesterday, this is “unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.”


America remains highly polarized politically and there will undoubtedly still be people who support Trump. Their willful ignorance and blindness towards his criminality has left us with a rudderless Executive Branch at precisely the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic is roaring back to life. The federal mismanagement of the pandemic is also because of Trump’s feckless “leadership”. He continues to live in a total bubble regarding COVID-19, where it will go away because of the summer heat and where public health measures such as wearing masks is a mark of weakness and political correctness. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the world’s premier expert in infectious diseases and pandemics, is muzzled and blocked from appearing on television to address the nation on what is happening. Trump says Fauci made many mistakes. Vice President Michael Pence, he of the smarmy smile and the oleaginous platitude, occasionally appears to pretend that there is still a coronavirus task force. Dr. Birx has become a shill for Trump and Dr. Redfield remains a nonentity. At this writing, the Johns Hopkins’ site records 3,210,955 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and 134,349 deaths as a consequence. As of today, cases are soaring in multiple states and the death count is rising as well.


Trump also continues to blunder along in other spheres. He revealed in an interview with Marc Thiessen, a conservative columnist at the Washington Post, that the United States had conducted a cyberattack on Russian trolls who were attempting to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections. That information was, of course, classified but Trump’s pathetic need to bolster his own ego overrode the requirement that he not reveal classified information. Just another example of having a severe narcissist in power, a man who has no understanding of national security at all.


It is hard to fathom how history books of the future will explain what has occurred in America. They should not pull any punches in my opinion. The worst president ever does not deserve any respect from anyone. Perhaps Benedict Arnold will be displaced in the history of treason. There is at this point one way out of this debacle. Trump and his mob must go. That includes all of his sycophantic supporters in Congress who have enabled this madness since January 20, 2017. Out with the lot on November 3. Out. Out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Obesity and Ozempic

  Obesity is increasing in prevalence worldwide. It isn’t only a problem in rich and developed countries but also in poorer and lesser developed countries. For our Current Events program here at MonteCedro, I prepared a presentation on obesity and the newest approach to it – drugs like Ozempic that reduce appetite and increase satiety. Their original use was as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes but the ancillary finding of weight loss during their use has promoted an awful lot of hype. Below the line is a list of references that I used in preparing the talk. I hope to provoke commentary about not only the health effects that surround obesity and these newer medications but also to look at obesity through a comprehensive biopsychosocial lens. Obesity has been labeled a disease by the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association but I wonder if it truly is a disease. Hope the links spur some reading and thought. =========================  Another Ozempic side effect? Faci
Read more

11 Months and Counting

  We are now at less than 11 months until the 2024 elections. The polls indicate that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. President Biden by the polls consistently lags behind Trump and is blamed for the “poor economy”, the war in Gaza, and for being too old. Trump, indicted 91 times in multiple jurisdictions, meanwhile signals strongly that he will take on the mantle of a dictator if he is inaugurated in January 2025. He has vowed to install nothing but vetted loyalists to senior positions in a second administration; to fire thousands of civil servants so that he can do the same al lower levels in the Executive; to curb the media and anyone who criticizes him; and top take vengeance on those he hates personally (because he feels they have humiliated him). If that does not remind you of Germany in the 1930s, you failed history. Robert Kagan’s essay in the 30 November New York Times was a bleak read. The fact that we already have a government of the minority and a flawed syst
Read more

The death toll rises

  I am preparing a Current Events session for our group at MonteCedro on the continuing war in Gaza. We discussed this in the fall of last year when it started but it has become obvious that an update is (sadly) necessary. The death toll in Gaza has passed 32,000 but as the New York Times notes, it is likely much higher than that.   “ Gaza has become a 140-square-mile graveyard, each destroyed building another jagged tomb for those still buried within.” I have read through numerous accounts from a wide variety of news sources. The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was unprecedented, barbaric, and horrible: 1143 dead, 250+ hostages taken, rapes and sexual assaults. Israel’s response was predictable but equally horrible in its consequences. Dead: 32,000 and counting. Wounded: many, many thousands more. Gaza became a major humanitarian crisis overnight with forced evacuations from Gaza City to the south followed by an air and land assault of immense size. Famine looms, especially threaten
Read more