Wednesday, January 23, 2019:    Fuck Your Wall – Americans Need A Decent Standard of Living
In our retirement, my wife and I run a small food program that serves food insecure children and their families in our small, rural community. The poverty is everywhere. Every year we see an increasing number of families who slip below poverty line and each month there are more homeless families. One day we are delivering food to a family and the next day they are gone because they couldn't pay the rent and repair the car and they need the car to get to work.

These people are not lazy. Most of them are working more than one job to try and pay the rent, put gas in their car, pay for health care, and put food on the table. Some of them are disabled because they haven't gotten decent healthcare. Bottom line, they just can't make enough money in today's America to live. Oh yes, we supposedly have this great economy with low unemployment but here is the problem with the unemployment statistic - it tells you nothing about the types of jobs being created or what they pay. In fact, most of the jobs being created don't pay a living wage.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has it right. Until there is equity in income distribution, this country will continue to slip backwards. Unfortunately, we continue to go in the wrong direction. According to Oxfam, wealth inequality widened again last year. The top 26 wealthiest persons in the world owned $1.4 trillion or as much as the 3.8 billion (yes that's BILLION) poorest people. If you focus on the United States only, income growth of the of the top 0.1% has gone up 343% since 1979 while the bottom 90% of us have only seen a 22% increase in our incomes. What's worse is that more and more of 90% are being classified as poverty stricken.

Does Trump care? Hell no!. He would rather spend 5 Billion on a totally useless wall. Should anyone doubt the existence of a line of ancestry that leads back to the Neanderthals, they only need to look at the current occupant of the Oval Office.


Saturday, January 12, 2019:    Trump: The American Taliban's Mullah
Ed. Note: Much of the material below is paraphrased from an Opinion article written by Katherine Stewart for the New York Times. For her whole article, click on this link: Why Trump Reigns as King Cyrus

Christian nationalists believe that Trump is a miracle sent straight from heaven to bring the nation back to the Lord and that resistance to Trump is tantamount to resistance to God. As Lance Wallnau, an evangelical author and speaker once said, "I believe the 45th president is meant to be an Isaiah 45 Cyrus," who will "restore the crumbling walls that separate us from cultural collapse."

If you are a heathen like me, let me explain that Cyrus was born in the sixth century B.C.E. and became the first emperor of Persia. Isaiah 45 celebrates Cyrus for freeing a group of Jews who were held captive in Babylon. So basically, Cyrus was a nonbeliever appointed by God as a tool to serve the faithful and Trump 45 has become Christian nationalists Cyrus in the flesh. (Have you seen the "45" embroidered on Trump's shirt cuffs?)

The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They would like you to believe they are fighting a culture war when in fact they are directly attacking democracy itself.

They want it all, and in Mr. Trump they have found a man who does not merely serve their cause, but also satisfies their craving for a certain kind of political leadership. Today's Christian nationalists talk a good game about respecting the Constitution and America's founders, but they prefer autocrats to democrats. What they really want is a king because the great thing about kings like Cyrus is that they don't have to follow rules. They are the law, which makes them ideal leaders in the minds of the paranoid who populate the Christian nationalist movement.

Ralph Drollinger, who has led weekly Bible study groups in the White House attended by Vice President Mike Pence and many other cabinet members tells his followers "Christian believers will — soon, I hope — become the consummate, perfect governing authorities!" So my friends, the Christian Taliban is alive and well in America and has a direct line to the oval office.

Christian Nationalists aren't the religious right. They are the religious wrong and if there is a hell, I am convinced that the road to it will be paved with these people.

Katherine Stewart has studied and writes about the political activities of evangelicals and other religious groups. Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart) is the author of "The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children."


Thursday, January 10, 2019:    Trump Manufacturing Inc.
Folks, there is no crisis at the border other than the one manufactured by the petulant five year old that occupies the oval office. Yes, we do need to revise our immigration policies, but Trump's wall would be America's white elephant - a possession which we could not dispose of and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, would be way out of proportion to its usefulness.

By the time this asshole is removed from office, he will likely have done more damage to this country than all his predecessors with the exception of Dubya.


Wednesday, January 2, 2019:   Some Battles Have Been Won, But The War Is Not Over
Despite winning the house and several state governorships, we are a long way from righting the ship of state. The damage to our democracy and our well being as a country is severe. While we have stopped the hemorrhaging, our democracy is still in the ICU on life support.

Here is the challenge that lies ahead. The war for the survival of our country still has to be waged on multiple fronts. There are forces within and without that are hell bent on turning America into the next fascist state - one in which the freedoms we hold dear are shredded. Where instead of freedom of religion we have a state dominated by the Evangelical Christian right. Where our elected form of government is undermined by Republican sponsored gerrymandering and voter suppression - where misogyny and racism is not only accepted but encouraged - where the American dream becomes the American nightmare for an ever larger number of Americans - where our environment and our health become victims of greed.

The idiot in the oval has shut down our government over his insipid wall. He is putting the well being of thousands of good, loyal Americans at risk for something that will not make America safer or more secure. As Vicente Fox, a Mexican Statesman, so aptly wrote "We should be building bridges instead of walls."

The forces and voices and anger that fueled the progressive victories in the mid-term elections must continue. The evil that has a stranglehold on our country will not just go away. It has to be driven out by word and deed. Let me ask this. What if those Federal workers who are being forced to work without pay were to walk off the job - the TSA for example. There is power in numbers. To save our democracy we need to use that power.