Liar, Liar, Earth on Fire

“The Republican Party stands alone, in terms of rich countries, in its blatant denial of climate change. This is why Noam Chomsky correctly calls them the most dangerous organization in human history. The Democratic Party, their hapless and willing enablers, are a close second.” Nick Pemberton, writing in Counterpunch.

Fires in Northern California. Fires in Southern California. Fires in Greece. Fires in the Arctic Circle.

The grass in Hyde Park in London is brown.

Floods in Japan. Floods in the Northeast of the U.S.

“Extreme weather” say the talking heads on Corporate TV. Rarely do their masters allow them to utter the forbidden words, “climate change.”

If Mother Earth could bring a legal case against the Trump Administration and the GOP-controlled Congress, every last one of them would be found guilty of criminal stupidity and gross negligence. At a time when the earth is sending us a clear and unequivocal message, giving us a taste of what is to come, our government ignores and denies the obvious evidence and in fact makes everything worse. Much worse. The weather around the world isn’t just extreme, it’s deadly.

It’s too late. The oceans will rise, fires will burn, millions will flee. We haven’t seen anything yet. We will pay, dearly, for our hubris, our greed, our venality.

The Democrats would rather talk about Russia. Day and night, through fire and flood, Russia, Russia, Russia; evil Russia, diabolical Russia, cyber-attacking Russia. Russia at dusk, Russia at dawn, Putin this and Putin that. The Russian threat to our glorious democracy, which is hardly a democracy at all. It’s as if Russian troops were massed near the US-Canada border, a daily provocation, rather than the truth: NATO forces have squeezed up to Russia’s borders for years, another broken promise. Who threatens whom?

We need our bogeymen to keep the war profiteers content. Russia. Iran. North Korea. And if we can’t find an enemy, we’ll just create one. Watch out for Venezuela, they have it in for us.

Sane voices are drowned out in the daily cacophony of idiocy and spectacle. We’re going down, days numbered, nights finite. We had our chances to amend our ways, but ignored and shunned the prophets and silenced the scientists. Nobody but ourselves to blame.

Fire and flood. Run to higher ground and all you will find is a mountain of ash.

F---Off Senate Majority PAC

I kept receiving these smarmy solicitations in my mailbox, so I decided to do something about it; they paid the postage. What the hell.

June 21, 2018

Senate Majority Pac

700 13th St NW Suite 600

Washington, DC 20015

Dear Senate Majority PAC:

I received your direct mail solicitation today, and the first thing I wondered is how you obtained my name and address. My second thought was why anyone of sound mind would use Chuck Schumer as their poster boy. Schumer, like the Clintons and Barack Obama, represents the gangrene at the heart of the Democratic Party, and the primary reason it loses elections and cannot create a coherent message after nearly a year and a half of the Trump Junta. I still have no idea what Democrats stand for, except, of course, tax cuts for the wealthy, endless wars and obscene Pentagon spending, corruption, ineptitude and impotence. More than 40 years ago the Democratic Party turned away from its core constituents and never looked back because the money was too good in corporate boardrooms.

What you’re saying is essentially this: Vote for Democrats because they are less bad than Trump. What an inspiring policy platform! You people are really stupid. The country is primed and ready for a progressive vision, and what does the Democratic Party do?  It discourages progressive candidates, throws its weight against them. Don’t count on a blue wave in November because Democrats will find a way to fuck up, and even if they don’t, what is their plan, a return to the policies of the Obama era? And what were those policies? Let’s see, coddling Wall Street banks, extrajudicial killings abroad, drone strikes against civilians, income inequality, corporate medical insurance, and endless wars. Great, sign me up. NO!

The problem with Schumer and Obama and the detestable Clintons is their arrogance and ignorance of the day-to-day struggles of average Americans. When a party is so corrupt that it runs a ticket of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, one might as well throw in the towel.

I am an average American, working-class, with only one difference: I vote and I read. Shitheads like Charles “I-serve-Wall Street” Schumer don’t speak for me and certainly don’t impress me. From me you get neither a dollar or a dime. Fuck you. Remove my name from your mailing list until the day Democrats offer more than lip service to the poor and working class.

Sincerely

Brian Tanguay

What Does the Server Say?

“But none are saved, all are lost.” George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

Just when you think the Trump Reign of Error can’t get any more absurd, the man goes to Europe and opens his foolish mouth, and something resembling language spills out. Trump sounds idiotic even when he’s reading from a prepared script, but when he veers off script, as he is prone to do, to the horror of his handlers, nearly everything out of his mouth sounds like gibberish. What he says today, on the record, on video tape, he denies tomorrow. The man has never in his wasted, pathetic life accepted personal responsibility. Trump bludgeons the truth every single day. The entire world -- with the exception of the parrots on Fox News and most members of the Republican Party -- knows Trump is a liar, a bigot, a fool, and an imbecile.

The Trump junta is a nightmare from which there is no awakening, no relief, no escape. Should the United States engage in dialogue with Russia? Yes, of course. With North Korea? Yes. With India and Pakistan? Yes. Israel? Sure, even if it’s done with a wink and a nod to Bibi. Nuclear powers need to talk to one another, explore mutual interests, and ease tensions whenever possible. I do, and yet don’t, understand the hysteria about Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Is it really a Pearl Harbor, 9/11-style event, a grave threat to our democracy? I’m not willing to go there. It  seems a certainty that Russia attempted to influence the election in Trump’s favor, but how effective their efforts were is more difficult to pinpoint, at least from where I stand. What we shouldn’t forget is that the US has been interfering in the elections, governments, and economies of sovereign nations for decades. Please, can we at least step back, pause, and recognize our own hypocrisy? It’s not worse, Democrats, because it happened to us, and I’m not willing to crown the FBI, CIA and NSA as glorious protectors of democracy, because these agencies have long, dark histories of subverting the democratic aspirations of other nations, not to mention spying on Americans. And the intelligence apparatus lies, all the time.

It also seems obvious that the Russians have something on Trump that Trump is desperate to keep locked away, hidden from sight. The Orange Menace is a degenerate of the highest order so there could be a tape of him cavorting with underage prostitutes, but far more likely is money laundering. I think we will see before too much longer that money Russian oligarchs stole from the Russian people was funneled through the Trump Organization and came out scrubbed clean. For the right price, Trump would sell Melania and his children into bondage and never bat an eye or lose a moment’s sleep.

It has to be the money.

We must understand two things about Trump’s grotesque presidency: First, it’s not normal. Trump doesn’t represent America. Second, Trump is out for himself and no one else. He cares not a whit for the poor sod in Michigan or Ohio or Pennsylvania who lost his union job in a ball bearing factory ten years ago and has been scratching out a living on Walmart wages ever since. Trump is a con man -- always was, always will be. If you’re a working class person who thinks Trump cares about you, well, I’m sorry. Both American political parties sold you out long ago. Some of your grievances are justified. You have a right to be worried for your future and your children’s future, but you backed the wrong savior; you’re a casualty of a system that is bigger and far more enduring than Donald J. Trump. Your enemy isn’t African-Americans or Mexican immigrants or women or gay people -- your enemy is neoliberal capitalism, the “free” market, unchecked corporate influence; these are the forces that have upended your world and ruined your shot at a middle-class life. And you’re not alone. Millions of us are huddled in this leaky boat.

My body involuntarily convulses, I feel a cramp in my leg, I sit up in bed and shake my head to rid my mind of the vision of Donald J. Trump’s leering visage; I’m dreaming and wide awake, certain my country is in its death throes, tottering on the edge of the abyss. My bed is on fire and just a few feet from me, Trump is rubbing a computer server and demanding that it reveal its secrets.

The World Cup: A Conspiracy of Fortune

“And when good soccer happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.” Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow

So, France has won the World Cup, beating a spirited Croatia side by a 4-2 margin. For long stretches of the Final, Croatia was ascendent, the better side, but as they did throughout this tournament, France did what they needed to do in order to win. The football wasn’t always free-flowing or lovely or technically brilliant or pretty, but it was effective. France won ugly when it needed to, usually a characteristic of a champion. Half the possession, many fewer corners than Croatia, no problem. France has players who can flick the switch and turn in a moment of quality.

Croatia deserves all the credit it has garnered from the media and public. If you want to see a side with spirit and resiliency, one that will never quit no matter what, look no further. Luka Modric was the best player in this tournament, followed, perhaps, by a duo of my favorites, Eden Hazard and N’golo Kante. A true football fan has to admire what Croatia achieved, a small nation not expected to go deep into the tournament, that defied the experts and the odds and proved they belonged in the Final. Modric, Rakitic, Perisic and Mandzukic proved that they deserved to play in the Final, that Croatia wasn’t a fluke.

Winning the World Cup takes a conspiracy of fortune -- an advantageous sorting in the group stage, fortunate pairings in the knockout rounds, being on the better side of the draw, having a healthy side that peaks at the right time, a measure of pure luck. To lift the trophy a lot has to go right. Football is a game of fine margins, inches, feet, seconds. Having what seems to be an unbeatable squad of talented players isn’t enough -- just ask Germany, Argentina, Brazil or Spain. In this tournament, giants were toppled, and some of the finest players in the world took an early vacation. Talent is one thing, a necessary thing, but so are intangibles like resilience, heart, and belief. Croatia believed. After storming to victory against Japan in one of the greatest comebacks in World Cup history, Belgium believed.

France should have won the 2016 European championship. They were on home soil, after all, and before thirty minutes of the final were over, Portugal’s star player, Cristiano Ronaldo, was subbed off with an injury. The door was wide open, big enough for a locomotive to plow through, but France lost. They avenged that loss in Russia. Kante and Griezmann and Giroud and Pogba and Mbappe, the latter all of nineteen, with the ability to change the game when the opposition got stretched and space opened before him.

The 2018 World Cup was one long feast, a banquet table groaning under the weight of a hundred delicacies; Russia gave us drama and heroics and passion and heart-stopping anxiety; Mexico beating Germany, Croatia stunning Argentina, Sweden going as far as it did, Russia ousting Spain.

When the tournament began I hoped Belgium would lift the cup, and after Belgium, France, and my third choice was Argentina, a pity vote for Messi. If Croatia had won, I would have been happy because they showed incredible mettle and teamwork. For the last month my life has revolved around who was playing who and at what stage. After the winnowing of the group stages there are few easy matches. The deeper into the tournament a team ventures, the tougher the going. Didier Deschamps and his team deserved to lift the trophy in the pelting Moscow rain.

This is America

"For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake." Frederick Douglass

The 4th came and went and I didn’t feel much patriotism for my country. It has been a long time since I saw the glowing myth behind the gray reality. Too many doses of truth. My generation has made a muddle of things, capitulating to the forces of capitalism. We bought the fable of market rationalism, believed, even when it became clear that it was a total failure, sat by idly while the few raked in all but the loose chips. The Market replaced God, seeped into our schools, public spaces, civil discourse, and institutions. The Market knows best. The Market is fair and just. The Market plays no favorites. The Market is always right, the only way of looking at the world, the only solution to any problem.

Brand everything, including yourself, package and sell it.

The hole we’re in is deep, caving fast. Our president, a shameless moron who would rather be King, shovels dirt on our heads. The light from above fades. A collapse is coming, and must come, because the foundation is cracked and can’t bear the weight of the fraud and mendacity at the top. The elites, the credentialed experts, the blow-dried talking heads on cable news, the PR flacks, the market cheerleaders -- heartless and cruel, perpetuating each other up and down the line. “In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.” Colson Whitehead wrote the line about a different set of criminals, but the thought applies just as well. It’s not that we are headed for plutocracy and kleptocracy, we’ve already arrived, cruised the limo around the circular drive, past the gilded fountain and the liveried staff. Democracy is a sham, we all know it, the game rigged, the fix in. Except for a few decades here and there, it has always been so, and right from the beginning. Those Founding Fathers feared the people, distrusted them, thought them too ignorant and unruly for self-rule. No, we didn’t want a king, but neither a mob. Now under-populated red states lord over heavily populated blue states, South Dakota represented by the same number of senators as California and New York. Tyranny of the minority.

Uruguay and France. Brazil and Belgium. There might be fireworks, for sure there will be drama. I will be glued to my big screen. Eight teams left in Russia.

Here’s a statistic from Jeffrey St. Clair’s latest column for Counterpunch:

+ Countries where school shooters in 2018 were born …

Libya- 0

Syria- 0

Somalia- 0

Yemen- 0

Iran- 0

United States- 22

The median price of a home in SB was recently pegged at a million bucks. In San Francisco, a six-figure income can qualify you as low income. The Market, again, turning a basic human need into a commodity. How can real estate prices rise so steadily when incomes are flat? There was a home for sale around the corner from us for a few weeks; yesterday a big truck was parked in the driveway and the porch was cluttered with furniture, packing cartons. Another lucky winner of the SB-Real Estate-Lottery. We got our piece of Paradise!

Apparently, Scott Pruitt, the disgraced former head of the EPA, believes God’s hand is guiding Donald Trump as he rolls back every regulation he possibly can, flogs coal, and thumbs his nose at climate science. Don’t count on Pruitt ever paying a price for the trail of blatant corruption he blazed. Remember, this is America.

Beacon of Freedom

“Maybe what I’m pining for is a liberal Magic Kingdom, a Midwest where things function again. A countryside dotted with small towns where the business district has reasonable job-creating businesses in it. Taverns, too.” Thomas Frank, Rendezvous with Oblivion

 

Historically speaking, the Supreme Court has never been a friend of us commoners. With few exceptions, the Court has advanced or protected the interests of capital and property, rich over poor, whites over Africans, males over females. That the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s Muslim ban was shocking at first, but when considered in historical perspective, not shocking at all. The United States -- beacon of freedom and liberty for the world’s poor and downtrodden, (don’t laugh) -- has blocked Chinese immigrants, Hindus and Sikhs, Syrian-Lebanese, and, of course, we shamefully incarcerated Japanese-Americans during World War II. North Korea and Venezuela were tossed into Trump’s mix to make it appear more palatable, but the target population was crystal clear: Muslims.

How many terrorist acts have been committed by Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian, Libyan or Somali immigrants? Zero. How many Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian, Libyan or Somali citizens have been displaced by undeclared US wars against their countries or by US support for countries like Saudi Arabia? Millions. Like presidents before him, Trump’s rhetoric inflated the danger and downplayed the reality. He is playing the very same card with regard to our southern border. Think about it, is the most heavily armed country on the planet really at risk of being overrun by brown-skinned immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many of them women and children? Demagoguery isn’t designed to make sense, it’s sole purpose is to stoke fear and make people act irrationally.

After upholding Trump’s Muslim ban, the corporate-friendly Court swung a lead pipe at the kneecaps of the last stronghold of organized labor -- public employee unions. The argument in JANUS vs. AFSCME, that collection of mandatory and involuntary agency fees (also called service fees or fair share fees) violated an employee’s first amendment right to free speech, was spurious at best, but this Court must believe that corporations don’t already have enough power and might over workers. The radical right has long sought to decapitate public employee unions and the JANUS decision might just do it. I was a member of a public employee union for many years, a local president, an activist, and I know that unions, like corporations, do dumb things; I got ticked off by the so-called “member leaders” who seemed as disconnected from reality as Washington politcos are from people who work for wages. But I always, and still, believed in collective action, people with shared interests, be they of whatever color or creed, standing together and making demands of the high and mighty. What remains of organized labor after JANUS must be more radical, more confrontational, more inclusive.

One bright light in this otherwise dreary week was the primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Latina socialist in New York who whipped an entrenched Wall Street toadie Democrat. Ocasio-Cortez is smart, passionate, real, and she’s promoting issues like Medicare for All, free college, and so on, that make the Democratic Party establishment cringe, and Chuck Schumer’s hemorrhoid pop. Ocasio-Cortez just might be going places, making things happen, shaking the tree. We need that.

Short Takes:

Shocking news from the group stages of the World Cup: Germany, the defending champ, is out. The talented giant, tripped, then stumbled, and never recovered. My three favorites: Belgium, France, and Argentina remain in the hunt. The knockout stage is next.

I just began reading a delightful book about football by the late Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow. Here’s a quote: “In soccer, as in everything else, consumers are far more numerous than creators.”

And so it goes, in June of this terrible year.

Crazy, Cruel & Venal: Another Week In TrumpLand

“In American the quirk was that people were things...A slave girl squeezing out pups was like a mint, money that bred money.”  Colson Whitehead

The United States is failing in so many ways that it’s mind-boggling. The slow-motion train wreck continues to unfold, one ghastly image heaped upon the last, from terrified migrant children to the idiotic Melania, to the scowling visage of Stephen Miller. This nightmare can’t be happening, and yet it is, the dark, slimy underbelly of America exposed for the world to see, though most nations have understood for decades the brutality of my country. Except for the Vietnam War in the 60’s and the Nixon Administration, I can’t remember the country being so divided against itself, so full of hatred and fear.

The Trump junta is crazy and cruel and venal, playing to a small base of the misguided who don’t know where to direct their ire. Trump’s diehard supporters continue to believe -- against all evidence -- that their man is working for them and that their circumstances will improve, as the Orange Menace promised. That they won’t is a foregone conclusion. Trump and his cronies and family members are making everything worse for the many, as I knew they would. Kleptocracies serve the very few, and only the very few. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, Trump spreads chaos and confusion. He clearly enjoys doing so. Immigration, trade, foreign policy -- there may be some twisted method to what Trump says and does -- but usually his actions seem driven by whim and pique and caprice.

I was listening to Thom Hartmann on the radio the other morning, on my way to the dojo for a kickboxing session, and he was talking about the many ways the people who own and run this country operate. They could never succeed by coming straight out about their aims to reduce regulation on corporations, slash corporate and personal income taxes, bankrupt the social safety net, and keep wages low. Wouldn’t fly and the owners know it. They have to wrap their true aims in claims about murderous immigrants, dangerous Muslims, welfare queens (who are invariably African-American), drugs and drug dealers, morale decay and decline whose only cure is personal responsibility (thus no welfare check without a job), and the Christian church, prayer in public schools, etc.  We elect scads of politicians who spout these sentiments and then once in office, vote to cut regulations on corporations, slash taxes on the wealthy, gut social programs, and punish the poor. Bait and switch.

Short Takes:

Belgium and France are playing reasonably well in the World Cup, Mexico is through to the Round of 16, and Germany is back on track after some late heroics from Tony Kroos. Great, entertaining stuff. Brazil and Argentina are lurking, too. Portugal, as it did in the Euros in 2016, finds a way to advance. The number of Mexico supporters who travelled to Russia is astounding. How do they manage it?

This week I’m reading The Bonanza King by Gregory Crouch, Reporter by Seymour Hersh, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, and Rendezvous with Oblivion by Thomas Frank. And the Lady and the Monk by Pico Iyer. Some of these I will review for the Santa Barbara Independent, my other job that brings me a lot of satisfaction and allows me to meet interesting and accomplished people. The day job is a necessity and I’m OK at what I do, but books and ideas feed my soul.

Earlier this year the local media reported that the annual Solstice parade (one of SB’s major tourists draws) might not happen due to lack of money. The fires and floods, road closures, loss of life and general disruption had dried up donations. The parade came off yesterday, though the Solstice organization was literally pushing a giant black hat mounted on wheels up and down the street, while volunteers angled poles with bags tied on the end into the crowd, hoping to come away with a few bucks. Bills to pay and all that. It costs money to block off streets and pay the police and clean up the mess afterwards. It’s always difficult to tell at street level, but the parade didn’t appear as well attended as in the recent past. The marine layer was thick and the sun never broke through.

The Blind Pig Finds an Acorn

“Say no more to treating people like things and corporations like people.” The Reverend William Barber

Another crazy week in TrumpLand. Who else but Donald Trump goes to meet one of our perennial bogeymen and babbles about building condos on the beaches? Despite the fulminations of Rachel Maddow and what passes for the liberal media ( what a joke), the bumbling, idiotic Trump might actually have done something good in Singapore. As Hunter S. Thompson was fond of saying, “even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then” and if nothing else, it’s better and safer for the world when nuclear armed nations are talking, rather than threatening, one another. Every now and then a rank amatuer pulls off a miracle. Of course, Trump returned from Singapore talking as if North Korea had already disarmed, the whole matter done and dusted, just like that.

What a simpleton.

But then you turn around and look a the deplorable, cruel and inhumane treatment of migrant children at our borders, separated from their parents by order of the diabolical Jeff Sessions, and the reality of the Trump Junta comes screaming back into one’s face.

I imagine Kim Jong-un leaning toward Trump and asking, “So, Donald, what was it like to fuck that porn star?”

The United Nations -- yes, that despised body -- released its report on extreme poverty and lo and behold the U.S. is doing great! 40 million Americans living in poverty; highest infant mortality rate in the developed world; our citizens live shorter and sicker lives; our access to clean water and sanitation ranks 36th in the world; and, of course, we retained our title as the undisputed leader in incarceration. Can’t touch the USA there! Take that, Vladimir. For every one you jail, we jail ten.

The World Cup is underway. The three teams I am pulling for are France, Belgium, and Argentina. France because of N’Golo Kante, who plays his club football for Chelsea; Belgium because Eden Hazard is one of my favorites and also a Chelsea man; and Argentina because I’d like to see Messi get the international monkey off his back. How fun was the match between Portugal and Spain? Cristiano buried that free kick to rescue a point for Portugal before he kicked the ball, you could see it in his face.

Maybe the thrill is gone, maybe it never was. It’s Father’s Day and I’m thinking of my dad, the smell of cigarette smoke on his coats hanging in the closet of our house on Ardilla Drive, and how little I knew of his interior life, what he thought and believed, what gave him joy. Ironically, I knew my father-in-law more intimately than my own father; they’re both gone. I’ve tried to lay down some markers for my kids so they’ll know who their old man was, but by the time they know, I’ll be gone, too.

And so it goes.

Bill of Goods

“People come, people go

Some grow young, some grow cold

I woke up in between

A memory and a dream

So let's get to the point, let's roll another joint

Let's head on down the road

There's somewhere I gotta go” Tom Petty

The daughter of one of my wife’s oldest friends graduated from a local high school on Thursday, an afternoon full of sunshine and a light breeze. The line of people filing into the stadium was long and moving slowly through the gate; parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, some clutching balloons that were not allowed into the stadium by the hired security guards, who also checked bags for contraband, air horns, signs, and anything else deemed verboten. An instrumental group was on the artificial turf field playing musical numbers from movies. White chairs for the graduates, arrayed like a chevron, and a three person Navy color guard. The mood in the area where we sat was expectant, light, tinged with relief, graduation being an end and a beginning. As we watched people stream in I thought of my son, for whom high school was one long agony of not fitting in or connecting; he stacked his time and couldn’t wait to be free of what he considered a soul-sucking waste of his time.

The instrumental group began playing the graduation march and the students filed in, two by two, girls in red robes, boys in blue; as the students passed the stands family members stood up and waved or called out, hoping for a wave in return. Pair after pair until all the students were seated on the white chairs. The school principal asked everyone to stand for the pledge of allegiance -- that strange ritual -- and then a choir sang the national anthem (no one took a knee in protest). The principal, an embattled figure who is currently suing the school district for its decision to return him to a teaching position next year, introduced two of the school board members who voted to oust him, an ironic twist. I wondered what was going through his mind, knowing that this was his final graduation exercise at the school where he had worked for nearly 20 years. He began speaking about what a record-breaking year it had been for the athletic department, with something like eight conference championships and two state titles, an odd place, it seemed to me, to start a graduation speech, given that the majority of students are not involved in athletics, and then he spoke of the award-winning choir and the theater department, using, within the first two minutes, the word “amazing” three times. Most of his speech consisted of platitudes to hard work, learning from adversity and never giving up, stock phrases, many of which were repeated by the white girl who spoke next; she reminded her classmates that they had begun four years before as wide-eyed, weak-kneed freshman, and now here they were, confident and accomplished seniors, ready to step out into the wider world and seize all the opportunities she was positive were waiting. Her pigmentation or surname would never stand between her and her dreams, and the cynic in me suspected she came from a family with dough, maybe even a Hope Ranch clan.

The final student speaker was a special education kid who got a big cheer when he finished. I wondered what his future would be like, if he would find his place in the world, or if this accomplishment would be the highlight of his life. The times are so different now, the American Dream is dead, the American Empire is in decline, and the can-do American spirit that existed in the the quarter century after World War II has been replaced by fear and cruelty and grotesque, brazen corruption that kills hope. As the long roll call of names began I wondered if my generation had sold these kids a bill of goods, a false promise, and a bucket of piss. I hope not. I hope these kids will wrest power from the oligarchs before it’s too late.

Short Takes:

Donald Trump: “All the best Constitutional scholars agree that I am above the law, below the law, immune to the law, better than the law, and beyond the reach of law. I can pardon myself any time I want to.”

Razan Al-Najjar was only 21 when she was murdered by an Israeli army sniper. Razan was a medic, trying to provide care to a wounded Palestinian near the fence that keeps Palestinians trapped in Gaza. The medics wore white vests and held their hands up, not that this universal gesture matters to the Israeli Defense Forces. Israel is now spinning the fairy tale that Razan was no Florence Nightingale, she was providing care to Hamas. Nobody believes this BS except Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the UN, and Bibi, of course.

Anthony Bourdain, RIP. You told the truth about what you saw, as well as what you ate.

According to Seymour Hersh, the award-winning and legendary investigative reporter, the most lethal words to come out of the mouth of a guest on cable news are, “I think.” Hersh could care less about what guests think -- he only wants to know what they know and can prove. Amen.

Trump is possibly the most brazenly corrupt American president in history. The US Constitution has a mechanism for stopping him, but only the corrupt US Congress can make that mechanism work, and the chances of that happening are slim.