Donald Trump and maga Republicans are supporting a weaponization of our government: Firing journalists is a clear and present danger!

Echo opinion published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, by Jenice Armstrong:  A Clear and Present Danger❗

America is not OK under Trump’s leadership: A trio of heavy hitters, including brothers Bryan and Howard Stevenson, will be at the Fitler Club on Thursday to talk about surviving in today's political climate.


The Washington Post’s firing of columnist Karen Attiah really has me shook, as they say.

I used to love that paper. I grew up in Washington, D.C., where it was a must-read. I even worked there briefly after college, and always assumed that one day I would end up back in its newsroom. But the paper that helped bring down former President Richard Nixon with its coverage of the Watergate break-in scandal isn’t what it used to be.

Now under the ownership of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, the paper claims Attiah was fired because she violated the paper’s social media policy by posting about the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. But personally, I think there was a lot more to it than that. Attiah — the last Black full-time columnist at the Post — was an unfortunate casualty of this toxic Trumpian moment that has engulfed America. She symbolizes what’s going on as voices such as MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd are being silenced, and journalists are being required to sign a pledge not to share unauthorized information in order to cover the Pentagon.

Americans should be up in arms as our freedom of speech — a bedrock principle in the Bill of Rights — is under attack. ABC’s indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! after the comedian’s remarks about Kirk became a rallying cry — enough to get him back on the air. Social media users are losing jobs and getting doxed because of their posts. Political polarization is extreme.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office plotting revenge against his political enemies and flexing his authoritarian muscles.

I used to wonder how my ancestors survived slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Here’s what I now realize: One day in the not-so-distant future, many will look back at us and wonder how we managed to get through such troubling times. America is not OK.

So, when an email landed in my inbox about a fundraiser dedicated to surviving today’s political climate, it stopped me. I actually read it several times as I savored the words: a “night of insight, inspiration and healing.” If America ever needed all three, it’s now❗

The event, scheduled for Thursday at the Fitler Club in Center City, will be cohosted by a trio of real heavy hitters: civil rights attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson, whose best-selling book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, was adapted into a Hollywood movie in 2019; his brother, University of Pennsylvania psychologist and professor Howard Stevenson; and Robin Smith, a psychologist and a former regular on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

When I talked to Smith, she said the purpose is to “have the conversation that is anything but safe.” The timing is fortuitous given everything that’s been happening. As she pointed out, “This is the season to … not ask, ‘Do you hurt?’ but ‘Where do you hurt, and how can we begin to tend to our injuries?’”

Proceeds will benefit Lion’s Story, a Philly-based nonprofit founded by Howard Stevenson that provides resources and training to assist those attempting to navigate the complexities of racial stress.

“My brother and I grew up in a poor, racially segregated community,” said Bryan Stevenson, whose organization was behind the effort to open the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., in 2018. “We are both the products of Brown v. Board of Education. We have lived that legacy of slavery and lynching and segregation from our own background.”

The Delaware native added that it’s important people don’t allow the country to backslide in its quest for racial justice. “We haven’t even got where we are trying to go,” he said. “So this is not a time for us to be pushed backward. Organizations like Lion’s Story have a critical role to play in that effort.”

If I were around, I would stop by the Fitler Club and try to soak up some of the good vibes for myself. But I plan to take a few weeks off to basically touch grass, as the young folks say, and to think about something other than politics and the implications of Trump’s latest post on Truth Social.

That’s my healing strategy. Hopefully, it will help sustain me for what challenges are ahead.

Jenice Armstrong
I'm an Inquirer op-ed columnist and a member of the Inquirer Editorial Board. I write about race and gender, local and national politics, and sometimes pop culture.

American people must rise up to Resist the disgraceful Trumpzi administration: Impeach Trump NOW !!!

Trump’s Disgrace opinion by David Remnick published in The New Yorker: While Franklin Delano Roosevelt set a modern standard for the revitalization of a society, Trump is determined to prove how quickly he can spark its undoing.

It was one thing to anticipate this prolonged Trumpzi evil political moment; it has been, these past weeks, quite another to live it. 

Each day is its own fresh hell 🔥, bringing ever more outrageous news from an autocrat who revels in his contempt for the government he leads, for the foreign allies who deserve our support, and for the Constitution he is sworn to uphold. 

Since beginning his second term, six weeks ago, Donald Trump has commandeered public attention to such an extent that it is hard to recall that there was ever a time when an American President went about his first weeks in office in a frenzy of activity characterized not by threat, chaos, and corruption but by discipline, competence, and compassion.

Yet there was such a time. On the overcast morning of March 4, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt arrived at the U.S. Capitol to deliver his first Inaugural Address. The country was in a general state of misery. Since the start of the Depression, in late 1929, one out of three American workers had lost his job. 

Countless schools were shuttered. Banks were collapsing. Edmund Wilson, reporting for The New Republic, wrote that “there is not a garbage-dump in Chicago which is not diligently haunted by the hungry.”

Roosevelt, having defeated Herbert Hoover in the popular vote by eighteen points, could honestly boast of a mandate and understood its meaning. As he said in his speech at the Capitol, the demands of the “stricken” electorate were clear: “This nation asks for action, and action now.” Before the notion of a President’s “first hundred days” was ever codified, he set off on a tear of executive orders and legislative initiatives. 

Roosevelt, with the support of enormous Democratic majorities in Congress, quickly saved the national banking system, took the U.S. off the gold standard, paid out significant relief to the poor, and created federal agencies that not only provided work to the jobless but helped revive the country’s economy and infrastructure for decades to come.

It has not taken Trump a hundred days to match Roosevelt’s New Deal for its speed, its “muzzle velocity,” as Steve Bannon, Trump’s formerly incarcerated court philosopher, has put it. 

But, while Roosevelt set a modern standard for the revitalization of a society, Trump seems determined to prove how quickly he can spark its undoing. In record time, he has brought shame and disorder to the country. Where F.D.R. set out to build and to comfort, Trump has set out to fire countless civil servants, punish his adversaries, and threaten the press. He has cast aside essential climate actions, humiliated undocumented immigrants and trans men and women, coddled dictators, and unnerved allies. F.D.R. appointed Cordell Hull, Harold Ickes, and other formidable advisers to his first Cabinet; Trump has empowered extremists distinguished principally by their conspiracy thinking, sycophancy, and incompetence.

F.D.R. created the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Tennessee Valley Authority; Trump has deputized Elon Musk, who has billions of dollars in contracts with multiple federal agencies, to freeze federal funding for programs that millions of Americans depend on and to fire thousands of workers in vital government agencies. “We will make mistakes,” Musk said in the White House, flashing a smile of privilege and malice. So far, these little goofs include, but are not limited to, momentarily laying off people who oversee the nuclear-weapons stockpile and cancelling Ebola-prevention measures.

Roosevelt, in his time, led the conquest of global fascism and the rescue of Europe. On matters of foreign policy, Trump has rapidly made common cause with autocrats from Budapest to Beijing and has made it clear to our European allies that when they come to Washington they had best flatter his ego and bear gifts, such as an invitation to visit King Charles. In the Oval Office on Friday, Trump nakedly sided with Russian aggression, berating the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, for failing to show him sufficient gratitude and respect and for “gambling with World War Three.” Zelensky is a hero of historic scale, brave beyond measure; Trump’s behavior was disgraceful. He and his Vice-President, J. D. Vance, deliberately tried to intimidate Zelensky with all the finesse of a couple of small-time hoods. The incident was both shocking and inevitable, all in line with the over-all temper of Trump’s Presidency—the threats, the firings, the multiple doge fiascoes, the proposal to cleanse the Gaza Strip of two million Palestinians.

Is this really what Trump’s supporters voted for❓ #IDTS 😕

President Zelenskyy Strong❗💙

How does the decimation of American values, institutions, and commitments bring down the price of eggs 🥚❓ Writing in Foreign Affairs, Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way make a painstaking and convincing case that most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War retain certain democratic features, particularly elections, but weaponize the state, purging it of perceived enemies. This sort of “competitive” autocracy—like Erdoğan’s Turkey and Orbán’s Hungary—is, the authors argue, what is now taking shape in Washington. To minimize the unending fusillade of Trump’s first weeks in office, to choose to turn away, to shut off the news, is to indulge in self-soothing.

There is no guarantee that Trump’s perverse momentum will slow, or be derailed, of its own accord. He has the unwavering support of his MAGA base, the cowed compliance of his congressional caucus, and the backing of multibillionaires such as Jeff Bezos, who would rather diminish the vitality of his newspaper than risk the dinner invitations of the sovereign.

And yet, the current torrent, fuelled by years of planning in right-wing circles and by Trump’s demagogic energies, is hardly unstoppable. Will working-class and middle-class Americans tolerate the self-indulgence and the corruptions of Trump’s favored billionaires while their own interests go unaddressed❓ Will Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is currently being tested by an outbreak of measles in Texas, have the public’s trust in the event of another pandemic❓ We have already seen how at least some courageous judges, governors, and law-enforcement officials have refused to bow down to the politicization of the law, or, as Levitsky and Way put it, the weaponization of the state.

And yet the current torrent, fuelled by years of planning in right-wing circles and by Trump’s demagogic energies, is hardly unstoppable. Will working-class and middle-class Americans tolerate the self-indulgence and the corruptions of Trump’s favored billionaires while their own interests go unaddressed? Will Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is currently being tested by an outbreak of measles in Texas, have the public’s trust in the event of another pandemic? We have already seen how at least some courageous judges, governors, and law-enforcement officials have refused to bow down to the politicization of the law, or, as Levitsky and Way put it, the weaponization of the state.

Roosevelt, at the start of his Inaugural Address, said that there was no need “to shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.” 

In our time, the crisis resides in the Oval Office. Whether there is a mandate for what is being practiced there will be made clear in the months to come––in Congress, in the courts, in the press, in the streets, and, eventually, at the ballot box. Fear itself was the singular enemy in Roosevelt’s time. It remains so today. ♦

Washington Post spiked a political cartoon? Hey Bezos....political cartoons 101: They are supposed to be controversial!

Gotta love political satirist Andy Borowitz, so following up on his lead, I am spreading this news:

File under "You cannot make this stuff up"

"Democracy can't function without a free press", Ann Telnaes

Ann Telnaes, the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist for the Washington Post since 2008, quit the paper this week after her editor killed her cartoon depicting WaPo owner Jeff Bezos and other craven billionaires debasing themselves before Donald J. Trump.

This act of censorship, of course, isn’t an outlier: anticipatory obedience to fascism has risen ominously in recent months. It began with WaPo and the Los Angeles Times spiking endorsements of Kamala Harris, only to be outdone by Disney, who gifted Trump $15 million instead of fighting his flimsy defamation claim in court. Oh, and let’s not forget Joe and Mika’s humiliating field trip to Mar-a-Lago.

I don’t know Ms. Telnaes, but I admire her work, integrity and courage. I’m publishing the rough draft of her cartoon above in the hopes that you’ll share it. If enough people do, it will reach a larger audience than if her WaPo editor had had the cojones to run it. Actually, given how many subscribers have fled the paper in recent months, reaching a larger audience than the Washington Post isn’t a daunting task.

Love, Andy Borowitz

What were the National Enquirer attorneys thinking? An echo opinion

Jeff Bezos- surprise! Kick in the ass exposes David Pecker

A cartoon inn the Vermont Caledonian news, shows the world’s richest man, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and the National Enquirer’s (AMI) CEO David Pecker, who was blackmailing Bezos.  In the cartoon, Bezos is kicking the Pecker's ass. The New York Post exposed the blackmail story on the newspaper's cover

Pecker’s AMI (American Medica, Inc.- publisher of the rag "National Enquirer"- ugh) was extorting Bezos, demanding that the Washington Post (which Bezos owns) hold back publication on their investigation of AMI, and that Bezos stop a private investigator he hired to look into AMI – otherwise they would publish photos of Bezos’ penis. 

Bezos was brave to expose Pecker’s extortion.

It is interesting that Pecker and AMI seems to have such success with blackmail that his attorneys didn’t step back to think of what would happen if the person they were blackmailing simply made their emails public. (Obviously, this brazen assumption that blackmail works has proven to work for past "hush money" incidents.)

AMI is looking pretty sleazy these days, with likely links to Saudi Arabia, and a reported safe full of Donald Trump secrets, among other tawdry stuff. So, Pecker’s dickish name was a natural...and Bezos has finally pulled Pecker’s pants down. 

Depressed working wages ~ Republican workers who vote against their own best interest

An echo essay about the *tax cuts for the rich* published in the History News Network - this opinion analysis also speaks to the incongruous correlation between Republican workers who support Donald Trump and weirdly vote against their own best interest. 

Dr. Lawrence Wittner, a Professor of History emeritus at State University of New York/Albany

Recent announcement by the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, that his company would give substantial raises to its lowest-paid employees should not blind us to the fact that most American workers are not receiving big wage increases. In fact, the real wages (that is, wages adjusted for inflation) of average American workers are declining.

When justifying the Republicans’ December 2017 $1.5 trillion tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan claimed that it would result, in 2018, in wage gains for American workers ranging from $4,000 to $9,000 each.

But, in reality, nothing like that has materialized. Instead, as the U.S. Labor Department reported, between the second quarter of 2017 and the second quarter of 2018, the real wages of American workers actually declined. Indeed, the second quarter of 2018 was the third straight quarter―all during the Trump administration―when inflation outpaced wage growth. 

The last time wages grew substantially above inflation was in 2016, during the Obama administration. Consequently, by August 2018, as the Pew Research Center reported, the purchasing power of American workers’ wages was at the same level as in 1978.

Why did the Republican promises go unfulfilled? A key reason for stagnating wages lies in the fact that U.S. corporations used their windfall derived from the slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent under the 2017 GOP tax legislation to engage in stock buybacks (thereby raising their stock prices) and to increase dividends to share-holders. This practice produced substantial gains for big corporate investors but did nothing for workers. Although it appears that some workers (a reported 4 percent) did receive pay raises thanks to the tax cuts, it’s estimated that corporations spent 88 times more on stock buybacks than on pay increases for workers.

Another important long-term factor that has depressed workers’ wages is the dwindling membership and declining power of America’s labor unions. Once a force that created a more level playing field between workers and their bosses, unions have been badly weakened in recent years by Republican-sponsored anti-union measures, such as so-called “Right-to-Work” laws and the subversion of the National Labor Relations Board.

The Republican opposition to raising the minimum wage has also undermined wage levels. In the past, numerous Republican Presidents backed legislation that increased the minimum wage. But that position has radically changed as the Republican Party has turned sharply to the Right. Although the federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 for more than nine years, Trump and congressional Republicans have blocked legislative efforts to raise this pathetically low wage floor, contending that they saw no need for a federal minimum wage. Moreover, Republicans have used their control of state governments, as in Missouri and Iowa, to block cities and counties from raising local wage levels through legislation.

By contrast, Republican policies have done wonders for the wealthy and their corporations. By the fall of 2018, the stock market had reached new heights and the fortunes of the wealthiest Americans had grown remarkably. According to Forbes, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans averaged $7.2 billion each―a hefty increase over the previous year, when they averaged $6.7 billion. Moreover, the ten richest Americans possessed $730 billion among them―an increase in their wealth of nearly 20 percent over the past year. And the very wealthiest American, Jeff Bezos, nearly doubled his wealth during this time―to $160 billion. From the Republican standpoint, their programs had been a great success. 

Accordingly, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted in late September to make its steep tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy permanent.

So let’s stop saying that Republican rule in the United States―from the White House, to the Congress, to the Supreme Court, and to the states―has been dysfunctional. It’s been very functional―not for American workers, of course, but certainly for those people Bernie Sanders has referred to as “the billionaire class.”

Trump's First Amendment problem- his words are threats

In a philosophical universe, where all that's possible can happen, the miserable preview of a Donald Trump leadership of America would include an out of the term "gate" violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.  So writes Michael Cohen in The Boston Globe, reprinted in "The Week" (May 27, 2016)

In fact, The First Amendent prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

Cohen reports:

The United States Constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press

Would Donaldl Trump be the first President to be indicted for violating the US Constitution?  I think so.....

Donald Trump's views on the free press should "terrify every American. While appearing on Fox News (aka Mock's News) last week, Trump complained bitterly that reporters at The Washington Post keep calling him with "ridiculous questions" and writing stories he deems as being negative, and are rumored to be working on a book about him he doesn't want to see in print.  

Then, Trump "pivoted to a darker place,"said Cohen.  He said, the Post was "owned as a toy" by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and that Amazon "is getting away with murder" and has "a huge antitrust problem."  Bezos, Trump continued in his paranoid fashion, is attacking him through the Post because "he thinks I would go after him for antitrust--- and "we can't let him get away with it."  Indeed, Trump has already said, "If I become president, oh, do they (Amazon) have problems.  They are going to have such problems." With his direct threats, Trump is clearly saying he would trample on the First Amendment and punish the Post---and other media outlets that incur hiswrath.  

Listen carefully to Trump's words. "He's basically giving us a preview of how he will buse his power (if he's God Forbid elected to lead the free world) as president.

(Certainly, Donald Trump doesn't want to be the first leader in the free world to be indicted for breaking the laws of his nation on the first day of holding office. Imagine, putting convicted President Trump in handcuffs where he'd receive Secret Service protection in a federal prison.)