Trumpziism is now tyranny!

America Has a Rogue President

By Frank Kendall:  Mr. Kendall was the secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration.

Opinion essay published in The New York Times:

Trump’s decision to fire senior military leaders without cause is foolish and a disgrace. It politicizes our professional military in a dangerous and debilitating way. What frightens me even more is the removal of three judge advocates general, the most senior uniformed legal authorities in the Defense Department. Their removal is one more element of this administration’s attack on the rule of law, and an especially disturbing part.

Let us start with the senior officers. As secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration, I worked closely with Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. for two years when he was chief of staff of the Air Force, and for more than a year when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In my entire 55 years of working in national security in many capacities, I have never known a steadier, wiser and more professional, patriotic or honorable officer than C.Q. Brown. Gen. James Slife and Adm. Lisa Franchetti are also extremely capable and professional officers whom I know well and deeply admire. They served for decades with honor and distinction over many administrations.

It pains me to see these fine people being treated so unfairly and, for the first time in my career, to see dedicated, apolitical military professionals being removed without cause. I am worried about political loyalty becoming a criterion to hold high military positions. For now, I have confidence that our professional military has nurtured dozens of highly qualified senior officers capable of holding positions of trust and responsibility, people who can provide leadership at the Pentagon and offer sound military advice to our civilian leaders.

But that optimism doesn’t extend to the consequences of removing the military’s top judge advocates general, the senior military professionals who interpret and enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the rules that guide troops in the field. They have the independent legal authority to tell any military commander or political appointee that an order from the president or the secretary of defense is unlawful, cannot be given and should not be obeyed.

Of the three JAGs who were dismissed, I know Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer and worked with him for more than three years. His legal advice was always sound, professional and well supported. It is hard to imagine there was any reason to remove him, other than the obvious one of replacing him with someone more loyal to Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — and therefore more willing to interpret the law consistent with their desires.

If there is one characteristic of this president and this administration, it is the utter lack of respect for legal constraints. Mr. Trump has been clear about his views. Among many examples, he recently wrote, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” It is clear from Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, public appearances, writings and support for convicted war criminals that he also does not believe JAG officers should constrain war fighters — or presumably the president and secretary of defense.

Trump and Hegseth will now get to choose the JAG leadership for all three military departments. One has to ask why JAG leadership was singled out for replacement. This is part of a much larger pattern of disrespect, even disdain, for the rule of law. We do not need JAG leaders who fit this pattern.

One of the most admirable characteristics of the American military is that all serving members are trained to understand that America stands for more than naked self-interest. Above all, it stands up for the Constitution and the rule of law, including the laws of armed conflict and those that restrict the use of the military against American citizens. Undermining those core principles is a disservice to our men and women in uniform and to everything America has stood for throughout my life. We are in danger when the legal constraints on how the president uses the military, including within the United States, are ignored or brushed aside.

My experiences with our JAG officers have always been positive. One stands out in particular. Years ago, I was an observer for the nonprofit organization Human Rights First at a legal proceeding for a detainee held at the military facility at Guantánamo Bay. In a briefing to observers and the media, the lead JAG defense attorney made a statement to the following effect: Whoever set up this prosecution system assumed that there would be quick trials with no meaningful defense by the assigned JAG officers. Those people did not understand JAG lawyers. We will support the rule of law and defend our clients, whomever they are.

I have never been prouder to be an American than I was in that moment. We will see if the new JAG leadership lives up to this standard.

Our country is in uncharted territory. We have an administration that is waging war against the rule of law. The evidence is everywhere. We don’t yet know how far it will go as it seeks to control, reinterpret, rewrite, ignore or defy legal constraints, including the Constitution itself. The replacement of the military JAG leadership is one skirmish in that war, but it’s time for the American people, across the political spectrum, to recognize what is happening. America has a rogue president and a rogue administration, and we need to acknowledge that and respond.

Comment response:  What is anybody supposed to do at this stage? We've spent 8 years nursing this monster into existence, failing to stop it while it was smaller and weaker. There have been countless opportunities for courts, Congress, and voters themselves to halt this assault on our nation. Every legal, governmental, and democratic check has failed, with Trump gaining strength each time. The man is like a bacteral infection developing antibiotic resistance after every failed attempt to treat it.

Nikki Haley certainly needs American History lessons about racism, slavery and civil rights

Echo opinion published in NOLA.com in Lousiana:

Not long after sundown on the day the United States of America honored the life of one of its greatest civil rights leaders ever, Martin Luther King Jr., an animated politician blurted out one of the most ridiculous claims in the history of this great country.

Ed Pratt: Never a racist country? Surely Nikki Haley knows better than that❗

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley proclaimed, “We’ve (the USA) never been a racist country.”

Wait❗ Isn’t battling racism and seeking rights for Americans the reason why King is annually saluted? 

So, I guess Haley, and those like her, never got the memo. 

Or, maybe she is joining the group working hard to whitewash our country’s history.

I’ve written before about my U.S. Army veteran dad and me being confronted by a White teenager who refused to sell him two sno-balls, and she made it clear why when she said, “We don’t serve Negros.”

My brokenhearted dad was convinced that he was a victim of racism. Silly, right?

In my early days as a reporter on the old evening newspaper State-Times in Baton Rouge, a White reporter held up a magazine for me to see the headline about a popular television miniseries: “Roots best watched from end to beginning.”

Let’s be clear, most folks in this country are working hard to treat people as people and that has led to improvements in employment, education, housing and other areas. But, my goodness, Nikki, there is a contingent who are unabashed racists and another group who don’t believe they are racist.

I’ve written before about my U.S. Army veteran dad and me being confronted by a White teenager who refused to sell him two sno-balls, and she made it clear why when she said, “We don’t serve Negros.”

My brokenhearted dad was convinced that he was a victim of racism. Silly, right?

In my early days as a reporter on the old evening newspaper State-Times in Baton Rouge, a White reporter held up a magazine for me to see the headline about a popular television miniseries: “Roots best watched from end to beginning.”

Get it, Nikki? Funny, huh? But not racist, right?

Let’s talk about the biggie — slavery. I guess holding human beings just a step above captive animals was just a thing or a phase, huh, Nikki? Nikki, have you seen what the belly of the slave ships were like?

Nikki, I know you read stories about places where people who look Black like me could not sit at the front of a city bus. 

I’m thinking that if you and your family were around at that time, some folks may have said something about you sitting in those front seats, too. But asking you to move to the back would not have been racist, though, right?

Nikki, Nikki, Nikki. Did you hear about the White people in Tulsa, Oklahoma who went into a prosperous Black section of town and burned it down? After finishing the dastardly deed, no harm nor foul to the perpetrators. Your thoughts?

Now, that I’m thinking about it, I recall you saying a couple of weeks ago that slavery was not at the heart of the Civil War. 😒😟😳❓ 

Indeed, even many racists agree that keeping slaves on those cotton farms was the foundation for the Civil War.

Hey Nikki, you know several GOP-controlled legislatures around the nation are trying to make it more difficult for Black and poor people to vote. Shouldn’t voting be as accessible as possible?

You know, Nikki, I’m anxiously waiting for your comments leading up to February. You do know what that is, don’t you? 

You know, February is Black History Month. Pay attention 😅, Nikki, you may learn something about what a race of people has faced since 1619, and what they have been doing about it.

Or, given your recent outlandish comments, you may say something else to cause jaws to drop and for you to appear, well, you know.

Email Edward Pratt, a former newspaperman, at epratt1972@yahoo.com.

Commentary on the Tulsa Oklahoma 1921 Massacre - echo opinion by Anna Badkhen

Tulsa Oklahoma Race Riot of 1921 and Charlottsville Virginia in 2017- A Tulsa World reader responded to an apparent apologists point of view, published by an Oklahoma history teacher named Donald W. Rominger, Jr., who objected to the use of the term "massacre", to describe the tragically incendiary murder of dozens of people during the incident.

Tulsa Oklahoma race riot 1921

The Tulsa race riot, sometimes referred to as the Tulsa massacre, Tulsa pogrom, or Tulsa race riot of 1921, took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when a mob of white citizens attacked residents and businesses of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma - non-fatal injuries = over 800. Total number of deaths = 36. Weapons used were an incendiary device, explosive and accounts of an air raid (!).

A mob of white citizens attacked residents and businesses of the African-American community of Greenwoodin Tulsa, Oklahoma.This is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States. The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 blocks of the district, at the time the wealthiest black community in the U.S.

More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and more than 6,000 black residents were arrested and detained, many for several days.The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead, but the American Red Cross declined to provide an estimate.

Photograph captioned Tulsa riot 6-1-21

The riot began over a Memorial Day weekend after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, the 17-year-old white elevator operator of the nearby Drexel Building. After he was taken into custody, rumors raced through the black community that he was at risk of being lynched. A group of armed African-American men rushed to the police station where the young suspect was held, to prevent a lynching, as a white crowd had gathered. A confrontation developed between black and white people; shots were fired, and twelve people were killed, ten white and two black.

As news of these deaths spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. Thousands of white people rampaged through the black community that night and the next day, killing men and women, burning and looting stores and homes. About 10,000 black people were left homeless, and property damage amounted to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property ($31 million in 2018).

Many survivors left Tulsa. Both black and white residents who stayed in the city were silent for decades about the terror, violence, and losses of this event. The riot was largely omitted from local, state, as well as national, histories: "The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place."

Contradictory letter to Tulsa World from an opinion writer Anna Badkhen, of Tulsa, Oklahoma: 

As a former war correspondent and journalist, I value the need to present different sides of an argument. As a witness to genocidal campaigns and ethnic cleansings in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq, among other geographies, I also appreciate the danger of seeking to portray balance, where there is none.

Don't whitewash the 1921 Tulsa race massacre

Historical record indicates that the 1921 massacre in Greenwood was a systemic, targeted campaign to extinguish black well-being and wealth in Tulsa, and that a white mob and an air raid murdered hundreds of people.

The letter's description of the tragedy as “26 black citizens and 10 whites…people of both races were arrested or detained” trivializes the death toll, omits the bombing and fudges the obscenity of hundreds of black residents being subsequently imprisoned in what newspapers defined as a concentration camp.

That letter is reminiscent of President Trump’s blaming “both sides” during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia: despite the government’s assault on the freedom of speech, that Constitutional Amendment still stands.

What insults the dignity and sanity of Tulsa and Tulsans is that the Tulsa World found it fitting to publish the letter (by David W. Rominger, Jr.) as if it presented another side of an argument. It does not.

It signals to the conscientious citizens of this city, including the descendants of the massacre’s victims, that whitewashing history is still the norm in Oklahoma.

Editor's Note: Historians and records differ on details of the event. The death count of 36 comes from the number of death certificates issued, but some historians believe the count to be higher.

Incompetence is the only trickle down proven to work

There's plenty of evidence about how "trickle down" economics, proclaimed by Republicans as good for the economy has failed. Yet, the theory happens to work splendidly when it comes to failed leadership. In fact, incompetent leadership trickles down quickly to the people that are appointed by failed leaders.

An example of how failed trickle down leadership works is the appointment of 36 year old Brett Talley. He's been nominated to be a judge when he's never even tried a case, as described in the Miami Herald.
By Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Bench Brett Talley, don’t put him on the bench — he’s a right-wing partisan who’s never tried a case

(Under the title, "As though there's isn't enough to worry about?")

You are not worried enough.

Granted, that may seem to be a nonsensical claim. Assuming you don’t belong to the tinfoil hat brigades who consider Donald Trump the greatest thing to hit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since Abraham Lincoln left for the theater, you’ve spent the last year worrying as much as you know how.

There’s certainly been no shortage of things to worry about: white supremacy, Russian interference, and nuclear war, to name a few. Not to mention that a credibly accused child molester may soon join the United States Senate as a Republican — the party of “family values.” Of course, the self-confessed sexual predator in the Oval Office thinks the accused child molester should step aside, news that gave irony a stroke and left satire unemployed.

If Trump has his way, though, Talley, 36, will soon be a federal judge. His qualifications for that honorable — and lifetime — position? They’re pretty well nonexistent.

He graduated Harvard Law School in 2007, so there is that. 

But, since then, Talley has worked as a law clerk, a speech writer, and also as a deputy attorney general and solicitor general in his native Alabama. He writes horror novels. And he blogs and tweets.

The one thing the would-be federal judge has never done is, well … judge. Or even try a case. In fact, he’s only been a lawyer for three years. The guy Trump thinks fit to oversee a courtroom has never even been in a courtroom as the attorney of record. What, then, are his qualifications?

The aforementioned blogs and tweets are instructive. In them, Talley emerges as a right-wing culture warrior, loudly decrying “Hillary Rotten Clinton,” condemning the “outrage” of calling for gun control after the Newtown massacre, urging his readers to join the NRA, and otherwise shredding any lingering illusion of judicial impartiality. (MaineWriter- did this man ever pass the Bar Exam? I thought there was a section dedicated to legal ethics?)

Before Donald Trump came to town, the American Bar Association hadn’t rated a judicial candidate “not qualified” since 2006. Counting Talley, it has now given that rating four times since January. Which didn’t stop Talley from sailing through the GOP-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee and on to the full Senate, where he’s expected to be approved on a party line vote.
Even if he isn’t — news broke this week that Talley failed to disclose his marriage to a White House lawyer, which has raised conflict-of-interest questions — it would provide little solace. There’s more where he came from, including Jeffrey Mateer, who once called transgender children part of “Satan’s plan” and disavowed the separation of church and state.

He was also given a pass by the Judiciary Committee. He is also awaiting confirmation.

And it bears repeating: these are lifetime appointments. Your children’s children could end up before one of these men, seeking justice.

It’s understandable that we are mesmerized by the frequent, high-profile illustrations of Trump’s unfitness. But arguably more frightening and important are the low-profile ways he is institutionalizing Trumpism, imposing changes whose effects will linger long after the stench of him has left the Oval Office.

And he knows it.

As Trump bragged last month, “The judge story is an untold story” whose consequences will be felt “40 years out.” He’s right about that. So let’s start telling it. Because you’re not worried enough.

You could stand to be angrier, too.

(MaineWriter- Failed leadership "trickle down" will erode confidence in the US Judicial system for many years.)