Donald Trump and maga Republicans must Impeach Trump Again. He is crazy and they know it but power to them is more important than sanity

Echo LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Whether it’s ICE abuses, the rising grocery prices, terrible tariffs, Trump has unleashed chaos | Opinion
Published in the Lexington Herald Leader, in Kentucky.

Our federal government under Donald Trump now specializes in escalated chaos. #ImpeachTrumpAgain❗

ICE rappelling from Black Hawk helicopters in the middle of the night to break down doors and zip the children. Putting migrants on planes to South Sudan. Blowing up Venezuelan boats with no warning. Cancelling federally funded projects in blue states. Proposing to use U.S. cities as training grounds for our military. Creating secret lists of domestic terrorist organizations, based on the groups’ views on family values, religion, race and immigration. 

One action that this administration is unlikely to undertake: releasing the Epstein files.

From Krisia Rosa, in Lexington, Kentucky

https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article312525947.html#storylink=cpy

Donald J. Trump kicks off a terrible second term while his evilism embarrasses all Americans

I won't be celebrating Donald Trump's inauguration because my values as a citizen and humanitarian won't let me. | Opinion
I’ve not been able to shake the sense that I don’t understand my country anymore. The United States has a problem. It's not united.
by Paul Wesslund Opinion Contributor published in he Courier Journal in Louisville, Kentucky:

I amd not among those who are wrongmindedly celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration.

I’m not happy about my lack of enthusiasm, for one of our nation's major civic events. But I’ve not been able to shake the sense that I don’t understand my country anymore.

I grew up learning that the worst thing you could do to our democracy is try to overthrow it. Last November half our country said with their vote that they don’t care about that.

I’m aware (and still stunned) that some would consider what I just wrote a controversial paragraph. So I’m amazed I’ll need to state clearly that the man elected president called a mob to Washington to overthrow the government on Janary. 6, 2021. 

In fact, Trump watched on TV as they threatened to kill the vice president and actually beat the living daylights out of law enforcement. 

More than 140 police were injured. More than 900 rioters have been convicted of crimes committed in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump is calling them patriots and, worse, he quickly pardoned them.

Sadly, the United States I grew up in is torn apart:

To me, January 6 disqualified Trump from the presidency. The campaigns last year featured a lot of important issues: The price of eggs, the need for immigration reform, crime, foreign policy. All are topics for legitimate debate. Unapologetic leadership of a violent coup is not.

Clearly, half the country disagrees with me. The scary part about that is that half the country also agrees with me. We’re torn apart.

Yes, I was hoping for a president who campaigned on a promise of being president for everyone. Nevertheless, the winner doesn’t act interested in the half of the country that clearly voted against him.

Trump has vowed to prosecute high-profile people who opposed him. He scoffs at global warming, one of my top issues facing the world. I detect only contempt for immigrants from the incoming officeholders. Yet my Christian faith calls me to have compassion for refugees fleeing war and other violence.

(Question from Maine Writer❓- Did the Trumpzi Bible, the one printed in China and sold for profit, include the Beatitudes❓ Or, were those verses edited out❓❓  “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” is a Bible verse from Matthew 5:7. It is part of a series of sayings called the Beatitudes.)

As a lifelong citizen of this country I might expect at least a passing nod to my values. Instead, I feel scorn.

While January 20 will be a joyous occasion for the more than 77 million who voted for Trump, for more than 75 million of us it will be a day where our beliefs and priorities will only be targets of ridicule.

I see the endless stream of post-election analysis headlines about how the Democrats screwed up this way and that. How Republicans got this right and that right. But I don’t read those stories. None of that seems to matter when I seem so out of touch with so many of my neighbors.

JD Vance is an embarrasement! Yale University gave this man a diploma? What were they thinking?

Echo essay published in Politico by Greta Reich:

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear came out swinging against the former president and his current running mate when he said on ABC’s “This Week” that “there is no lie too big for Donald Trump and JD Vance,” referring to their refusal to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020, election.

Governor Beshear has the highest approval rating of any Democratic governor in the country,

“I mean, when you ask [Vance] about the last election, all you’re asking him to do is admit reality,” Beshear, a Democrat, told “This Week” host Martha Raddatz. “And we deserve to have a Vice President who believes in democracy and can say, yes, DonOLD Trump lost the last election, and now we’re running in this election.”

Beshear appeared on “This Week” just moments after an appearance by Vance himself, where Raddatz questioned him repeatedly about whether or not Trump lost the 2020, election.

Vance’s responses echoed what he said during the vice presidential debate, and multiple times after, when asked the same question.

“I’ve said repeatedly, I think the 2020, election had problems. You want to say rigged, you want to say he won, use whatever vocabulary term you want,” Vance told Raddatz, adding that he wants “to focus on the fact that we had big technology firms censoring our fellow citizens in a way that violated our fundamental rights.”

This censorship is in reference to independent studies that have — Vance has said — suggested affected the vote.

Adding to his critique of intentionally spreading misinformation, Beshear also slammed Trump and Vance for lying about FEMA’s disaster response during Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

“In Kentucky, we went through our worst tornado disaster and our worst flood disaster in our history, and I didn’t have to deal with any of the shenanigans that Donald Trump is putting out right now, and these lies can hurt people,” Beshear said, presumably referencing the lethal tornadoes that hit his state in May.

“I mean, the line that $750 is all that’s available,” he said. “That means that individual might not apply for the $40,000-plus in individual assistance.” ($750 is the initial money given to those affected to help with immediate needs.)

He continued: “If you truly care about the people that are harmed more than yourself, you wouldn’t politicize this. You wouldn’t be putting out all this misinformation. As somebody who has led through national disasters, it hurts.”

When asked why the race appears so tight despite the lies, and the record-breaking amount of money raised for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, Beshear blamed heightened partisanship.

“It’s something that I hope after this election that the Vice President can move us beyond, that she can remind us that this isn’t supposed to be an us versus them, that Donald Trump seems to do in everything that he’s about,” he said. “She can remind us that we are all Americans first, and Democrats, Republicans, and independents, second, third, or fourth.”

By the way, shame on Yale University! When J.D. Vance applied to law school, he viewed it as a pathway out of his chaotic upbringing in working-class Middletown, Ohio. Then he won a spot at his dream school. Yale Law not only accepted him for the fall of 2010, but also offered a nearly full ride the first year (What were they thinking?)

Gun violence is caused by guns! Full Stop! Republicans want security for their cult leader but forget about shcool children

Echo guest opinion published in The New York Times by former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords*:

A victim of gun violence who survived:  After every shooting, blame and rationalizations fly. I know, because I was shot in the head at a 2011, congressional event near my home in Tucson, Ariz. Eighteen other people were shot at that event, six of whom died. In the weeks that followed, there were all kinds of arguments as to why and how that could have happened. 

To me, only one rang true: Someone dangerous had access to a gun.

There have now been two assassination attempts on Donald Trump in just over two months. Two separate assailants, in possession of semiautomatic weapons, came terrifyingly close to inflicting great harm on him. But the through line here isn’t Mr. Trump. The through line isn’t the Secret Service. The through line isn’t heated rhetoric. The through line is, as it always is, the guns.

We are a country weary of repetitive gun violence. When that happens, you have a school shooting on a Wednesday and the country’s attention has moved on by Friday. You have a country where shootings on interstate highways appear to be a pattern and students in Kentucky miss several days of school during a manhunt for the perpetrator of the most recent interstate shooting. I imagine many people reading this right now might not even know about that shooting, or that manhunt, or those kids in Kentucky, doing schoolwork at home because it’s not safe to go to school.

Political rhetoric matters — but rhetoric wasn’t in the bushes around Mr. Trump’s golf course, or on the interstate in Kentucky, or in the school hallways in Georgia, or at the Trump rally in Butler, Pa. Dangerous people with guns were. The most recent would-be attack on the former president, on Sunday, is an indicator of where we are as a nation: a place where no one is safe from gun violence.

There’s no doubt that our political debate needs to cool down. We live in a participatory democracy with a wide range of opinions. We always have times when emotions are running hot; it’s inevitable.

What’s not inevitable is angry or inexplicably violent people having such easy access to guns. In Pennsylvania, a gunman too young to buy a beer nonetheless got his hands on a semiautomatic rifle. In Georgia, the high school shooting suspect was 14, and used an AR-15-style rifle. In Kentucky, the suspected gunman reportedly sent a text message declaring his intention to “kill a lot of people” and then opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle. Nothing about these episodes was inevitable.

I didn’t grow up in a country with a lot of school shootings, or mass shootings generally. The gun industry was granted broad legal immunity by Congress in 2005 through the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a major contributing factor to the soaring number of gun sales. That was great for gun company profits, and terrible for public safety. With the saturation of guns and loosening of gun laws came, unsurprisingly, a saturation of violence. Gun deaths have skyrocketed since the gun industry received that immunity. 

OMG❗ 😱 So when Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, says school shootings are a “fact of life,” ❓❗ but he should know: They weren’t a fact of life in this country until guns proliferated and loopholes in our laws allowed dangerous people to get them.

I am, at heart, a political moderate. I believe that successful governing requires a measure of moderation — pragmatic concessions that lead to the breakthroughs that move us forward. The value of moderation is that it allows us to find common purpose and to act on solutions. But moderation without action is merely a different kind of talk, and talk is not what’s wanted or needed now.

How can we tell Americans it’s safe to send their kids to school, to head to the grocery store, to attend concerts or houses of worship — or political events with their families — if we won’t acknowledge the danger that weak gun laws present, and won’t take reasonable steps to keep them secure? All over the country parents are having to answer their children’s questions about whether school is protected, about why these guns threaten their childhoods and their lives.

One thing I learned as a candidate and elected official myself was never to try to talk people out of their own reality. Americans know the dangers of gun violence. They see it in their communities and on their news every week. Now they’ve seen a heavily guarded former president as the target of gun violence twice in just over two months.

And Americans know the difference between action and inaction. Recent research from my gun violence protection organization, Giffords, found that 95 percent of likely voters in battleground House districts — including 91 percent of people who voted for  Trump in 2020 — support background checks on all gun sales, which would make it harder for dangerous people to get guns. Seventy-four percent of those survey respondents support banning weapons like the AR-15 and the AK-style rifles, the weapons implicated in the events this week, last week and the week before.

I have fought so hard to recover from my grievous wounds. I’ve fought hard to work, to stand shoulder to shoulder with other survivors and demand different gun laws. I’ve worked so hard to find my voice — as hard as it is, as much as I struggle to find the right words — to share not just my story of violence but also my deep belief in the American people, that we can find a different, safer way of living.

It’s Monday morning as I write this. Earlier today, students threw books and papers into their backpacks, grabbed lunch or their water bottles and headed out to school. We have promised them safety, but how can we look them, or their parents, in the face and pretend that the answer is anything other than changing easy access to guns? Our path forward requires us all — leaders, voters, Americans — to name the problem clearly and to take action.

*Gabrielle Giffords was a Democratic U.S. representative from Arizona from 2007 to 2012. She is the founder of Giffords, a national organization dedicated to saving lives from gun violence.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a Bible thumping creationist!

Wind On Capitol Hill published in The New Yorker by Oliver Whang: Mike Johnson’s Vote-Whipping Strategy: Two by Two?

A creationist offers a tour of a giant pretend Noah’s ark in Kentucky, which stands to earn eighteen million dollars in tax breaks thanks to the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.

One criticism of Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, is that he doesn’t have much experience in Congress, but that’s not strictly true. Johnson was once the lawyer for a pretend Noah’s ark, and during that time he gained some conceptual experience with many animals, including a congress of salamanders. 

The ark is in the horse country of northern Kentucky, and it was built to the specifications given by God to Noah in Genesis. 

That’s three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high, or five hundred and ten feet by eighty-five by fifty-one. In the words of a cartoon giraffe featured on the side of a bus that transports visitors to the ark, “It’s SOOOOO big!”

Ark Encounter, as the attraction is known, was opened in 2016, by a Christian-fundamentalist nonprofit called Answers in Genesis. 

It was the vision of the group’s young-Earth-creationist founder, Ken Ham, and cost more than a hundred million dollars. 

Kentucky offers a tax incentive to big tourist attractions; for Ark Encounter, this could add up to ongoing rebates totalling eighteen million dollars. 

But in 2014, the state blocked Ark Encounter’s incentive; the organization, it turns out, requires its employees to make a “statement of faith,” which labels homosexuality an abhorrence and rejects modern science. At the time, Johnson was an attorney for the religious legal-advocacy group Freedom Guard, and he sued on behalf of Ham and Ark Encounter, claiming that the State of Kentucky had engaged in religious discrimination. 

Johnson said that the suit was about “the free exercise of religion.” The state lost.

The other day, Ham, who is seventy-two, surveyed the ark from the park’s welcome center. “Every day, there’s thousands,” he said of the visitors milling about the grounds. (General adult admission is sixty dollars.) 

An Australian, Ham has white hair and whiskers, and is a celebrity among creationists. “The main antagonism is from secular atheists that don’t want Christians to have a point of view,” he said, ambling up a ramp leading into the hull of the ark, which was lit by fake oil lamps and lined with clay pots for hypothetical food. Halfway up, he
was stopped by a couple riding mobility scooters.

“Is this the man everybody said was crazy?” the woman asked. 

Ham posed for a photo and then proceeded, past cages holding pairs of deer, sloths, and other animals made of Styrofoam or synthetic furs, up another ramp to the second deck, past squabbling children and young acolytes staring with their mouths open, and past more cages of pretend sabre-toothed marsupials and shrunken stegosauruses. According to Ham, the millions of land-animal species currently in existence, and the untold numbers that have gone extinct, all descended from around a thousand fundamental “kinds,” including the “cat kind,” the “cattle kind,” and the “pig kind,” conjured by God on the sixth day of Creation. 

“So we answer this question here, how so few kinds can become so many species,” Ham said. 

“The way we got our domestic varieties of dogs, the domestic species, the poodles and Chihuahuas and bichons, is similar to natural selection, except we do the selecting instead of the environment.” Some of the models look like hybrids—koalas crossed with wombats, say—that represent what could’ve been walking around with Noah thousands of years ago.

(Not surprisingly 😔😜😌 ya' think?) The scientific community hasn’t warmed to Ham’s views, which deny the findings of evolutionary biology, astrophysics, and geology. “Yeah, we’re all about the Bible,” Ham said. “But we’re also about experimental science. We admit our beliefs as well as promote science.” He made his way to the third deck, stopping to sign a Bible for a fan. He passed wall text that posed and answered a variety of big questions.

Q: How did the six-hundred-year-old Noah deal with animal waste?

A: Strategically placed wheelbarrows.

Q: Can you explain fossils?

A: Mostly bones in the graveyard of the forty-five-hundred-year-old flood.

“We have really gone into a lot of detail, based on research on what man is able to do,” Ham said. One question on a wall that didn’t have an answer: “The pre-flood world was exceedingly wicked and deserved to be judged. Does our sin-filled world deserve any less?”

Ham climbed a flight of stairs and shuffled out onto the top of the ark, off-limits to tourists. “There are these articles, they’re all saying that we used tax dollars,” he said. “They are attack articles on Mike Johnson. But what it has done is, we’ve had a very large influx of people checking out our Web sites. Peoplewant to check out the ark.”

In 2022, after Ham gave Johnson a private ark tour, Johnson said that it had almost brought him to tears. “Watching the faces of these kids and these families and how it’s just kind of opening their minds,” he said. “It’s just really an awesome, awesome thing.”

Standing atop the ark like a terrestrial sailor keeping watch, Ham pointed to a new hotel—a symbol, he said, of the economic boon he provides to the state. “When we apply for our rebate for the year, they send it straight away,” he said, smiling. “Money speaks.” 

Senator Rand Paul is a low class moronic politician and a jealous doctor

Jealous Ran Paul’s attacks on Dr. Fauci are just a political jealous diversion:

Recently someone suggested that U.S. Senator (jealous!) Rand Paul found something nefarious committed by Dr. Anthony Fauci and the public should know. (OMG!)

So, to investigate, jealous Paul’s statements about Dr. Fauci were investigated. Here are some conclusions: 

1. Jealous Paul suffers from “doctor’s envy” towards Dr. Fauci, a condition among physicians described as “the egotistical ill-feeling caused by another’s achievement or superior quality or welfare.” 

Why? HELLO! 

• Dr. Fauci graduated first in his class from an Ivy League medical school. Jealous Paul did not. 
• Dr. Fauci is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, an elite society whose membership is composed of less than 1% of all USA scientists. Paul is not a member. 
• Dr. Fauci enjoys international recognition for his scientific/administrative accomplishments at the National Institutes of Health. Paul holds no such international standing.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is a national treasure.

Moreover, jealous Paul is a mediocre legislator, and he knows it. After reviewing his two-term legislative record as a senator, there is nothing particularly outstanding to promote his political resume, other than a long series of “no” votes. To paper over his fundamental legislative shortcomings, Paul is using jealous personal attacks against Dr. Anthony Fauci, and candidate Charles Booker, as his political diversion.

Perhaps jealous Paul also suffers from short term memory impairment.  He actually signed a terms limit pledge in 2019, that states he will co-sponsor and work for a term limits amendment to the U.S. Constitution, consisting of three House terms and two Senate terms. This poses a “come to Jesus moment” for him. 

Should jealous Paul follow his sworn statement? Jealous Paul’s time will soon be up. Go figure.  From Ed Cupp in Owensboro, Kentucky.

P.S. Dr. Fauci called

Where did Senator Mitch McConnell study American History?

Ahhhh?  Let me guess. Senator McConnell went to school in Kentucky. * 

African Americans are Americans #MitchPlease! Echo opinion by Jonathan Capehart, published in The Washington Post:

“I *am* American. #mitchplease”

Maine Writer opinion: There’s no question in my mind about the root cause of Senator Mitch McConnell’s misstatement about African-Americans who vote. He is a native son of Kentucky and, therefore, he was never really educated to understand his own state’s racist history or how racism is insidious. Should someone send Senator McConnell a copy of the book “How To Be An AntiRacist”, by Ibram X. Kendi? Even if he is given this important book, #MitchPlease will likely have to pay someone to read it to him, because Senator McConnell is obviously racially illiterate.

Hold up! Did Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) say what I thought he said?

When asked on Wednesday what he would tell voters of color who fear they won’t be able to vote in November’s midterm elections because of the Senate’s failure to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Kentucky Republican said, “If you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high percentage as Americans.”

First off, McConnell knows how misleading this is. He ignores all the hoops and hurdles Black voters (and the young and the elderly) have to jump through and over not only to register to vote, but to actually cast a vote on Election Day. This doesn’t even take into account the millions who are being discouraged from even trying to vote.

But secondly — and far more importantly — African Americans are Americans. Isn’t it sad that really the only times I feel seen as an American are when I’m abroad? I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist outside of the United States. What I am saying is that the rest of the world can see that I’m American. Why is it so hard for so many White Americans?

When you’re Black in the United States, you grudgingly grow accustomed to having people deny that your existence is integral to everything that makes this country what it is. 

"I’m so American I don’t even know which part of Africa Mitch’s ancestors stole mine from!!," Paula Dunn Brown.

Usually, I roll my eyes and keep going in response to such nonsense. McConnell insists he misspoke; I have a hard time with that, since the leader is known to choose carefully what he says. But no matter how they came about, the words are illustrative of how Black people are seen by our fellow citizens. And the more I thought about them, the angrier the offense made me. I needed to respond.

I love taking photos of the American flag fluttering in the wind. So I hunted through my Google archive to find one of me with Old Glory in the background. What I found was a 2017 selfie, taken aboard a ferry in San Francisco Bay. I’m swaddled in a hat, coat and scarf, staring down at the camera that also captured the stars and stripes and crisp blue sky behind me.

I wish I could take credit for the hashtag. The play on the tart rejoinder the phrase rhymes with is used almost nightly by MSNBC’s Joy Reid to rebuke McConnell for whatever it is he’s done that day. It perfectly summed up my attitude about what McConnell said — and my irritation at the mind-set the comment represents. I’m tired of rhetoric and actions that seek to cleave me from my country.

The reaction to the post showed me I’m far from alone, and that African Americans weren’t the only ones offended by a politician saying the quiet part out loud: The hashtag has been trending on Twitter for the past two days. And Black Americans across the country have joined me in the selfie strategy, posting pictures of themselves and demanding their place in the American story:

“100% American,” they said.

“I am an American that served America in the United States Army!”

“I am an American and nothing Mitch says will ever change that!”

Paula Dunn Brown from Dallas issued a particularly devastating twist on the tweet. The look on her face in the accompanying photo could speak for just about every Black person in the United States.

Even if the measured McConnell did misspeak, the slip shows how ossified the assumptions in our political discourse still are: “White” is always the default. Talk of suburban voters is really about White suburban voters. Women voters really means White women. And, as McConnell put it, American voters really means White American voters.

With #mitchplease, I was channeling my inner Langston Hughes. “I, too, am America,” he concluded in his 1926 poem “I, Too.” That this truth must be reiterated and reclaimed in 2022 is a shame.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @Capehartj.
Jonathan Capehart

*Slave or Free: Slavery was first introduced to Kentucky during its territorial days, and for nearly the first 40 years of its statehood, Kentucky’s population of slaves grew faster than that of whites. By 1830, slaves constituted 24 percent of all Kentuckians, although this ratio dropped to 19.5 percent by 1860. Slave owners in Kentucky numbered more than 38,000 in 1860, the third highest total behind Virginia and Georgia. Like most slave states, Kentucky was not a land of large plantations: 22,000 of its slave holders — or 57 percent — owned four or fewer slaves.

Kentucky’s most ardent proponents of slavery came from the state’s south and west sections, where the lifestyle most resembled that of the Deep South.

Trumpian sexual assault, nepotism and financial self -interest

This echo editorial published in the Lexington Kentucky Herald Leader newspaper was published in February 2020, but guess what?

This opinion is as meaningful and impactful today as it was when the newspaper first published the opinion! Senator Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul are embarrassments to Americans and to Kentucky voters.  

Evil Trumpziism!

From Kentucky- Could there be anything more embarrassing and depressing than being from Kentucky? First, the senior Senator Mitch McConnell has shred democracy and decency to tatters by announcing a political whitewash of the most corrupt president in U.S. history, then followed it through in an impeachment trial and Republican debacle that would make the Founders weep.

Then there’s the (Maine Writer nurses opinion "asshole") junior Sen. Rand Paul. Despite the fact that every human knows how the impeachment trial would turn out, Asshole Paul spent the last day of the Senate’s impeachment trial, bouncing around like a demented toddler on the Senate floor. 

Spoiled brat. Rand Paul  is upset because SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts wouldn’t read his question that identified the whistleblower. So,  Asshole Paul gave the whistleblower’s name, but then denying (aka "lying!") about it in the elevated nanny nanny boo boo oratory that has made him famous: "They made a big mistake not allowing my question,” Paul said, according to Politico.

It’s nonsense to expect us to believe that Donald Trump wouldn’t hold military aid to investigate one of his political rivals. 

It’s as Trumpian as sexual assault, nepotism and financial self-dealing. What’s not clear is why Paul believes that it’s in the nation’s or Kentucky’s best interest for him to embarrass himself and his constituents with this whistleblower nonsense. Can’t he just make up some ridiculous excuses for why he’s voting to acquit like most of the other Republicans?

McConnell venality is utterly depressing. In fact, he didn’t want witnesses, even in the light of new allegations from John Bolton (John Bolton! To think for a few days our hopes for our nation depended on that warmonger) and he didn’t get them. McConnell wanted a quick trial, he sort of got it. He must be feeling as good as he did the day Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. McConnell, the man who ensured Gorsuch by blocking Obama’s rightful pick, who has never chosen country above the GOP, actually had the audacity to say Wednesday: “We simply cannot let factional fevers break our institutions.” Thank you, at least, to Sen. Mitt Romney, for showing some guts and principles and voting no with this great line: “Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented, and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.” It is curious that the Republican Senate seems to be assuming that a Democrat will never be elected to the White House again so that person can experience a presidency with immense power almost unchecked by Congress. Have they never heard of “turnabout is fair play?” 

Lock Trump Up!

But, given the mayhem of the Iowa caucus, maybe Republicans have a point. That this all has happened on either side of the State of the Union speech is the cherry on the cake for Republicans like McConnell, who are justified in (hypocritically) gloating alongside Trump.  #CrazyisAsCrazyDoes #CIACD

Yes, yes, Nancy Pelosi tore up Trump’s bogus #SOTU speech, but her theater really cannot hold a candle to awarding Rush Limbaugh, that racist gasbag, the Medal of Freedom in the middle of his speech? Therefore, if you believe that immigrant children shouldn’t be put in cages or that presidents shouldn’t pay off strippers, or that your state’s duly elected senators should uphold federal law and the barest minimum of dignity, it’s been a rough week. It’s amazing to think of the number of people willing to aid and abet and support Trump in the midst of his truly overwhelming crimes, and that Mitch and Rand will probably cruise to reelection in 2020 and 2022. It’s no wonder Kentucky’s voter turnout rarely tops 50 percent. But, I also know there are many, many people who believe in what we used to call democracy, believe in protecting our most vulnerable citizens, our air, our water, our most basic freedoms. Yes, those who understand how government works are depressed; yes, you’re embarrassed by Asshole Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell. 

But, all you can do is get busy. Register to vote! Talk to more people about dangerous right wing extremism. You know what to do.  #VoteBlue

Lesson to the United States Senate from President George Washington

Written by George Washington, to "The People of the United States of America", he wrote the letter near the end of his second term as President, before his retirement to his home Mount Vernon. 

Originally published in David Claypole's American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796, under the title "The Address of General Washington To The People of The United States on his declining of the Presidency of the United States," the letter was almost immediately reprinted in newspapers across the country and later in a pamphlet form.
Impartiality is a duty "under oath"
Lexington Herald Leader newspaper opinion letter echo:

News reports indicate that the U.S. Senate majority party is planning to carry out a sham impeachment “trial” with no witnesses, where the goal is to “be in lockstep with the White House” to achieve “a rapid acquittal.”

"Washington on Dorchester Heights,” is believed to be the first work of art acquired by the state. The full-length portrait depicts a triumphant Washington beside his horse during the British evacuation of Boston in 1776. Painted by Thomas Spear of Massachusettes. Exhibited in the Maine State House in Augusta, Maine. (L'Heureux photograph)

#Opinion_echo: Now, I’m not a lawyer, but those phrases do not in any way represent what would constitute a fair trial. 

Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky should remember that, as jurors, they will be required to swear an oath to be impartial in the case.

The country is filled with partisanship, which is exactly why George Washington warned the country against political parties in his farewell address. I urge my senators to read that address and to actually put their country before their political party by living up to their constitutional duty to be fair and impartial jurors.

Jean Amick, Lexington, Kentucky

Another crack in the Republican political veneer- Senator McConnell protested

Senator Mitch McConnell is loosing credibility even at his Alma mater in Louisville KY 

Republicans finally began to part with stupid Donald Trump by not supporting his expensive and inefficient border wall.

Now, protesters at Republican Senator McConnell's hometown University of Louisville, where he is among the alumni, have publicly demonstrated against him because of his support for fossil fuels. (By the way, where are all those coal mining jobs promised by dumb dTrumpf during his 2016 campaign? I just looked up Cold Peak Energy going at $0.10 a share- yes, that's ten cents a share.)

Protesters interrupt Mitch McConnell's introduction of Sen. Tim Kaine at the University of Louisville

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of President Donald Trump's key allies, joined U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine — a Democrat who was Hillary Clinton's running mate in 2016 — at a bipartisan-spirited event at the University of Louisville on Monday.

The Virginia senator came to Louisville as part of the McConnell Center's Distinguished Speaker Series. University of Louisville President Neeli Bendapudi took a moment to praise the center, which was founded 1991, for providing scholarships to students at McConnell's alma mater who hold varied political beliefs but share a desire to make a difference in their communities.

McConnell introduced Kaine to the crowd but was briefly interrupted by a group of about 10 people who stood up and protested the Republican leader.

"We are constituents," announced one of the people protesting, who also called McConnell out for accepting money from the fossil fuel industry.

By Dominique Jackson in Raw Story

Senator Mitch McConnell in Kentucky- While at an event in his hometown at the University of Louisville, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was greeted by angry protesters.

A group advocating for climate change showed opposition against the Senator.

“One protester, identifying herself as a McConnell constituent, shouted at the Republican leader: ‘why don’t you stand with us?’ The demonstration began as McConnell praised students on campus,” a report said.

Senator Mitch McConnell is missing the environmental moment- as usual!

An echo opinion published in the Kentucky Courier Journal

Green New Deal

Croplands are turning to desert, in parts of China, Kenya and Kansas. Entire species are disappearing. The Great Barrier Reef is dying.

Already, in Lexington, mosquito season lasts 10 percent longer than just a generation ago, exposing more people to the risk of the Zika virus and other diseases they carry. 

A nasty nickname for Senator McConnell happens to be "turtle head", but maybe the label is more of a metaphor than a slur. Certainly, McConnell knows how to hide from the truth about global warming. He could capture the opportunity to do the right thing by acknowledging the science about climate change, but he won't do it and, therefore, is rightly criticized in this Kentucky opinion:

McConnell wildly out of step with Kentucky and US on climate change- by Rhea Suh 

For the first time in his four years as Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell is poised to call a floor vote on a plan to confront the rising costs and mounting perils of global climate change.

But don’t be fooled. The Kentucky Republican means to bury climate action, not praise it, in one of the clearest signs yet of how wildly out of step he and others in his party are with the best interests of the nation — and the people of Kentucky.

McConnell, Donald Trump, and other Republican leaders have no plan of their own for addressing the central environmental challenge of our time, and little but derision for those who do.

To prove the point, McConnell and other Senate Republicans want to make a show of voting down a resolution that outlines the aspirations behind a Green New Deal, an ambitious call to national action to avert climate catastrophe.

A master of Senate process, McConnell knows this resolution contains big-picture goals, not specific legislation: that’s for Senate committees to craft.

Indeed, before McConnell unveiled his scheme to try to shut down talk about a Green New Deal, before the conversation can even begin, the resolution was slated to go before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. There, its animating ideas could be hammered out and refined through the customary process of hearings, expert insights and public debate.

Debate? That’s the last thing McConnell wants. 

Since 1989, he’s received more than $3.3 million in campaign contributions from the coal, gas and oil industries whose fuels produce the carbon pollution that’s driving climate change. McConnell has consistently voted against legislation that would help us reduce that dangerous pollution and confront the widening climate crisis — while there’s still time to act.

Our families deserve better. Nearly eight in 10 Americans — and more than six in 10 in Kentucky — understand the growing climate crisis we face; about seven in 10 expect our government to help fight it, and no wonder.

We just wrapped up the five hottest years since global record-keeping began in 1880. Of the 19 hottest years on record, 18 have occurred in this century.

Seas are rising, glaciers are melting, wildfires, storms and floods are raging.

Croplands are turning to desert, in parts of China, Kenya and Kansas. Entire species are disappearing. The Great Barrier Reef is dying.

Addressing this shouldn’t divide us red state and blue. Of the 15 states projected to pay the highest costs for climate change, 14, including Kentucky, voted for Trump.

Kentucky and its people are already paying the price.

Heat waves and attendant health threats are becoming more common, with the Bluegrass State on track to get 70 such days a year by 2050, a five-fold increase over current conditions.

Tourism is starting to sweat. Summer highs average a pleasant 87 degrees at popular Mammoth Cave National Park. That’s set to rise to a scorching 98 degrees, though, by century’s end, unless we take action now.

Already, in Lexington, mosquito season lasts 10 percent longer than just a generation ago, exposing more people to the risk of the Zika virus and other diseases they carry. Scientists predict more frequent and prolonged droughts like the one that slashed Kentucky’s corn output in half in 2012. And they warn that graceful trees like the sugar maple and American beech will be vanishing from the Kentucky landscape by 2100.

All of this and more gets much worse, the science tells us, unless we cut our carbon footprint today, so our children don’t inherit climate chaos tomorrow. That’s why we need assertive climate action that helps us rise to this challenge and create millions of good-paying American jobs doing it.

The people of Kentucky hold proud ground in the history of our country’s economy. They deserve their place in powering our future.

A Green New Deal could help, by promoting a just and equitable transition to the clean energy future we need.

That means bringing clean energy jobs to the state’s hard-hit rural and manufacturing areas. It means shoring up pensions and health care coverage for coal miners. And it means providing retraining for those who lose their jobs in an industry that has shed two-thirds of its Kentucky workforce in just the past decade.

Big ideas seldom arrive fully cooked. Advancing the goals of a Green New Deal with actual bills will take months. If McConnell has helpful suggestions, or any plan at all for confronting the growing dangers of climate change, we’d all love to hear it.

What we can’t afford to do is to allow this vital national conversation to be choked off before it gets started, as one more way to enable big polluters and their Capitol Hill backers to block the action we need to leave our kids and our grandkids a livable world.

Rhea Suh is president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group with more than 3 million supporters nationwide.

Caring for the poor - a human responsibility: echo opinion

A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

— Proverbs 11:25

SNAP - putting food on the table an echo opinion by Dustin Pugel

Published in the Kentucky newspaper - The State Journal

(MaineWriter opinion - Right wing Christians including those who call themselves "Evangelicals" are quick to support Donald Trump but they are silent about his cruel policies opposing programs that help the poor.)

In the 2018 holiday season, as Kentuckians (and Americans) celebrate with friends and family around the table, we must also remember the impact policy choices are having on one of the best tools we have to ensure we all get enough to eat.

The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, plays a critical role in improving the health and well-being of 580,000 Kentuckians, including workers, children, seniors and 23,000 veterans. According to Feeding America, SNAP provides 12 meals for every one meal the network’s food banks provide. And, though relatively modest — SNAP supplements Kentuckians’ food budget with an average of $1.36 per person, per meal — it goes a long way to help prevent hunger and its consequences.

SNAP doesn’t just provide nutrition; it is also one of the best anti-poverty programs we have. In Kentucky alone, SNAP keeps 164,000 of us out of poverty, including 73,000 children. It also helps our economy. In 2017, the federal government injected $933 million into local Kentucky economies through SNAP. And, by reducing food insecurity, SNAP keeps us healthier, too. Research shows that people who are food insecure are likelier to have a chronic disease such as heart disease, cancer or diabetes.

Despite all of these benefits, the state has erected new barriers to SNAP participation in recent months. As a result, between May and September of this year, more than 10,000 adults lost food assistance after three months of not being able to prove they worked enough hours. Many of them live in “labor surplus areas,” communities with more people who need work than there are jobs. Some face discriminatory barriers to employment or work in low-wage industries where consistent hours are hard to come by. A significant number of those losing coverage were likely unclear about the new paperwork requirements they had to meet.

As time goes by, the number of people who cannot surmount the state’s new barriers is likely to rise, leading to more and more people losing nutrition assistance. Until this year, the state routinely waived time limits for communities facing economic challenges. It should return to the practice of doing so.

At the same time the state is kicking people off SNAP, Congress is working to finalize the Farm Bill — landmark legislation that is passed every five years and funds SNAP and other priorities. With many Americans and Kentuckians left behind in the slow recovery from the Great Recession, it’s crucial that lawmakers pass a Farm Bill that protects and strengthens SNAP — along the lines of what the Senate passed earlier this year — and avoid the harmful cuts to SNAP included in the House version. U.S. Rep. James Comer and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky serve on the conference committee that will decide the fate of SNAP soon. They should recognize the vital role SNAP plays in the commonwealth among their constituents and in our economy.

Many Kentuckians (and Americans) will donate food, serve in soup kitchens and take meals to neighbors in the coming weeks. Many will give even when it feels difficult financially to do so. This generosity strengthens our communities, but we can’t fight hunger through charity alone. We also need our lawmakers, both state and federal, to protect and strengthen SNAP. 

As we give thanks this season, let’s ensure all families can put food on the table.

Dustin Pugel is a policy analyst with the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

Echo letter from Kentucky ~ support students against gun violence

An echo opinion letter published in the Lexington Kentucky Herald Leader in support of students who are protesting gun violence. 

#MarchForOurLives

I have a simple message for the brave students featured in a recent edition of the Herald- Leader: You are not alone. 

One article noted the cruelty directed at three Marshall County High School students who spoke out against gun violence, while another reported that the valedictorian and the student council president of Holy Cross High School (?!) were denied the opportunity to speak at graduation due to their history of advocating for social justice.

Please know that in spite of how isolating it may feel at any given time, there are people throughout Kentucky who agree with you and who admire you. Your public display of courage on these important issues makes it easier for others who quietly agree to face their own fears and join you.  From Greg Erhardt in Lexington KY

Senator McConnell isn't answering his mail- so echo this

“A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others”- Frank Baum "The Wizard of Oz"
Senator McConnell confirmed my suspicions. He really doesn't listen to Kentucky constitents, especially about his "unhealthty" GOP "uninsurance" bill. In fact, one constituent writes about how his phone is likely taken off the hook and his fax lines are clogged (or blocked). In other words, the world could end as we know it and Senator McConnell might have to find out about it until the incendiary incident hits him in the face.

Here's another letter to the editor published in the Lexington Herald Leader (kentucky.com):

McConnell lost his heart

LEXINGTON, Ky: Countless people, myself included, cannot get our concerns through to Sen. Mitch McConnell.

His staff never answers, his voice mail is always full and now when I email, that mailbox is full. How can he ignore people?

I saw the picture of the woman with spina bifida who was protesting outside of his office being hauled away by security guards. How can he be so cruel?

I have family members who work full time and depend on the Affordable Care Act. Don’t he and fellow senators depend on the government for theirs?

All of us depend on unpolluted air, water and soil. Does McConnell want to drink foul water? And what about his grandchildren; is it OK with him for them to breathe polluted air?

When McConnell first campaigned for senator, promising to help find missing children like Adam Walsh, he appeared to care about people.

But now he acts like he has no heart and no conscience.

McConnell has the power to seek justice and do great good.

We are depending on him to reverse his heartless course, for the future of humankind.~ Nell Valentine, Lexington KY

This blog is an echo to the list of others published about Senator Mitch McConnell and in opposition to the cruel Republican "repeal" bill that takes 22 + million off of health insurance.

Racists alert - White people are dying at increasing rates

Right wing radical racists internalize a false belief about white supremacy. In other words, they don't support any kind of racial integration. Well, regardless of how wrong minded this evil following subscribes to, the fact is, as younger caucasion women are dying faster than other population groups, there's "hello?" no way this bigotry can survive.

Washington Post: 

What has changed is the age of the people dying. 

Over the last 15 years, McCreary County (Kentucky) saw a 75 percent increase in the mortality rate for white women between the ages of 35 and 59, one of the highest increases in the nation, according to a Washington Post analysis of national mortality rates. The analysis also showed that the mortality rate for similarly aged white women nationally increased 23 percent; for white men increased 16 percent; for black women decreased 10 percent; for black men decreased 20 percent; for Hispanic women decreased 11 percent; and for Hispanic men decreased 16 percent.

Another study, by a research center at the University of Washington, found that McCreary County women are more likely to be obese and engage in life-shortening behaviors such as binge drinking than in previous generations, and a separate tally kept by the funeral home showed that, in 2013, 20 white women younger than 60 were buried; last year it was 31.

Those deaths have been charted by Debbie Murphy, the owner of two of the county’s three funeral homes. In fact, she maintains spreadsheets that enumerate every burial in McCreary County, and, moreover, she knows most of the people, too.

In fact, The New York Times reported in February 2016 that white death rates in America are increasing.

Andres Cherlin wrote: It's disturbing and puzzling news

"Death rates are rising for white, less-educated Americans."

The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton that rates have been climbing since 1999 for non-Hispanic whites age 45 to 54, with the largest increase occurring among the least educated. An analysis of death certificates by The New York Times found similar trends and showed that the rise may extend to white women.

Both studies attributed the higher death rates to increases in poisonings and chronic liver disease, which mainly reflect drug overdoses and alcohol abuse, and to suicides. 

In contrast, death rates fell overall for blacks and Hispanics.

Why are whites overdosing or drinking themselves to death at higher rates than African-Americans and Hispanics in similar circumstances? Some observers have suggested that higher rates of chronic opioid prescriptions could be involved, along with whites’ greater pessimism about their finances.

Yet I’d like to propose a different answer: what social scientists call reference group theory. The term “reference group” was pioneered by the social psychologist Herbert H. Hyman in 1942, and the theory was developed by the Columbia sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1950s. It tells us that to comprehend how people think and behave, it’s important to understand the standards to which they compare themselves.

How is your life going? For most of us, the answer to that question means comparing our lives to the lives our parents were able to lead. As children and adolescents, we closely observed our parents. They were our first reference group.

And here is one solution to the death-rate conundrum: It’s likely that many non-college-educated whites are comparing themselves to a generation that had more opportunities than they have, whereas many blacks and Hispanics are comparing themselves to a generation that had fewer opportunities.

When whites without college degrees look back, they can often remember fathers who were sustained by the booming industrial economy of postwar America. Since then, however, the industrial job market has slowed significantly. The hourly wages of male high school graduates declined by 14 percent from 1973 to 2012, according to analysis of data from the Economic Policy Institute. Although high school educated white women haven’t experienced the same major reversal of the job market, they may look at their husbands — or, if they are single, to the men they choose not to marry — and reason that life was better when they were growing up.

African-Americans, however, didn’t get a fair share of the blue-collar prosperity of the postwar period. They may look back to a time when discrimination deprived their parents of equal opportunities. Many Hispanics may look back to the lower standard of living their parents experienced in their countries of origin. Whites are likely to compare themselves to a reference group that leads them to feel worse off. Blacks and Hispanics compare themselves to reference groups that may make them feel better off.

The sociologist Timothy Nelson and I observed this phenomenon in interviews with high-school-educated young adult men in 2012 and 2013. A 35-year-old white man who did construction jobs said, “It’s much harder for me as a grown man than it was for my father.” He remembered his father saying that back when he was 35, “‘I had a house and I had five kids or four kids.’ You know, ‘Look where I was at.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, Dad, things have changed.’”

African-American men were more upbeat. One said: “I think there are better opportunities now because first of all, the economy’s changing. The color barrier is not as harsh as it was back then.”

In addition, national surveys show striking racial and ethnic differences in satisfaction with one’s social standing relative to one’s parents. The General Social Survey conducted by the research organization NORC at the University of Chicago has asked Americans in its biennial surveys to compare their standard of living to that of their parents. In 2014, according to my analysis, among 25- to 54-year-olds without college degrees, blacks and Hispanics were much more positive than whites: 67 percent of African-Americans and 68 percent of Hispanics responded “much better” or “somewhat better,” compared with 47 percent of whites.

Those figures represent a reversal from 2000, when whites were more positive than blacks, 64 percent to 60 percent. (Hispanics were the most positive in nearly all years.)

But we size ourselves up based on more than just our parents. White workers historically have compared themselves against black workers, taking some comfort in seeing a group that was doing worse than them. 

Now, however, the decline of racial restrictions in the labor market and the spread of affirmative action have changed that. Non-college-graduate whites in the General Social Survey are more likely to agree that “conditions for black people have improved” than are comparable blacks themselves, 68 percent to 53 percent.

Reference group theory explains why people who have more may feel that they have less. What matters is to whom you are comparing yourself. It’s not that white workers are doing worse than African-Americans or Hispanics.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, the median weekly earnings of white men aged 25 to 54 were $950, well above the same figure for black men ($703) and Hispanic men ($701). But for some whites — perhaps the ones who account for the increasing death rate — that may be beside the point. Their main reference group is their parents’ generation, and by that standard they have little to look forward to and a lot to lament.

Andrew J. Cherlin is a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America.”

In other words, these sociological analyses about death rates apply to the groups studied and that obviously includes those who are racists themselves!