Donald Trump and maga Republicans must support truth about Pentagon operations and end Pete Hegseth's "Bagdhad Bob" propaganda

Editorial

Editorial Board opinion published in the Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper.

No more fitting tribute exists of Florida's Sunshine Week, the annual tribute to open government, than a judge’s refusal to let Pete Hegseth manipulate the Pentagon press.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the policy he struck down favored journalists “willing to publish only stories that are favorable or spoon-fed” by Department of Defense leaders.

Hegseth’s wrong minded aim was to make the Pentagon press a house organ for the Trump administration. The proof was in what took place after legitimate reporters turned in their passes and left the building last fall rather than fall in line.

In their place, the Pentagon handed press credentials to bizarre right-wing sycophants such as Laura Loomer, the Floridian whose hushed suspicions to Trump try to get people fired; “MyPillow Guy” Mike Lindell, who fabricates stolen election conspiracies; and Matt Gaetz, the ex-Florida congressman, too toxic to be confirmed as attorney general.
Stop the press media suppression❗

“A primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription,” Friedman wrote. “Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech. That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now.”

The nation that endures partly because of that principle owes a debt of gratitude to the New York Times, which filed a First Amendment lawsuit in Friedman’s court. The judge also found a violation of the Fifth Amendment, because “any newsgathering and reporting not blessed by the Department” would become “a potential basis for the denial, suspension, or revocation” of journalistic access.

True to form, the Pentagon plans an appeal. But, Friedman should not pause his ruling and no higher court should suspend it while the appeal plays out — especially not now.

“The Court recognizes that national security must be protected, the security of our troops must be protected, and war plans must be protected,” the judge wrote. “But especially in light of the country’s recent illegal incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing Trump World War with Iran, it is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing — so that the public can support government policies, if it wants to support them; protest, if it wants to protest; and decide based on full, complete, and open information who they are going to vote for in the next election. As Justice Brandeis correctly observed, ‘sunlight is the most powerful of all disinfectants.’”

Judge Friedman left intact a part of Hegseth’s edict requiring reporters to have escorts near his office and certain other parts of the sprawling Pentagon building.
Few rays of sunshine🌞

The ruling was on the next-to-last day of Sunshine Week, an event coordinated by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, and supported by more than 100 organizations and publishers.

Rays of sunshine are rare. Trump’s war on the media is relentless. Gov. Ron DeSantis runs the most secretive administration in Florida history.

Records requests filed under Florida’s public records law routinely go unanswered, or meet with exorbitant fee demands. In the just-ended legislative session, the Senate refused to enforce compliance by not considering a House-passed bill (HB 437).💢

Our history abounds with examples of the importance of the First Amendment.

President Kennedy regretted having persuaded the New York Times to withhold what it knew of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which ended disastrously in 1961.

The Pentagon Papers, stamped “Top Secret,” told about how successive administrations led the U.S. deeper into a Vietnam war that tore the nation apart in the 1960s.

Millions of Jeffrey Epstein documents forced open by Congress exposed a staggering story, still not fully told, about the government’s multiyear failure to protect children from a wealthy, well-connected sexual predator.

The bane of every dictator is Freedom of the Press.

In his classic work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, journalist William L. Shirer described what Hitler did: “Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day. In case of any misunderstanding a daily written directive was furnished along with the oral instructions.”

Pete Hegseth’s directive was not so blatant. But, it was on the same slippery slope.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board.

Donald Trump is a dangerously failed leader - echo opinion

This opinion letter from Oklahoma was published in Tulsa World:

Letter to the Editor: Trump’s Alabama Sharpie map erodes trust with Americans- he is dangerous.

#Sharpiegate Trump

On Sept. 1, 2019, Donald Trump tweeted a warning that Alabama would be among the areas “most likely” to be hit by Hurricane Dorian. About 20 minutes later, the National Weather Service in Birmingham tweeted: "Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian." (Hurricane Dorian)

On Sept. 4, Donald Trump gave a (stupiud!) news conference with a map obviously altered with a Sharpie to show that the extended Dorian’s projected cone went into the southeastern corner of Alabama.

This hand-drawn addition indicated the storm would move from Florida into Alabama and made it appear Trump’s Sunday tweet was correct, despite national weather officials and updated forecasts saying otherwise.


There are lives that can be lost if a president does not consider and rely on experts in making decisions and pronouncements.

Everyone makes errors, especially Donald Trump. But, further compounding an error with an obvious misstatement leads one to question whether that president should continue making the momentous decisions needed for the job.

In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced we were blockading Cuba because nuclear ballistic missiles were being installed there by Russia. Americans believed Kennedy and stood by him.

If Trump were to make a similar announcement that had grave implications on the continuance of life in America, would you believe him and stand by him? If not, that - in and of itself - is a serious (and dangerous!) problem.

John L. Harlan, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Roman Catholics must stand against bigotry

Alfred E. Smith (1873-1944), governor of New York and member of Dr. John G. Coyle K of C Council 163 in New York City, gives a speech as the Democratic candidate in the 1928 U.S. presidential race. Smith was vehemently opposed by the Ku Klux Klan, which burned crosses during his campaign and claimed that “A Vote for Al Smith Is a Vote for the Pope.” (Library of Congress)
"(1923) The Klan and its allies’ campaign of racial and religious bigotry extended to Catholics in general and the Knights in particular — portraying Catholics as foreign invaders beholden only to Rome, and the Knights as the Church’s enforcers."~ Kevin Coyne in Columbia Magazine.

The Ku Klux Klan is vile, the oldest American hate group, and while the number of active KKK chapters declined in 2016, members of the Klan are trying to regain ground. Estimates are there are between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members nationwide.
This Columbia article is particularly interesting because the Roman Catholic Church has a history of supporting immigrants and opposing bigotry.  Nevertheless, as a practicing Roman Catholic woman, I am dismayed, to say the least, by the American Catholic Bishops' support for Donald Trump. Our Bishop Deeley, in Portland Maine, even called from the pulpit for parishioners to support Trump's presidency, after he was elected.

In my mind, this unwarranted support is without cause, because Donald Trump is the antithesis of what Roman Catholicism stands for and the man opposes the social justice messages of Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, this article in the October issue of the Columbia Magazine, the official publication of the Catholic Knights of Columbus, is of historic interest because it explains how, in the past, the bigotry now tacitly supported by Donald Trump and his misguided followers was a cause for the the Catholic Knights to become the organized group it is today.

THE KNIGHTS VS. THE KLAN- by Kevin Coyne

At the peak of the Ku Klux Klan's popularity, the Knights of Columbus stood as its most vigorous opponent.

One evening in the summer of 1923, Supreme Advocate Luke E. Hart looked out the window of the train he was riding through southern Indiana.

“The lights of the automobiles lit up the roads for miles and made quite an impression on the travelers on our train,” he wrote in a letter the next day. He estimated that there were “not less than 1,000 automobiles filled with members of the Ku Klux Klan” returning from a KKK parade in the town of Orleans.

A St. Louis lawyer, Hart had been named supreme advocate barely a year earlier, at a time when the Klan was on the rise and on the attack. The Klan and its allies’ campaign of racial and religious bigotry extended to Catholics in general and the Knights in particular — portraying Catholics as foreign invaders beholden only to Rome, and the Knights as the Church’s enforcers.

The introduction of a 1921 KKK pamphlet titled The Ku Klux Klan or the Knights of Columbus Klan referred to the Knights of Columbus as “the Pope’s Knights of Mob and Murder, his Militia of Christ, his pliant tools who have bound themselves together in a secret, unholy compact to destroy our free American Public School system, our Constitution and its guarantees.” It further stated, “Apparently the organization most interested in the destruction of the Ku Klux Klan is the Roman Catholic Order of the Knights of Columbus.”

The Klan grasped one grain of truth: The Knights of Columbus did indeed work to counter the Klan’s malicious ideology. 

Moreover, the Order’s passionate, nonviolent response to the Klan’s anti-Catholicism, racism and historical revisionism remains a model for Knights today.

Nativist Slander and Violence

The size and reach of the Ku Klux Klan, and the racist, nativist beliefs it traffics in, have ebbed and flowed through the history of the United States. Born in the South after the Civil War, the group’s hatred was initially aimed at newly freed slaves and Yankee carpetbaggers. The Klan surged again in the years before Hart’s Indiana train ride, spreading to the rest of the nation and broadening its list of enemies at a time when racial and cultural prejudice was magnified by political and economic fears.

Immigrants — “Italian anarchists, Irish-Catholic malcontents,” as a Klan pamphlet of the era described them, “the scum of the Mediterranean and the middle European countries … masses of ignorant, superstitious, religious devotees … festering sores on the American body politic” — were still arriving at a pace that alarmed those who believed that the United States was, and should remain, a nation of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

The Klan cast itself as the sentinel against the kind of rapid social change that many Americans found unsettling. 

Membership in the Klan soared past 4 million by the early 1920s, large enough to gain wide political influence and sway elections. For example, the Klan was instrumental in electing governors or senators in Oregon, Oklahoma, Indiana, Colorado, Maine and Texas, as well as many local government officials.

As the size of the Klan peaked, so did its battle with the Knights — fought with legal briefs and letters, pamphlets and magazines, speeches and meetings, and sometimes with violence.

Knights and their allies from around the country reported on the Klan’s actions in missives addressed to Supreme Advocate Hart — typed neatly on the letterheads of parishes and local councils, scrawled hastily in pencil on pages torn from notebooks, dispatched urgently in telegrams.

From Santa Maria, Calif.: The Klan was invited to march in the Armistice Day parade, but the Knights were not. From Scottdale, Pa.: “The Klan is just now running the town, or think they are.” From York, Pa.: The Klan was sponsoring appearances by Neva Miller Moss, a “self-styled ex-nun” peddling copies of her salacious book, Behind Convent Walls.

Many of the complaints concerned the Klan’s circulation of the “Bogus Oath,” a compendium of lurid anti-Catholic fantasies that had been circulating in various forms for centuries, but that had been attached most persistently in recent years to the Knights. It was purported to be an oath taken by Fourth Degree members and included such intentions as to “hang, burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive” Protestant “heretics” and to undermine civil government.

In Terre Haute, Ind., Klansmen rode through the night tossing copies of the Bogus Oath onto lawns and porches.

“Each pamphlet was wadded up and jammed into a wooden clothes-pin, thus making it easier to hurl,” one letter reported. In Kingsville, Texas, copies of the Bogus Oath in Spanish “caused quite a little excitement among our Mexican population,” another correspondent wrote.

Protected by the dominance of the Klan in some regions, KKK members went beyond propaganda to commit acts of violence.

On an August afternoon in 1921, at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Birmingham, Ala., the pastor, Father James E. Coyle, presided at the wedding of Ruth Stephenson, a recent convert, and Pedro Gussman, who was Puerto Rican. Born and ordained in Ireland, Father Coyle had spent 25 years in Alabama ministering to immigrant Catholics, many of them drawn to work in the mills, mines and foundries. He was a charter member of Mobile Council 666 and chaplain of Birmingham Council 635.

An hour after the wedding, Father Coyle was sitting on the porch of his rectory when Rev. Edwin R. Stephenson, a Methodist minister, approached with a gun. The minister, who was the bride’s father and a Klansman, shot the priest in the head, killing him. The Klan paid for his lawyers, three of whom were members. The fourth, Hugo Black, who later became a U.S. Senator and Supreme Court justice, also joined the Klan after the trial. The judge and the foreman of the jury were both Klansmen as well. After a weeklong trial, the jury returned quickly with its verdict: not guilty.

Several years later, as the Knights of Columbus spoke out strongly against Mexico President Plutarco Elías Calles and the violent persecution of the Church in Mexico, the Klan offered its own members as soldiers for the Calles regime in the event that they were necessary.

Knights of Columbus Resistance

The Knights’ first Spanish-speaking council in the United States, Del Norte Council 2592 in El Paso, Texas, repelled a Klan attempt to take over the school board and mayor’s office in 1922. K of C members followed Klansmen to their secret meetings and then wrote down their license plate numbers and made their names public.

K of C councils in other cities, such as Anaheim, Calif., had similar success in countering the Klan’s infiltration of local government.

Sometimes, the Knights answered the Klan with their own show of force. In 1924, after hooded Klansmen abducted, severely beat and mutilated Father John Conoley in Gainesville, Fla., Knights armed with shotguns stood in the windows of the rectory, protecting another priest and the church itself from the Klan’s threats to burn it.

Most often, the Knights responded simply by using words, reason and the law. Anyone circulating the Bogus Oath got a stern cease-and-desist letter from Luke Hart. Those who failed to comply got a libel suit. The editor of the Rail Splitter Press, which published reams of anti-Catholics tracts, called Hart’s letter “the most damnable piece of papal insolence that has ever come into this office,” but he never reprinted the oath again.

Rewards were offered to anyone who could prove the oath was genuine. “It was clamoring to be claimed, but no one came,” the bishop of Galveston wrote about the $5,000 deposits that waited in banks in each of the five Texas dioceses — $25,000 with no takers.

The Knights also distributed literature of their own, including pamphlets reprinting speeches against the Klan by public figures.

“I heard of the Knights of Columbus on the battlefields of France; I heard of them in the hospitals over there nursing the boys; but I did not hear anything of the Klan over there, and no masks were worn over there except gas masks,” declared Mississippi Sen. LeRoy Percy after a Klan representative had spoken at the county courthouse in Greenville, Miss. “If you love your people, if you love the welfare of your community, do not be led off after this firebrand creed that is built on dissension, hatred and factional strife.”

In the tumultuous debate over who was, or ought to be, American, the Knights published more substantial volumes, too, defending not only their organization and their faith but their larger belief in an open and diverse nation.

The Knights of Columbus Historical Commission was established in 1921, and three years later, it published the Racial Contributions Series: The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America, by W.E.B. DuBois; The Jews in the Making of America by George Cohen; and The Germans in the Making of America by Frederick Schrader.

Around the same time, a KKK pamphlet titled Knights of the Klan versus the Knights of Columbus portrayed Catholic and Jewish immigrants as a menace to U.S. society.

Christopher Columbus, too, received the Klan’s hatred. Eager to defame this Catholic, non-Anglo explorer, celebrated by immigrants, the Klan targeted anything that honored him. In Oregon, for example, the Klan fought to get rid of Columbus Day. In places such as Richmond, Va., and Easton, Pa., the Klan nearly succeeded in blocking the erection of statues of Columbus. Elsewhere, Klansmen disrupted Columbus Day celebrations, such as with a cross burning in Nanty Glo, Pa.

Whereas KKK publications called Columbus Day “a papal fraud,” the Knights insisted that U.S. citizens’ embrace of Columbus — and the immigrants he represented — enriched rather than threatened American identity.

Defending Religious Liberty

The Knights’ most lasting victory over the Ku Klux Klan was in a legal battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

In the 1920s, several states tried to force Catholic school children out of parochial schools and into public ones, but none were as successful as Oregon, where the Klan was strong and Catholics were sparse.

In the 1922 Oregon state election, the Klan supported Walter M. Pierce for governor, as well as the ballot initiative that Pierce endorsed. Later known as the Oregon School Law, it required all children to attend public school through eighth grade. Pierce and the ballot initiative both won.

“There is only one way left for us to defeat this infamous law, and that is through the courts,” wrote the Knights’ state deputy of Oregon.

Supreme Knight James A. Flaherty agreed. “I call upon members of this Order everywhere,” he wrote, “to rally in defense of the Catholic schools.”

The plaintiff in the case was an order of teaching nuns, the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, and the Knights helped finance their legal battle. 

When the Supreme Court eventually ruled unanimously against the Oregon law in 1925, the Knights saw not just a legal victory but also a moral one.

“We see about us the fruits of irreligion, and we see that they are bitter fruits. It is clear to us that if the seeds of irreligion are sown and resown, our nation will reap a dangerous harvest indeed,” Flaherty wrote. “Let us be proud of our part in the good fight, let us rejoice that when, in the dark hours of bigotry’s first threatening advance, the victims of a small and prejudiced group sought our aid, they didn’t seek in vain.”

Although the Klan was shrinking in numbers and influence by the end of the 1920s, conflicts continued.

After Msgr. Bernard J. Quinn, the founder of the first church for black Catholics in Brooklyn, established a Catholic orphanage for black children on Long Island, it was burned down twice in arson attacks attributed to the Klan. Msgr. Quinn, who had previously served as a K of C chaplain in World War I, responded by simply rebuilding the orphanage, the second time in stone and brick.

That same year, the Klan met Al Smith’s presidential campaign train to Oklahoma with fiery KKK crosses.

“I here and now drag them into the open and I denounce them as a treasonable attack upon the very foundations of American liberty,” Smith said about the Klan to a packed crowd of 10,000 in the Oklahoma City Coliseum Sept. 29. “Nothing could be so contradictory to our whole history. Nothing could be so false to the teachings of our divine Lord himself. The world knows no greater mockery than the use of the blazing cross, the cross upon which Christ died, as a symbol to instill into the hearts of men a hatred of their brethren while Christ preached and died for the love and brotherhood of man.”

Though Smith, who was a member of Dr. John G. Coyle Council 163 in New York City, ultimately lost the election, the Klan’s influence continued to decline.

But decades later, when another Knight, John F. Kennedy, a member of Bunker Hill Council 62 in Charlestown, Mass., ran for president in 1960, the Bogus Oath surfaced yet again.

Led by Luke Hart, who had served as supreme knight since 1953, the Knights once again responded. 

Through publications, lawsuits and public witness, the Order was determined to stamp out the Klan’s bigotry and falsehoods for good.

KEVIN COYNE is an award-winning writer and professor at the Columbia School of Journalism. He lives with his family in Freehold, N.J.

(MaineWriter- Thank you sent @columbiamag with a hashtag to Kevin Coyne on Twitter.)

Echo on AARP health care advocacy- the future

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past — let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” - President John F. Kennedy

AARP continues to fight for the health care principles that are vital to people 50 and older, and their families.

AARP Advocacy

AARP opposes any age tax that allows insurance companies to charge people ages 50 to 64 five times as much (or more) as they charge other customers, and that reduces or eliminates tax credits that allow them to afford their coverage.

AARP will fight to keep Medicare strong. People have earned Medicare throughout their working lives, but proposed legislation would cut funding for Medicare and open the door to benefit cuts and vouchers that would shift more costs and risks to seniors.
We will fight to defend Medicaid. Proposed cuts to Medicaid would leave millions of Americans uninsured and at risk of losing the care they need as well as the ability to live independently in their homes and communities.

Reminded of a quote about the definition of politics by the late Groucho Marx. “Politics,” he said, “is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

Even though the measures proposed in the Senate failed, that doesn’t mean the health care debate is over. It is clear the “remedies” that were proposed by both the House and Senate bills would have resulted in higher costs and less care, especially for older Americans, and huge windfalls to pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies.

That’s why AARP conducted an all-out effort to urge senators and representatives in Congress to vote “no” on these bills. We ran an extensive campaign urging our members to contact their lawmakers and held tele-town halls across the country. AARP volunteers and staff in every state made more than 400 visits to their congressional representatives, expressing opposition to the bills. AARP members continue to make their voices heard.

Don’t get me wrong — the Affordable Care Act is not perfect. Aspects of the law need to be fixed in order to lower costs and maintain vital protections and coverage that millions of Americans rely on. But instead of overcharging older Americans and threatening access to affordable coverage, Congress should focus on bipartisan solutions that will increase coverage, lower costs and improve care. There are many ways to reduce health care costs that would not harm ordinary people. For example, AARP has long advocated for Medicare to be allowed to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.

We urge Congress to follow the advice of John F. Kennedy, who as a senator in 1958 said, “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past — let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” Our responsibility for the future is to create a world-class health care system that is affordable and gives all Americans access to the care that they need.

Donald Trump does not read- "can he?"

Honestly, it's painful to watch Donald Trump try to read.  

No seriously! It's like listening to a fifth grader who is reading challenged, in elementary school, or a student practicing diction.  

In fact, the only time Donald Trump makes sense is when he's spewing hate and spreading evil, while not reading from script. He's a terrible reader.

This commentary, by the opinion writer Michael Gerson, gives a perspective on the Donald Trump "reading problem".

Donald Trump is "reading challenged"

Why doesn't Donald Trump read?
Michael Gerson: For wisdom on North Korea, Trump should pay a visit to the White House library

WASHINGTON, DC — Donald Trump doesn’t spare much time for reading. “I never have,” he explains. “I’m always busy doing a lot.”

But what he is now busy doing is managing a global crisis with nuclear dimensions and historical precedents. 

One adviser, Sebastian Gorka, has said, “This is analogous to the Cuban missile crisis.” Which demonstrates how a little bedside reading might come in handy.

In his account of that 1962 nuclear standoff, “Thirteen Days,” Robert F. Kennedy describes a meeting with President John F. Kennedy early in the crisis. “A short time before,” recounts RFK, the president “had read Barbara Tuchman’s book ‘The Guns of August’” — a still-compelling account of the lead-up to World War I. “He talked,” RFK continues, “about the miscalculations of the Germans, the Russians, the Austrians, the French and the British. They somehow seemed to tumble into war, he said, through stupidity, individual idiosyncrasies, misunderstandings, and personal complexes of inferiority and grandeur.”

“I am not going to follow a course,” JFK later says, “which will allow anyone to write a comparable book about this time, ‘The Missiles of October.’ ... If anyone is around to write after this, they are going to understand that we made every effort to find peace and every effort to give our adversary room to move.”

Is it possible to imagine our current president reading “The Guns of August” and applying its lessons to current events? 

By all indications, Trump lives in the eternal now of his own wants and compulsions. 

Rather, he combines a total ignorance of the past with a total (IMO- misguided) confidence in his own instincts. Now, in the first crisis not of his own making, he must produce traits of leadership he has not exhibited before: judgment, prudence and wisdom. His default mindset is not only indifferent to these traits; it is antithetical to them.

Trump’s main virtue as president (and there are some) has been his choice of responsible, respected advisers on foreign and defense policy. The three generals — John Kelly as chief of staff, H.R. McMaster as national security adviser and James Mattis as defense secretary — are the real reasons Americans should sleep well at night, or at least sleep. And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — though resented by his own demoralized department — is trying to be a calming influence.

But Trump has begun this chess game (?- Dear Michael, do you really think Donald Trump understands how to play chess? No, seriously!), with a move taken from cage fighting — promising “fire and fury” if North Korea makes “any more threats to the United States,” then defending and emphasizing his intemperance. This may be the flimsiest, most foolhardy red line in presidential history. The North Koreans — with a threat to Guam — crossed the line immediately, without consequence. Trump’s statement, made after days of briefings with advisers who surely urged pacific rhetoric, is perhaps best interpreted as a declaration of independence from those advisers themselves. It may have been Trump throwing off the resented constraints of sound counsel.

Ultimately, the most consequential event in the current crisis will take place between the president’s ears. He must decide if a North Korea with nuclear-tipped ICBMs is acceptable or not. Yes or no.

A case can be made for both sides. In one view, the North Korean regime is a criminal enterprise, not a suicidal death cult. The logic and practice of nuclear deterrence — which includes the right of a pre-emptive nuclear first strike — will hold. In another view, the North Korean regime is deeply unstable, prone to miscalculation and capable of unthinkable horrors. With the artificial confidence of nuclear capabilities, the North Korean regime could blunder past real red lines and set off unpredictable escalation.

This is the decision we are trusting Donald Trump to make — a choice that will determine policy at every stage of the standoff. And what will inform that decision? The instincts of an untested leader? The deal-making experience of the New York real estate market? The collective wisdom of military leadership?

During the 1962 crisis, President Kennedy determined that the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. But he consistently pushed back against the advice of military action and probed its assumptions. In the end, he pursued a nonnegotiable objective with maximal diplomatic flexibility. “Above all,” he later said, “while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to the choice of either a humiliating defeat or a nuclear war.”

What Trump may need most at this moment is a geography lesson. 

Directions to Donald Trump- follow the the White House library, it's in the basement, right next to the main stairs.

(MaineWriter- Donald Trump will have to read directions, if he is ever to find the library.)

Michael Gerson’s email address is michaelgerson@washpost.com.

American space age in the 21st century needs inspired visionary leadership says Captain Eugene Cernan

A visionary leader like President John F. Kennedy is vital to the future of America's ambitious space program. Retired Navy Captain Eugene Cernan rallied an audience in Portland Maine to this reality
when he spoke on May 20, 2014, about his experience as an American astronaut and the last man to ever walk on the moon. Today, he told the audience, America's space program is dependent on the equivalent of "trampolines" to launch humans into space.

In other words, our nation's humans into space program is at a crossroads. In spite of political and societal challenges, President John F. Kennedy rallied Americans to support the space program and put humans on the moon. This visionary leadership is needed again.

Captain Eugene Cernan with Juliana L'Heureux (above)  and meeting Richard L'Heureux (below) at the Champions for Kids benefit dinner to benefit the Salvation Army in Portland Maine

Captain Cernan spoke alongside Karen McBride, a Mars exploration program specialist from NASA and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). While Captain Cernan spoke about the extraordinary value of the American space program, McBride spoke about the future possibilities of Mars exploration.  

There's no question about Captain Cernan's credible insight into the value of the space program. Humans will always seek new challenges and chart the unknown, he said.  Unfortunately, some people believe the reason our humans in space program is now at a crossroads is because of a lack of leadership. Given the US Congress is incapable of agreeing on any kind of government investment on futuristic projects, like the space program, it's hard to blame just one person for the lack of leadership that Captain Cernan wants to rally for the cause. 

Nevertheless, President John F. Kennedy did rally Americans to support the ambitious project, when the technology to support the vision was hardly up to the challenge. Cernan said most people listening to him in the audience had more technology in their pocket hand-held devices than he had available when he flew to the moon. 

At the time when Americans like Cernan landed on the moon, only the construction of the Panama Canal, in modern peacetime, and the Manhattan Project in war, were comparable in scope. 

NASA's overall human spaceflight efforts were guided by Kennedy's speech; Projects Mercury (at least in its latter stages), Gemini, and Apollo were designed to execute Kennedy's goal. His goal was achieved on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong stepped off the Lunar Module's ladder and onto the Moon's surface.

In spite of the exhilarating possibilities and excitement of human space travel, the monetary cost of supporting such an expensive endeavor remains the daunting obstacle to progress. Visionary leadership requires inspired supporters. So long as Republicans control the purse strings in the US Congress, the prospect of seeking a return on investment in space travel seems remote, at best.

Money notwithstanding, Captain Cernan is correct about the need for inspired leadership. Given how Captain Cernan is a motivational speaker, I suspect he could have some influence over even the most dyed in the wool conservatives regarding funding for space exploration.

Certainly, Captain Cernan's message deserves the honor of being heard and listened to.  As he told us, Americans can achieve practically anything when we set our sights on doing it.  

President Obama Advances the Dream - Dr. Martin Luther King's Vision Moves Forward

"With the few dollars they scrimped from their labor, some bought tickets and boarded buses, even if they couldn't always sit where they wanted to sit. Those with less money hitchhiked, or walked. They were seamstresses, and steelworkers, and students, and teachers, maids and pullman porters. They shared simple meals and bunked together on floors,"  President Barack Obama, describing the August 28, 1963, "Let Freedom Ring", March on Washington.

Freedom's bell clearly rang today as the nation commemorated the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's Dream Speech, during the March on Washington DC.  Dr. King's vision was advanced today during an emotional commemoration of the March on Washington, when, in 1963, over 250,000 people peacefully demonstrated for the Civil Rights of millions of Black American citizens.  

None of us who experienced the magnitude of Dr. King's speech in 1963, could have seen the future he dreamed of, where equality for all people would be fulfilled as he articulated:  "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

President Obama advanced Dr. King's vision in the speech he gave in the very same location where the Dream Speech was so magnificently articulated, 50 years ago.  

Yet, let's not allow the spotlight of the 50th remembrances to blind us to the martyrs who lost their lives as a result of supporting Civil Rights and the equality of all people.  

We must remember the brutal history that subsequently led to the fulfillment of Dr. King's vision.  

President Obama remembered those martyrs today:

President Abraham Lincoln:  Martyred on April 15, 1865, in Ford's Theater, in Washington DC, because he led the Civil War (1860-65) and defeated the Southern Confederate states, after singing the Emancipation Proclamation, later ratified by Congress, thus freeing the African Negro slaves, as a result.

President John F.  Kennedy: Martyred in Dallas Texas November 22, 1963.  He was President during the original March on Washington who hosted the organizers at the White House following the success of the March on Washington.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy: Martyred in Los Angeles California on June 6, 1966, brother of President Kennedy and his brother's Attorney General during the Civil Rights movement.

Dr. Martin Luther King: Martyred April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, author of "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", written while he was in prison because of his Civil Rights activities; murdered following his charismatic and inspiring "I Have a Dream Speech", given to a throng of 250,000 people, on August 28, 1963, at the foot of the statue of Abraham Lincoln.  

Additionally, let's never forget the martyred children, who were killed following the enormous success of the March on Washington. This Birmingham, Alabama church bombing occurred on September 15, 1963, just a few weeks after Dr. King's Dream Speech.  At 10:22 a.m. on the morning of September 15, 1963, some 200 church members were in the building--many attending Sunday school classes before the start of the 11 am service--when the bomb detonated on the church's east side, spraying mortar and bricks from the front of the church and caving in its interior walls. Most parishioners were able to evacuate the building as it filled with smoke, but the bodies of four young girls (14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Denise McNair) were found beneath the rubble in a basement restroom. Ten-year-old Sarah Collins, who was also in the restroom at the time of the explosion, lost her right eye, and more than 20 other people were injured in the blast.

Today, the "Let Freedom Ring" bell, a relic from the Birmingham Church bombing, rang out to remember the past and symbolically advance Dr. King's dream. 

Dr. King's dream was proudly advanced by our African American President Barack Obama, who focused on the economic equality envisioned in the Dream speech (text below): 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

In 1963, almost 200 years after those words were set to paper, a full century after a great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed, that promise, those truths remained unmet. And so they came by the thousands, from every corner of our country -- men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others. 

Across the land, congregations sent them off with food and with prayer. In the middle of the night, entire blocks of Harlem came out to wish them well.

With the few dollars they scrimped from their labor, some bought tickets and boarded buses, even if they couldn't always sit where they wanted to sit. Those with less money hitchhiked, or walked. They were seamstresses, and steelworkers, and students, and teachers, maids and pullman porters. They shared simple meals and bunked together on floors.

And then, on a hot summer day, they assembled here, in our nation's capital, under the shadow of the great emancipator, to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress and to awaken America's long-slumbering conscience.

We rightly and best remember Dr. King's soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions, how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.

But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books, never got on TV.

Many had gone to segregated schools and sat at segregated lunch counters, had lived in towns where they couldn't vote, in cities where their votes didn't matter. There were couples in love who couldn't marry, soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found denied to them at home. They had seen loved ones beaten and children fire- hosed. And they had every reason to lash out in anger or resign themselves to a bitter fate.

And yet they chose a different path.

In the face of hatred, they prayed for their tormentors. In the face of violence, they stood up and sat in with the moral force of nonviolence. Willingly, they went to jail to protest unjust laws, their cells swelling with the sound of freedom songs. A lifetime of indignities had taught them that no man can take away the dignity and grace that God grants us.

They had learned through hard experience what Frederick Douglas once taught: that freedom is not given; it must be won through struggle and discipline, persistence and faith.

That was the spirit they brought here that day.

That was the spirit young people like John Lewis brought that day. That was the spirit that they carried with them like a torch back to their cities and their neighborhoods, that steady flame of conscience and courage that would sustain them through the campaigns to come, through boycotts and voter registration drives and smaller marches, far from the spotlight, through the loss of four little girls in Birmingham, the carnage of Edmund Pettus Bridge (in Selma Alabama). and the agony of Dallas (Nov. 22, 1963), California (June 6 1966), Memphis (April 4, 1968). Through setbacks and heartbreaks and gnawing doubt, that flame of justice flickered and never died.And because they kept marching, America changed. Because they marched, the civil rights law was passed. Because they marched, the voting rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else's laundry or shining somebody else's shoes.

Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed and Congress changed and, yes, eventually the White House changed. 
Because they marched, America became more free and more fair, not just for African-Americans but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans, for Catholics, Jews and Muslims, for gays, for Americans with disabilities.

America changed for you and for me.

And the entire world drew strength from that example, whether it be young people who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would eventually end the scourge of apartheid.

Those are the victories they won, with iron wills and hope in their hearts. That is the transformation that they wrought with each step of their well-worn shoes. That's the depth that I and millions of Americans owe those maids, those laborers, those porters, those secretaries -- folks who could have run a company, maybe, if they had ever had a chance; those white students who put themselves in harm's way even though they didn't have to -- those Japanese- Americans who recalled their own interment, those Jewish Americans who had survived the Holocaust, people who could have given up and given in but kept on keeping on, knowing that weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning --  on the battlefield of justice, men and women without rank or wealth or title or fame would liberate us all, in ways that our children now take for granted as people of all colors and creeds live together and learn together and walk together, and fight alongside one another and love one another, and judge one another by the content of our character in this greatest nation on Earth.

To dismiss the magnitude of this progress, to suggest, as some sometimes do, that little has changed -- that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years. Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Martin Luther King Jr., they did not die in vain. Their victory was great.  

But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own.

To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency. Whether it's by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all in the criminal justice system and not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails -- it requires vigilance.And we'll suffer the occasional setback. But we will win these fights. This country has changed too much. People of good will, regardless of party, are too plentiful for those with ill will to change history's currents.

In some ways, though, the securing of civil rights, voting rights, the eradication of legalized discrimination -- the very significance of these victories may have obscured a second goal of the march, for the men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search of some abstract idea.

They were there seeking jobs as well as justice -- not just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity.
For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can't afford the meal?

This idea that -- that one's liberty is linked to one's livelihood, that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material security -- this idea was not new.Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms, as a promise that in due time, the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all should have an equal chance.

Dr. King explained that the goals of African-Americans were identical to working people of all races: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures -- conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.

What King was describing has been the dream of every American. It's what's lured for centuries new arrivals to our shores. And it's along this second dimension of economic opportunity, the chance through honest toil to advance one's station in life, that the goals of 50 years ago have fallen most short.

Yes, there have been examples of success within black America that would have been unimaginable a half-century ago. But as has already been noted, black unemployment has remained almost twice as high as white employment (sic), Latino unemployment close behind. 

The gap in wealth between races has not lessened, it's grown.

As President Clinton indicated, the position of all working Americans, regardless of color, has eroded, making the dream Dr. King described even more elusive.

For over a decade, working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate. Even as corporate profits soar, even as the pay of a fortunate few explodes, inequality has steadily risen over the decades. Upward mobility has become harder. In too many communities across this country in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets, the shadow of poverty casts a pall over our youth, their lives a fortress of substandard schools and diminished prospects, inadequate health care and perennial violence.

And so as we mark this anniversary, we must remind ourselves that the measure of progress for those who marched 50 years ago was not merely how many blacks had joined the ranks of millionaires; it was whether this country would admit all people who were willing to work hard, regardless of race, into the ranks of a middle-class life. (Applause.) The test was not and never has been whether the doors of opportunity are cracked a bit wider for a few. It was whether our economic system provides a fair shot for the many, for the black custodian and the white steelworker, the immigrant dishwasher and the Native American veteran. To win that battle, to answer that call -- this remains our great unfinished business.

We shouldn't fool ourselves. The task will not be easy. Since 1963 the economy's changed.

The twin forces of technology and global competition have subtracted those jobs that once provided a foothold into the middle class, reduced the bargaining power of American workers.

And our politics has suffered. Entrenched interests -- those who benefit from an unjust status quo resisted any government efforts to give working families a fair deal, marshaling an army of lobbyists and opinion makers to argue that minimum wage increases or stronger labor laws or taxes on the wealthy who could afford it just to fund crumbling schools -- that all these things violated sound economic principles.

We'd be told that growing inequality was the price for a growing economy, a measure of the free market -- that greed was good and compassion ineffective, and those without jobs or health care had only themselves to blame.

And then there were those elected officials who found it useful to practice the old politics of division, doing their best to convince middle-class Americans of a great untruth, that government was somehow itself to blame for their growing economic insecurity -- that distant bureaucrats were taking their hard-earned dollars to benefit the welfare cheat or the illegal immigrant.

And then, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that during the course of 50 years, there were times when some of us, claiming to push for change, lost our way. The anguish of assassinations set off self-defeating riots.

Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse- making for criminal behavior. Racial politics could cut both ways as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support, as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself. All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was diverted. It's how our country remained divided.

But the good news is, just as was true in 1963, we now have a choice. We can continue down our current path in which the gears of this great democracy grind to a halt and our children accept a life of lower expectations, where politics is a zero-sum game, where a few do very well while struggling families of every race fight over a shrinking economic pie. 

That's one path. Or we can have the courage to change.

The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history, that we are masters of our fate.

But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together. We'll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling, the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago.

And I believe that spirit is there, that true force inside each of us. 

I see it when a white mother recognizes her own daughter in the face of a poor black child. I see it when the black youth thinks of his own grandfather in the dignified steps of an elderly white man. It's there when the native born recognizing that striving spirit of a new immigrant, when the interracial couple connects the pain of a gay couple who were discriminated against and understands it as their own. That's where courage comes from, when we turn not from each other or on each other but towards one another, and we find that we do not walk alone. That's where courage comes from. And with that courage, we can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on earth for every person.

With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit and prepares them for the world that awaits them. 

With that courage, we can feed the hungry and house the homeless and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise.

America, I know the road will be long, but I know we can get there. Yes, we will stumble, but I know we'll get back up. That's how a movement happens. That's how history bends. That's how, when somebody is faint of heart, somebody else brings them along and says, come on, we're marching.

There's a reason why so many who marched that day and in the days to come were young, for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear, unconstrained by the conventions of what is. 

They dared to dream different and to imagine something better. And I am convinced that same imagination, the same hunger of purpose serves in this generation.

We might not face the same dangers as 1963, but the fierce urgency of now remains. We may never duplicate the swelling crowds and dazzling processions of that day so long ago, no one can match King's brilliance, but the same flames that lit the heart of all who are willing to take a first step for justice, I know that flame remains. That tireless teacher who gets to class early and stays late and dips into her own pocket to buy supplies because she believes that every child is her charge -- she's marching. 

That successful businessman who doesn't have to, but pays his workers a fair wage and then offers a shot to a man, maybe an ex-con, who's down on his luck -- he's marching.

The mother who pours her love into her daughter so that she grows up with the confidence to walk through the same doors as anybody's son -- she's marching. The father who realizes the most important job he'll ever have is raising his boy right, even if he didn't have a father, especially if he didn't have a father at home -- he's marching. 

The battle-scarred veterans who devote themselves not only to helping their fellow warriors stand again and walk again and run again, but to keep serving their country when they come home -- they are marching.  Everyone who realizes what those glorious patriots knew on that day, that change does not come from Washington but to Washington, that change has always been built on our willingness, we, the people, to take on the mantle of citizenship -- you are marching.

And that's the lesson of our past, that's the promise of tomorrow, that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. And when millions of Americans of every race and every region, every faith and every station can join together in a spirit of brotherhood, then those mountains will be made low, and those rough places will be made plain, and those crooked places, they straighten out towards grace, and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed as one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

"Let Freedom Ring"

Morning in America Eclipse: Travel Alert to the United States - Gun Violence Targets the American Dream

As an American citizen of the world, I'm deeply sorry for the thousands of preventable gun violence death of all people. 

This preventable slaughter is darkening the American dream and eclipsing the metaphor "Morning in America".

Exactly where is Ronald Reagan's Morning in America?  

Instead of idealism, we're killing ourselves with guns in record numbers. Now, the preventable violence has made an international embarrassment out of the American Dream.

"..our country is prouder and stronger and better..," President Reagan said in his now nostalgic 1984 "Morning in America" campaign ad.  

Of course, President Reagan was tragically the victim of gun violence.  Yet, before he died in 2004 of Alzheimer's, he spoke out against gun violence.

"I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.'' ---Ronald Reagan, at his birthday celebration in 1989.
Although a majority of Americans agree about eliminating gun violence with stronger regulations of ownership, we've been, heretofore, unsuccessful in changing our nation's gun ownership laws to prevent the slaughter of innocents. 

America's city streets, especially in Chicago, our families where domestic violence is out of control, going to school or jogging in Oklahoma, are now dangerous places to be, because of the risk of gun violence.

Once again,  we're summoned to mourning after learning of the tragic killing of the 22 year old Australian athlete, Christopher Lane, who was shot and killed, without reason, by a gang of three minors who are also thugs, on August 16th,  in Duncan, Oklahoma.
I didn't know Mr. Lane, but I'd be willing to bet he believed in the American Dream.  Now, his family in Australia is living the nightmare of knowing their son is dead.

How did a gang of three minors get access to a gun and murder an innocent young Australian rising baseball star, while he was jogging in Oklahoma?  Since when do minors have Second Amendment Rights to own guns?

This senseless evil act of violence against Lane was coupled by another (thankfully unsuccessful) attack at a school near Atlanta, Georgia, when a gunman, with an AK-47, like President Reagan spoke about, added more imagery to those of the Sandy Hook Elementary slaughter of innocents on December 16, 2012 or the Columbine Massacre of April 20, 1999..  

Well before these incidents, back on July 23, 2012, Australia's then Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer had already issued a travel advisory for his country's citizens, who were planning to visit America.

Beware gun-toting US: Fischer- issued this warning a year before Mr. Lane was murdered last Friday in Oklahoma:  

"It has reached the stage where the likelihood of being shot is 15 times greater in the US than in Australia," he said.

BY:HARRY EDWARDS
From:The Australian
July 23, 2012 12:00AM


FORMER deputy prime minister Tim Fischer issued an extraordinary warning to Australians planning to take advantage of the strong dollar and travel to the US: go at your own peril.

Mr Fischer's warning came after 12 people were killed and a further 58 wounded when a gunman fired on a crowded cinema during a screening of the latest Batman movie in the Denver, Colorado, suburb of Aurora.

"It has reached the stage where the likelihood of being shot is 15 times greater in the US than in Australia," he said.

"People should be aware of this when making a decision to travel to the US.

"If I go to the US, I will factor this in and I will be very reluctant to take my family to the USA in the foreseeable future."

Four American presidents have been victims of gun violence:

1.  Abraham Lincoln - murdered in Washington DC 1865

2.  William McKinley - murdered in Buffalo NY 1901

3.  John F. Kennedy - murdered Dallas, TX 1963

4.  Ronald Reagan - seriously wounded, nearly died except for expert trauma care, assassinated in Washington DC, in 1981.

Several other presidents, including Gerald Ford, were also targeted.

Our reputation as Americans, who were inspired by "Morning in America" is experiencing damaging sun spots. Our American Dream is becoming a nightmare, as gun violence in cities like Chicago makes living there as risky as being stationed with the US Army in the Taliban infested Afghanistan.

In my opinion, God Rest Their Souls, our four late Presidents, who were victims of gun violence, would readily join hands in a quartet of ghosts to warn us about the future of America in the wake of growing gun violence.  We're killing our young people!

Our American Dream is becoming a grizzly "Ghost of America Past" (to paraphrase Charles Dickens), as unbridled gun violence grows, causing preventable harm to thousands of promising young people, and world leaders and, now, to the bereaved family of Christopher Lane.

I'm so deeply sorry.  I'd change the gun laws if I could...but, because Americans have, heretofore, been unsuccessful in changing Second Amendment Rights, we can never bring Christopher Lane back.