Donald Trump is a jealous politician who craves all media attention either with or without merit

Echo essay published in the New York Magazine the Intelligencer by Margaret Hartmann:

Kamala Harris has been featured on a lot of magazine covers recently. This is to be expected, as she just became the Democratic presidential nominee in an unprecedented last-minute switch, and polls now show her leading the race. 

But, Donald Trump seems upset that he’s losing his main-character status in the press, and one recent cover has really gotten under his skin: this illustration of Harris on his beloved Time magazine.

Trump first brought up her Time cover during his disastrous chat with Elon Musk on Monday night. “She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live,” he complained. “It was a drawing, and actually, she looked very much like our great First Lady Melania. She didn’t look like Camilla [Kamala], that’s right. But of course, she’s a beautiful woman, so we’ll leave it at that, right?”

Many people pointed out that this was a very weird thing to say, as Harris looks nothing like Melania Trump in the cover image, and comparing your female opponent’s looks to your wife’s is generally a bad move. But Trump is still fixating on the image. He brought it up again during a rally in Asheville, North Carolina, on Wednesday evening, which was ostensibly about the economy but included lots of personal attacks against Harris.

“Now they are putting her on the covers of Time magazine with an artist’s sketch,” Trump said. “They don’t use a picture. They don’t use a picture, they use an artist sketch. I want to use that artist. I want to find that artist, I like him very much.”

Trump mentioned the Time cover yet again during a press conference at his Bedminster, New Jersey residence on Thursday, which was supposed to be about the economy.

“Like the cover of Time magazine,” Trump said. “They didn’t put a picture, they got a great artist to do it. What was that all about? You know? What was that all about? The whole thing is crazy.”

For weeks, conservatives have been making the (arguably dubious) accusation that mainstream-media coverage of Harris has been too positive. A handful of right-wing media outlets have complained about Time’s coverage specifically, calling this week’s cover story too worshipful. 

But it’s unclear if Trump has even read the piece. His critiques have focused solely on the cover — and not just its portrayal of a hopeful Harris surrounded by excited supporters. Trump’s specific gripe is the vice-president’s appearance; he said “she looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live” and complained that “they don’t use a picture” to show what Harris actually looks like.

Time actually used a picture to create the cover. Neil Jamieson made the photo illustration, and the magazine also credits “Andrew Harnik — Getty Images.” The illustration appears to incorporate this photo of Harris taken by Harnik last month; while the cover image is stylized, her facial features aren’t altered. (Jamieson did not respond to questions about his process.)

Trump’s issue with the cover is probably based in his long-standing, retro obsession with Time. Trump first appeared on the cover in 1989, and he’s bragged that he’s been featured more than anyone else. That isn’t true; at the end of his presidency, Trump had been on the cover 35 times, putting him fourth behind three other presidents. But he made up for it by putting himself on fake Time covers, which are framed and displayed at at least four of his golf clubs.

Time hasn’t been ignoring Trump. The magazine interviewed him in May, and he was featured on the cover (a subsequent Joe Biden cover was styled similarly) and  Time put out a single-issue edition about the Trump assassination attempt.

But Trump will not be satisfied until his favorite magazine puts a pretty filter over his face and issues a cover showing Harris with devil horns.

Donald Trump is a serial abuser - lies, more lies, denegrates and insults like an out of control fire hose

Republicans are begging Donald Trump to stop being so insulting.
As a certain president of the United States might say: Not a joke!

Just listen to them 📣😒:
1.  “The winning formula for President Trump,” his White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on Fox Business, “is fewer insults, more insights.”

2,  Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, recently released from prison and now guest hosting the show of another former Trump adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, while he does his stint in prison, told viewers: “When Trump attacks [Kamala] Harris personally rather than on policy, Harris’s support among swing voters rises.”

3.  Deposed House speaker Kevin McCarthy proposed that Trump “make this race not on personalities. Stop questioning the size of her crowds.”

4.  Vanquished Trump primary opponent turned Trump supporter Nikki Haley added that his campaign “is not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It’s not going to win talking about whether she is dumb.”

5.  Another primary opponent turned supporter, Vivek Ramaswamy, told Politico that he had advised Trump to “shift the focus to policy.”

6,,  And longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz told CNN that “if it’s about attributes, Harris is much more likely to be successful, because, quite frankly, people like her more than they like him.”

They all might as well ask Trump to abandon Mar-a-Lago and move into a double-wide. Trump abandon insults? They are the very essence of the man.

They all might as well ask Trump to abandon Mar-a-Lago and move into a double-wide. Trump abandon insults? They are the very essence of the man.

Trump has been calling Harris “nasty” in public and has repeatedly called her a “bitch” in private, the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported. Trump responded to the report — by insulting Haberman. “Maggott. Hag. Erman,” he called her at a rally in Bozeman, Mont. Lest one think that was an off-the-cuff slip into insults, he repeated it on Truth Social.

And that was one of the milder insults he floated in Bozeman. President Joe Biden was “Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe,” he posited, polling the crowd. Harris was “Crazy Kamala,” a “bumbling, communist lunatic,” “Comrade Harris,” “grossly incompetent” and in possession of “a very low IQ.” Biden administration officials were “stupid.” Former Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie was “a fat pig.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was “Pocahontas.” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) had “got the biggest stomach I have ever seen. … Stomach brimming out like a big slob.”

On his social media site and in fundraising emails, Trump kept the insults flowing through the week: “Sleepy Joe … Fake News and low self-esteem leakers. … Radical Left Losers, Fascists and Communists. … Crooked Kamala. … WHAT A JOKE SHE IS!!! … The stupid people are at it again!”

Trump returned to his original insult machine, the former Twitter, to lob fully 2½ hours of insults in a live stream hosted by Elon Musk. Trump, who complains frequently and bitterly that he no longer gets to run against Biden, directed the bulk of his insults at his former foe.

Biden, he said, has a “very low IQ. He had a low IQ 30 years ago, by the way. But now he might not even have an IQ at all. There’s nothing on the board that goes as low.” The “stupid” Biden, he added, is “close to vegetable stage, in my opinion.” Furthermore, Trump said Biden, “the worst president in history,” “could barely walk” and can’t lift a beach chair.

Musk, who had just spent 20 minutes asking Trump about the assassination attempt, opined of Biden that Democrats “just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him.”

With so many others to insult — the Democratic California governor is “Gavin Newscum” and the Democratic Illinois governor is “a real loser” — Trump almost forgot to insult the “incompetent” Harris. And he still hadn’t settled on the best way to do so.

In one breath he called her a “radical left, San Francisco liberal.” 

But, in the next breath he complained that Harris was stealing his policy proposals: “She wants to be more Trump than Trump.” Is she an unreconstructed Marxist lunatic? Or is she “copying almost everything” from Trump? Trump seemed not to realize he was contradicting himself.

In a further sign of Trump’s confusion, he called Harris “Camilla” and complained that a drawing of Harris on the cover of Time magazine “looked very much like our great first lady ❓, Melania.”

Our "whaaa?" First Lady?  Melania is an embarassment.
Melanija (Knavs) Trump; b. April 26, 1970, Slovenian-American former fashion model.

But the biggest insult of the evening was one that Trump had to endure. Musk’s X botched the live stream, leading to a 40-minute delay at the start, which Musk blamed on an “attack against our servers.” The troubles persisted after it started — at a couple of points, the distinct sound of sleigh bells could be heard — and Trump sounded as if he were sucking on a lemon — or, as NBC’s Seth Meyers joked, wearing plastic vampire teeth.

To refute the claim, Trump reposted an explanation for the “Lisp Hoax” on Truth Social. It was by Jack Posobiec, the conspiracy theorist who promoted the nutso claims about a “Pizzagate” pedophile ring and the killing of a Democratic staffer. Trump himself blamed “cellphone technology” for making his voice “somewhat different and strange.”

In fairness, Trump did talk about some issues. He declared that “I want to close up (the) Department of Education,” which “would cut your cost by 50 or 60 percent.” (Hello?  This policy is supported by the Project 2025 document, the one Trump falsely claims he "has no knowledge about.....😟😲😡🤥"

He further opined that “the biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean’s going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years and you’ll have more oceanfront property.”

It was hardly the “INTERVIEW OF THE CENTURY,” as Trump had (falsely) promised. The Harris campaign issued a statement after the Musk-Trump tete-a-tete calling the pair “self-obsessed rich guys who … cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung responded by calling the Harris campaign “f---ing cowards.”

Trump's tanking campaign further distinguished itself this week by posting, from its official account on X, a message that was not only insulting but openly racist. “Import the third world, become the third world,” it said above two photos. The first, labeled “Your neighborhood under Trump,” showed a brick home with tidy landscaping and an American flag. The second, labeled “Your neighborhood under Kamala,” showed dozens of Black and brown migrants crowded behind a barricade.

 And wait❗ there's more❗Trump was scheduled to deliver what his campaign billed as “remarks on the economy” in Asheville, N.C., and Trump told the crowd he was “doing this as a intellectual speech” — but he clearly wasn’t on board with the plan. “They say it’s the most important subject,” he said of the economy. “I’m not sure it is.” 

Trump proceeded to work in his usual insults. Harris has “the laugh of a crazy person.” She is an “incompetent socialist lunatic.” Also, “she is not very smart.” Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is “a clown” and a “beauty.” Harris and Biden are “stupid people.” Trump worked in a mention of “crazy Bernie” and two more of “Newscum.” Harris and Walz are “beyond socialists,” Trump informed the crowd, and “your quality of life is going to collapse under these lunatics.”

Trump’s policy address turned into yet another medley of defamation and abuse. But in a sense that is Trump’s policy. He will Make America Vituperate (blame or insult someone in strong or violent language) — Again, and Again, and Again.

His campaign tried one more time on Thursday, scheduling a news conference ostensibly about the economy. But Trump, standing with boxes of cereal and coffee, instead went on interminably about his legal troubles, Harris’s intelligence (“she’s not smart”) and even Hillary Clinton’s emails.

A reporter asked what he thought of allies’ advice that he should “stop with the personal attacks on Kamala Harris.”

“I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence. ... She actually called me weird.”  (AWWWW❗❓)  👺👹👽

Trump, during his marathon session with Musk, expressed his admiration for the Tesla chief’s skill at firing workers.

“You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump told him. “I mean, look at what you do. You walk in, and you just say, ‘You want to quit? Then go on strike.’ They — I won’t mention the name of the company — but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone.’ And you are the greatest.”

Donald Trump, friend of the working man.

Once again, Trump seems to have forgotten that he is the self-proclaimed representative of the “forgotten men and women.” It happened in a big way in 2017, when, after enacting tax cuts that disproportionately favored the wealthy, he told his pals at Mar-a-Lago, “You all just got a lot richer.” It happened in April of this year, The Post reported, when he told oil executives at Mar-a-Lago that, if they raised $1 billion for his presidential campaign, he would, in exchange, reverse dozens of Biden’s environmental rules and policies.

And it’s happened at regular intervals since Trump first entered politics: Opposing an increase in the hourly minimum wage from $15 because wages are “too high.” Opposing the restoration of labor organizing rights because it would impose “costly burdens on American businesses.” Reducing workplace safety inspections. Urging union members not to pay their dues. Telling nonunion workers that their lower wages come with “advantages.”

(Unfortunately.....) Trump tapped Ohio Senator (and former venture capitalist) JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate, he says, “because he’s a very strong believer in work and the working man and woman, and especially the working man and woman who have been treated very unfairly. … He wrote the book that became a bestseller.”

This can only mean that Trump didn’t read “Hillbilly Elegy,” in which Vance remarks on the people he grew up with in Middletown, Ohio: “Too many young men immune to hard work.”  A “willingness to blame everyone but yourself.” Not “a single person aware of his own laziness.”

“We choose not to work when we should be looking for a job,” Vance wrote. “Sometimes we’ll get a job, but it won’t last. We’ll get fired for tardiness, or for stealing merchandise and selling it on eBay, or for having a customer complain about the smell of alcohol on our breath, or for taking five thirty-minute restroom breaks per shift. We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves.”

But there was Vance in Byron Center, Michigan, (lies....OMG- just👀 read it for yourself❗) falsely....rhapsodizing about the “hardworking people” he grew up with in Middletown. He recalled how “I watched in my own community as jobs were sent overseas. … I saw families torn apart as China built its middle class on the back of the American middle class.”

These are the lies we tell ourselves.  Of course, a lot of these White, working-class people Vance demeans will go for Trump. But Harris and Walz are, at least, making a case for their votes.

“You knew Vice President Harris grew up in a middle-class family, picked up shifts at that McDonald’s as a student,” Walz said in a speech to a public-sector union on Tuesday. “Can you simply picture Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s, trying to make a McFlurry or something?”

It would probably go about as well as the live stream with Musk.

Trump is aggrieved that Harris is running a disciplined campaign. “Kamala gives the exact same speech, over and over again,” he complained. “I don’t do that.”

No, he doesn’t. Sure, he gives the same basic stump speech over and over again: The radical left is taking your guns. World War III is imminent. The fake news won’t say that I have the biggest crowds. Windmills are bad. The government is weaponized against me. We are a failing nation.

But it’s true that you never know quite what will happen when Trump appears. In Bozeman, they decided to play “My Heart Will Go On” from “Titanic” — a shipwreck of a metaphor. Celine Dion issued a statement saying she hadn’t authorized it — “and really, that song?”

At any moment, Trump might say of Harris that “nobody really knows her last name,” or that Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi are “lovely individuals,” or that “suburban women like me a lot,” or that “I didn’t know I had that much blood — the doctors later told me that the ear is a place that is a very bloody place.”

But much of Trump’s spontaneity comes from his emancipation from anything resembling facts. Walz “ordered tampons in boys’ bathrooms” and “signed a law letting the state kidnap children to change their gender.” The crowds at a Harris rally attended by 15,000 people “DIDN’T EXIST” and “there was nobody there.” He went down in a helicopter with Willie Brown. His Jan. 6, 2021, crowd was bigger than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. Harris wants to abolish cows. Walz is guilty of “stolen valor.”

This isn’t just false — it’s bananas.🍌

So when Trump got together with the world’s second-most-influential purveyor of disinformation, Musk, things were bound to get especially loony. 👾😖

Trump lied about the border, oil pipelines, climate change, inflation (worst “in 100 years”), the price of bacon, his tax cuts and his legal troubles, among many other things.

The two fabulists hatched a plan to meet in Venezuela if Trump loses the election because “it’ll be a far safer place” than the United States, where “our crime rate’s going through the roof.” (It’s dropping sharply.)

Musk posited that, because Hiroshima and Nagasaki are “like full cities again,” this means that nuclear fallout is “not as scary as people think.” Trump agreed.

Toward the end of the night, Trump announced that “you got a lot of people listening to you right now, like 60 million or something.” Even X only claimed 1.1 million were listening — a small fraction of a network newscast. “Do I get paid for this or not?” Trump asked.

He may need it. Shares in Trump’s Truth Social have plunged 70 percent from their high, as the company reported a quarterly loss of $16 million on essentially nonexistent quarterly revenue of only $837,000. And now that Trump is back on X, the lone selling point Truth Social had is gone.

Trump killed the truth, and now he is killing Truth.

(Like an out of control fire hose! )

President Volodymyr Zelensky: Fighting a war to protect democracy for all of us

Our View: Zelensky’s love of country an inspiration

Echo published by the editors of The Durango Herald in Colorado.

Ukrainian president keeps our gaze on his homeland

The actor who played a TV president as recently as 2015, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has shown steely courage and resilience in defending his country against the Russian invasion. Zelensky wore his national pride on his sleeve, stepped onto the world stage and inspired us to get behind his cause of solidarity with Ukraine. And we absolutely did.

How could we not? It’s in our best global security interest and the right thing to do. But it’s also Zelensky himself, a former comedian who found success – then as a rookie president – was propelled into the horrors of war. A man who bleeds blue and yellow.

No surprise, Zelensky is Time Magazine's 2022, Person of the Year.

Since February 24, when Russia launched a full-scale military assault on Ukraine, bombing major cities, including Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa, Zelensky has led by example. His decision to stay in Kyiv – rather than flee – was the first glimpse into the man he is, when after the U.S. offered to evacuate him, he said, “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

In our own country, where divisiveness has been the commonality, Zelensky’s love for Ukraine – all of its parts, the good and not so good – is decidedly different from how things look in the United States. Yes, Ukraine is under unrelenting assault. Ukrainians fight to survive every single day, especially now in winter. But even before they were on the front lines to justify their very existence, there was a national spirit. A camaraderie. A deep affection for Ukraine, what citizens had and how they lived.

This has us thinking, could we find that same kind of love for our own country? Could we defend the U.S. as states that are truly united – all the incongruent parts, all the people and their differences – in the way Zelensky has? He would certainly be an act to follow.

People around the world responded to Zelensky’s contagious spirit by digging deep into pockets for donations, along with offering humanitarian and morale support, prayers and genuine good wishes.

During Zelensky’s visit to Washington, the Biden administration provided Ukraine its most advanced ground-based air defense system, the Patriot, along with a number of other weapons. Lawmakers also announced a deal to provide more than $44 billion in emergency aid.

Zelensky looked tired as he walked to the floor of the House Chamber to address members of Congress, where many reached out to shake hands or pat the back of this modest, yet exceptional man.

Zelensky does have his share of critics. Some Republicans are vocally opposed to sending more aid to Ukraine.

Portrait of Bravery: Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska

"We’re looking forward to victory. We have no doubt we will prevail. And this is what keeps us going."

And Zelensky caught heat for posing with his wife, Olena Zelenska, for the October issue of Vogue. He knows how to keep our short attention span on his mission for a restored Ukraine. This wasn’t about celebrity. It was an intentional move to keep all eyes on Ukraine. He and his wife just want the rest of the world to care. Attention is the currency here. Zelensky is skillful in getting it. Again and again.

Ukraine is a reminder that democracy is fragile. And a person of ordinary origins can possess the strength of character to grow into someone larger when pressed. Zelensky is this person.

Maine Writer post script: Thank you President Zelensky and Olena Zelensky. You are brave and inspirational leaders. Your leadership by example is helping to protect democracy for all of Europe.

Christians who defy public health directives are putting others in danger

Christian Groups That Resist Public-Health Guidelines Are Forgetting a Key Part of the Religion's History

Published in TIME and the History News Network by Matthew Gabriele

(Maine Writer- I believe it's a tenet among some Pentecostals groups and cults like Seven Day Adventists that the end of times is to be desired, because those who believe their particular doomsday creed will be raised, while the those left behind will be cast into hades.)

Because of its long history, Christianity has a tendency to produce contradicting reactions to any number of situations—and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. 

On one hand, some religious leaders have shown that they believe a Christian response to the global emergency involves steps such as making allowances for their congregants to practice their faith with socially distant private worship or drive-through confession; in March, Pope Francis hailed “the creativity of priests” in responding to this crisis. Meanwhile, others have made it clear that they see their Christian faith as a reason not to follow public-health guidelines.

Lawsuits across the country filed by Christian churches seek exemptions from state-level stay-at-home orders, and some churches simply said they wouldn’t obey those orders and would hold services anyway this Easter, leading in some cases to arrests. 

One Virginia evangelical pastor who preached in March that he would continue to hold services in a crowded church, died on April 11 due to the coronavirus. In perhaps the most notable example, Liberty University made headlines as one of the few U.S. colleges that welcomed students back to campus after their Spring Break. Though the school later reversed course and went entirely to online instruction, university president Jerry Falwell, Jr., has downplayed the threat of the virus to young people, echoing earlier statements he’d made about the virus being a conspiracy to hurt President Trump. Now, as COVID-19 deaths in the area near the school grow, the school faces a class-action lawsuit initiated by a student.

The reasons behind these acts of defiance are, of course, varied. Some said that social distancing violates the Constitution, while others claimed their religion gave them immunity from virus, while still others acknowledged the threat but said that the gatherings were essential because “true” Christians welcomed death. 

Some of these ideas might suggest a link between these acts of defiance and the early Church, and certainly we can see similar themes — a sense of persecution by the state, spiritual protection against the evils of the world for the select few, welcoming (what they perceive as) potential martyrdom. 

In fact, the perception of such a link has been demonstrated over the past decade or so by scholars such as Elizabeth Castelli and Candida Moss, among others, and the defenses mustered by churches now support that linkage; for example, one Louisiana church that defied gathering-size limits relies on a theology that specifically touts its connection to the early church.

But there seems to be something missing from how Christian groups defying public-health guidelines are thinking about the ancient past. In fact, scholars of ancient Christianity might point out that the religion’s origins offer a very different lesson—one that would be useful for the world to remember at this moment of crisis.

The growth of the earliest local cult practices among the first followers of Jesus into a pan-Mediterranean religion is a development that has interested scholars for generations. Indeed, that rise and spread was by no means linear. It moved in fits and starts, with Jesus followers (people we today think of as “Christians”) at first clustering in and around urban centers across the Roman world, remaining a very small percentage of the overall population. The real explosion only came after the Emperor Constantine’s conversion in 312 CE and his Edict of Milan the following year, allowing the formal practice of Christianity across the empire.

But though the Emperor played a large role in that story, scholars have found another consistent element that, both before and after Constantine’s conversion, made the religion grow. This element was embodied by the Latin word caritas. In English, we often translate that word as “charity” but it also, and perhaps more meaningfully, meant “love.” The term is found throughout the Christian Bible, perhaps most famously in 1 Corinthians 13, that staple of so many wedding readings today (“Love is patient, love is kind,” etc.), in which every instance we translate as “love” is actually caritas in Latin. This love, this charity, in the ancient and early medieval world, was about care for others.

This mattered because the ancient Mediterranean world was a world of disease. For example, the Antonine Plague (perhaps smallpox) ravaged populations from the Tigris to the Rhine during the late second century CE, while the Plague of Cyprian (measles?) killed thousands in those same regions towards the end of the third century CE. Generally, polytheistic philanthropy was focused on endowments and monuments, with little care for suffering bodies. Christianity offered something different with caritas. Scholars have shown that a large part of Christianity’s attraction in the Roman world was that it cared for the welfare of the people who were suffering.

Although initially a closed community, wary of contemporary social antagonism and the threat of imperial violence, these early Christians offered people a sense of equality and a social network that would “love” them with donations of food or money, that would often take them in if they were ill. 

It’s striking how much time in early hagiographies (lives of the saints) was spent on healing miracles. These in part are literary convention, emulations of these same miracles in the Gospels, but they also reflect the very real concerns of contemporaries.

The Life of Martin of Tours, written in the fourth century CE, says at one point that “the gift of accomplishing cures was so largely possessed by Martin, that scarcely any sick person came to him for assistance without being at once restored to health.” In a world where affliction was everywhere, where the pandemic was always, a response of caritas was revolutionary.

The line between then and now is never direct. There is no “rainbow connection” that we can use to move between epochs, skipping over the historical change that’s occurred across the last 1,700 years. But history echoes. In the later Middle Ages, in stone on cathedrals across Europe, virtues and vices were paired. Charity was depicted as the antidote to avarice. Caritas was portrayed as a woman giving what she had to help someone in need. Avarice was shown as hoarding, being concerned only for yourself and not for the public good.

The early hagiographies, the images etched into those cathedrals, still hold lessons for us today. The Christian groups in 2020 that are resisting stay-at-home orders are actually far divorced from the historical models they might seek to emulate. Actions that put others at risk are actions that create rather than ameliorate future suffering. They’re far removed from the early Christian ideal of caritas—an ideal that should hold just as much power today as it did all those centuries ago.

Historians’ perspectives on how the past informs the present

Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies and chair of the Department of Religion & Culture at Virginia Tech

A Second Amendment reality check - echo from a gun owner

"These are my new thoughts and prayers," Elise Jordan.

This opinion was published in the April 16, 2018 edition of TIME Magazine, written by Elise Jordan.

Why I'm no longer a Second Amendment absolutist

When I was growing up, my family lived in Mississippi on the outskirts of a small town, near a hospital.  Once in a while, an inmate receiving medical treatment there would escape.  One night, one knocked on our door, asking to use the phone.  My aunt declined to show hospitality.  The inmate bolted.  Soon, the police knocked on our door too. Although my aunt never touched a gun that evening, she certainly had ready access to plenty of options. The incident impressed upon me why it could be helpful to have one in the house.

The Parkland, Florida shooting, where 17 innocent people were killed*, was the culmination of several troubling years of legal guns winding up in the wrong hands. 

I am convinced that those of us who have believed nothing should infringe upon the Second Amendment should now support commonsense gun control, from universal background checks to closing loopholes for gun-show sales and person-to-person transfers of firearms.  The U.S. government is so broken, it is literally killing people - at least 438 American have been shot in school shootings since the Sandy Hook massacre- as well-funded bureaucracies fail to keep guns out of the hands of people who are not fit for the awesome responsibility of owning firearm weapons.

Sadly, the ease with which the alleged Parkland murderer obtained his rifle reminded me of an incident that was once funny, but is now troubling.  A decade ago, when I was in Afghanistan, working at the NATO/ISAF headquarters, I bragged to my late father about shooting an AK-47, and he decided he wanted to buy one himself.  One evening at around midnight, my mother answered the phone.  The man on the line apologized for the late hour but told her he was on parole and it was the only time he could call without getting caught by his mother. He had seen my father's want ad and had a AK-47 to unload. My mother told him to never call again.

More recently, another relative purchased an AR-15 in a legal person-to-person transaction with no oversight or paper trail.  The process is easier than obtaining certain kinds of skin-care treatment. Consider the regulation of Accutane, which has been linked to depression and can cause severe birth defects.  In 2000, then Representative Bart Stupak's 17-year-old son committed suicide while taking the drug, and the bereaved Congressman championed greater oversight. The eventual result was the creation of a patient registry, which required patient, pharmacist and doctor participation.

It's extraordinarily annoying to obtain the drug, but I went through the process, going to monthly doctor's appointments, getting blood drawn and taking a quiz over the phone to make sure I wasn't pregnant- because it was important to me. And, yes, I probably needed a skin drug that can kill you as much as my dad needed an AK-47. But, that's the beauty of America. We should be able to get both, if we go through reasonable measures to do so.

I observed an evolution in viewpoint similar to my own in March, during Ashcroft in America focus groups held in Tennessee and Mississippi.  Most of the participants were gun owners who believe in the right to bear arms but are open to banning bump stocks and high volume magazines, enacting stricter background checks and increasing the age limit to 21 for buying semiautomatic rifles.
Also, they reject arming teachers as a solution to school shootings.

These men and women would rather work for a solution than fight change that they consider necessary, and its they who are the gun lobby's biggest constituency. If the lobby does not start listening to what they want, it will risk ceding its influence during a moment of major society change.

As a libertarian, I don't want to surrender my individual liberties to a government that failed at so many pivotal points of the Parkland tragedy, including dozens of calls to local police since 2010, to go to the murder's home and detailed warning to the FBI. 

But, just as in the aftermath of the serial tragedies, the Orlando nightclub, Las Vegas concert and the Sutherland Springs church shootings, and others, nothing will really get done unless voters - including those of us who support the Second Amendment - push Congress toward reasonable gun control.

These are my new thoughts and prayers.

97 percent of voters who responded to a Quinnipiac University national poll supported universal background checks (February 20, 2018): 

U.S. Support For Gun Control Tops 2-1, Highest Ever, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds
*The teen gunman accused of opening fire with a semi-automatic rifle at his former high school in Parkland, Florida, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, officials said Thursday.

Donald Trump has NO military leadership experience - troops on the ground won't be his own

Although reports about the March 10, Republican primary debate seemed calm in comparisom to past fiascoes, I'd hardly say the discussion was "elegant". War was discusssed. Trump now calls for ground troops against ISIS.  

Included is the Time Magazine grahpic explaining where American troops are already on the ground:

During the March 10, Republican debate fights, Donald Trump had to say something presidential.  Infomercials for wind, steak and magazines were part of his primary election messaging  Putting America's treasured youth into the mix of his lack of public policy experience makes for more headines without substance.

Obviously, Donald Trump has not had an international seurity briefing. Moreover, none of his family would be among the troops on the ground. Didn't Governor Sarah Palin with her family's experience, teach Donald Trump anything at all during her flashin the pan Trump pendorsement?

But Donald Trump didn't always hold this position about ground forces.  

CBS Reports:  Donald Trump: Massive ground force may be needed to fight ISIS

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump suggested at Thursday's CNN Republican presidential debate in Miami that he would be willing to support a massive ground force to take on ISIS.

This is a shift for Trump, who has, as a presidential candidate, often portrayed himself as less hawkish than his Republican opponents.

Trump made the troop comment in response to a moderator's question as to whether he would follow a military commander's advice to increase the number of ground troops to fight the terrorist group.

"We really have no choice," Trump said. "We have to knock out ISIS. We have to knock the hell out of them. We have to get rid of it and then we have to come back here and rebuild our country, which is falling apart."

Radio host Hugh Hewitt pressed on specific numbers.

"I would listen to the generals," Trump said, "but I would - I'm hearing numbers of 20 to 30,000. We have to knock them out fast."

Before Thursday, Trump has often bragged about his reluctance to support wars in the Middle East. "'I was against the war in Iraq," he recently said at a rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "We have to be given credit for vision. I was against the war in Iraq because I said it would totally destabilize the Middle East. And that's exactly what happened."

But Trump's position on ground troops has always been amorphous and without specifics. He's even talked about how he has been vague on purpose, saying at a South Carolina rally in December, "I want to be unpredictable. I don't want to tell ISIS what I'm going to do to knock the hell out of them."

This was a claim he has repeated many times on the trail and in television interviews. "I think we have to be unpredictable," Trump told CBS News' John Dickerson in January. "Our enemies know what we are going to do, whether it is battle, whether it is war, whether it is finance. You have to be somewhat unpredictable."

However, Trump's debate suggestion would mean a massive investment of ground troops abroad - a position that was a big part of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's platform during his unsuccessful presidential bid. Trump was critical of Graham's foreign policy platform, telling CNN in July, "All I know is every time I watch Lindsey Graham, he wants to bomb everybody."

Trump has always implied, since announcing his candidacy, that he would be in favor of ground troops on some level. In an August interview with MSNBC'sMorning Joe, Trump said that the United States military should confiscate oil from ISIS-held territories - with ground troops if necessary.

"I would knock out the source of their wealth," Trump said. "The primary source of their wealth which is oil. And in order to do that, you would have to put boots - I would knock the hell out of them, but I would put a ring around it and take the oil for our country. I would just take the oil."

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly has said, to the delight of crowds, that he would "bomb the [bleep] out of ISIS" as president, but has stopped short of calling for a massive infusion of ground troops like he did tonight.

Last December, Trump told Fox News, "I would do whatever you have to do. I've been saying on your show for a long time, take the oil, and you know that. I've been saying it very loud and strong for years. I mean, I've been saying it for years. They've never done it."

While his support for ground troops has been unwavering, Trump has danced around how much he would invest in a campaign against ISIS.

At a press conference in November before a rally in Worcester, Massachusetts, Trump suggested that other countries should take the lead in taking on ISIS and that the United States should only be in a supporting role.

"We've got to get rid of ISIS quickly, quickly," Trump said. "Not for a long time. Let me tell you what I really want to do. I want to get other people to put troops on the ground and we'll back them up 100 percent."

To this effect, Trump was very supportive of Russian president Vladimir Putin's decision to launch airstrikes in Syria in September.

"If Putin wants to knock the hell out of ISIS," Trump said at a Fox Business debate in November. "I'm all for it 100 percent and I can't understand how anybody would be against that."

Trump even told Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes, "If you look at Syria. Russia wants to get rid of ISIS. We want to get rid of ISIS. Maybe let Russia do it. Let 'em get rid of ISIS. What the hell do we care?"

(We need to care about how to support our American treasure! If Donald Trump wants "troops on the ground", then let him also tell us how to bring them home. Moreover, will he lead them?)

The Conspiracy of the Sarah Palin created "Death Panels"

A Forbes op-ed column brings attention, once again, to the conspiracy of death panel ideation created by Sarah Palin, as she attempted to discredit President Obama's Health Care Reform aka "Obamacare". In fact, "death panels" are figments of right wing zealous pro-life imagination, whereby they are convinced how dying people will be selected or de-selected for premature death based on certain, to be determined, medical criteria.  But, it's a myth.

Now, Time Magazine political reporter Mark Halperin, who's a regular on MSNBC Morning Joe and co-author of the book "Game Change", about President Obama's re-election campaign, has issued a "me bad" tweet apology about his part in continuing this "death panel" conspiracy theory.

It's amazing how Sarah Palin was able to create this deadly concept. She's masterful at soaking up the political oxygen in any debate. Her creativity is boundless. By conjuring up the image of "death panels", Palin was nearly able to put a stake in the heart of the entire health care reform initiative. It took a co-ordinated effort from medical, hospice and health policy experts to push back on her concocted theory.  

Regardless of the number of credible people who've declared "death panels" DOA, the concept took hold with righties who're quick to buy into other stupid ideas like creationism or who deny global warming. 

Incredulously, Mark Halperin jumped on this death panel myth in his recent interview on the Steve Marlzberg Show. Perhaps Halperin's books aren't selling well. It' no wonder.  He's certainly no Tom Brokaw. Nevertheless, to gain attention, he jumped on the Sarah Palin conspiracy train to create some buzz around his ego.

An op-ed in Forbes has now called into question Halperin's reporting credibility. Nice call.

It seems to me, Halperin has forgotten his journalism 101 mantra. He's supposed to report and analyze the news, rather than create it.

Perhaps Halperin's job at Time was already in danger after he was suspended from Morning Joe for using derogatory and incendiary language about President Obama.

Perhaps Halperin is hankering for another job and he thinks Sarah Palin might be hiring.

Whatever his motivation, the conspiracy of "death panels" continues to be used as a weapon against health care reform.

Unfortunately, "death panels" has now become a Palinism in the American lexicon.

People who believe in death panels are the creationists who deny global warming. It was Halperin's responsibility, as a journalist, to educate people, rather than feed the death panel conspiracy.

If Sarah Palin won't hire Halperin, he might join the recently let go 60 Minutes Lara Logan, to form a support group for discredited journalists. Obamacare health insurance might even pay for the therapy.