Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth giving American military illegal orders in violation of the Defense Department's policy to save shipwrecked survivors

Echo opinion published in the Virginian Pilot, newpaper in Norfolk Virginia written by Jon Duffy*.

Pege Hegseth is giving illegal orders to American military in violaion of the Pentagon's own policies. 

New reporting from the Washington Post described how the U.S. forces conducting counter-drug operations in the Caribbean fired second missiles at people who survived an initial strike and were left swimming in the water. 

This illegal war crime marks a stark departure from long-standing U.S. military practice and from the most basic prohibitions in the laws of war.

If the United States is firing second missiles at survivors of its own strikes, we are no longer debating policy. 

Rather, we are describing a nation committing the very acts it once prosecuted others for. We have become what we once condemned.

There is a rule every professional military knows it cannot break: You do not kill people who can no longer fight. You don’t do it because the moment you do, you are no longer engaged in war. You are no longer fighting an enemy. You are killing for the state.

For weeks, the country has argued over legal memos, theories of presidential authority and the semantics of “armed conflict.” All of that obscures a simpler truth. Killing survivors is not a legal gray area, a battlefield innovation or a partisan dispute. It is a war crime. Full stop❗

The Geneva Conventions forbids violence against anyone “placed hors de combat,” or “out of the fight.” 

As a matter of fact, the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual restates this without qualification. Section 18.3.2.1 even states, “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.” Every American service member learns it before deploying. Killing people who are swimming for their lives is not a “disputed framework.” It is the abandonment of law.

In three decades of service, I watched how the institution quietly conditions people for moments like this — not through malice, but through the steady rewarding of compliance and the quiet sidelining of candor. By the time a real moral test arrives, most of the system has already learned that silence is the safest choice.

We know that a senior lawyer at U.S. Southern Command raised legal concerns and was sidelined from the process. 

Silencing a dissenting voice is not the act of a confident military. We know the SOUTHCOM commander, Admiral Alvin Holsey, abruptly announced his retirement amid these operations. The effect was unmistakable: The last check on illegality disappeared, and the killing continued.

A second missile does not fire itself. Killing survivors requires the participation or assent of entire layers of command: intelligence analysts, targeteers, pilots, strike cell leads, watch officers, military lawyers, commanders, post-strike assessors. This was not a lone aviator making a catastrophic judgment. This was institutional, and the institution committed a crime.

The cost of this atrocity is suffered by those least empowered to stop it. Young Americans — some barely old enough to drink — will carry this for the rest of their lives. 

Unfortunately, some will rationalize it. Some will break under it. 

A nation that orders its warriors to kill the helpless forfeits the moral standing to ask anything further of them.

Firing on the defenseless is not a gray area or “irregular warfare.” Our uniforms may be cleaner, the legal memos more elaborate, the language more sanitized — but the act is the same. These are war crimes — ordered from the very top of the chain of command. And the consequence is unmistakable: the collapse of the moral credibility of American power.

There must be investigations. There must be consequences — reaching as far up the chain of command as the facts demand. A military that kills the helpless is not operating in a fog of war. It has crossed the final boundary separating a professional force from a system designed to execute, not to think.

A nation that orders its service members to kill the defenseless is not being protected by its military. It is morally injuring its warriors, dishonoring the institution they serve and disfiguring itself.

And a nation that tolerates this — without outrage, without accountability, without demanding that it stop immediately — can make no claim to exceptionalism. It has surrendered its soul.

*Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain. His active duty career included command at sea and national security roles. He writes about leadership and democracy for the Los Angeles Times.

Donald Trump violated for political purposes the sacred ground in Arlington Section 60

“Trump visit to Arlington Cemetery sparks alleged altercation”:
Opinion letter published in The Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness)....

Dear Editor - Every Memorial Day, I make a point of visiting Arlington National Cemetery, where eight of my fellow Iraq War veteran friends rest — eight Americans who gave their lives for our country. Each of them is a hero, and one even earned the Medal of Honor, making the ultimate sacrifice to save others.

Iraq campaign medal ribbon

Service in Iraq during the Iraq War (from 19 March 2003 to 31 December 2011)

Like so many veterans from my generation, I bear the scars of service. Post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt are constant companions, but I live each day to honor the sacrifice of my friends, my heroes, whether I knew them personally or not. Section 60 is sacred to me. It is where my generation of American heroes have found an honored place of rest. I go there to pay my respects, and I am appalled that anyone could walk these grounds with any other intention.

Donald Trump recently used Section 60 and Arlington National Cemetery as a backdrop for a campaign ad. He and his staff shamelessly walked these hallowed grounds, bone spurs 🦴and all, in pursuit of something for themselves. 

Iraq campaign medal

Reports even suggest that they assaulted an employee whose job is to preserve the dignity and sanctuary of this space. I cannot stand by and watch this happen. I will oppose such disrespect with every breath I have left.

If any other figure were to commit this irreverant travesity, Trump’s actions toward the men and women who have served this country would be an automatic disqualifier from public service. 

Yet (unbelievably❗)  once again,😠 we see a man who behaves as though he is above the very norms and values that define the United States — the same values which the men and women at Arlington made the ultimate sacrifice to protect.

From Will Attig, in Arlington, Virginia, executive director of the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council and served with the 1-26th Infantry of the U.S. Army.

More cazy from Psycho Trump

Echo opinion by Colbert King published in The Washington Post

Trump is much worse than ‘weird’👺: His astonishing self-regard has been on full display of late.

Donald Trump’s (narcissistic) high regard for himself has been on full display. On July 26, he went to the Believers Summit in West Palm Beach, Fla., to glorify his endeavors on behalf of Christians. That same day, he used a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach to extoll the Trump administration’s treatment of Israel and emphasize the credit he feels is his due from American Jews. (And Netanyahu fell for it. 😕😠

Then, Trump arrogantly went before an assembly of Black journalists in Chicago to proclaim, “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.”

The idea that Trump’s behavior is weird has caught on of late, and it is. And surely Trump’s messianic frame of mind has been a wonder — and scary sight — to behold.

“I love you, Christians,” Trump told Believers Summit attendees gathered under the umbrella of Turning Point Action, a conservative political advocacy group. “I’m a Christian. I love you. Get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

Bearing down, Trump said: “It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

The nation has lost its way and is in decline, Trump told the audience of young Christian conservatives. He blamed low Christian voter turnout. “You know, I don’t want to scold you, but do you know that Christians do not vote proportionately? They don’t vote like they should. They’re not big voters,” Trump said. He produced no evidence of that. 

White Evangelicals and White Catholics overwhelmingly support the Republican Party. That matters not to Trump.

“We are not going to allow this horror to continue,” he declared. Vote like you should, Trump told them, and “we will soon be a great nation again.”

Those moments of self-absorption echoed the former president’s immersion in egocentrism at his session with Netanyahu.

 “I was very good to Israel,” Trump said, “better than any president’s ever been.”

Let us pause.😕😒 As for President Harry S. Truman seizing the moment and becoming the first world leader to formally recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people? That he did it 11 minutes after Israel’s creation, and over the objection of the State Department, out of a deep conviction that the Jewish people deserved a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland? Better than that❓

Were the Camp David Accords, brokered by President Jimmy Carter and signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, that established a framework for a historic peace treaty concluded between Israel and Egypt, inferior to all the “very good” that Trump says he did for Israel❓

Check out the story of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system and the essential role played by President Barack Obama. Was the creation of that miraculous, lifesaving system less than the “very good” that Trump claims he did for Israel?

Then again, Trump believes he owns the truth on all things Israel and Jewish. At the Believers Summit, Trump said Vice President Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, “doesn’t like Jewish people. She doesn’t like Israel. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s always going to be. She’s not going to change.” In a radio interview Tuesday, he proclaimed that Jews who support Harris should “have their head examined.”

No matter that Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish. That as a student, Harris helped raise money for the Jewish National Fund. That she established a hate crimes unit as San Francisco’s district attorney and gave priority to combating antisemitism when she was California’s attorney general.

So much for that❗😖😞 The best of Trump’s tour was saved for this week’s National Association of Black Journalists 😁😀😄gathering in Chicago.


It was a disaster, with Trump exposing the racism, cynicism and hostility that lurk within his self-righteousness.

Set aside his repulsive dig at Harris’s heritage, his lies and evasive answers to straightforward questions from seasoned journalists, and his unhinged self-comparison to Lincoln. Step back to consider what has been on display.

Trump believes he knows what is true and right, because he’s blessed with superior knowledge. To his way of thinking, he’s entitled to be president, was victimized in the 2020 election by evil forces, and ought to be admired and praised for all he has done and for the presidential campaign he is waging now.

“Listen up Christians, Jews and Black people. I am the solution,” I can imagine Trump saying. Weird, yes. But ethically unbound and self-centered autocrats think that way.

Marine Corporal JD Vance, "This is fine mess you've gotten GOP into"

Laurel and Hardy comedy line "Another fine mess..."

Echo report published in the Columbus Dispatch by Amelia Robinson.

Former Marine Corporal JD Vance thinks Jennifer Aniston's vote should count less. Actress Jennifer Aniston said, "I am a childless cat lady, but I respect Martha and George's decision to love dogs, birds and her biological children and grandchildren. They had a right to their choice."

https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/columns/2024/07/26/jd-vance-cat-lady-comments-jennifer-aniston-ivf/74543387007/

#PresidentGeorgeWashington did not have biological children but they were partners when raising Martha's children at Mount Vernon.

U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and his disdain for the childless — cat ladies in particular — has me thinking about the talented actress Jennifer Aniston and the two things America's first president George Washington and I have in common.

Vance's supporters say his words at the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute in 202, were taken out of context, but they are not.

Here is what he said. “When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power,” the Republican nominee for vice president (IOW a Presient in Waiting) said, reported in the Washington Post and a resurfaced in a video posted on X, formerly Twitter. 

“You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality. If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”

“When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power,” the Republican nominee for vice president said according to the Washington Post and a resurfaced video posted on X, formerly Twitter. “You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality. If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”

Like George Washington, I am childless. Like George Washington, I am invested in this nation's future.

I am not sure when George Washington accepted he'd never have children of his own, but the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon has records that indicate it was something that eventually happened.

I don't know exactly when I completely accepted the fact either.

The roller coaster that was my infertility hit its last hill eight years ago when an ultrasound revealed 70 fibroid tumors in my uterus. 

My kind and compassionate fertility doctor urged me to get a hysterectomy immediately, worrying that the sheer number may have indicated a rare cancer. It thankfully did not.

Vance called Harris childless cat lady.Where does he stand on family issues?

I speak so freely about infertility, a subject once never spoke about in polite society, for four simple reasons.

1. It was a medical issue.
2. There's nothing taboo about the female body.
3. Men like Vance have made it their business to control women's reproduction while criticizing women who can't or don't want to reproduce.
4. Silence is deadly.

I am a selfish, childless cat lady.🐱😸😻😲😳

Vice President Kamala Harris provides stability critical to President Biden's re-election

Echo opinion published in the Washington Post (Democracy dies in darkness) by Karen Tumulty associate editor and columnist:

NEW ORLEANS — The annual Essence Festival of Culture has grown into the country’s largest annual celebration of Black talent and influence. This year, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were there to deliver a message about the fragile moment in which President Biden and the Democratic Party find themselves.

“People are talking about ‘Biden is too old’ — hell, I’m older than Biden,” 85-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said, bringing a standing ovation. “No matter what anybody says, it ain’t going to be no other Democratic candidate. It’s going to be Biden, and you better vote!”

The congresswoman’s bluntness made it all the more noticeable that the next speaker on the program — Vice President Harris — went nowhere near the subject that is preoccupying the political world.

Harris mentioned the president only once, even as she argued for his achievements and the urgency of his reelection against an opponent who intends to “weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, who has talked about being proud of taking from the women of America a most fundamental right to make decisions about your own body.”

Displaying chops developed in her years as a prosecutor, the vice president pressed the case against Donald Trump more powerfully than Biden himself has been able to do lately.

Therein lies the delicacy of her situation. Should Biden step aside, something he has vowed not to do, putting Harris at the top of the ticket presents the quickest and most logical way for Democrats to regroup. Some polling also suggests she might fare slightly better against Trump, which is why his campaign is already organizing a full-scale assault against her.

Biden doomsday scenarios are everywhere, except in the vicinity of Harris. She has been the most loyal — and effective — of Biden’s allies in this fight. In a combative interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper just minutes after the debate, she didn’t cede a millimeter: “I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last 3½ years of performance.”

That line, which Harris delivered extemporaneously, has since become the backbone of the Biden campaign’s talking points.


Through most of the past three-plus years, though, Harris herself was kept backstage. She was handed impossible assignments like tackling the root causes of migration in an administration that showed no interest in doing anything about the border.

Air Force Two touched down in New Orleans on Friday night just moments after the broadcast of Biden’s prime-time interview on ABC. That interview did little to stop the fallout from his disastrous debate performance. As the vice president emerged from the plane, she was caught in a downpour, punctuated by thunder and lightning. I wondered: Was this a random weather event or an omen?

President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris

It was not until the overturn of Roe v. Wade that the White House recognized her value as its messenger on the suddenly salient issue of abortion — a word that Biden still has trouble bringing himself to mention. Harris’s travel schedule accelerated dramatically. This year so far, she has gone on the road more than 60 times by her staff’s count.

When Biden picked Harris as his history-making running mate in 2020, the first Black woman ever to share a major party ticket, the two knew each other primarily as adversaries. The California senator’s own campaign for that year’s Democratic nomination had started with promise but collapsed before the first votes were cast in Iowa. She was overly cautious, too deliberate, brimming with policy proposals that never quite added up to a rationale for her candidacy.

Given Biden’s age, Harris was always going to be an issue in this campaign. During the Republican primary, it was a rare appearance at which Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, would not declare: “A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris.”

Conservative commentators mock her laugh. Trump mispronounces her first name. And in a recently surfaced video, he called her “pathetic” and “so f---ing bad.” (Maine Writer - WOW❗😮 the Biden campaign should latch on to that evil venom and turn it around....IOW "Trump is so f----ing bad❗)

But watching her over the weekend, I saw an assurance that was absent when Harris was running in her own right four years ago. Were she to do it again, now or in 2028, I’d bet she would be harder to caricature, less easy to demonize than Republicans believe.

Harris concluded her appearance here with a message to the younger women in the audience.

“You are on many occasions in your life going to be in a room [where] you will be the only one that looks like you or has had your life experience,” Harris said. “And what I demand of you is that you always walk into those rooms with your chin up and your shoulders back.”

“I will beseech you: Don’t you ever hear something can’t be done. People in your life will tell you, ‘Oh, it’s not your time. It’s not your turn. Nobody like you has done it before,’” she added. “Don’t you ever listen to that. I like to say, ‘I eat “no” for breakfast. I don’t hear “no.” ’ ”

This may or may not be Kamala Harris’s own time. But if the call comes, we know what her answer will be.

Opine: Evangelical is not a rubber stamp for "Trumpziism"- Evangelicals are not a Trump political party

“Trump has changed what it means to be evangelical”: ❓ #IDTS

Published in the Washington Post: "Democracy dies in darkness".

Rev. Martin Deppe, Chicago

An insightful Washington Post opiniono column by Mr. Shadi Hamid describes how some of Donald Trump’s (cult❗ minded) supporters — including Muslim, Jewish and Hindu voters — use the word “evangelical” as a “badge of partisan identity.” Some of us “evangelicals” will not concede to this transformation. It is a frightening distortion of the true meaning of the biblical word.

I am an evangelical Christian. That means I am called to evangelize, to share the Good News, which is the Gospel. My tradition calls me to share this spiritual awakening in a loving and forgiving God by “doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly.” I am continually challenged to live out my life as an evangelical Christian.

That said, being an evangelical does not mean adopting a political party. It does not mean favoring one ethnic group over another. It does not turn a blind eye to lawlessness and lies or to advance grievances and hate. Specifically, an evangelical Christian does not condone any identification with white nationalism. Nor does a genuine evangelical claim any human being as akin to Jesus.

I declare, from my heart, that I will not allow my spiritual heritage, which comes out of an immigrant evangelical church, to be co-opted by those who misuse this precious New Testament word. May God have mercy upon us all. 

From the Rev. Martin Deppe, Chicago

Media alert! Donald Trump must be accountable for crazy statements calling veterans "suckers" and "losers"

Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist led a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and other specialists who questioned Trump’s mental fitness for office in a book that she edited called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

Echo opinion by Eugene Robinson published in the Washington Post:

It is irresponsible to wrongmindedly obsess over President Biden’s tendency to mangle a couple of words in a speech while Donald Trump is out there sounding detached from reality. Biden, who is old, at least makes sense. Trump, also old - 78 years old, rants like someone you’d cross the street to avoid.

We in the media failed by becoming inured to Trump’s verbal incontinence — not just the rapid-fire lies and revenge-seeking threats, but also the frightening glimpses into a mind that is, evidently, unwell. In 2016, Trump said outrageous things at his campaign rallies to be entertaining. 

In 2024, his tangents raise serious questions about his mental fitness.

His rally on Sunday in Las Vegas offered a grim smorgasbord of examples, but the obvious standout (and not in a good way) is the story he told about being aboard a hypothetical electric-powered boat. He posits that the battery would be so heavy that it would cause the craft to sink, and he relates his purported conversation with a knowledgeable mariner about this scenario. Bear with me, but it’s worth reading the passage in full:

Trumpzism rant:  “I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’ “By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lot of sharks. I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well they weren’t really that angry, they bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy. He said, ‘There’s no problem with sharks, they just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming.’ No, really got decimated, and other people, too, a lot of shark attacks.
“So I said, ‘There’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?’ Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer.
“He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.’ But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that, we’re going to end it for boats, we’re going to end it for trucks.”

Trucks? He’s actually talking about the transition to electric vehicles, which he has vowed to halt. That entire hallucination is part of Trump’s rationale for one of his major policy positions.

Trump told the electrocution-or-shark story at least once before, at a rally in Iowa last October. Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress who received $130,000 in hush money to keep quiet about her sexual encounter with Trump — a payment that led to the former president’s conviction on 34 felony charges — has said that Trump is “obsessed with sharks, terrified of sharks.” Way back in 2013, he declared on Twitter: “Sharks are last on my list — other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!”

The White House press corps would be in wolf pack mode if Biden were in the middle of a speech and suddenly veered into gibberish about boats and sharks. 

There would be front-page stories questioning whether the president, at 81, was suffering from dementia; and the op-ed pages would be filled with thumb-suckers about whether Vice President Harris and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment. 

House Republicans would already have scheduled hearings on Biden’s mental condition and demanded he take a cognitive test.

(IMO the Biden campaign team should demand for former guy Trump to havea venereal disease blood test!)

The tendency with Trump, at 78, is to say he’s “just being Trump.” But he’s like this all the time.

Also during the Las Vegas speech, Trump tried to deny the allegation by one of his White House chiefs of staff, retired Marine General John F. Kelly, that he refused in 2018, to visit an American military cemetery in France, saying it was filled with “suckers” and “losers.” Trump told the crowd on Sunday that “only a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person” would say such a thing while “I’m standing there with generals and military people in a cemetery.”

But he wasn’t “standing there” with anybody❗ He never went to the cemetery.😓

Add to the Trump lie library

Except in his delusional mind, perhaps, which is a much bigger problem than Biden fumbling a name or garbling a sentence.

Trump gives crazy speeches about mythical sharks and other bizarre statements

Echo opinion published in the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison

Trump is the candidate making crazy statements -- from Roger Brooks

Why, oh why,❓ I have repeatedly wondered, is so much being made in the mainstream media about President Joe Biden’s age and indications of minor lapses while, at the same time, little is said about former guy Donald Trump’s repeated crazy statements?

One recent example is when he mused about whether he would prefer being attacked by sharks* or being electrocuted in a sinking boat. Another is when he claimed that the feds are out to assassinate him.

Shark attack in Nevada? 🦈 Who knew?😩😧

When will we be given at least an equal indication of whether the presidential contenders are mentally, emotionally and temperamentally fit for the office?

Roger Brooks, Madison

Washington Post  Eugene Robinson Opinion: For thin-skinned Trump, every week is shark week: After saying something that made no earthly sense, and getting ridiculed for it, the former president couldn’t drop it.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/24/trump-rally-sharks-media-electrocution/

Trump speaking in Nevada, "We can’t get the boat to float. The battery is so heavy. So then I start talking about asking questions. You know, I have an, I had an uncle who was a great professor at MIT for many years, long, I think the longest tenure ever. Very smart, had three different degrees and, you know, so I have an aptitude for things. You know, there is such a thing as an aptitude.
I said, ‘Well, what would happen if this boat is so heavy and started to sink and you're on the top of the boat. Do you get electrocuted or not?’ In other words, the boat is going down and you're on the top, will the electric currents flow through the water and wipe you out?'"

Donald Trump rants about sharks when speaking in Nevada where there is no ocean

Why was Trump talking about sharks at a Nevada campaign event in June, 2024?

Echo report (excerpts) by Philip Bump published in the Washington Post:  The former president’s riff on sea life and electric boats confused a lot of people, speaking in Nevada to a sweltering hot audience because, apparantly, the Trump campaign cannot afford to rent an air conditioned venue for their small donation campaign supporters.

It is possible that the sheer weirdness of this story has already led to your seeing it. Transcripts of Trump's 500-plus-word riff spread over social media, as people tried to parse it like the final exam of a fifth-grade English class. If you didn't see it, allow me to offer an abridged version.

The story began with Trump describing a conversation with a boat manufacturer in South Carolina. (This was the person who purportedly referred to him as “sir.”) Trump offered more familiarity with boats than his audience — again, in the desert city of Las Vegas

I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’” Trump said.

Then Trump went on a tangent about sharks and shark attacks. In the abstract, this was just odd, given that — just as a reminder! — this was Trump trying to convince a lot of Nevadans to vote for him for president. But his aversion to sharks is well-established — and, in fact, overlaps with his recent criminal conviction in Manhattan.

The criminal trial in New York centered on porn actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 — he denies they had sex — and the hush money payment made to her by Trump’s attorney before the 2016, election. 

In a 2011,interview with In Touch Weekly that was published after the details of the alleged encounter between Trump and Daniels were made public in 2018, she recounted his disdain for sharks. 

Daniels explained that one of their encounters overlapped with the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” programming. As the two sat in Trump’s hotel room, he volunteered how much he hated sharks and wished they all would die. That his central concern related to a sinking boat would be sharks certainly bolsters the idea that Daniels was telling the truth.  #StormyDanielsStrong❗

Nikki Haley gets justifiably bashed in main stream media because of her Civil War racist response in New Hampshire

In flub over Civil War, Nikki Haley reveals a surprising truth about the culture wars:  Nikki Haley’s comment on the US civil war was no gaffe caused by the excuse of being "fatigued".

"Nikki Haley goes on Civil War autopilot, runs over her own campaign," Washington Post.

Opinion by Erika Smith echo report in the Las Vegas Sun newspaper"

African-American soilder in uniform Civil War (1863-1865)

Despite the buzz and the endorsements and right-wing donors funneling millions of dollars into her campaign, Republican candidate Nikki Haley may have eliminated what little chance she had of becoming president of the United States.

Race and racism, as it turns out, are important issues, even for Republicans. Well, sort of. But first, let’s back up.

By now, we have heard in main stream and social media about the extraordinarily simple question that Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, couldn’t bring herself to answer during a town hall campaign event in New Hampshire the last week of December.

What,” a man stood up to ask, “was the cause of the United States Civil War?”  (A "no brainer" question any high school history student could have answered correctly!)

Haley, who broke barriers as the first Indian American woman in the nation to serve as a governor and the first in a White House Cabinet-level role as U.N. ambassador, seemed genuinely flummoxed. “Well, don’t come with an easy question,” she told the man.

She continued: “I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” Haley added. “And we — I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life.”

To this nonanswer that echoed the excuses of segregationists, the man told Haley, “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.’ ”

Sorry, but that’s not astonishing. Haley is not and never has been a moderate. Her history on issues of race is, at best, mixed.

As Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement, “This is what Black South Carolinians have come to expect from Nikki Haley, and now the rest of the country is getting to see her for who she is.”

The is the woman who, when she was running for governor in 2010, met with the leaders of Confederate heritage groups and told them that the Civil War was a fight between “tradition” and “change,” and that she supported having a Confederate history month.

This is also the woman who, during her campaign for reelection as governor in 2014, rejected calls to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina State House. This was after it came out that she had offered to leverage her identity as a child of immigrants to somehow convince the NAACP that the Confederate flag “is not something that is racist.”

Of course, these days, Haley loves to lean into her decision to back the removal the flag in 2015, after a white supremacist killed nine Black people at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. She did so again at yet another town hall event in New Hampshire the day after her Civil War gaffe.

“By the grace of God, we did the right thing and slavery is no more,” Haley said, according to The Washington Post. “I say that as a Southerner. I say that as a Southern governor who removed the Confederate flag off the State House grounds.”

“Yes, we know the Civil War was about slavery,” she added.

Not that Haley is not convincing anyone, let alone Democrats. As Harrison said, “I am disgusted, but I’m not surprised.”

U.S. military are without a Senate-confirmed leaders because of stupid Tuberville stunt

Three service secretaries to (incompetent!) Tuberville: Stop this dangerous hold on senior officers.  By Carlos Del Toro,  Frank Kendall and Christine Wormuth. Opinion published in The Washington Post*:

Carlos Del Toro is secretary of the Navy. Frank Kendall is secretary of the Air Force. Christine Wormuth is secretary of the Army.

As the civilian leaders of the Navy, Air Force, Space Force and Army, we are proud to work alongside exceptional military leaders who are skilled, motivated and empowered to protect our national security.

These officers and the millions of service members they lead are the foundation of America’s enduring military advantage. Yet this foundation is being actively eroded by the actions of a single U.S. senator, Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who is blocking the confirmation of our most senior military officers.

The senator asserts that this blanket and unprecedented “hold,” which he has maintained for more than six months, is about opposition to Defense Department policies that ensure service members and their families have access to reproductive health no matter where they are stationed.

After the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, this policy is critical and necessary to meet our obligations to the force. It is also fully within the law, as confirmed by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Senators have many legislative and oversight tools to show their opposition to a specific policy. They are free to introduce legislation, gather support for that legislation and pass it. But placing a blanket hold on all general and flag officer nominees, who as apolitical officials have traditionally been exempt from the hold process, is unfair to these military leaders and their families.

And it is putting our national security at risk.

Thus far, the hold has prevented the Defense Department from placing almost 300 of our most experienced and battle-tested leaders into critical posts around the world.

Three of our five military branches — the Army, Navy and Marine Corps — have no Senate-confirmed service chief in place. Instead, these jobs — and dozens of others across the force — are being performed by acting officials without the full range of legal authorities necessary to make the decisions that will sustain the United States’ military edge.

Across the services, many generals and admirals are being forced to perform two roles simultaneously. The strain of this double duty places a real and unfair burden on these officers, the organizations they lead and their families.

The blanket hold is also exacting a personal toll on those who least deserve it.

Each of us has seen the stress this hold is inflicting up and down the chain of command, whether in the halls of the Pentagon or at bases and outposts around the world.

We know officers who have incurred significant unforeseen expenses and are facing genuine financial stress because they have had to relocate their families or unexpectedly maintain two residences.

Military spouses who have worked to build careers of their own are unable to look for jobs because they don’t know when or if they will move. Children haven’t known where they will go to school, which is particularly hard given how frequently military children change schools already.

These military leaders are being forced to endure costly separations from their families — a painful experience they have come to know from nearly 20 years of deployments to places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The leaders whose lives and careers are on hold include scores of combat veterans who have led our troops into deadly combat with valor and distinction in the decades since 9/11. These men and women each have decades of experience and are exactly who we want — and need — to be leading our military at such a critical period of time.

The impact of this hold does not stop at these officers or their family members.

With the promotions of our most senior leaders on hold, there is a domino effect upending the lives of our more junior officers, too.

Looking over the horizon, the prolonged uncertainty and political battles over these military nominations will have a corrosive effect on the force.

The generals and admirals who will be leading our forces a decade from now are colonels and captains today. They are watching this spectacle and might conclude that their service at the highest ranks of our military is no longer valued by members of Congress or, by extension, the American public.

All because of the actions of a single (stupid!) senator.

Any claim that holding up the promotions of top officers does not directly damage the military is wrong — plain and simple.

Rather than continue making sacrifices to serve our nation, some might leave uniformed service for other opportunities, robbing the Defense Department of talent cultivated over decades that we now need most to maintain our superiority over our rivals and adversaries.

Throughout our careers in national security, we have deeply valued the bipartisan support shown for our service members and their families. But rather than seeking a resolution to this impasse in that spirit, Tuberville has suggested he is going to further escalate this confrontation by launching baseless political attacks against these men and women.

We believe that the vast majority of senators and of Americans across the political spectrum recognize the stakes of this moment and the dangers of politicizing our military leaders. It is time to lift this dangerous hold and confirm our senior military leaders.

Army, Navy, Marines All Without Senate-Confirmed Leaders Thanks to GOP Stunt (Tuberville-Sluberville stupidity.)

*P.S. By the way, Tuberville never served in the military.

Save American democracy: Get to the bottom of what happened on January 6th 2021

Opinion echo: If we are to save our democracy, there must be a reckoning for the January. 6 attack

By Eugene Robinson 

One year ago, ours was a nation on the brink. We must never forget!

The first week of 2021, brought an unprecedented rupture in the democratic process that Americans have taken for granted since the election of John Adams in 1796. A sitting president, Donald Trump, was trying desperately to remain in office despite his defeat in a free and fair election. He summoned a mob to Washington as an intimidating show of force, and that violent mob — whipped into a frenzy by Trump and his cronies — stormed the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Trump’s loss.

Much has happened since, both domestically and in foreign affairs. Now, as then, the biggest factor in most Americans’ day-to-day lives is the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. And the leadership of the Republican Party dearly wants us to forget that the Jan. 6 insurrection ever took place.

But the nation cannot just “move on” from such an attack on our constitutional order. Not since 1814, when British soldiers marched into Washington, had the Capitol been overrun and pillaged. Not even during the Civil War was the orderly transfer of presidential power disrupted. Never had a defeated presidential candidate — much less a defeated incumbent who had sworn to defend the Constitution — refused to accept the result of an election.

We need to know everything that is knowable about these events. And those who inspired, organized and committed the insurrection need to be brought to justice.

President Biden and Vice President Harris intend to deliver remarks Thursday to mark the anniversary of the failed putsch. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has planned a series of events, beginning with prayer and a moment of silence in the House chamber, where so many of her colleagues sheltered in terror on Jan. 6 as a crush of thugs and zealots tried to smash their way inside.

And because Democrats are in charge of the White House and Congress, most Republicans will do their best to pretend that the commemoration is more about politics than nationhood. Trump is also expected to speak Thursday, and he will surely repeat his lies and gibberish about the election somehow being “stolen” from him and his supporters. He and the GOP — his GOP, make no mistake — have been trying to make the insurrection into a partisan issue. 

Don’t let them do that!

Noose appears near Capitol; protesters seen carrying Confederate flags:  A noose was erected on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday afternoon, attached to a wooden beam.

The mob threatened to “hang” Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, after Pence announced that he would do his constitutional duty and certify Biden’s electoral victory. The senators, House members, staff aides and other Capitol workers forced to flee for their lives or shelter in terror belonged to both parties. And if you surveyed the political beliefs of the scores of police officers who were clubbed, beaten, doused with bear spray and abused with racist slurs by the mob, I wager you’d find as many conservatives as progressives.

What happened last January 6 was much bigger and more important than politics. And holding accountable the perpetrators of this attack on our democracy must take precedence over any political concerns. This is bigger than who wins the midterm elections or who runs for president in 2024. This project of reckoning is about the continuation of the American experiment.

Jacob Chansley, the spear-carrying January 6th rioter, whose horned fur hat, bare chest and face paint made him one of the more recognizable figures in the assault on the Capitol, was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in prison.

Actually, there are three simultaneous accountability projects whose success the American people must demand.

The House select committee investigating the attack (appointed by Pelosi only after Republicans refused to form a proper blue-ribbon commission) appears to be doing an admirable job of collecting new information, including about Trump’s actions that day. The committee must not let stonewalling by Trump and his inner circle cause delay — a full year has already passed. It is good that the committee plans to issue an interim report this summer but, in the meantime, it should hold public hearings and release as much information as possible. Their work is not just important but also urgent.

Simultaneously, Congress as a whole must shore up the weaknesses in our transfer-of-power process exposed by the insurrection. The mob’s aim was to halt the official counting of electoral votes — and the mob succeeded, at least for several hours. Even the libertarian Cato Institute agrees that the 1876, Electoral Count Act is “a mess of ambiguities and contradictions” and needs to be reformed. Legislation to do so should begin making its way toward Biden’s desk.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department must continue to press criminal charges against the insurrectionists. It is not enough to prosecute and sentence those who participated bodily in the assault. The puppet masters who assembled the crowd and sent it off to sack the Capitol must be held to account as well.

And no one, including Trump, can be considered above the law.

Landmark legislation: Support For The People Act

Senator Joe Manchin Alert! Echo opinion published in the West Virginia The Register-Herald, in Beckley, WV.  

"Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has announced that the Senate will take an initial vote on the For the People Act legislation next week; Senator Manchin said he did not know what changes Schumer and other Democrats would be willing to make to win his support."- Washington Post

Dear Editor:

Some people would have you believe that legislation dubbed the For the People Act is a solution in search of a problem. I wish that were true. Unfortunately, it is not the case whatsoever if you look at widespread efforts to restrict access to voting.

On May 11, Senator Capito authored an op-ed claiming that “Democrats want to politicize our elections.” 

There are some serious issues with saying this (oxymoron 101!) – especially falsely alluding to the idea that the For the People Act is a partisan bill. 

Although the bill has been introduced by Democrats, 76 percent of registered Republican voters in West Virginia support the For the People Act. Senator Capito and I agree: Republicans and Democrats want to see more people voting and that is why she should support S. 1.

Right now across our country, we see state legislature after state legislature—including here in West Virginia—considering and even passing legislation that would make access to the ballot box more difficult. The For the People Act is a remedy that seeks to combat restrictive measures to voting.

The For the People Act does three things. The first is that it would make it easier to vote, address challenges voters faced in casting their ballots, and protect the security and integrity of our elections. It also would end the predatory and harmful dominance of big money in politics. Finally, it would restore ethics and accountability in government by ensuring public officials are working in the public interest.

After the (seditious) attack on our capitol on January 6, and the spread of mistruths (aka "lies!"- The Big Lie) following the 2020, election, we know that the sanctity of our democracy is under threat from actors both foreign and domestic. The only way we will preserve our system of governance is if we stand up and demand it and further make it more inclusive for all to participate. The best way to stand up for our democracy is to demand passage of the For the People Act. Join me and let’s show both Senator Capito and Senator Manchin that we support this landmark legislation.

Zachary Fancher, Fairmont, West Virginia