By now everyone has likely heard and gotten wind about the shameful, disgraceful tiradeVice-president J.D. Vance and President Trump went on with and against President Zelensky of Ukraine. To say this childish behavior from the White House was unprecedented is to wrongly identify the facts of the last 4-years (Feb. 22, 2022) and the last 11-years (Feb. 20, 2014).
US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky listen to Vice President JD Vance (R)as they meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, February 28, 2025. Zelensky on February 28 told Trump there should be “no compromises” with Russian President Vladimir Putin as the parties negotiate to end the war after Moscow’s invasion. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)
Trump and Vance wrongly accuse Zelenskyy and Ukraine of ‘not wanting peace’ in their illegally occupied country. This is classic Trump diversion tactics of historical, contextual facts and “foolish” naive American Trump-Vance supporters. One simple question to Americans, particularly MAGA Republicans, will easily make light of their idiotic fallacy about the war in Ukraine made by Russia and Vladimir Putin. That question is this:
If North Korea invaded the United States and seized huge swathes of American soil, reducing our 50-states to say… 34 states, would loving patriotic Americans stop fighting and defending their country’s borders because China accuses America of not wanting peace, in negotiation attempts between Kim Jong Un and President Trump?
The answer is GLARINGLY obvious. Duh.
So why should President Zelenskyy and Ukrainians drop their weapons and let Putin and Russia have whatever they want in Ukraine (and the Crimea?) “for the sake of peace”? Would Trump, Vance, the U.S. Armed Forces, and real patriotic Americans just let Kim Jong Un and North Korea have whatever they want?
Exactly.
And THAT is why Trump, Vance, and all MAGA Republicans are dead wrong today praising our Commander-in-Chief and V.P. for their humiliating, childish tirade on President Zelenskyy today. Duh!
An excellent read from Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American on just how dead wrong Trump, Vance and MAGA Republicans truly are and how they are taking the USA down a very dark, dangerous road, fast.
I get regular emails from a handful of political outlets that are aligned with my own viewpoints which is left of center for sure. This I don’t mind one bit for many reasons.
I received this email newsletter today:
Dear Member,
It’s barely been a week since the election, but Donald Trump has already made more than a dozen appointments—and they’re exactly the staff envisioned by Project 2025.1 Some of the appointees even wrote Project 2025.
A white nationalist in charge of immigration policy. An insurrectionist and misogynist as Defense Secretary. A conspiracy theorist and homophobe helming the Department of Health and Human Services. An evangelical Christian and staunch opponent to Palestine as ambassador to Israel. A climate change denier as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.2
And Trump named Elon Musk as the co-head of the effort to “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy” and hand our country’s future over to corporations and billionaires.3
This wave of extremist appointees—who are rife with extraordinary conflicts of interest—is antithetical to American values. It’s overwhelming. It’s depressing. That’s exactly MAGA’s point.
Trump is dumping this deluge of awful appointees and plans for his administration on us in hopes that we will be so exhausted that we won’t fight back. He couldn’t be more wrong. We are already fighting back—in fact, we just had an amazing victory we’ll tell you about in a minute—and we are preparing for four years of nonstop campaigning to stop Trump’s anti-democratic, anti-civil-rights agenda.
Trump’s appointees are a veritable Who’s Who of right-wing extremism, racism, and hate.
To no one’s surprise, white nationalist and architect of Trump’s “kids in cages” plan Stephen Miller is now deputy chief of staff for policy—ready to implement Trump’s mass deportation plan.4
Trump appointed “Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth, famous for cheering on the January 6 insurrection and saying that women don’t belong in combat, as secretary of defense. Trump also announced plans for appointing a board to weed out any military generals who are not sufficiently loyal to him.5
Other appointees include Mike Huckabee, who believes that Gaza should be eradicated, as ambassador to Israel.6 Climate change denier Lee Zeldin as Environmental Protection Agency administrator.7 John Ratcliffe, who weaponized secure data against Trump’s opposition during his first term, as CIA director.8
And just minutes ago, Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, to lead the nation’s public health department.9
His MAGA House of Representatives tried to fast-track a bill through Congress—H.R.9495—that would have granted Trump unilateral power to strip organizations of their nonprofit status if they were accused of “supporting terrorism.” His administration would have no burden of proof or standard to meet—just a stroke of the pen would take down any organization (such as MoveOn!) that he perceived as an enemy.10
The bill had bipartisan support and was assumed to be a done deal, but our members fought back. Thousands of our members called their representatives, and our voice was heard in the halls of Congress as well. Because of the work of you and others in our coalition, H.R.9495 failed.
The American government is one of checks and balances, and we can rein in Trump’s assault on us if we are willing to hold our leaders accountable to those checks. As an organization of millions of voices, we are strong. We are powerful. And as long as we keep speaking out together, we can stop Trump’s attack on our civil rights, on our economy, and on our democracy.
But we must be prepared to campaign around the clock and use every tool at our disposal, which takes vast resources—resources that are depleted in the wake of the most expensive election in history.
Left to right — National Security Adviser – Mike Waltz, Chief of Staff – Susie Wiles, and Department of Government Efficiency – Elon Musk
What are your thoughts? Share them. Did you vote this past election year?
If you did not vote, like far too many Americans did not—approximately 7-8 million registered voters did not turnout at the polls—then your silence was beyond horrendously appalling for such a historically unprecedented election year given what was at stake for our country! That is the sole reason tRump and Republicans won so many positions of government! Sad, very very sad America.
When I was 12 or 13-years old I learned a very painful lesson, literally! Who or what taught me this hard painful lesson? The who was my father. The what was a gas-powered mechanical lawn edger.
After edging my neighbor’s front and back lawns with their mechanical edger with the blade spinning on the side, I did not know how to turn it off. I walked to our house, explained to Dad I didn’t have a clue how to turn the motor off so he and I returned to the still running edger. Here’s the complete story in my December 2014 blog-post, To Operate A Mechanical Edger.
The short version of what happened that Saturday afternoon in 1975 was that Dad explained to me verbally, and by pointing at the external spark-plug with its attached metal short-out bar, that all I needed to do was to push that little metal L-clip onto the tip of the spark-plug and the motor and blade would stop. Easy.
WHAAM! 💥😵🥴 I was almost knocked to my ass. Unmoved by what he saw happen to me, Dad repeated again what to do so the motor would shut off. WHAAM! Same painful result. Was I not holding it to the spark-plug long enough? Dad pointed at me to turn it off. WHAAM! This third time hurt even more. I was tearing up and shaking like a leaf in the wind. I looked up to Dad in complete shock and baffled. “Turn it off” he said again with a straight face, unmoved. I tried to hold the clip down even longer this attempt. WHAAAAAM!!! Now I am convulsing trying to shut the edger motor off and crying now.
Finally, Dad had mercy on me, pointed at my other hand holding tight the metal handle-bars, and calmly explained to me “Dwain, your are directing the electrical current from the clip and spark-plug, through both your hands and arms, into your upper body, and back to the edger’s metal handle bars. Move your left-hand off the metal and onto the rubber handles.”
To this day that incident has never left my traumatized memory. It never will leave me, ever. It hurt so much and burned into my fingers, muscles and memory that today anytime I deal with electricity and electrical currents and/or equipment, that painful lesson always rushes back to me.
Why would I want to repeat that horrible, excruciating lesson? Why would anyone want to repeat or keep repeating over and over hard, painful lessons of the past? Why? Isn’t that sheer stupidity?
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In Heather Cox Richardson’s latest Letters from an American dated October 27, 2024, Heather writes “I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way.” But once again she and the rest of normal, sane, democracy-loving Americans have been again taken to all-time lows after Trump’s Nazi-esque rally at Madison Square Garden yesterday. Apparently, his MAGA rally deliberately recalled its February 20, 1939 predecessor, a pro-Hitler rally of some 18,000 “true Americanism” featuring George Washington in his Continental Army uniform front and center stage bookended by swastikas. Yes, I shit you not people!
Heather continues in her letter:
Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024.
Nazi fascist rally in the old Madison Square Garden, New York, USA, Feb. 20, 1939
Her letter is a very good, well-sourced on the verifiable, historical facts and I highly recommend reading it despite how deeply disturbing the rally events panned out. As I read Heather’s letter, skimmed over some other non-profit news coverage of the fascist, Nazi-esque Republican rally yesterday, I kept asking myself this question, Why can’t half of Americans today remember or learn from national and world history, modern history at that!? Seriously, what is that half of the U.S. population’s malfunction? Do they have no clue what the 1930’s–1945 Axis powers did to the entire world, in particular Adolf Hitler, his SS and high-ranking Reich Ministers and Generals, then the Holocaust? WTF!!!?
Written c. 38–41 BCE
Indeed an ignorant child bereft of earnest wisdom and learning.
Will Americans not learn from our grave, indecent, atrocities of the past? Will we never learn from those who we just fought a long, four year war (WW2) to rid Europe and Asia from the worst men in history and the deaths of 75-80 million people worldwide? What does it take to not repeat history in November 2024? How is this even a question right now? I sure as hell don’t want to re-experience my electrical shock memory and trauma as a boy with that damn edger! Isn’t that just common sense?
Addendum 10-30-2024 — Heather Cox Richardson’s follow-up Letter dated Oct. 29, 2024 is another disturbing, poignant letter of former President Trump’s follow-up press conference regarding the Nazi-esque rally Sunday night:
On Monday, Trump felt obliged to tell an audience in Georgia, “I’m not a Nazi.” The Trump campaign has made it a point never to apologize and never to explain, but on Monday it broke that rule, trying to distance itself from performer Tony Hinchcliffe’s comments about Puerto Rico.
This morning, Trump announced he would hold a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. He showed up more than an hour late for the assembled press, then began the event by undermining faith in the election, claiming the campaign is going “very well; there are some bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught or are in the process of being caught,” although it was unclear what he meant.
He went on to deliver such a litany of lies that CNN cited them as a reason to cut away from the speech. Trump chose not to acknowledge the offensiveness of the Madison Square Garden event, saying ““The love in that room, it was breathtaking—and you could have filled it many many times with the people that were unable to get in.”
American voters; sane, reasonable, Moderate American voters, if you cannot just read on a literal basis beyond what this narcissistic, megalomaniac, fascist, Orange Orangutan Baby and his extreme MAGA Republican supporters and sycophants are saying BETWEEN the lines, implicitly as well as explicitly, then please do so with vigilance, honorable conscience, with your COUNTRY first, not your Party. You are an American first who loves this country even with all of its flaws and imperfections, as well as its celebrated glories, equality, liberties, and freedoms. Do the right thing by Nov. 5th!
Precursor — I am still working on the blog-drafts Conclusion: A New U.S. Constitution and Paul, Acts, Forgeries & Marcion – Part III (the Marcion part). However, this news here was just far too critical to ignore and not write about. Our country is on a very, very dangerous path and the consequences must be fully realized.
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There are five (5), maybe six (6), U.S. Supreme Court Justices that have literally lost their minds and abandoned the core foundations of our sacred Charters of Freedom, the precedents, and what it means contextually to live and govern a nation by laws, not personal opinions or beliefs. Who are the “rogue” federal justices? They are from most radical (MAGA puppets) first, to least conservative at the end:
Samuel A. Alito – appointed under George W. Bush’s administration.
Clarence Thomas – appointed under George H.W. Bush’s administration.
Neil Gorsuch – appointed under Trump’s administration.
Amy Coney Barrett – appointed under Trump’s administration.
Brett Kavanaugh – appointed under Trump’s administration.
John Roberts – the least radical, appointed under George H.W. Bush’s administration.
Chief Justice Roberts’ Supreme Court, October 2022
The other three justices which are not ultra Conservative or extreme radical are Ketanji Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, the most liberal according to Axios. What is the obvious indication that these five justices (six?) have completely lost their way and forsaken their Constitutional vows? Read this…
On Thursday, April 25th, 2024, a Trump lawyer argued to the Supreme Court justices that “the president could assassinate a political rival and be immune from prosecution.” But the most shocking, appalling part of this brazen claim is that the five (six?) MAGA Supreme Court justicesagreed with him! 😲
Assassinations of political rivals or enemies today happen in countries like Russia (Vladimir Putin& Alexei Navalny), Venezuela (Nicolás Maduro), Saudi Arabia (Mohammed bin Salman), Syria (Bashar al-Assad), or China, if one speaks out publicly against Xi Jinping and his communist government, you disappear in prison for life. But this isn’t supposed to happen in the United States. Our Founding Fathers clearly designed our nation to be ruled and governed by the law, not anarchy, authoritarianism, or societal trends or ideologies.
Furthermore, when the U.S. declared its independence to Great Britain in 1776 then drafted and ratified its Constitution in 1788, it was with the full intention of moving away from the kings, rulers, and despots of unstable colonial Europe.
In America, the rule of law is king.
— Thomas paine, a core founding father
Left to right: Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Mao Zedong, and Kim Il-Sung
When I was a 4th thru 8th grade History-Social Studies teacher in 2010–2014, I often did a role-playing activity for my 8th graders called “Rule of Law or Rule of Man.” All my students would receive a Post-It note with words or phrases such as:
Public Safety
Dissent
Dictator
Executive Branch
Constitution
Liberty
Anarchy
Consensus
Freedom
Inalienable Rights
Fairness
Protest
Protection
Lawyer
Mob
Gang
Court
Prison
Responsibility
Legislative Branch
Violence
Hedonism
Democracy
Equality
Abuse
Separation of Powers
Selfishness
Inequality
Checks & Balances
Judicial Branch
Independent Judiciary
Best Interest of Country
Best Interest of One Person
After giving each student about 5-minutes to consider what their Post-It note says, then have them put their Post-It note in the correct column of the Big Chart which is divided in two: Rule of Law on the left; Rule of Man on the right.
Once all students have placed their note in one of the columns—it’s possible that some notes can be in either column, hence ‘on the line’—then ask the 8th-graders to make a consensus classroom definition of the Rule of Law and the Rule of Man. Next would be a set of discussion questions. For example:
When and where did our system of law originate and how?
How do laws today affect each of us daily?
What functions do laws serve in our society?
Be sure to discuss at least nine sub-topics of this question.
Are there flaws in our system of law? How are they resolved?
What role does our government’s Separation of Powers play in ensuring adherence to the Rule of Law?
Why is an Independent Judiciary fundamental to the Rule of Law?
It has been said for over 235 years that based on our Constitution, we are “a nation of laws, not people.” What does that mean?
Why is it so critically important to be well educated about our Founding documents and Founding Fathers like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?
Why is it critically important all Americans, especially our elected officials, follow the Rule of Law?
These are just a sampling of the important questions I would’ve asked my 8th-grade students. I would also have my students role-play in groups of 3-to-6 students per group assigning one of them to be the group Director. Following are a sample of the role-playing scenarios students would play:
Scenario #1 — “Brown vs Board of Education,” Little Rock, Arkansas. This case involved the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Scenario #2 — “Mapp vs Ohio,” Cleveland, Ohio. This case involved seized evidence without a legal search warrant was deemed inadmissible in state courts according to the Fourth Amendment.
Scenario #3 — “Gideon vs Wainwright,” Panama City, Florida. This case involved the Circuit Court judge denying Clarence Gideon his right to a state attorney to represent him when he couldn’t afford one himself, according to the Sixth Amendment.
And here is the real gut-punch scenario for the 8th-grade students:
Scenario #4 — This scenario is based on the Watergate scandal. The Constitution states that an Executive (like the U.S. President) who puts himself/herself above the law and deliberately abuses his or her powers of office may be impeached and even sent to prison. President Richard Nixon obstructed legal proceedings into the scandal by refusing to comply to the special prosecutor’s demands for Nixon’s wire-tapping tapes. Nixon resigned from office before he could be convicted. SCOTUS determined that Executive Privilege was not and is not limitless.
From this above 8th-grade classroom activity you might have deduced that the Separation of Powers was specifically designed by the Core Founding Fathers to protect against one office, one person, one branch of government seizing total or near-total, authoritarian power. Even 8th-graders, and 9th-graders to 12th-graders grasp and understand these basic Constitutional principles. They all know what a bully is like in the school yard and if not stopped what will eventually happen.
Yet, there is a sizable U.S. contingent within our state and federal governments as well as in the Supreme Court and within the general public who fail to comprehend, protect, and enforce this core Constitutional precept against bullies! Their deliberant naïvety is appalling as well as deeply disturbing. This November Americans might well be adding another man to the above image of history’s most infamous dictators: Donald J. Trump.
Some food for thought and debate…
Should this Trump lawyer’s and the supporting MAGA Supreme Court Justices’ logic somehow prevail and win out for a President’s total immunity to assassinate, should President Joe Biden consider assassinating Donald Trump? After all, you can’t have it both ways or apply the law when it suits you best and disregard it when it doesn’t. Why shouldn’t Biden entertain the idea of erasing Trump while he is the sitting President? Or why not imprison Trump in some remote Siberian location just as Vladimir Putin, Nicolás Maduro, Mohammed bin Salman, Bashar al-Assad, and Xi Jinping all do with regularity? If it is legal for Trump to do it, then it follows that Biden can do it.
What has Trump stated publicly and explicitly he will do if put back into the White House? Here are just three Project 2025 action plans, out of a litany of others, which he and MAGA Republicans promise to execute beginning in January 2025:
Incite violence against anyone, including political opponents, he deems a threat to his ambitions. Trump hasn’t just verbalized this intent, he has actually done it. Just last month Trump posted on his social media platform a video of President Biden hog-tied in the back of a pickup truck, bound and gagged with what appears to be a bullet-hole in his head. Regular threats such as these against the POTUS is in fact a crime.
Completely overhaul and dismantle civil service positions to favor his political allies that will loyally do his biddings. Within Project 2025 there is already a documented plan to replace thousands of agency employees with his own loyal sycophants, then undo hundreds of environmental protections and reduce even more civil rights for Americans.
Turn the FBI and other law enforcement agencies into his personal police state and imprison—just like Putin did with Alexei Navalny—all political or social opponents he deems a threat to himself. These are Trump’s words verbatim, “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business.”
Anyone with a quality, fair and well-rounded education of American history and American government must admit that the above rhetoric and promises made by Trump 2024 and his MAGA cult members/minions, including 5-6 Supreme Court Justices, flies in the face of everything this nation was founded on by our six core Founding Fathers and the Charters of Freedom they drafted and the states ratified.
I cannot stress enough nor vehemently enough just how monumental this November will be. Not just for the future of the United States, but also the world. Mark my words right now, if the Orange Orangutan Baby gets back into the Oval Office, that isthe beginning of the end of this democratic republic from which we may never recover.
More great news for the 2024 Presidential ballots across the nation! What states are the lawsuits pending against Trump? Well, I for one was shocked by one state, my home state of Texas being included in the list. But I can guarantee everyone that the radical MAGAt Republicans in Austin and our heavily ultra-Conservative state Supreme Court justices will take less than 10-minutes to throw-out the lawsuit.
According to Lawfare, there are 14 more states reviewing cases to disqualify Trump from the 2024 Presidential ballot. Who are they? Here is the current list: Arizona, Alaska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Now of course there are a few of these 14 other states besides Texas that won’t even seriously consider banning the Orange Orangutan from the 2024 ballot because they are strong, well-established, conservative Republican states with Red-majorities in too many key offices and court positions.
The U.S. Supreme Court, Washington D.C. will at some point make a decision as to Trump’s appeals
Some states have already dismissed on appeals or by the plaintiffs as these cases are ongoing as I write. Meanwhile, lets enjoy this growing trend in all these states and hope that they continue and perhaps one-third or half of them (and more later?) step up and SAVE this country and true democracy—run by laws, not a man or necessarily “voters”—from this narcissistic autocrat and his cult members, shall we?
I have zero expectation that anything I ever say will end someone’s belief in their God. Not my goal or purpose. That alone belongs to the individual. ~ Zoe
'Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it' - Terry Pratchett
The Professor's Convatorium 