Category Archives: Trump

It is a Nice Idea

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Free speech is a pain in the rear. Always has been. Always will be.

It is a nice idea. If you have freedom of speech, you have the right to say whatever is on your mind without fear of repercussions. But there is a rub. It also means the guy standing next to you has freedom of speech. That means he can say whatever is on his mind, even if you find it to be abhorrent, disgusting, threatening and maybe even dangerous.

The men who designed our government met in secret and wrote a historic document detailing the structure of the national state and enumerating the powers and responsibilities of its parts. When the document was made public, the people were not pleased. They demanded a guarantee of their rights be written into the document.

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This is Sick

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The post above was made on his personal social media account by the man 77 million Americans sent back to the Oval Office. It was repeated by the official account of the White House. It is literally a declaration of war by Donald Trump on a major America City. MAGA apologists have been scrambling to pass it off as a joke, a cute and meaningless quip. It is not.

This is simply disgusting.

The meme Trump posts is a take on a scene from the movie Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic set during the war in Vietnam. That’s the war Trump sat out, having found a doctor to write him a medical excuse saying he could not serve because he had “bone spurs.” Fifty-Eight thousand Americans died in that war. Most had been involuntarily drafted.

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Trump’s Economy

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The charts above are certainly things Donald Trump did not want to see. Unemployment rate up. Total employment down. They come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics‘ report on employment in the United States for August. Just last month the July report, showing a slowing economy, led Trump to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. I wrote a few weeks ago that it was a case of shooting the messenger. Trump falsely claimed downward revisions in the August report were “rigged” to make Republicans look bad. BLS revisions are routine and based on updated employer data. It would be nearly impossible to “rig.”

Just 22,000 nonfarm payroll jobs were added in August. That was below expectations and continued the summer slowdown. The Unemployment Rate rose slightly to 4.3%, up from 4.2% in July. Long-Term Unemployment held steady at 1.93 million, now representing over 25% of all unemployed individuals.

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Trump’s Happy Labor Day

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As the nation celebrates Labor Day, Donald Trump is escalating his attack on the federal workforce by trying to strip union rights from more federal employees.

Trump signed an executive order targeting workers at key federal agencies like the National Weather Service and NASA, arguing for a “national security” exemption to circumvent collective bargaining rights. This is part of Trump’s broader strategy to diminish the power of labor unions, which have long been essential advocates for workers’ rights and protections.

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Trump Invades D.C.

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The tourist season in Washington, officially the “District of Columbia,” begins in April, about the time the cherry blossoms bloom. The nation’s capital is especially beautiful at that time. It is when school children from all over the nation arrive on a traditional trip to see the places they are familiar with from the news and to see the documents, faded though they may be, that were written to create the world’s first Constitutional democratic republic.

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249 Years In

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The date will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

John Adams, Letter to his Wife Abigail, July 3, 1776.

That guy could sure write, couldn’t he? John Adams was prescient. He accurately described the way we celebrate Independence Day. He did get the date wrong. He was certain July 2nd would be the date we celebrate. That was the day the Continental Congress passed Virginia’s resolution on independence. July 4th, the day we do celebrate, was the day Congress approved the text of the Declaration of Independence. The document, primarily written by Thomas Jefferson, spelled out the reasons for the thirteen colonies’ separation from England.

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Bombing Iran

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It has become routine. Every two- or three-days Donald Trump does something more atrocious than before and it interrupts whatever I was doing and prompts a cycle of disgust, fear, and rage and often provokes one of these blogs, forcing me to put side something I thought was more interesting. I have come to hate the fact that he sucks all the oxygen out of the room.

But despite that, I find myself unable to get upset about Trump’s recent decision to bomb Iran‘s nuclear facilities. In fact, my initial thought was simply, why did it take so long?

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