An Aphorism For Today's Times!

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A USELESS PIECE OF INFORMATION! THERE IS ONLY INFORMATION FOR WHICH YOU DO NOT CURRENTLY HAVE A USE!

So far as I know, I actually invented that two sentence aphorism. At least, I am the first person I ever heard use it in public. I have always loved information and I actually grew up reading nearly all of a set of World Book Encyclopedias which my parents bought for me. Before they bought that particular set, I read an earlier, less complex set of encyclopedias which they had bought for my sister who was eight years older. I have no idea when the first occurence was in which that phrase popped into my head. It must have been some situation in which a previously obscure bit of trivia had been floating in my brain without a purpose and suddenly a situation arose when I could drag it out of the dark and dusty synapses and foist it upon someone else. But the situation in which I was reminded just last night of that wonderful aphorism occurred during a conversation by phone with a relative in which we were discussing the terrible political disaster in which the United States now finds itself with TRAITOR Trump and his Criminal Syndicate which poses as a "cabinet". The person with whom I was talking brought up the name of the Right Wing Radical Repugnican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky. I brought up the fact that Congressman Massie, one of the most extreme Right Wing Radical Repugnicans in congress in a time when the Repugnican delegation is the most extreme in the history of the nation, is currently in agreement with Congresswoman Axexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most liberal members of congress, that the attack which TRAITOR Trump ordered against nuclear sites in Iran is unconstitutional. My relative then stated that they think Massie has ulterior motives to which I agreed but stated that in my opinion he is seeking an opportunity to try to get himself into the White House and is actually intelligent enough to pull off that crime. I then asked my relative if they knew where Congressman Massie's college degree was achieved. My relative, who had no idea where Massie got his degree, stated that they just want to "ignore Massie" which I consider one of the most asinine statements I ever heard. I made an honest attempt to make the point that Massie and his wife both hold degrees from MIT, which proves they are both smart enough to pull off a robbery of an American election, especially if we consider that TRAITOR Trump, one of the stupidest people alive, can pull it off. My relative still insisted that they just want to "ignore Massie" and that it doesn't matter where he got his degree. At this point, I insist that the aphorism above is definitely applicable in such a situation especially when we combine it with another from Sun-Tzu whcih states that If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Both I and my relative consider Congressman Massie to be an enemy of both Democracy and the United States. Yet my relative is willing to state that they are willing to ignore that enemy and to disregard a very pertinent piece of information about him, the fact that he holds a degree from one of the most prestigious universities in the nation. That degree, that piece of information, makes Congressman Massie more dangerous than if he had just barely skated through a university studies degree at Podunk Community College. I am perpetually baffled in today's world to see fairly well educated people such as my relative who are willing to attempt to disregard any piece of information about the key people who pose the greatest danger to our country since World War II. GOD HELP US ALL!

America's Laying Hens Announce A Strike

In a stunning announcement today which was provided to all major American news outlets by their representatives, the Dominecker Rooster John L. Lewis Jones and Attorney Ovum Brown of Quiche, West Virgina, the laying hens of America announced their intentions to stage a strike and walkout unless their multiple demands are met. They say that on Memorial Day, May 26, 2025, all the hens of America will cross the road(s) in every zip code across the country which has not already made the presence of chickens pullus non grata. Messers Jones and Brown, in their joint press conference, stated that the laying hens of America have finally reached the end of their road as captive, poorly paid workers and will cease all egg production for the foreseeable future. John L. Lewis Jones perched on the podium to deliver his portion of the demands and called on all other roosters, capons, and chickens who are gender neutral to join in the effort. They say that all egg production, insect extermination, and early morning services as alarm clocks will cease as of sunrise on Memorial Day. The hens provided a written statement which was read to the attending members of the media by their attorney Ovum Brown. Mr. Brown stated that the hens are sick and tired of being seen simply as egg production devices while being held in captivity in cages, seeing their eggs and potential offspring roll away down automated systems to be sold at what are now truly exorbitant prices due to the fact that TRAITOR Trump will do nothing to lower egg prices while using thousands of raw egg yolks each year to maintain his orange facsimile of a tan and eating thousands of others to maintain his fictitious weight of whatever amount it is over the stated 210 pounds. The hens' statement, as read by Ovum Brown, also said that the hens are tired of being deprived of the opportunity to love whom they wish, and demand that each week the hen in each facility who lays the most eggs be given one day off, and they mean off the property, to spend that day with the rooster of their choice. The hens document also stated that each commercial laying hen is expected to lay more than 300 eggs per year or be sold off to slaughter houses to become filler material in hot pockets, TV dinners, and heat and eat entrees. The hens say this strike will continue until each and every hen is allowed to spend the last 6 months of her egg laying life of three years in a free range setting on a farm where an equal number of handsome, virile, melodious roosters live to serve the desires of the hens. At the end of that six months, the striking hens statement went on to say they must be set free in an adjoining farm along with the male companion of their choice to live, love, and produce happy young offspring who will become just as handsome and melodious as their fathers. The statement from the hens also addressed the strongly negative impact which TRAITOR Trump's tariffs have had on the price of eggs as well as everything else which is either a farm product or some feed or equipment which is necessary for farm management. The hens say their strike will continue until the tariffs are ended along with the importation of poor quality (and now higher priced) chicken feed which is contributing to the early deaths of so many hard working laying hens, the very hens who are such an integral part of the nation and the GDP. The statement ended with this sentence: "This is not a simple matter of the chicken or the egg; but the tariffs must end or all of America will be eating hoe cakes, oatmeal, or grits for breakfast for a very long time." The press conference by Messers Jones and Brown ended with a courteous cock-a-doodle-doo from the Dominecker who exited the room perched on the shoulder of his associate.

Reviewing The Last Four Years and Anticipating The Next Four Disastrous Years In America!

I wrote this roughly four years ago and posted it quite a while after that on this blog under the name "A Liberal Political Action Plan". I am looking back on it now knowing full well that it will be a miracle if we manage to hang onto any of the few positive wins we have had from it over the past four years. But, whatever happens in the near future, those of us who know just how much we have lost in the November election of 2024 must not surrender to TRAITOR Trump and the Criminal Syndicate he is assembling for his imminent return to the White House, the scene of many of his worst crimes against the USA, the world, and the planet. Their overall plan is to both rob and destroy the government of the United States. None of the people who have been named as nominees for cabinet positions is fit to run a one car funeral, clean shit out of cages at a local humane society, or hold any position of public trust at any level, literally down to constables and dog catchers. Each of them has been required to swear fealty to TRAITOR Trump and been willing to do so in anticipation of whateverit is they think they can steal for themselves. A few of them, including TRAITOR Trump, are already convicted felons. A few of them are accused sex offenders including TRAITOR Trump. All of them are willing contributors to his overall plan for extensive TREASON. None of them are to any degree trustworthy. God Help Us All! We have now lost control of all three branches of government. We cannot allow the 2026 midterm election to occur without regaining control of congress. It is the only hope we have to prevent the loss of democracy in America. In the two years before that 2026 election,anything which can be stolen or destroyed by legislation or executive order will be stolen and destroyed. In the meantime, all of us who understand just how disastrous this recent election was must not just sit down and shut up. We cannotand must now simply sit idly by. Every time one of the current members of congress leaves office for any reason, whether it be resignation, death, or arrest and conviction, we must ensure that their replacement is a loyal member of the Democratic party no matter what state they represent. We must continue to speak outand educate the electorate about the ongoing crime spree by TRAITOR Trump and his Criminal Syndicate. We must Stand Up, Speak Up, and Speak Out! I will return to this post in the next two or three days and update it with reviews of each section below and a discussion of how we have both succeeded and failed in the attempt to bring its goals about. I apologize at this time for the lack of time to complete it today. Introduction: November 3, 2020, was a mixed day for liberal and Democratic political aficionados. While we won the White House, the election is obviously under attack from TRAITOR Trump and his allies both in the US and in Russia. While nearly every legitimate world leader has congratulated and consulted with Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin is still denying the winner any acknowledgement and, like his puppet in Washington is striving to hold onto their ability to damage America. Democrats managed to retain control of the House of Representatives and had a net gain in the senate but the two runoff races in Georgia leave the Senate in doubt. In Kentucky, where most of us live or have roots, we have an excellent governor who is under attack from a slate of elected Republican officials and a solidly Republican state legislature. They have extensive plans to further damage the governor’s ability to successfully manage the state in a time of steadily increasing crisis and they probably have the votes to override most of his potential vetoes of their damaging legislation. The Kentucky Attorney General is joining in every Republican law suit he can in order to further damage the governor’s ability to succeed. The one bright side to the Attorney General’s situation is that he has shot himself in the foot with his highly questionable actions in the Breonna Taylor grand jury and seriously damaged his standing with the African American base from both parties which had previously coalesced to elect him. Kentucky and the nation are both under unrelenting attack by Right Wing Radical Republicans. In this writing, I am setting forth what I consider to be goals for each of us as individuals and all of us as a group for which we should be working on a daily basis just as we all did in the months preceding the November 2020 General Election. I fully realize that all of you might not agree with all of my goals and recognize your right to do so. But, we are small, hard working, intelligent, committed group of politically motivated women and men who have proven over the past several months what we are capable of as individuals. We can prove over the next months and years that we can, as a cohesive group, achieve a great deal more. I do not visualize this group of people becoming a major national force in politics but I also know that we can help promote rational, progressive values in our area and, to a lesser degree in the nation as a whole since each of us has some level of networks with other likeminded people all across the nation. In my original communication to you about forming such a group, I mentioned the idea that, at some time in the future, we might consider meeting face to face at least once. I would love to see that happen. But, for the foreseeable future, that is not possible or advisable until the Covid Crisis is under control. But the dangerous issues being debated in the nation require immediate actions and we have all proven that we are capable of engaging in those actions on an individual basis. I am setting out below several important goals we can work on and I hope you agree with me and decide to take some actions to support those goals. Let me also say that I have absolutely no personal political goals other than being a continual force for good. I do not intend to run for political office and I never will. But I do want to put your mind at ease about the possibility that my intentions could be less than altruistic. I am nearly seventy years old and my wife has been in a wheelchair for more than twenty years. I am also working nearly daily on my career as a published Appalachian writer. I have more than enough to occupy my mind and my time. So let’s look at what I consider to be important actions we can take to help what I hope can become a changed and grateful nation. Immediate Goals: 1) Support President-elect Joe Biden and his administration to overcome the irrational and anti-American opposition to his election which is rooted in the both the legal smoke screens and the Stochastic Terrorism of TRAITOR Trump. We can speak out on Joe Biden’s behalf. We can support whatever actions it becomes necessary for him to take to legally occupy the White House on January 20, 2020, as mandated by the US Constitution. We can write letters to newspapers and magazines on his behalf. We can confront the supporters of TRAITOR Trump wherever and whenever we encounter them. We can make telephone calls to radio and television stations to support him. We can each make whatever monetary contributions to his transition team which we can afford. 2) We can also support the ongoing efforts in Georgia to elect Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the US Senate in Georgia. As of this writing, the Republicans hold 50 seats in the US Senate without winning either seat in Georgia. If Warnock and Ossoff both win, Vice-President Harris will hold the tie-breaking vote in the senate which would make President Biden’s work much easier. We can each support these two important candidates in all the ways we sought to help Joe Biden, Amy McGrath and other candidates. We can volunteer to make phone calls for them without ever leaving our homes. We can write letters. We can make whatever monetary contributions each of us is comfortable with. 3) For those of us who live in Kentucky, we must support Governor Andy Beshear in his work to save this state both medically and economically. In order to do that, we must actively oppose the efforts of the elected state officials to destroy the governor’s work. We must publicly, in every medium possible, confront their attacks on the governor with telephone calls to their offices; telephone calls to our friends and random strangers; letters to newspapers and television and radio outlets; and continuing everything each of did to help elect the governor and to fight for those candidates who would help his cause. Intermediate Goals: 1) In two years, one third of the US Senate and the entire House of Representatives will be up for reelection. In 2022, Rand Paul will be up for reelection in Kentucky and we have several potentially good candidates to replace him such as Charles Booker, Andy Beshear, and others. We must work to defeat Rand Paul just as hard as we tried to replace Mitch McConnell this year and, in this case, we must win. 2) We will also have an opportunity to replace many of the Republican state legislators in Kentucky including, especially, Goforth, Wheeler, and the entire Republican state delegation. We work to defeat them by assisting viable candidates, inducing candidates to run, and registering and turning out Democratic votes. We must develop a plan to register a majority new eighteen year old potential voters, to educate those voters, and to keep them in the Democratic fold. I have at least one good idea on that front which I will discuss later. 3) In 2023, we will be facing another statewide election in Kentucky and we must work in all the ways above to elect a statewide ticket of Democratic candidates including Governor Beshear if that is what he believes is his best option. We should also do all we can to induce as many of his inner circle of cabinet members and key advisors to seek either lesser statewide offices, congressional offices, mayoral posts in our larger cities, or positions as county judge executives. In Conclusion: This has been worked out in my head for several months although this is the first attempt I have made to put it into writing. It is at best a rough draft, a preliminary plan, which I wanted to get to all of you before the fire in our bellies dies as we move away from the recent election. But always remember that the next election always begins, at the latest, when the votes have been counted in the most recent one. We must keep fighting as if our lives, our nation, and our state depends on it, which it definitely does. Please send me your impressions of this set of idea along with your honest criticisms and your own ideas which may differ from mine.

Have You Ever Called Vladimr Putin? I Never Have!

 

 As pre-release copies of Bob Woodward's new book "War" were sent out in advance of its October 15, 2024, release date, nearly every legitimate, ethical news agency in the  nation began to report on some of the most important revelations the book contains.  Most of those news stories were similar to the one which PBS ran on October 8, 2024, one week before the book's release.  I quote from that story below: 

"Donald Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic, Bob Woodward reported in his new book “War.”"  (PBS via AP, October 8, 2024.  https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-had-as-many-as-7-private-calls-with-putin-since-leaving-office-bob-woodward-writes-in-new-book )

I received my copy of the book on October 19, 2024, and have not read the entire book yet.  I am currently snowed under with a pile of new books on my "To Be Read" shelf, and was forced to simply use the index to check all the book's references to both TRAITOR Trump and Putin, the man who has owned him for forty years.  The book is stunning in what it says about TRAITOR Trump and his deep connections and indebtedness to the worst dictator in the world. You must also consider who Bob Woodward is when you examine what he says in this book.  Bob Woodward, along with Carl Bernstein, was responsible for breaking the story of Watergate which resulted in the end of the political career of former President Richard Nixon.  Woodward has been a fixture in Washington, DC, and world politics and literature since the early 1970's. He has published about 20 other books in his career, nearly all have been best sellers, and his integrity has never been questioned.  His reputation is impeccable.  If he prints it, it is a fact!  But what I find stunning is not that TRAITOR Trump was maintaining contact with Vladimir Putin.  For years now, a large number of other honest, ethical journalists have been telling you and the rest of the world that TRAITOR Trump is just that, a TRAITOR.  I have published on this blog numerous discussions of other books by other writers about the thousands of crimes of TRAITOR Trump.  He is a TRAITOR, nothing more, nothing less, and he has been for at least forty years.  But I have known several retired military personnel in the last 10 to 20 years who have all been saying exactly what I have been saying.  We have universally believed that for some long period of time some covert channel of communication existed between TRAITOR Trump and his Russian handlers who were probably not Putin until after Putin and Russia managed to steal the 2016 election and place TRAITOR Trump inside the White House.  Timothy Snyder has actually compiled and posted a list of 50 times TRAITOR  Trump was involved in exchanges of power, money, or influence with Putin and Russia. I have quoted and cited numerous authors over the last 9 years who have said the same thing.  In this blog post, I quoted the entirety of page 220 of Timothy Snyder's excellent book "The Road To Unfreedom" in which Snyder provides another long list of the incidents in which TRAITOR Trump has interacted with Russia, Putin, and other Russian agents.  What Bob Woodward tells us in his new book is nothing new! It just comes from his contacts with a different source, an employee of TRAITOR Trump who spilled the beans.  And when we consider if Bob Woodward knows how to develop and utilize a source, just remember that he and Bernstein were the men who got a Deputy Director of the FBI to divulge what he knew about Richard Nixon's crimes, to become known as Deep Throat, and to admit it publicly before his death.  If Bob Woodward says it, he can prove it.  

So now let's look at what Bob Woodward is saying about TRAITOR Trump and his contacts with Vladimir Putin.  First, let's look at the second half of the allegation from the PBS story quoted and cited above, that TRAITOR Trump sent Putin "COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic".  Woodward discuses that fact on page 33 of his book in this manner: 

"President Trump had secretly sent a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use as the virus spread rapidly through Russia.  "Please don't tell anybody you sent these to me," Putin said to Trump.  "I don't care", Trump said. "Fine."  "No, no," Putin said, I don't want you to tell anybody, because people will get mad at you, not me.They don't care about me."  (Bob Woodward, "War", page 33.)

Then on page 98 of "War", Woodward writes directly about an interview he had with TRAITOR Trump at Mar-a-Lago:

"Putin respects me.  And I respect Putin. I think Putin likes me.  I think I like him.  I do like him", Trump concluded.  "Bob Woodward, "War", page 98.)

And there we have another repetition of the kind of ignorance contained in TRAITOR Trump's famous Love Letters to Kim Jung Un.  His desire to please a dictator, especially a dictator whose banks saved him from financial disaster many years ago, is the ruling element in his psyche.  Woodward begins chapter Seventy-Five of his book on page 356 with the discussion of the phone calls TRAITOR Trump has had with Vladimir Putin since leaving the White House on January 20, 2021.  This discussion of the telephone calls is what shocked much of the journalistic world since, after leaving the White House, even a legitimately elected president, which TRAITOR Trump never was, cannot conduct, or attempt to conduct foreign policy with legitimate world leaders without the clear approval of the sitting government.  It is a clear cut violation of The Logan Act of 1799.  It is a felony under federal law.  Here is what Woodward has to say about those telephone calls: 

"In early 2024, a Trump aide loitered outside the former president's office.  Trump had sent the aide out of the room so he could have what he said was a private phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  According to Trump's aide, there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021.  When I asked Trump's campaign aide Jason Miller, in July if he knew about phone calls between Trump and Putin, Miller's answer was, "Um, ah, not that, ah, not that I'm aware of."  Is Trump able to talk to Putin now? "I'm sure they know how to get in touch with each other," Miller said."  (Bob Woodward, "War", page 356.)  

A little farther down the page, Woodward says, "The Logan Act makes it illegal for private citizens to negotiate disputes without the clear authorization of the sitting US government."  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem!  Traitor Trump has clearly committed multiple violations of The Logan Act.  It is highly likely that in the process of those violations he has also committed multiple violations of The Espionage Act. And, without a doubt, he also committed violations of the Sedition Act during his involvement in and orchestration of January 6.  But additionally, we need to ask ourselves this: "if he has maintained regular contact with Vladimir Putin, the most dangerous enemy of the United States, in addition to having stolen and lied to the FBI about hundreds of classified federal documents, what has he passed on to Putin from the contents of those documents".  As a citizen of the United States of America, you need to accept the fact that TRAITOR Trump is an agent of Russia, a TRAITOR, and an existential threat to the existence of American Democracy.  And you need to vote accordingly on November 5, 2024. 

 

 

 

My Plan From Now Until November 5, 2024!

 

There are only 41 days from now, September 26, 2024, until November 5, 2024, the date of the 2024 US Presidential Election.  I have a plan for what I will attempt to accomplish between now and then which will include several goals, all of which are individual steps in my plan to do everything I can as a single human citizen of the greatest country on earth to help ensure that Kamala Harris will be elected as the next President of The United States, and to ensure that TRAITOR Trump is never again allowed anywhere near the White House.  I hope that each of you who reads this has a similar plan and will do everything in your power to carry that out to its fully justified and righteous completion.  Listed below are some of the steps in that plan, hopefully not the full list of steps since I will be thinking everyday until November 5, 2024, is there one more thing I can do to ensure that America is safe from TRAITOR Trump.  Among the things I will be doing is reading as much as I can of the list of books below, and each day adding on this blog a post discussing what I have found in these books.  Some of the books on this list are nearly fresh off the press.  Some are several years old and were either published prior to and because of the 2016 election or as a result of the horrible outcomes of that stolen election.  Every one of these books is a very important book.  I have read and written about several of them on this blog in the past.  Others I have not read but ordered over the last few weeks because of the potential outcomes of this election, potentially wonderful if all goes well, potentially  the death of American Democracy if all goes wrong and TRAITOR Trump is allowed to return to the White House after having already been indicted for 94 felonies and convicted of 34, after his having created, fomented, and caused the worst insurrection against the duly constituted government of the United States since the Civil War, and after the many evidences of his decades long deep, dangerous connections to Russia and Putin.  The list of books is appended to the bottom of this post and other, more easily completed tasks will be listed and discussed briefly before the book list.  I beseech each of you to do as many of these tasks as you possibly can.  This is literally  the most important election in the history of the United States just as the previous two were.  One of those elections, 2020, turned out in the best interests of the country and for almost four years we have reaped the rewards of that election.  The other of the two previous elections ended in the worst possible way and we have paid horrible prices for that outcome over the intervening four years.  Sadly, we are not, and will not for some unforeseeable time in the future, done with suffering the outrageous costs of the 2016 election, and will not be done for many years to come.  It will take at least fifty years for this country to overcome the incredible moral and ethical damage which TRAITOR Trump has already  done to this country.  We will never be able to overcome the increased ethical, moral, governmental damage which TRAITOR Trump would do to the country in four more years of his work to destroy America and American Democracy.  Do all you can to help the country avoid that outcome!

!) Every day from now until the next election I will be doing everything I can to convince other Americans to do the right thing and elect Kamala Harris to the presidency.  I will confront the ignorance and TREASON which attempts to justify the election of TRAITOR Trump, anywhere, anytime, from anybody.

2) I will VOTE FOR KAMALA HARRIS and so should you.  I will do all I can to convince every person I discuss this election with to do the same.  If I am needed, I will haul voters to the polls, I will spend my time, gasoline, and effort to ensure the best turnout possible for Kamala Harris in this election.  If necessary, I will stop traffic at a polling place and help little old ladies and gentlemen across the street to vote if I see the need.

3) I will use every form of communication available to me between now and the election to spread the truth about both Kamala Harris and TRAITOR Trump.  This election is literally between Good and Evil.  No more dangerous human on earth exists today who could be placed in the White House.  Tell everyone you know the truth.  Use your personal communication skills in face to face talks with others.  Use social media if you use it.  Use your telephone to call others and urge them to vote for Kamala Harris and the entire Democratic ticket wherever they live in the US.  Volunteer for phone call duty with your state Democratic party.  Put up a yard sign at your property and, if you live in a community which prohibits that, tell you HOA to Kiss Your Ass and appeal their decisions against you to the highest arbiters possible at least until November 5.  If you have the money, hire a small plane to fly a banner over the local high school football game on Friday night.  If you belong to some form of club, fraternity, sorority, or other group activity speak out before and after their meetings. If it allowed, speak out during those meetings when the most people will hear the truth.  Do all you can in any way possible to help Kamala Harris win this election.  America and American Democracy literally depend on the outcome of this election.

4) Now let's talk about this list of books.  All of them are important but I will list some of the shorter, new, arguably more important books first and the older books last.  But remember this, every one of these books contains truths about TRAITOR Trump and the danger he presents to the country.  

    A) "On Freedom" by Timothy Snyder has just come off the press and my copy has just hit my mail box literally as I have been writing this post.  It will be the next book I read cover to cover after I complete the current Timothy Snyder book which I am about two thirds of the way through. That book is "The Road To Unfreedom".   I cannot list enough superlatives about Timothy Snyder and his books.  "The Road To Unfreedome" is described in this manner on his website: Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means—and this is leading us into crisis.  According to Snyder, the goal of the book is to allow us to design a government in which we and future generations can flourish.  I assure you we cannot design such a government with TRAITOR Trump and his cult anywhere near the White House.  

B)  "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder is a wonderful book and I am currently waiting for my third purchased copy to arrive.  One previous copy I passed on to cousin who is like a brother to me and joins all of us in resisting TRAITOR Trump and his TREASON.  A second purchased copy was accidentally left on a toilet paper dispenser in a restroom at the Kentucky Clinic.  I only hope that it fell into hands of someone who was open to its ideas, read and understood the truths it contains.  Snyder's website describes the book in this manner: On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.  I have written about resistance on this blog in the past and read more than one book on political resistance in response to the terrible damage which TRAITOR Trump has caused this country over the last ten years.  One of the books I read in that vein is "A Nation Defiant: Poland's Resistance To The German Occupation Of Poland" by Richard S. Fuegner which I wrote about in this blog post in February 2017.  In January of 2017, I also constructed a list of books to be read by those who understand that it is the most patriotic act possible to resist a destructive government such as the Nazi and Fascists of WWII and a possible Fascist government to be constructed by TRAITOR Trump if this election goes awry as 2016 did.  Every book on that list is well worth reading in today's times but should be read only after you have read the books on this blog post.  

C) "The Road To Unfreedom" by Timothy Snyder is the third of his books which I am adding at the front of this list, and I realize that some of you are already wondering if I should add so many books by the same author.  Timothy Snyder is the professor at Yale University who holds the endowed Richard C. Levin Chair in History and is perhaps the greatest living historian in America in addition to being the best author of history, especially about current politics in America, World War II, and The Holocaust.  This book is about the rise of Fascism in Russia and other parts of Europe, Vladimir Putin and his well publicized plan to create what he likes to call Eurasia which he has stated will stretch from Vladivostok to Lisbon, literally putting Russia and Putin in control of nearly all of Eastern Europe and a large portion of Asia.  It details Putin's fascination with the deceased Russian political philosopher Ivan Ilyin.  

D) Now we move away from the works of Timothy Snyder but not away from Yale University.  The book "How Fascism Works" by Jason Stanley is exactly what the title says.  It is great description of how Fascists rise to power in susceptible countries, gain control of governments in such countries, and move on to destroy those countries.  Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky professor of philosophy at Yale.  His works are not as voluminous or publicly popular as Snyder's but they are equally important for the person who understands just how dangerous these times  have become in American politics because of TRAITOR Trump and his cult.  

E) The next book on this list is "How Democracies Die" by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.  It is about exactly what the title says, the death of democracies. Steven Levitsky is a professor political science at Harvard University.  Daniel Ziblatt is Director of Harvard University's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies where he is also Eaton Professor of Government.  Their book is described as being about how elected leaders can gradually subvert the democratic process to increase their power. The book also offers stark warnings about the impact of the Republican Party and Donald Trump on U.S. democracy.  Are you beginning to understand that I am not the only writer in America who understands that TRAITOR Trump is the greatest present danger to Democracy and the United States?  

F) This next book is one of the most important to come out of the stolen 2016 election and I wrote about it several years ago on another list of books I was recommending at that time.  It is "The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump", edited by Dr. Bandy X. Lee, M. D., a professor of psychiatry and the law at Harvard University. She went to Harvard after having taught at Yale for 17 years.  The book is written in a series of articles by 27 of the most respected, most experienced, and most honest psychiatrists in America.  Each article details and explains the seriously dangerous nature of TRAITOR Trump's mental illness. It was a massive best seller when it was published in 2017.  It will be an important book so long as TRAITOR Trump lives outside a federal prison cell.  

G) "Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness And The Mind Of Donald Trump" was edited by John Gartner, Steven Buser, and Leonard Cruz and is also written in separate articles as the Lee edited book is.  But these national experts are discussing the unfitness of TRAITOR Trump to be in charge of the American nuclear arsenal.  Each of the writers in this book are experts in the field of nuclear weaponry and/or nuclear war. Several of these authors are retired American military officers who worked in the area of nuclear weaponry during their military careers.  Others were journalists who specialized in the military field.  

H) I have not read a word of this next book yet.  But you can bet that I will, at least, have read the concluding section and written about it before the election. The book in question?  "On Call: A Doctor's Journey In Public Service" by Anthony Fauci, M. D.  One chapter in that section is entitled "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" and without a doubt that chapter is about Fauci's horribly demeaning treatment by TRAITOR Trump during the Covid crisis when Fauci and many other researchers at the National Institutes of Health were working day and night trying to find a successful treatment and intervention program to curtail the Covid epidemic, and were being belittled, resisted, mistreated, minimized, and publicly abused by a TRAITOR who proved on a daily basis that he knew less about Covid and epidemic management than he knew about any other subject on earth. I should also say here that I am very familiar with NIH, ,having traveled there regularly for about five years in the 1990's due to my wife suffering from an incredibly rare and undiagnosed genetic anomaly which has placed her in a wheelchair for the past 25 years.  We traveled to NIH about 3 times a year for a week at a time for their team in the National Institute for Diabetes and Kidney Disease.  During that time, we never met Dr. Fauci, but we did meet the Director of the NIDKD, Dr. Simeon Taylor, M. D. along with hundreds of other NIH employees in most departments at all levels of responsibility.  For the rest of my life, I will be a fan a defender of NIH and all its employees who are many of the finest humans I have ever met in my life.  

It is possible that I might add a few other excellent books to this list before election day.  I realize full well that most of us could not hope to read them all in the next 41 days.  I am asking you to choose a few from the list to read before the election.  And, regardless of the outcome of the election, please read them all when you can.  They will give you a very good education about American Democracy, the dangers TRAITOR Trump always has and always will present to  this country and to every one of its citizens so long as he walks the earth a free man.  He must not be allowed to live in the White House again.  He must not be allowed to destroy this country and democracy.  He must be convicted of his crimes against America, American Democracy, the entire civilized world, and the planet itself.  GO VOTE!  

Immoral and Amoral, Two Very Different Words

 

I have to admit that using a photograph of the cover of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as the header photograph for this blog post might have been a fine way to run off potential readers.  But it is a far better thing to do than to begin this post with a photograph of either of the two people whose actions have merited their mention in this larger discussion of two related, but very different words: IMMORAL and AMORAL.  Or if we use their noun forms instead of the adjectival forms: IMMORALITY and AMORALITY.  If we refer to the "Concise Oxford English Dictionary", which I do frequently, we find that IMMORAL means "not conforming to accepted forms of morality".  AMORAL means "lacking a moral sense; unconcerned whether something is right or wrong".  Now you ask, what on earth could he be thinking to write a blog post about just two words in the vast English language which has always required 26 volumes for the complete Oxford English Dictionary.  This is not the first time I have written a blog post about the differences between two words.  This blog post about "Practicing" and "Professing" came up for the very same reason this one has, because our country and our democracy are under threat today by some of the most dangerous enemies this country has ever had, enemies who falsely claim to be devoted to this country and the values on which it has been built and which have made it the world's greatest representative democracy.  AMORAL and IMMORAL are very closely related and come from the same root word, and they both refer to deficiencies in morals in a human, or more appropriately, in a human soul.  IMMORAL refers to a person who lacks sufficient moral values or moral fiber, if you prefer, to meet the customary minimum standards of a civilized society.  But the IMMORAL person has one unique quality which the AMORAL person does not.  The IMMORAL person has the capacity to change, learn, improve, and to develop sufficient morals in order to become a socially acceptable person who is worthy of trust, respect, and, in some cases, admiration.  The AMORAL person is not built the same way psychologically as the IMMORAL person.  The AMORAL person lacks the ability to change, learn, improve and to develop morally to become a better human being who is worthy of trust, respect, or even admiration.  Psychologically, the AMORAL person is a very different breed of animal and, even more to be distrusted, disrespected, and guarded against in all forms of human interaction.  They have no internal controls or moderating factors to make them capable of successful, productive, and humane interactions with the human race.  Some examples of people who were AMORAL instead of IMMORAL would include Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Benito Mussolini, and Sadaam Hussein.  

 

We are facing the most momentous presidential election in the history of this nation which is almost 250 years old.  Even the presidential election of 1860 was not as potentially consequential as the presidential election of 2024.  If the 1860 election had gone wrong and Abraham Lincoln had not been elected, the United States would have simply split into two separate countries and both might well still be in existence today.  If the presidential election of 2024 goes wrong, the most likely outcome would be that while the title of United States of America might remain in use for an extended period of time, the United States of America would cease to exist in practice, not just as the most powerful democracy in the world, but as a democracy at all.  Fascism and Democracy are the real opponents in this presidential election with Democracy, as it has existed for almost 250 years, being represented by Vice President Kamala Harris and whomever she chooses as her running mate ; and with TRAITOR Trump and J. D. Vance representing the future Fascist and oppressive entity which might continue to exist under the name United States of America but would almost instantly become a government devoted to the destruction of nearly all individual rights, and totally uncommitted to defending our mutual interests jointly with our long term fellow democracies. This election is literally a contest between Good and Evil, Democracy and Fascism, Liberty and Totalitarianism, AMORALITY and MORALITY.  TRAITOR Trump and J. D. Vance both represent everything that is evil, destructive, dangerous, unethical, and AMORAL in the world today.  There is no crime which either of these men will not commit if it will further their momentary gains.  We, as loyal Americans, must ensure that MORALITY wins in this election.  We must not allow two men who belittle anyone different from them, and seek to destroy anything human, animal, mineral, or vegetable which stands between them and their short term desires. As Americans at the voting booth, we must support Democracy, Humanity, Fealty, Decency, Patriotism, and above all MORALITY.  We must not allow our country to follow in the historically malevolent footsteps of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist Cambodia, or any other nation which allowed itself, in the course of human history, to become the slave of a dictator and that dictator's evil.  

The Sad State Of Both Education And Politics In America And Appalachia Today

  An Update To Two Earlier Blog Posts

In two other blog posts from the last few days, I wrote about my decision to buy and publicly wear a baseball cap with the caption "Jack Smith Making America Great Again".  I had written about the fact that I had worn it to several businesses on this past Friday, February 9, 2024, and had not had a single person speak to me about the baseball cap either to thank me for wearing it or attempt to convince me that I was an idiot and had made a terrible mistake to support the work of Jack Smith, the Special Prosecutor who will, if there is a God in Heaven, send TRAITOR Trump to the federal penitentiary for the rest of his slimy, treasonous life.  I also wrote another blog post yesterday, February 10, 2024, about the absolutely dangerous and destructive Right Wing Radical Repugnican majority in the Kentucky state legislature and, in particular, a pending Kentucky State Senate bill (Senate Bill #4) which is intended to stop Kentucky school teachers from using their unused sick days to add to their service time upon retirement which has been a standing benefit provided to Kentucky teachers and other state employees for many years.  This is an absolutely asinine bill which will further exacerbate the state's ability to hire and retain competent teachers especially in light of the fact that their pay and benefit structure is already well below those of most other states.  In that particular post about the state legislature, I had also provided a link to the Kentucky State Senate Regular Session Record website from the Kentucky State Legislative Research Commision which provides complete information about every pending piece of legislation during the session.  I sincerely hope  that every concerned citizen of Kentucky or anyone else with a vested interest in the state will choose to visit and study that website, use it to inform and refine your beliefs and opinions about pending actions of the legislature, and then choose to speak out about, propagate, and vigorously defend those beliefs and opinions.  

 

Now, I am betting that most of my regular readers are wondering what all this writing about Kentucky Senate Bill #4 and the Right Wing Radical Repugnican majority in the state legislature has to do with wearing a baseball cap supporting the incredible work of Jack Smith and his investigative and prosecutorial team.  This is the story of that connection.  Yesterday, Saturday, February 10, 2024, I went as I usually do to my local Saturday hangout where I customarily eat lunch and spend time with two friends, one of which owns the hangout and the other who is a lifelong friend of that owner and my friend from several years.  It is also pertinent that the owner is a local business person with two businesses in the this county and has served almost twenty years in two separate terms on the county Board of Education.  I had spent probably an hour talking with my two friends when the owner's liberal son-in-law came downstairs from where he had been working without my knowledge.  This liberal son-in-law is also a friend of mine and we love to talk politics and other topics when we have the time together.  I called him over to show him my baseball cap which he appreciated greatly and we had a good laugh about it.  His father-in-law, the long term Board of Education member, then asked me, seriously, "Who is Jack Smith?" I told him, "the Special Prosecutor" and he never said a word further.  It is now pertinent for me to say that a Facebook friend of mine who is a retired college English professor had mentioned to me earlier that the reason I had not had anyone ask me about the baseball cap was because the people who customarily support TRAITOR Trump can't read.  I now have to admit that this friend was correct.  

My Board of Education member friend and I then continued our conversation in which I asked him what  he thought about Kentucky Senate Bill #4 and the fact that the majority in the state legislature was attempting to take away the right of Kentucky teachers to use their unused sick days to extend their time of service upon retirement.  To my surprise he said that the bill is a good idea and gave me a rambling justification that "when people retire the Boards of Education where they worked have to pay for that sick time at their current rate of pay instead of the rate of pay they were earning at the time they earned the sick time".  I asked what he thought about the probability that the bill, if it becomes law, will make it more difficult to hire and retain teachers in Kentucky.  He said,"Yes, it might but it's a good idea to pass that bill."  I was, to say the least, surprised if not shocked to hear that from a sitting Board of Education member in a county where I personally know that at least one teacher has been hired in the last year or two who did not have an education degree and all her prior work  history had been in a variety of public sales positions. Hence, she was hired under a special provision in the law which allows people with unrelated degrees and experience to be hired as teachers because of a hardship waiver if qualified teachers are not applying for the available jobs  I have no idea if it is relevant that the teacher to which I am referring is related to a member of my friend's extended family. But it is very relevant that he has a great niece who is a teacher and has chosen to work in another county located about two hours from this county where most of her close relativee live.  The county in which she works is one of the best counties in the state in terms of teacher pay and benefits.

But the most relevant aspect of all this for me is that I know a member of the local Board of Education who had no idea who Jack Smith is until I told him and is not concerned that every teacher in this state stands to lose a great deal of accumulated sick time, and therefore time of service which will lower their retirement pay when it has been a long standing aspect of employment in education in Kentucky.  And you can bet your sweet ass that if the Right Wing Radical Repugnican majority in the Kentucky State Legislature get away with taking that sick time feature of retirement away from teachers, their next move will be to take it away from every other employee of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  If Kentucky teachers don't Stand Up, Speak Up, and Speak Out strongly in their entire numbers against this legislation it will become law at a time when the current lieutenant governor is a former educator and she and the governor have fought tooth and nail for their entire time in office to try to force the legislature to give teachers a sizeable raise which would make them more equitably paid in comparison to their peers in other states. And, due to the veto proof majorities in both houses of the legislature any veto from the governor can only be a public statement of disagreement with the bill.  In fact, every state employee, both current and retired needs to be fighting to defend the teachers of Kentucky in this effort to stop this asinine bill from becoming law. If every state employee stood up with the teachers and expressed their intent to vote against any legislator who votes in support of this bill, it would never pass into law.  We should all be fighting to make Kentucky teachers the best paid and best compensated via other benefits in the nation.  When teachers are given excellent pay and benefits in this state, better qualified and more dedicated persons will strive to become teachers and to fulfill their careers until retirement.  Better teachers produce better educated citizens and those citizens produce better lifetime output than lesser educated citizens.  If we want a great state, we must hire and retain great teachers and pay them what they are worth in every other state in the nation.

"Professing" and "Practicing": Two Very Different Words

 

In American politics today and over the last 8 to 12 years, one of the most influential groups has been those who describe themselves as "Christians" or "Conservative Christians".  Yet, very rarely do any of these people describe themselves as "Practicing Christians".  And therein lies a very serious problem of religious, moral, ethical, and political dichotomy, or more bluntly, political hypocrisy.  The problem is rooted in the very basic moral, ethical, religious, and political difference between the two words "Practicing" and "Professing" as they are or can be applied to religion, theology, politics, morals, and ethics.  The Oxford Language website defines "Practicing" in this manner: "actively pursuing or engaged in a particular profession, occupation, or way of life". Their second definition of the word is this: observing the teaching and rules of a particular religion. The same Oxford Languages website defines "Professing" in this manner: claim that one has (a quality or feeling), especially when this is not the case.  Their second definition of the word "Practicing" is this:

affirm one's faith in or allegiance to (a religion or set of beliefs)".  The difference between those two definitions is at the heart of the many societal problems which are being created in America today by those self-described "Christians" or "Conservative Christians" and the Right Wing Radical Repugnican politicians they have assisted in rising to power at all levels of elected offices in America.  Most of them, if not all, are simply "Professing Christians", if they profess any beliefs at all other than their belief in the abolition of most individual constitutional rights, and they are not remotely "Practicing Christians".  Anyone, anytime, anywhere can profess to be or support anything without any attempt to practice the core tenets of whatever it is they profess.  I have written in the past on this blog about these people and the core differences between what they claim to be compared to what they actually are based on their daily efforts to destroy the US Constitution and the country which is based on that constitution.  

These people under discussion are working on a daily basis to create laws which force the government to intervene in citizens lives in areas which have clearly been forbidden to the government by the Bill of Rights and hundreds of previously approved laws based on that Bill of Rights.  They support book banning, voter suppression, governmental control of the medical decisions of citizens which have clearly been forbidden to the government for more than 200 years.  And, what they never would admit, is that based on their egregious invasions into personal rights, they are indirectly, and sometimes directly, supporting the total destruction of representative democracy in America.  They are simply using the Bible and the churches of the nation, (or at least those churches which allow them to) to abolish the concept enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  They are more than willing to completely and falsely deny the fact that no citizen can be happy, at liberty, or free to live a live based on individual rights when these people are daily working to destroy, abolish, and forever eliminate the right of those citizens to make their own decisions in their daily lives. They are brazenly denying the basic constitutional concept of Separation of Church and State.  They are literally willing to steal and abrogate anyone's freedoms whose beliefs do not support their own totalitarian beliefs.  They are the greatest danger to the perpetuation of democracy in America today. 

A Year To Be Moderately Thankful For!

 

Ever since June 16, 2015, America had little to be thankful for until the results of the November 2020 presidential election were finalized and President Biden was sworn in and the nation was once again in safe hands after four years of having a TRAITOR living illegally in the White House based on his TREASON with Putin and Russia.  But, after the election was settled, we were still due to face an act of Insurrection, Domestic Terrorism, and TREASON on January 6th, 2021.  The consequences of that act on January 6th are still playing themselves out both in the nations law enforcement and judicial communities and it will be at least 20 to 30 years before the end of the appeals, prison sentences, and further insurrections play themselves out.  America will continue to suffer for at least another generation due to the TREASON of TRAITOR Trump.  The moral, ethical, and legal damage which has been wrought on the psyche of the nation will continue to be serious damaging for at least a generation.  Many of the individuals who have been participants in all those acts of insurrection, sedition, domestic terrorism, and treason are currently raising children who have been exposed to the arcane, violent, and deeply destructive ideas of their parents, just as all parents deeply affect their children's thinking, and those children are likely to carry on their parents' traditions of ignorance and violence for years to come. 

But on November 8, 2022, this country and a majority of its voters delivered a message to TRAITOR Trump and his many co-conspirators that we will not accept that kind of insurrection, terrorism, and treason.  In the best electoral performance in about 40 years by the party of a sitting president, the Democratic party has held onto control of the US Senate, actually gaining one seat and possibly two based on the pending outcome of the runoff election in Georgia, and nearly held control of the US House.  But the House was lost by just a few seats and the Right Wing Radical Repugnicans and other co-conspirators of TRAITOR Trump will assume control of the US House in January 2023 and will do everything in their power to obstruct the positive works of President Biden and the Democratic party. They will end the incredibly important work of the January 6th Committee and do everything they can to destroy any evidence it has gathered on the insurrection and any other crimes of which the committee members have become aware.  They will bury the TRAITOR Trump tax returns which the US Supreme Court has finally just ordered to be released to the House Ways And Means Committee if TRAITOR Trump even delivers those tax returns before the new congress assumes control in early January.  I am betting that TRAITOR Trump will simply refuse to deliver the returns and will bet that the wheels of justice will run too slow for him to suffer the legal consequences of any criminal referral which the current chair of the House Ways And Means Committee might send to the justice department by the end of the year.  Both he and Kevin McCarthy, a proven co-conspirator, will do everything they can to prevent the truth from ever coming to light about the insurrection of January 6th. It is highly likely that several of the very members of congress who are suspected of assisting the terrorists of January 6th will now assume key positions in the very congress their previous efforts sought to obstruct and destroy. 

But, the newly appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith will also have a lot to say about the January 6th insurrection, the clearly treasonous attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the theft of highly classified documents from the White House and the high likelihood that they were passed on to Russia and/or other foreign actors who are opposed to the very existence of the United States.  The fact that the White House and the Department of Justice are in the hands of Democrats and Jack White is on the job are one of the major events of the past year that we have to be moderately thankful for.  It is no accident that when the FBI sought the warrants that  led to the discovery of hundreds of US government documents in the hands of TRAITOR Trump at Mar A Lago that the law cited in those warrants was the Espionage Act.  It is no accident that Jack Smith, the person chosen by Attorney General Merrick Garland is an experienced war crimes prosecutor who is accustomed to dealing with and successfully prosecuting rouge government officials all around the world.  The case against TRAITOR Trump has always been about TREASON and Russian Espionage.  Jack White and the team he is assembling to conduct this investigation and prosecution will track the story to its logical end.  They will indict TRAITOR Trump for every crime which they uncover and, at the very least, it will include the crime of mishandling and illegal possession of classified government secrets.  It is also highly likely to include TREASON and espionage for the sale or uncompensated transfer of those documents to Putin and Russia and is just as likely to include crimes committed during attempts to sell those documents to other foreign countries, especially those countries which either have or are seeking nuclear weapons and the technology related to them.  And no one should ever forget that the list of such countries includes Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan.  Thankfully, Jack White and the staff he is assembling, with the assistance of the entire US intelligence community, will pursue all possible crimes to the logical ends of the investigations and they will successfully prosecute all offenders.  

We are also incredibly blessed to have control of the US Senate which will stop many of the efforts of Kevin McCarthy and his co-conspirators to destroy the goals of President Biden.  A bicameral legislature is one of the greatest inventions of early political strategists and the American Founding Fathers in particular.  That concept has saved this country from many mistakes over the past two and a half centuries and there is no doubt it will save us from many as long as Kevin McCarthy is Speaker of the House and Democrats retain control of the White House and US Senate.  

We are also greatly blessed by the fact that, in general, voters all across the country had the wisdom to elect Democratic US Senators and Congress members,  state officials including governors, secretaries of state, and state attorneys general.  In Michigan and Arizona, in particular, we won nearly every office and that delivered a strong message to people such as the Right Wing Radicals who plotted to kidnap and assassinate Governor Whitmer.  We are blessed to have her in office in Michigan.  Nevada reelected US Senator Masto.  Arizona elected a Democratic governor, two US Senators, and most of the other officials in the election.  Now Georgia is faced with the decision to reelect Senator Warnock or to elect a markedly, terrifyingly incompetent and unqualified opponent.  In Georgia, the effort to elect Hershel Walker to the US Senate is a clear cut litmus test about just how deeply damaging the Right Wing Repugnican Party is willing to be in order to gain another vote in congress.  Walker is definitely the most unqualified candidate to ever be nominated for a senate office in this country.  

But two years ago, Georgia stepped up and did the right thing for the state and for America.  I believe they will do it again in the senate runoff election.  Yes, we have had a year for which we can be moderately thankful.  But we have also had a year in which the potential damage to America and American Democracy was as high as it has ever been since the times of Benedict Arnold.  We must continue to fight against TRAITOR Trump and his co-conspirators until they are all in prison where they should have been many years ago.  We must continue to fight to elect Democrats in every office in the country.  Literally, we are in the fight of our lives to save America and American Democracy.  Thank God, we won most of the important battles of the past year. 

The Moral Degeneration In America

 

Over the last five or so years, we have seen a steady downhill slide in the general public attitudes in America which has steadily drifted toward dishonesty, depravity, criminality, and general disrespect for morality, laws, and honesty in general.  This widespread shift in the moral behavior of large segments of the American population has included a shift in the overall morality of one of the segments of the population which had previously, for four centuries, been considered one of the bedrock institutions in the country.  That segment of the population includes much of the clergy and self-professed Christians in the country who had generally advertised themselves and often been accepted as being in the forefront of the moral arbiters of the country. In one way or another, I have written about this shift in the morals of the country at least since 2016.  I believe I first clearly addressed this shift in my writing on this blog in October of 2016 with this blog post.  From that point on, I have striven diligently to confront this deterioration of the morals of the country and have regularly written about various aspects of that deterioration.  But by beginning to confront the moral degeneration of the country at that date in October of 2016, I began the battle at least 16 months later than I should have.  

We can clearly point to the exact date this moral deterioration began, or at least began to worsen rapidly and which has led us to the point we are at today where we are attempting to recover from a domestic terrorist attack on the very seat of the US government for which many indicators point to the terrorists having been assisted by several members of congress and the capitol police force some of whom are already under arrest and indictment along with the domestic terrorists themselves. That attack was also encouraged, provoked, and incited by TRAITOR Trump in his appearance before the domestic terrorists only minutes before the attack began.  Amazingly, 43 members of the Right Wing Radical Repugnican contingent in the senate voted to allow TRAITOR Trump to escape punishment for another of his crimes in his long standing effort to destroy the country. They are also at the forefront of this moral degeneration in the country. The investigation by the FBI and the US Department of Justice is ongoing and the numbers of indictments and arrests are likely to expand over the next several months.  We are also at a point, and have been for at least five years, where we know that large segments of the clergy and their self-described "Christian" adherents are a part of the degeneration.  The date this deterioration began, or at least began to worsen, can be written in stone as having been June 16, 2015.  That is the date that the worst TRAITOR in American History and an accused Russian intelligence asset rode down an escalator and made the asinine and incredible announcement that he believed he was a fitting candidate to become President of the United States.  Russia managed to steal that election in three states and install their agent in the White House for four of the most criminal and miserable years in American History and that has rapidly accelerated this moral degeneration among the supporters of TRAITOR Trump and his TREASON. 

Since that date which will live infamy, we have seen a consistent chunk of the American electorate holding steady at about 35-40% which is willing to accept larceny, sexual deviance, criminality, TREASON, moral corruption, and a variety of other deviant and abhorrent behaviors as being outside the realm of disqualification for a candidate seeking election to the leadership of the free world.  These people have found it within themselves to accept nearly any crime from anyone who will express public acceptance of their most egregious hatreds and self-expressed desires.  These people generally fall within one of four groups as I described in this blog post on August 5, 2018.  These same people either participated in, encouraged, or were accepting of the January attack on the US Capitol.  They flatly refuse to admit they are ignoring nearly everything in the Holy Bible which they claim to hold dear.  They refuse to read, comprehend, and practice the teachings of Jesus Christ, whom they erroneously claim to worship, in order to actually worship the worst criminal in American History.  These people have watched more than 500,000 of their fellow Americans become innocent victims of a pandemic which their TRAITOROUS leader could have prevented during his Russian supported occupation of the White House if he had taken even the most basic scientific precautions against a new disease which both the scientific and intelligence communities informed him in January 2020 was coming and could destroy the country.  

As a nation, we will suffer from the damage perpetrated by that TRAITOR and his followers for the next fifty years.  With fifty years of solid, honest, committed, patriotic, political leadership, we might be able to undo the damage of these people and the TRAITOR they have chosen to follow in his efforts to destroy America and American Democracy.  These people are in the process of raising at least one more generation of children who are being fed the same lies which their parents have chosen to believe and support.  If those children cannot be rescued from the ignorance of their parents, they will also continue this effort to promote treason, racism, fascism, terrorism, and a multitude of lesser crimes.  The United States is greater danger today than it has been in since Pearl Harbor.  Simply because we have a highly moral and legally, legitimately elected President in office, we cannot rest in our effort to resist the ignorance which brought about the horrible four years from January 20, 2017, until January 20, 2021, which will be remembered as being four of the worst, most destructive years in the history of America.  We must work every day to continue to confront the ignorance, criminality, and TREASON which resulted in those four years until we have literally erased all memory of it from our history.  Most of us who are adults today cannot hope to live long enough to see the end of the damage that has been and will continue to be done to America because of that TRAITOR and his TREASONOUS followers.  

Donald Trump, Russian Intelligence Asset According to "The Guardian"

It is always great to learn that you have been correct about anything.  It is even better when you learn that you have been correct about a very important thing.  Today, January 30, 2021, I learned that I was correct, which I have known in my heart all along, in my deep seated conviction that the TRAITOR Donald Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset since the 1980's.  I admit that using the words "TRAITOR  Trump" and "Intelligence" in the same sentence creates an oxymoron of the worst kind.  Today, I read a news story on "The Guardian" which is one of the greatest and most accurate sources of news in the world.  In their story of January 29, 2021, entitled "The Perfect Target: Russia Cultivated Trump As An Asset For Forty Years- ex-KGB Spy", their writer David Smith provides details of an interview he conducted with retired KGB officer Yuri Shvets who is now an American citizen living and operating a corporate security firm in Virginia detailed how the TRAITOR Trump was cultivated by Russia's intelligence forces beginning in 1977 and worked both with and on him ever since to the fulfillment of their most extravagant dream, having an intelligence asset inside the Oval Office.  

Shvets was interviewed by journalist Craig Unger for an upcoming book and began disclosing how Russian kompromat, their term for the use and control of foreign intelligence assets, was able to feed TRAITOR Trump Russian talking points, flatter him  with women and Russian bank loans when no American bank would loan him money, and use him to fulfill their goals in the United States.  The news story details how a KGB asset in New York City was able to assess TRAITOR Trump as a possible asset and to direct him to others higher up the ladder who completed the process.  What is truly interesting about this story is that the scenario in the news story on "The Guardian" is eerily close to the scenario I used to write my short story, "Burial At Sea", which has been published on the Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, the Creativity Webzine in Germany, and on my blog all under the public domain since I wanted the story  to be published and circulated as widely as possible before the 2020 election since I have known from wide reading of other authors over the past five years that the only logical explanation of TRAITOR Trump's love of Russia was Russian kompromat.  In all three publications, I made clear that I want the story to be always in the public domain so it can be published and circulated anywhere, anytime, by anybody, so long as I am given appropriate author credit.  My wording on Creativity Webzine is as follows regarding publishing the story in the public domain: "Author’s Note: While this story is copyrighted, the copyright is intended only to protect my authorship. Anyone, any time, anywhere has my unrestricted permission to disseminate this story on any medium whether now known or created in the distant future. You may share it on social media, e-mail, websites, books, magazines, literary journals, or other forms of mass communication. I do not seek or require any form of remuneration for this work other than dissemination of the work. This permission is granted in tribute to my mentor, Don West, who published his life’s work without a copyright. The only thing I ask is that you give appropriate author credit and my brief bio is below." If you have the desire to pass my story on, feel free to do so under those circumstances.   

 "The Guardian" is one of the best, most reliable news sources in the world. If they publish a story you can bet it was vetted and proven to be true! For those of you who have read my short story, “Burial At Sea”, or Bill Best’s book, “Li’l Donnie” which contains an afterword I wrote along with a foreword by Juanita Herrington, or any of the other political books which I have written about on my blog, "My Appalachian Life" at Blog Spot, or posted about on Facebook, you will not be surprised.  I will never have to confess on judgment day that I did not Stand Up, Speak Up, and Speak Out against TRAITOR Trump! What about you?