Trump's Tyranny

North Korea is open to reasonable negotiations. The United States, as embodied in the buffoon whom we have allowed to hold more power than any royal monarch has ever known, would prefer armageddon to reasonable negotiations.

These are not speculations.

Several years back, I led a team of authors drafting articles of impeachment against then-President George W. Bush for then-Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

Is silence on racism still racism? Does it matter?

hite supremacy survives on violence, but the President of the United States can’t, or won’t, bring himself to condemn either. Most Americans, it seems, don’t have that difficulty, judging by the outpouring of disgust with the President and the hail of statues coming down around the country.

That’s the encouraging early public response to President Trump’s reactionary news conference in Trump Tower in New York on August 15. The news conference was supposed to be about the nation’s highways and other physical infrastructure. Even though the actual remedy was limited to an executive order that’s supposed to reduce regulatory delays, Trump summarized his accomplishment by saying: “We are literally like a third-world country. Our infrastructure will again be the best. And we will restore the pride in our communities, our nation. And all over the United States will be proud again.”

Campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump argued that blacks and other people of color should vote for him.

A wonderful thing about observing and analyzing the human mind is that
there is a seemingly infinite variety of phenomena to observe and
analyze. I sometimes wonder if it is even remotely possible to master
this subject but, even if it is not, at least it provides an unending
source of 'entertainment'.

The phenomenon that I want to discuss in this article is what Anita
McKone and I call the 'magic rat'.

Before proceeding, let me emphasize that the 'magic rat' is an
incredibly dangerous psychological disorder that afflicts most political
and virtually all corporate leaders, notably including those in the
United States, thus rendering them incapable of responding intelligently
and appropriately to the ongoing crises in human affairs. And,
tragically, it afflicts most other people too, which is one reason why
it is difficult to muster a strategic response to these crises, even at
grassroots level.

In describing this disorder, I also want to emphasize that it never
occurs in isolation. Individuals afflicted by this disorder will

Angst, fear and loathing are the overwhelming emotions six months into the disastrous Trump presidency. Just exactly who, or what, do we have at the helm of the United States Ship of State, and the little red button that could end life as we know it?            

This month’s Free Press cover depicts a Trump regime floundering in rough sea waters, with the Don confident, but clueless.

The planet and its leaders are watching in horror as the ship appears to be capsizing. Trump and his fools enrich themselves, all the while gleefully decimating domestic social programs, dooming the environment and destroying our nation’s relationships around the world.

Charles Wince, the artist, is asking: just who is steering this ship of fools?

A buffoon? A bully? An oft-bankrupt billionaire businessman? A Benito Mussolini in the making?

Simply put, what we have is an international criminal hell-bent on continuing his crime spree within and without his corrupt administration. Making the world safe for oligarchy.

Candidates say campaigns are about articulating programs, issues and priorities. But people vote for candidates based on how that person makes them feel. Consciously or unconsciously, elections are about giving voice to values.

Voters are moral proxies who want to know that a candidate or elected official truly cares about them — that they are authentic — more than they care about what they know.

President Donald Trump and his administration are expressing moral values that have no market value. The Golden Rule has both moral and market value. Trump wouldn’t want done to him what he’s doing to the majority of the American people.

Trump’s values express reverse gratification. The powerful are suppressing the weak; the rich are exploiting the poor; the elephant is crushing the gnat.

Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions disavows the Voting Rights Act. He has a history of politicizing it by frivolously charging blacks with voter fraud, and has withdrawn Justice Department support from a voting rights case involving racial discrimination. That’s an expression of this administration’s values.

Any truthful way to say it will sound worse than ghastly: We live in a world where one person could decide to begin a nuclear war -- quickly killing several hundred million people and condemning vast numbers of others to slower painful deaths.

Given the macabre insanity of this ongoing situation, most people don’t like to talk about it or even think about it. In that zone of denial, U.S. news media keep detouring around a crucial reality: No matter what you think of Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, they hold the whole world in their hands with a nuclear button.

If the presidents of the United States and Russia spiral into escalating conflicts between the two countries, the world is much more likely to blow up. Yet many American critics of Trump have gotten into baiting him as Putin’s flunky while goading him to prove otherwise. A new barrage of that baiting and goading is now about to begin -- taking aim at any wisps of possible détente -- in connection with the announced meeting between Trump and Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany at the end of this week.

How devastating would the Republican health care legislation be if enacted?

Leighton Ku, a leading health care expert and director of director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, told NBC that, based on the Republican House bill, cuts in funding for Medicaid and health subsidies would trigger “sharp job losses and a broad disruption of state economies.”

“Within a decade, almost a million fewer people would have jobs,” he added. “The downturn would hit the states that expanded Medicaid the hardest.” That includes West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

This job loss wouldn’t be offset by the effects of top-end tax cuts. If the wealthy do create any jobs — which is far from likely — they won’t be located in the states and communities ravaged by the cutbacks in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes.