lookin

Ever since Trump came down that escalator in 2015 he has been drumming into our heads messages of divisiveness, anger and fear of the other. It's been a potpourri of pathogens that's nearly impossible to escape. In my opinion, he and his acolytes have assaulted the mental health of the society here in the U. S. and, since our media reach is global, he's destabilized the mental wellbeing of much of the rest of the world. Last year, I concluded that Biden's Surgeon General should have called a public mental health emergency. Someone told me that he had, in fact, made comments in that direction. But that was then and this is now, and I believe we've continued in the direction of poorer mental health with no plan for public intervention. Of course, like physical health, mental health exists on a continuum. We have folks with excellent mental health who are able to cope effectively with whatever gets thrown at them, we have the majority in the middle, and we have folks who are less mentally stable and can slip off the deep end into antisocial behaviors up to and including mass murder. The person who muttered to himself on the street yesterday could be the person who picks up a rifle tomorrow. I think your advice to break the cycle is exactly what needs doing. And I'll join you questioning my own contributions to fostering distrust and divisiveness. In the absence of any institutional intervention in a national mental health problem, it will be up to individuals and groups to promote better mental health, and I think that has to begin with forming new and stronger connections with our fellow humans. I'm not saying it's easy but, until somebody comes up with a better idea, I think it's worth giving it even a small try. Thanks for your openness and suggestions for breaking the cycle.

And those would be my other two Bye Bye votes. Perhaps they could all hitch a ride with Elon Musk.

Naturally he'd be one of my three Bye Bye votes. 👋

Lately, our Deporter-in-Chief has been floating the idea of revoking the citizenship of naturalized citizens who have criminal records or who made errors in their application paperwork. It’s supposed to be a ‘civil denaturalization proceeding’ which means the targeted individual has no right to due process. In effect, the President can say “I don’t like you and get out of the country!” Well, this got me thinking about the small handful of people I don’t like and wondering if I could also tell them to get out of the country. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a believer in the democratic process and I’d be looking for a way to do it within the legal system. So I’ve been thinking of asking my House representative to introduce what I’ll call the Bye Bye Bill, that would allow voters to decide who gets to stay and who is asked to leave. I’m thinking of a regular ballot item that would allow every registered voter to list three people that (s)he would like to see leave the country. And whoever gets named by 50% of the voters would have ninety days to wind up their affairs and head off to the country of their choice. A newly formed Department of Deportation would provide the plane ticket and send an agent to wave goodbye. It would be a pretty high bar for somebody to get fifty percent of all voters to kick him or her out of the country. And that’s fine with me. I like most of the people who are here now and it would take only a handful of public deportations to cheer me up and make America a place we could get back to enjoying again. “But, lookin”, you say, “what if fifty percent of the voters decided you should leave the country? How would you like that?” And the short answer is, I wouldn’t. If the Bye Bye Bill is passed, I’d do my level best to make sure I didn’t piss off half the people in the United States. I’d try to be a little less divisive and not call anyone names or try to take away their health care. It might be a stretch, but all I’d have to do is make sure I wasn’t one of the three worst people in the country. Given our current crop of misfits and misanthropes, I'm willing to take my chances. And how about you good folks? Can you think of three people you'd like to see deported?

Apologies for being a fussbudget but, if it's really necessary to flank the mantel with portraits and gold medallions, shouldn't they be evenly spaced? The ones on the left are aligned with the edge of the mantel and the ones on the right are offset by several inches. Call me finicky but, if I were clustering an array of gold-plated chachkas for a photo op, I think I'd also try to scrounge up a working yardstick. (I'd probably also clear out Benjamin Netanyahu, but that's another post. )

Seems to me it's the other way 'round. While we've been talking about Epstein, he's been federalizing the police force in a major U.S. city. He planted the seed in LA, DC is meeting less resistance, and next he's looking to Chicago, New York, Baltimore and Oakland. He'll run into resistance from Pritzker and Newsom but the Overton window has been raised enough so that we're starting to move on from 'if' to 'where' and 'when'. He's got ICE under his control and he's working on federalizing the National Guard. If you ask me, he's using Epstein as one of his steady stream of diversions while he tries to build himself a Schutzstaffel. So far, his incompetence has given us a generous amount of time to predict and prevent his next moves and I sure hope we don't keep wasting it.

Good gosh! I sure hope nobody tips them off.

Here's a website that's tracking the implementation of Project 2025: Tracking Project 2025 Out of 316 specific objectives, 115 are listed as 'done', 63 are listed as 'in progress', and 138 are listed as 'not started'. So, with Trump in office for a little over six months, he and his crew are about halfway through implementation of a program designed to take apart our democratic form of government. It's pretty amazing that we who support our 250-year 'experiment' with democracy have been given the playbook for how it will be destroyed, along with a specific progress report for how much is already gone and how much remains to be dismantled. It's even more amazing, to me anyway, that this tracking report isn't the lead story in every news outlet in the country. If I were looking to thwart its goals, I'd publish at least one Project 2025 story for every Jeffrey Epstein story. The "success" of this plan to get rid of three branches of government and replace them with a 'unitary executive' branch is well underway and Trump's antics have definitely helped to move it along. We sure can't say we haven't been warned. 😳

Well, the folks at the Jacobin Foundation do. Although they're proudly leftist, Socialist and bordering on Marxist, they sure know how to dig for data and reach defensible conclusions. They say there's a subset of Trump voters - about 11% - who are economic populists and also hold socially moderate views. Their social attitudes aren't progressive, but they aren't socially conservative either. Can't say I picked through the data line-by-line but the folks who put together the report clearly did. They say this 11% of Trump voters - 5% of the total electorate - are the easiest pickings for the Democrats and, even if Democrats could pick up half of them, it could be enough to swing a close election. Now all we have to do is hope there is another election.

I won't say this is witness-tampering but I will say it places the witness in a position to be tampered with. What I wanna know is how many folks might Todd Blanche bring along as witnesses, and who might they be? And will there be any record of his conversation with Maxwell? If the answers are 'No', 'No one' and 'No', I think we will have opened the Overton Window to include an Executive branch that does its own judging and sentencing without oversight. They've done it with immigrants and Eric Adams and this could be another high-profile display.

I guess if I hadn't been watching Trump for the last decade, I'd be more inclined to think this is the caper that will finally peel away the bulk of his followers. But he's wriggled out of more tight spots than Harry Houdini. Still, that won't stop me from setting this latest escapade to music. Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o And on that list he had some names, ee-i-ee-i-o With a not-me here, and a not-me there Here a not, there a me, everywhere a not-me Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o And on that list was Donald Trump, ee-i-ee-i-o With a pussy-grab here, and a pussy-grab there Here a pussy, there a grab, everywhere a pussy-grab Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o And on that list was Teflon Bill, ee-i-ee-i-o With a cum stain here, and a cum stain there Here a cum, there a stain, everywhere a cum stain Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o And on that list was Dershowitz, ee-i-ee-i-o With a lawsuit here, and a lawsuit there Here a law, there a suit, everywhere a lawsuit Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o And on that list was Prince Andrew, ee-i-ee-i-o With a Palm Beach here, and a Palm Beach there Here a Palm, there a Beach everywhere a Palm Beach Jeffrey Epstein had a list, ee-i-ee-i-o 🎶 🎶 🎶

🎶 🎶 🎶 Hey, Mister Tangerine Man Tell a lie for me Make it creepy and I Promise I will follow you Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man Tell a lie for me In miasmic MAGA gaslight I’ll come following you 🗣️ 💩

You may be right that Trump himself has no plan but, according to that Frontline piece, those around him sure do. It's called the 'unitary executive theory' and argues that the Constitution gives the President sole authority over the Executive Branch. That means, for example, Trump doesn't have to let the Justice Department do its job impartially but can tell them that they now work directly for him and he will tell them whom to prosecute and whom to let alone. Nixon tried that, going so far as to say that it's legal if the President does it. There was a lot of blowback against Nixon and subsequent administrations moderated their quest for power. Trump, and those around him, are making up for lost time. I'm really glad, and will look forward to your take on it. I was surprised by how conscious the effort is to implement the 'unitary executive theory' and how far along the path the Trump administration has travelled. Steve Bannon keeps popping up in the documentary saying there's no stopping them. Getting rid of seventeen Inspectors General two weeks into his term, and without the required notification of Congress, took away Congressional oversight of the State Department among others. According to the Frontline piece, Congress has already been hobbled, and it's unclear if the Judicial Branch has much power left. Trump has already signaled that he may just ignore judicial rulings and it's not clear how the justices would enforce their rulings. I sure hope there's some way to maintain three independent branches of government, as the country's founders intended, but I'm not sure who has the willingness, authority, and power to make it happen. Whoever it is will have to get busy before too much longer.

Same here! And sometimes I'll ask them to loosen their belt just so I can be sure.

Gotta say, I was amazed to read Trump's Truth Social post this morning in which he starts out railing against The Radical Left Democrats and then turns on his own base. Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this “bullshit,” hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years. . , , Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore! Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! He's throwing away not only his political toadies but also many of his followers who have stuck with him through thick and thin, but who are starting to question their leader on this one issue. That seems like a big move and I'm looking for a precedent of an authoritarian leader telling a large number of his followers to get lost. Hitler did it, but only in the final days of World War II when he was surrounded by Russian and American troops and blamed the German people for not fighting harder. He committed suicide soon after. Jim Jones arranged for his followers to commit suicide, which he did too, but only when he concluded that the American military was on its way to round them all up. But, as far as I know, Trump isn't at the end of his rope just yet. So why would he think it's OK to cut off a significant part of his base? Perhaps he thinks he can bully them back into line. Or perhaps he thinks he now has enough power to turn his followers into subjects with no ability to resist. I didn't think he had that much power yet but, after watching Frontline's Trump's Power and the Rule of Law last night, I'm thinking a little harder. 🤔