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One of the things I do on this website is often to write from the perspective of pretending to be the President. So what would I do about gerrymandering?

The fact is, I think, that at least in our current supposed constitutional form of government, even a benign and fair minded President can’t do much about gerrymandering. Certainly not by executive order. I am left with the bully pulpit of persuasion for fairness and equality.

I have always thought of the courts, certainly the Supreme Court, as the final arbiter of equality but not this court. They have said gerrymandering is OK and leave it to the states. They are complicit in the cruelty. They have become so distant and isolated from how people really live.

Two dead young children, 17 wounded, shot while in church first day of school. Of course it is about mental health, anyone who would do this is crazy. Crazy people can slip over the edge to violence very quickly ….. can government, all levels of government keep track of all the crazies?? School shootings (and others) have become a copy-cat epidemic. There have to be additional safeguards.

I’m glad Killmar Abrego Garcia has adequate legal representation. He has become symbolic. What about the other 250 deported to prison in El Salvador without due process. The cruelty continues.

Trump should not send National Guard to Chicago or any other city unless local authority asks for law enforcement assistance. There is no emergency in Chicago, or Los Angeles. It is all a political emergency in Trump’s mind.

Long may be remember their service and sacrifice.

Clear as a bell to me, Trump is on his way to kissy-poo with Putin again. After tough talk about increasing sanctions on Russia, he is now ready to carve up Ukraine. Putin has something on Trump and we wonder about the Epstein thing. There is something about meeting in Alaska, perhaps a better distraction. Pray for Ukraine.

Sending National Guard into Washington is D.C. is another political stunt. Trump is in a jam and needs to create a distraction.

Also on Monday 8/10 a court in Florida denied his effort to unseal the Epstein/Maxwell Grand Jury. Secondly a trial started in California where Trump is accused of violating the Posse Commitatus Act by Federalizing the California National Guard and using them against U.S. citizens, overriding local control, when there was no emergency. This follows another court loss in California which prohibited racial profiling of immigrants for deportation. This could very well apply nationally.

And finally, Trump is about to go kiss ass Putin in Alaska and abandon Ukraine. D.C. is about distraction. However I fear another demonstration of Trump’s cruelty, because of his mention of homeless and squalor. I remember how he did not want disabled veterans at events during his first term. Doesn’t like the look. He can’t act the victim in the presence of people who are disabled or in difficult circumstance.

So maybe that is why MAGA seems really upset about the Epstein issues. Sex trafficking of hundreds if not more than a thousand underage girls. Pedophilia by the rich and powerful. So why is Trump resisting release of the files and playing patty-cake with Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein created the conditions where this could happen, probably participated, but Maxwell was the mastermind and primary sex predator and pimp. Epstein and Trump were friends for decades and Trump is hiding something, a cover-up.

And also disgusting, I search for words, sick at heart, sick to my stomach, at the continued cruelty, masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street, gardeners, housekeeping workers, farmworkers and sending them to impoverished countries where they cannot even speak the language.

Moving submarines closer to Russia looks mostly like distraction to me. Yes someone in Russia mouthed-off, a diplomatic complaint is the first appropriate step, not sabre rattling.

Election suppression in the name of “integrity”. I trust our local registrars of voters over whom there is already oversight. Fire the statistician who produces the employment figures. Censor the Smithsonian and National Parks of U.S. History Trump does not like.

This post was a you tube video, Bernie Sanders, “My view of the Epstein Files” I recommend it on line but it occupied too much space on my web site.

So a couple this morning, George Conway has referred to Ghislanine Maxwell as a “moral maggot” which I think is right. Apparently trump is thinking about pardoning her, thinking perhaps that it will minimize his own exposure in this mess.

Meanwhile ICE is arresting people when they show up for court ordered immigration hearings. The absolute, flagrant cruelty continues. Children are starving in Afganistan, Gaza and Ukraine because of the cut off of U.S. food aide Trump is golfing in Scotland.

Whole families lost and many children. 120 dead and counting with 160 still missing in the Texas flooding. The terrible duty of the responders finding and recovering the bodies. No one has been found alive since last Friday. This was avoidable.

There is an expanse of the American landscapte in the west that has a history of flash floods. The Guadalupe River in the Texas hill country has that history. There are also flash floods occurring in New Mexico. Did the river rise higher or more quickly than in past ….. could it be a result of climate change? I don’t know. From the size of trees uprooted it appears to me it had not risen so high in a long time. One has to look at Global averages which is why the NASA Earth Science program is so important. Trump is ending it.

I saw the weather reports and flash flood warnings from the National Weather Service. But who was supposed to go door to door telling people to evacuate in the middle of the night? If the river came up 26 feet in 45 minutes would there have even been time to get people out, unless action had been taken on first warning from NWS. One thing I’m sure, we need FEMA and we need NoAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) the scientific backbone of the National Weather Service.

Franklin Roosevelt knew that he did not understand science. He did not understand atomic energy, rocket trajectories or why volcanoes erupt. But he knew it was important enough to appoint a scientific advisor to explain the forces of nature to him.
Trump is an ignorant man who seems to believe cruelty and political theater creates reality. He is destroying our country.

Exclusively Republican legislation. Republican obedience to Trump. And their usual false mantra about attacking fraud and waste. So root out the fraud and waste rather than ripping off the people and abandoning the most needy.

Near trillion dollar cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. How can our Country be so divided about something so universal as health care. Big cuts to food stamps and school nutrition programs. Call it MAGA cuts, all to fund a huge tax break for the wealthiest Americans. Ronald Reagan believed that when the rich get richer they take care of everyone else, trickle down economics, and Republicans have been swimming in this fantasy ever since, not because it works which it does not, but because they are the fat cats.

And the still bigger lie that Republicans care about reducing the National Debt. The Big Beautiful Bill, aka Rip Off, Big Beautiful Betrayal will raise the National debt by $3.5 Trillion over the next ten years. Republicans continue to sell out future.

I would make a list of every tax schedule since WWII, choose the fairest and work to get it through Congress. See my previous posts about making government more efficient.

Also happening the Fourth of July.

North Korea sending 30,000 more troops to fight for Russia in Ukraine.

Masked men grabbing people off the streets across the country in cruel and lawless immigration raids, Republicans do nothing.
The “Alligator Alcatraz” ine Florida Everglades is political theater but I wonder about humane conditions.

Shock and outrage over Brian Kolberger plea deal, while mass shootings hardly make the news anymore, two this week.

The Supreme Court continues to ignore harm and cruelty to the people while supporting the unitary executive Trump.

This 4th of July, God Bless America and God Help Us All!

I am re-posting my 6/1/25 letter to the Supreme Court because today they allowed Trump to continue to deport people to third countries apparently without due process, to strife torn countries where the deportee may not speak the language and may be in mortal danger.  Is the Court blind ….. masked ICE agents, refusing to show identification, violently snatching people off the streets, breaking up families, deporting veterans and sending them off to any damn hell hole place they, ICE, wants.  Absolutely inhumane, cruel, lawless and being backed up by U.S. military!

Dear Justices:

If there is really any question that District Courts may issue nationwide injunctions, surely it must be in cases that involve our actual persons, our bodies and those of millions of individuals all across the country.

I did not agree with the District Court ruling in the Mifepristone case but I never doubted that this issue had nationwide impacts. Other issues which, without exception, involve everyone’s body are birth, air and food. We must breathe and eat.

In several recent cases, it appears you have allowed serious harm to continue, “for now”, toward many thousands of people; lives upended, careers destroyed, likely socio-economic distress. I’m talking about DOGE mass-firings and layoffs for alledged “poor performance”. Trans persons in the military have always been there. And now ending humanitarian parole for 500,000 people who are in this country legally, vetted, sponsored.

Why were these “emergency” cases at all?

How can you be so distant from people’s lives? It appears to me you are complicit in the cruelty.

John LaBoyteaux

I would have tried to talk to the leaders of Iran before dropping bombs.  I know the diplomatic negotiations about the nuclear program were not getting anywhere, but I would have made a personal effort to persuade that they did not need nuclear weapons.  And maybe save some lives.

So now it seems we are at war with iran.  There has been no Declaration of War and Congress was not fully informed.  Only Republicans were briefed.  For a real Congress, this could be an impeachable crime by the President.

It seems we are at war with Iran and possibly a broader war in the middle east.  You saw all those people in the streets of Tehran.  They can hardly back down under these circumstances.  But it will likely be an complicated and imbalanced war.  So Americans everywhere are less safe.  I would have personally tried to talk to the leaders of Iran.  Maybe it would not have worked  but I would have tried.