By Bob Gaydos

Photo published in The Guardian of an image taken from a Iranian state television showing what it says is the site of US and Israeli missile strikes that hit a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran. At least 80 children were reportedly killed.

    It’s 55° and sunny in my little corner of the world on the last day of February, the snow is melting, the guys on the other side of the creek have started their target practice, scaring the dogs and the SOB in the White House, along with his friend in Israel, has started a war with Iran because everybody in this country is talking about how the FBI is covering up stuff in the Epstein files about said SOB raping a 13-year-old girl on Epstein’s island. Ah, Saturday.

    Look, this is simple. The Constitution prohibits the president from unilaterally declaring war on any other country. Congress has actually passed a War Powers Act. Other presidents have ignored it. Doesn’t make it right. Picking on the baddest actor in the Middle East doesn’t make it right. Claiming it’s necessary because Iran is developing weapons is pure hypocrisy when the SOB in the White House, in his first term, withdrew from an agreement President Obama had made with Iran that forbade them from developing nuclear weapons. That meant inspections and verification. Trump dumped it. Then, back in the Oval Office last year, he bombed the crap out of Iran and said their ability to develop nuclear weapons was obliterated. And, not so by the way, he campaigned as the peace president who would not get involved in regime change in other countries and would not get the United States involved in protracted war anywhere, but especially the Middle East.

    So, maybe he got tired of killing unarmed Venezuelan fishermen or killing law-abiding American citizens in Minnesota or was really angry that the Supreme Court told him he couldn’t unilaterally impose tariffs on other countries. Or maybe he owed Bebe Netanyahu a favor.

   Or, maybe he noticed that everyone in this country was talking about the FBI covering up stuff from the Epstein files about him raping a 13-year-old girl on Epstein‘s island. That news wasn’t going to help with the midterm elections if all the cowardly Republicans in Congress got voted out of office. Only a couple of them seemed to notice that he didn’t get the OK from Congress to attack another country. Apparently constitutional law is only for Democrats to worry about now. 

    It’s Saturday in America and it’s 55° and sunny in my little corner of the world on the last day of February and maybe some of the mainstream media, as they are now referred to, will notice that the SOB in the White House can’t stay awake at meetings, can barely put two sentences together that make sense, lies with every breath, reportedly just bombed a girls elementary school in Iran and is an adjudicated sex offender whose name appears thousands of times in the Epstein files, including accusations of raping a 13-year-old girl, which the FBI, under his control, is trying to cover up.

    At least the guys on the other side of the creek stopped shooting and let the dogs get back to their nap. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.

Prologue

I wrote the column below on Oct. 20, 2016. It appeared on zestoforange. It’s still here. It was obviously written out of frustration and anger and I’m reposting it here out of frustration and anger that, nearly 10 years later, there are people in this country who still think the Republican Party has any moral standing as a legitimate political party. Even after that craven display of cowardly behavior at the State of the Union. Despite the continued Epstein coverup. Trump is Trump. He’s always been the same. Republicans picked him. He has been the death of them. Millions of Americans voted for him simply because he represented one of our two major political parties. Others believed his lies. Many, sorry to say, agreed with his brand of bigotry. Then they did it again. Even after four years of chaos. Yet people still give Republicans a pass for making this vile, now demented, man their leader. He in turn remade them in his image. Finally, one of those shouting TV commentators actually said the other day that Republicans are letting Trump destroy our country. It started 10 years ago, people, when Trump destroyed them.

By Bob Gaydos

People walk past a mural on a restaurant wall depicting Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting each other with a passionate kiss in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. PETRAS MALUKAS / AFP – Getty Images

That’s all. I’ve had it. I am through with writing about what a sick, repugnant human being Donald Trump is and then watching him reach a new low. Those who know about recovery from addiction, a subject on which I write regularly, say that every bottom has a trapdoor. Trump is living proof of that. Yet, with each new bottom, every poll seems to find 40 percent of those surveyed favoring him for president.

A few days ago, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to give people a reason to vote for Hillary Clinton, rather than against Trump. I stopped writing in mid-column because it seemed to be a waste of time. Who was I going to convince?

Here’s as far as I got …

There I was, having breakfast and rummaging around in my mind to find an angle for this presidential campaign other than don’t vote for Donald Trump because he’s an ignorant, racist, bigoted, misogynistic, cruel, vindictive, vile, narcissistic, xenophobic, quick-tempered, undisciplined, untrustworthy, uninformed, unspeakably crude sexual pervert and birther, who lies as naturally as he breathes.

Somehow, writing that message week after week (me and plenty of others) still hadn’t convinced a lot of people that the only vote that makes sense on Nov. 8 is one for Hillary Clinton. You don’t have to like her, folks, just know that that the future of this nation may well depend on voting for her.

Deaf ears. “Yeah, Trump may be all those things,” comes the unconvincing shrug, “but I can’t vote for her.” I have given up asking for reasons why. You know, reasons based on actual facts that would outweigh the choice at hand.

I set aside a newspaper article about how Trump had managed to actually make insulting comments about Clinton’s body as part of his defense against multiple charges that he is a sexual predator. Instead, I tried to focus on my egg white omelette (Swiss cheese and tomatoes). Then, as fate (or my excellent hearing) would have it, the angle was delivered to me from a nearby table. A reason to vote for Hillary … not that it was presented that way.

“DId you hear that Putin said if Clinton is elected, be prepared for war?”

The point the gentleman was making to his friend was that voting for Clinton would be dangerous because it could mean getting into a war with Russia. This was delivered in all seriousness because Vladimir Putin had said so and, as we know, he always speaks the truth and never has any nefarious plot in mind because that’s the way former heads of the KGB comport themselves when they get elected president of Russia.

The further point would be that voting for Trump would be smart because Putin says nice things about him. And Trump says he’d like to work with Putin.

So there you have it, America, the Republican candidate for president of the United States is now being touted as the better choice because the president of Russia doesn’t like the other candidate. Does this seem backwards to anyone else? When did being pals with Putin all of a sudden become more important than standing up to the Kremlin? When Trump launched his campaign based on lies and fear, that’s when.

Trump, of course, has said that he has met Putin. He has also said that he has not met Putin. You can be sure that Clinton and Putin know each other well. And he apparently does hate her guts. (I’m liking this reason for voting for her even more now.) That’s because, as secretary of state, she publicly called him out on stealing his election, something which Trump has accused Clinton of trying to do. She stood up to Putin. Meanwhile, Trump wants to do business with the man who grabbed Crimea from Ukraine and whose political opponents have a way of ending up dead.

It used to be that Republicans automatically voted for the candidate who was tough on Russia. They wanted someone the Kremlin would have to talk to and would do so with respect. Someone experienced in  diplomacy whose word could be counted on by friend and foe alike. That would be Hillary, not Donald. Donald, who doesn’t know Crimea from Korea, wants to sell out NATO and maybe get a hotel deal in the bargain. Putin has played him — and his followers — perfectly, from the hacked Clinton e-mails to the threat of war. Trump’s entire campaign is based on fear. That’s no way for America to negotiate with Putin, or any other world leader. …

***

I stopped there, wondering whether to go on. Then Trump said in the last debate that he wouldn’t necessarily accept the results of the election if he lost. That’s when I threw in the towel. For a man who has promoted violence at his rallies and some of whose supporters have openly espoused rebelling against any defeat, this is as unacceptable, unpatriotic, indefensible, possibly treasonous a statement as a candidate for president can make.

But that’s Trump — a new bottom every day. His fans cheered. I do not blame him for being who he is; I simply detest him. In truth, I’m sick of him. I do, however, blame the Republican Party for infecting American society (not just politics) with this utterly degrading election campaign. I mean every elected Republican official, from Speaker Paul Ryan to every governor, senator, congressperson, state legislator, county executive, county legislator, mayor, supervisor, councilman who has stood silently by and let Trump make a mockery of our democratic system and lay waste to any sense of decency or decorum in selection of the most powerful political leader on the planet.

A lot of these people went to Cleveland to vote for Trump. Then they stayed mute for months as he … okay, I said I’m not doing that anymore. The world knows what he has done. If you know all that and can still support him, words actually fail me. The same goes for those who say Hillary is just as bad. Not even close. You people need to get serious.

Republicans, Trump is not one of you. He is Trump. Period. You created him. Your hypocrisy and cowardice have emboldened him and his ilk. He has sullied us all. And he has destroyed you.

By Bob Gaydos

A b. We worh Trump’s imhw hamga from the from of the Justice Department headquarters.

  Trump is scheduled to give the State of the Union address tonight and I won’t be watching because I have no interest in listening to a demented old man talk about oatmeal or windmills or the special deal he’s offering on bitcoin.

   Besides, I have a long list of things I haven’t had the time to write about but I’m sure he won’t be talking about tonight.

   Things like the Supreme Court finally slapping him down on his tariffs, saying he had no power to impose them and his childish response to the ruling. Wonder how many justices will be in the chambers tonight.

   Or that phony baloney “Peace Board,”which costs a billion dollars to join and is largely composed of nations whose citizens have been barred from immigrating to the United States by Trump. A big grift.

  Or his image on a banner hanging from the front of the Department of Justice headquarters, as well as at Labor and Agriculture, like the ruler of some Third World country.

    Or his constant threat to attack Iran for developing nuclear weapons capacity when, in his first term, he quit the treaty with them which barred them from doing so and, in his second term said attacks on them had eliminated their nuclear capability. A diversion.

    Or his sudden decision declaring the pesticide Roundup, long declared a cancer threat, is necessary for national security, a favor to a friend.

   Or his equally dangerous and inexcusable decisions to rev up the coal industry and declare that the U.S. has no obligation to fight climate change and not pollute the air. New York MAGA Lee Zeldin, EPA head, gladly made the announcement.

    That’s a quick, short list of the true state of the union. Oh, and inflation is up and job growth is down, whatever he may say.

    Maybe Kash Patel, back from his beer blast with the gold medal-winning men’s hockey team will be in the audience with them and will provide an update on where the FBI’s investigation of all the famous people mentioned in the Epstein files stands. I’m sure some of the survivors of the sex-trafficking ring who are expected to be in the audience as guests of Democrats would appreciate it. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

   The gold-medal winning women’s hockey team rejected Trump’s invitation to the White House because of his insulting comments about them.

   That’s the state of the union.

By Bob Gaydos

Democrats’ shopping list for coming elections. Unsolicited.

    Back two or three lifetimes ago, being between newspaper jobs and hobbling around downtown Annapolis on crutches as the result of a touch football accident, I spent some time answering phones and making phone calls for the Democratic Party. It was primary season and someone whose name I can’t recall thought it would be a good way to spend some time and use my journalist’s familiarity with politics. Drinking may have been involved.

     It was 1976. Joe Tydings, scion of a prominent Maryland family, was trying to get back to the Senate and Governor Moonbeam — Jerry Brown of California — was running for president. Or dating Linda Ronstadt. Or both.

   Tydings lost the primary to Rep. Paul Sarbanes, who went on to serve five terms. Brown carried Maryland, but lost nationally to a peanut farmer from Georgia. That farmer, Jimmy Carter, then beat the accidental president, Gerald Ford, in the general election, but later ran into Ronald Reagan and the Iran hostages crisis, serving only one term.

    I reminisce about this history and these less than happy days in reaction to a mailing from the Democratic National Committee (one of many I have received) asking me, as a Democrat, to fill out a survey to help them prepare an agenda to fight Donald Trump and the Republicans. 

   While it’s good to know that someone is thinking about these things, let me be clear: I am not now and have never been a member of the Democratic, or for that matter, Republican, Socialist, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or Communist Party. Being registered in a political party doesn’t mesh with writing about politics for newspapers. My time answering phones in Annapolis may have filled a void, but I never joined the party.

    So DNC, I won’t be returning the survey or making any donation. I get it that it takes a lot of money to run political campaigns, but I will limit my contribution to giving (since you asked) my two cents on what Democrats should do to rid this country of Trump and the brain dead Republican Party.

    In essence, all of the above on your survey. That is, virtually everything suggested makes sense to some extent. Except for one.

    Under ranking of priorities, one item states: “Persuading voters who did not vote for Democrats in 2022 and 2024.”

     Save your breath, folks. These people knew Trump-the-terrible from the first time, enjoyed the rewards of Joe Biden’s economic agenda and still didn’t vote for Democrats. Ten years and counting of Trump Republicanism.

   If they were alive and breathing in 2022 and 2024 and voted for the party of anything Trump says is Ok, they are either too dumb to figure it out or they agree with the feed-the-rich, starve the non-white, non-Christian agenda of the Republican Party.

    Look, there are MAGA Trumpers who don’t even care that their leader raped young girls with Jeffrey Epstein, stole money from a phony kids cancer charity, sexually asssulted a woman in a clothing store dressing room on Fifth Avenue, promised a wall to stop the flow of immigrants from Mexico but delivered roaming bands of violent, masked kidnappers instead, and pardoned all those who followed his direction and laid waste to the U.S. Capitol when he told them the 2020 election was stolen from him.

    I could go on, but you get the idea. If they didn’t see or care about the difference between Democrats and Republicans two years ago, they likely still feel the same today or they are too embarrassed to admit they were wrong. Too iffy.

    Better to “engage,” as you say, those who didn’t bother to vote in 2022 and 2024. The ones who say all politicians are the same, so they don’t pay attention to politics. Or vote. They may be sorry they ignored their privilege and their duty.

    If the cost of groceries today, disappearance of jobs, violent ICE raids locally, illegal destruction of the East Wing of the White House and the total humiliation of the U.S. on the international stage with a president who “ends” dozens of wars except for the real one in Ukraine (“Day One”, remember?), rambles incoherently, insults longtime allies and falls asleep at meetings don’t persuade them that not all politicians are the same, nothing probably will. But it’s definitely worth a shot.

    So, yes, by all means work to win back the Congress this year and the presidency in 2028. Talk about the Epstein files every day. Go to court. And talk about Republicans’ shameful duplicity and cowardice with regard to Trump at every level of government. Every day.

    An unknown peanut farmer from Georgia beat the guy who inherited the Watergate mess from Richard Nixon in 1976. That mess pales by comparison with the grift Trump has been performing on Americans for a decade. Clean it up, please.

   As a lifetime independent voter, that’s what I think you Democrats should do.

By Bob Gaydos

Epstein survivors stand as Attorney General Pam Bondi refuses to acknowledge them.

  If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, then a recent photo taken of Pam Bondi is priceless. The photo, which accompanies this column, encapsulates in one moment the very essence of the woman. Pure evil.

  Bondi’s hysterical, theatrical performance before a committee of Congress seeking full release of the FBI’s files on Jeffrey Epstein has been thoroughly covered by all media sources and her refusal to answer questions in favor of insulting members of Congress well-documented. It was likely the worst appearance ever by any United States Attorney General before a congressional committee. It should have been an embarrassment for her and her boss, Donald Trump.

  But I doubt that it was. The photo sealed the deal. Near the end of the three-hour ordeal of Bondi defending the Justice Department handling of the files by scowling, smirking and shrieking at committee members — she called Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) a “washed-up loser lawyer” and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) a “failed politician” — Rep. Pramila Jayapal ( D-Wash.) asked Bondi to turn around and personally apologize to the survivors who attended the meeting for the manner in which her department has handled the files.

    Bondi refused. She turned her head away from the survivors and said, “I am not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics.“

  When Jayapal asked the survivors to stand and raise their hands if they had not yet been granted a meeting with the Justice Department to share their stories, all nine survivors in the room stood and raised their hands, as did two family members of the late Virginia Giuffre, who committed suicide.

    There’s your photo. The survivors standing and staring at Bondi as she sits, clutching her playbook, looking the other way with her best privileged school girl face. Mission accomplished. She was unable to display even the slightest modicum of compassion, to face them as a woman, if not the attorney general, and express sadness for the pain and suffering they have endured.

    Nothing.

    A portrait of evil. 

By Bob Gaydos

The New York Times played Trump‘s racist slur of the Obamas as the lead story on Page One.

    The racist-in-chief hit a new low, at least for me, last week when he posted a video clip on his social media site portraying President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes. 

     I say “at least for me” because, even though using this imagery has long been considered to be crude, racist behavior for any average citizen and until now has been beyond belief that any American president would wade this deep into the sewer of the history of racism, no one is talking about it. Even though it was only last week.

     How low he has taken us.

     To be fair, in the crisis-a-day atmosphere of the Trump era, it can be difficult to maintain outrage. And the daily release of new names in the Epstein files with the continuing coverup by the White House is legitimate news  and worthy of its own outrage.

     And, The New York Times, rediscovering its role under the First Amendment, did give the racist post the appropriate position as lead story on page one the morning after.

     Still, the initial administration attempts to disavow and the even worse efforts to pass it off as a joke only served to make Trump‘s racism more difficult to ignore. From his long ago attacks on the Central Park Five to his history of demeaning comments about women of color and insulting remarks about non-white nations and American cities with large black populations, Donald Trump has displayed his racism, even eagerly it seems, at every opportunity. Sometimes, perhaps, just for the sake of it. 

   I am just angry and disgusted that he gets to do it while representing the United States of America to the rest of the world, demeaning the position and embarrassing the nation, and that so many Americans think it’s OK because (1) they agree with him, or (2) they  think, well, he’s always been that way.

   I’m sorry. It’s not OK. I just hope that, in the future, history lessons will include full, honest detail of this dark chapter in American history and that teachers will be allowed to teach it. 

    But if we ignore it now, I fear that’s exactly what will happen. So, please, don’t pass it off. Don’t let Trump’s racism get lost in the chaos. He eventually admitted he posted the slur of the Obamas. Fine. Then fight fire with fire. Call a racist a racist, habit or not, president or not. Let him know that it’s not in any way OK.

By Bob Gaydos

Bad Bunny pays tribute to Puerto Rico at the Super Bowl.

  So, as I said I would and out of an abundance of curiosity, I watched Bad Bunny‘s halftime show at the Super Bowl.

    Although I didn’t know what to expect, I’m not sure anyone could have predicted what was delivered. I came for the music and got a living history of Puerto Rican culture complete with sugarcane fields, electric utility poles, dozens of dancers, a market and an actual wedding. All in Spanish. With accompaniment by Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Jessica Alba and Cardi B.

     Daring and dazzling, with a welcome message of peace and love.

     For me, there was a bonus. I watched the 12-minute performance with closed-captioning on. That meant I could read anything being sung or said also in Spanish. It gave me an opportunity to practice what I’ve been trying to learn on Google’s Duolingo. And I even took the opportunity during the following commercials to sneak in a quick Spanish lesson on the app. It’s a slow process but, hey, you’re never too old.

    Further bonuses: Seattle won the football game (New England looked lost for the most part), the alternative MAGA halftime show was reportedly a flop and Trump  (Who had said of the performance when it was first announced, “In this country we speak English, not Spanish”) was recorded actually watching Bad Bunny on a huge TV screen in Mar-a-Lago, which, by the way, is Spanish for “Sea-to-Lake,” noting its location between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth. The mansion also features Spanish architecture and a considerable number of Spanish-speaking employees.

   Fue un buen dia en el Super Bowl 60.

By Bob Gaydos

Kaitlin Collins and Donald Trump

   There’s something that’s been baffling me for years and it was brought to my attention again this morning by two unrelated news stories: Donald Trump and the women who support him.

   I don’t get it. I admit it. And I would welcome any women readers’ attempts to explain it to me.

    One story, the one getting all the headlines, concerned an exchange between Trump and CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins at a press conference in the Oval Office. Collins was pressing Trump about what he might say to survivors of the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking operation who feel they have not received justice.

    Trump, whose name appears thousands of times in the recently released Epstein files, did what he typically does with a female reporter — he insulted her.

    He called her the “worst reporter” and then said, “l don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. You know why you’re not smiling? Because you know you’re not telling the truth.”

     Collins didn’t take the bait, but kept pressing for an answer that never came. Trump, of course, had previously called a female reporter “piggy“ for daring to bring up the same subject.

    The other story I just happened to come upon while glancing over old copies of the New York Times that I was preparing to toss in the recycling can. It was the typical overlong Times profile of a young woman, Andrea Lucas, whom Trump has made chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

   Her job, as with practically everyone else Trump named to head a government agency or department appears to be to make it unnecessary.

   In a nutshell, she says she wants to remake the image of the commission in Trump’s vision of workplace discrimination. No diversity, no equity, no inclusion for those discriminated against in the past, because young white males are having difficulty finding jobs and, if that’s the case, they should report it to her because they might be entitled to some compensation. (That might also explain the surge of interest for jobs in ICE.)

    How can she do this? I asked myself. How can she support this man? Is she not aware of the struggle women have fought for decades to gain respect in the business world? To even have the right to vote? To have the right to make decisions about their own bodies? Heck, for her to even hold the job she has.

    And even more to the point here, how can she do this when every sane person of reasonable intelligence in the entire world knows that Trump was fully immersed in the Epstein sex-trafficking of young teenage girls? Rape.

     How can she — and I look at the history here — fully support a man who cheated on his first wife with his second wife and cheated on his second wife with his third wife? Who cheated on his third wife while she was taking care of their newly born son? Who tried to cover up that cheating (with a porn star) and was subsequently convicted of four felony counts? Who, in a civil trial, was adjudicated liable and ordered to pay millions of dollars for sexual assault and defamation of character in what a judge called rape for his attack on a female journalist, yes, in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

   How? How do you look at a man like this, smile, nod and say, yes sir, never heard of Jeffrey Epstein, when you’re a woman?

    How does Pam Bondi do it? Kristi Noem? Karoline Leavitt? Tulsi Gabbard? Linda McMahon (Education), Brooke Rollins (Agriculture), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Labor), and Susie Wiles, chief of staff?

      I’m stumped, angry and saddened by this allegiance to a man who the recently released trove of files show Epstein referring to him as “the worst person” he’s ever known.

       That’s it. That’s what I don’t get. Maybe it’s as simple as being a man and not a woman, but I’d really appreciate it if some women readers could share some thoughts with me on this.

Bad Bunny and his Grammy

By Bob Gaydos

   I was scanning one of those social media posts about the various generations — The Greatest, Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen X, Gen Z … — and wondered what mine was and, heck, where it was. Turns out I’m part of the Silent Generation.

     Who knew? Did I miss the memo that I was supposed to focus on my career and hold my tongue for 84 years? Well, live and learn.

      I guess being born into the war years and inheriting the prosperity that came with victory was supposed to make us care only about ice cream sodas and eventually rock and roll. Not a bad deal, but honestly, I gotta say I think we’ve also been pretty vocal about race, Vietnam, Iraq, gay rights, women’s rights, sports betting … etcetera. Life.

    So, in the spirit of the not so silent generation and because as a journalist I’ve unknowingly been violating my generation’s assigned code for 60 years, I’d just like to comment on two recent events. 

    — Don Lemon and three other black journalists were arrested for charges brought against them while covering a demonstration in Minnesota against ICE. In a church. He’s accused of preventing people from exercising their right to religious freedom. The demonstrators were protesting against the church minister for his cooperation with ICE. The demonstration and Lemon’s press coverage were both protected by the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and a free press. Not negotiable. 

    Attorney General Pam Bondi couldn’t find a legal way to arrest Lemon (a judge refused to issue a warrant), so she slapped together a secret grand jury and, undoubtedly, lied.

  This gestapo-like policing to arrest journalists who have been critical of Bondi’s boss is what the Greatest Generation — my parents’ generation — fought to eliminate. No American of any generation should support it. None. Ever.

    — Someone named Bad Bunny is the lead act at halftime of Sunday’s Super Bowl. Full disclosure: Who?

     No, I never heard of the performer until the NFL announced his selection. Then he just won the Grammy for best album of the year. And then, he tore Donald Trump a new one in his acceptance speech live on TV, denouncing ICE tactics and saying the violence is not who we are as human beings. 

     Bad Bunny also happens to be Puerto Rican. Trump hit the roof, typically insulting everything about Bad Bunny and saying he won’t watch the Super Bowl. Who cares?

     I’m now probably going to watch the half time show to see what all the fuss is about. It will be in Spanish. I suspect I won’t be crazy about the music, since I grew up with the crooners and then the rockers and the jazz giants and the folk story tellers. (Great times). But I’ll watch.

     Bottom line?

— Pam Bondi: Bad.ii

— Bad Bunny: Good. (Although I’m still not a fan of the name.)

****

     PS: Go Seattle!

By Bob Gaydos

A protestor in Minneapolis. AP photo

 Catching up after snowmageddon with a cautious sense of optimism that America has finally awakened to the moral rot festering at the core of its existence. The sad thing is it took the murder of two innocent American citizens in broad daylight on the streets of one of the nation’s leading cities by agents of the federal government — and the subsequent clumsy attempt by government officials to place blame for their deaths on the victims themselves — to arouse this awakening.   

   That to me is the real problem. The malaise, the laziness, the apathy, the entitlement, the irresponsibility, the selfishness, the fear, the lack of awareness and, bluntly, sometimes the utter stupidity on the part of millions of Americans that has allowed the likes of Donald Trump and his coterie of greedy, amoral, bigoted, lying vermin to turn this nation into a festering pool of anger and violence that keeps putting money in their bank accounts.

   Too harsh? It’s not for nothing that Trump once said, “I love the poorly educated.”

    The truth is, without the votes of millions of Americans who know and care nothing about how government works and were enthralled by the phony persona of a TV pitchman and the millions of non-votes by Americans who think that “all politicians are alike“ and don’t understand that the freedom and other benefits they enjoy by living in this country depends on their participation, Trump and his mob would not be in power. He’d probably be in prison.

    And Renee Good and Alex Pretti would likely be alive.

    The shooting deaths of the two Minneapolis residents by ICE agents were captured on video by bystanders. They showed clearly that neither one of the victims did anything to provoke or threaten the ICE goons. Yet the Trump administration immediately targeted both victims as terrorists and threats to their killers.

    This time, however, the lies backfired. Thanks to cell phones and social media, people, even the true Trump believers, could see for themselves what happened. Heck, even the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post could see it. Two American citizens were shot dead in the streets by federal agents who are poorly trained at best and were likely lured to apply for the job by a $50,000 signing bonus and the opportunity to wear all kinds of military gear, a mask and a badge and the freedom to shove and threaten, kidnap and beat people at will without regard to their safety, much less the law. Even a couple of Republican lawmakers noticed.

   So things are calmed down in Minneapolis for now, Democrats are threatening to cut off funding for ICE and a lot of Americans suddenly realized it wasn’t only “immigrants“ who should be wary of the government.

   But as Trump typically backpedals when his bluster and BS don’t work, what happens now? Will demonstrations against ICE continue around the country? Will Republican lawmakers be held accountable for allowing a clearly cognitively declining Trump to continue his assault on America? Will ICE be abolished? Will Kristi Noem be fired? 

     A few years back another Minneapolis resident, George Floyd, was killed by agents of the government – Minneapolis police. The Black Lives Matter movement came and went, but not before prompting a Blue Lives Matter reaction. Unlike the thousands of non-white, Spanish-speaking immigrants and those of other nationalities who are lawfully in this country or at least leading a productive, law-abiding life and have been kidnapped and locked up by ICE, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were white, non-immigrant, English-speaking American citizens. Americans are in revolt.

     Coincidence?

     We’ll find out soon enough if this is a true moment of moral clarity for America or just more of the same selective attitude towards that “All men are created equal” line we like to brag about.

     Honestly, sticking with my cautious optimism and acknowledging the law of unintended consequences, sometimes it takes the wrong motivation to realize the right outcome. In this case, I can live with that. It’s a lesson America would be much better off for learning.