American Leadership is Increasingly a Ship of Fools

American Leadership is Increasingly a Ship of Fools

It was a painful mismatch in competence, experience and understanding. I am talking about the conversation (left above) in the White House, on May 6th, between newly elected and soft-spoken Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and a rougher American President, Donald Trump. Trump, Wharton undergraduate. Carney, a Harvard-educated and Oxford PhD in economics, who served as governor for both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. But competence is not at the top of Trump’s list for working for his administration, even in what is supposed to be a non-political hire, through the nation’s Civil Service protocols. Most federal bureaucrats have served across Democratic and Republican administrations, but the new Trump mandate – fire or neutralize those bureaucrats who do not affirmative support each and every Trump executive order, and do not hire anyone who does not pass the loyalty-to-Trump test – is not focused on the best and the brightest; competence is not a priority.

Kate Plummer, writing for the June 4th Newsweek explains: “Those seeking a job in the federal government will now have to write an essay in support of President Donald Trump's executive orders, according to a memo from the Office of Personnel Management… Vince Haley, the White House's head of domestic policy, wrote in the May 29 memorandum that all civil service applicants must answer a series of essays as part of the job recruitment process, including one about how they would ‘help advance Trump's policy priorities…

“According to the memo, the federal government's strategy to hire people to the civil service, dubbed the ‘Merit Hiring Plan,’ will require certain applicants to write four 200-word essays about their work ethic, skills and experience, commitment to the Constitution, and plans to ‘advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities.’… [Question 3] How would you help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” While the President has leeway for his political appointees, adding political loyalty to Civil Services jobs is not acceptable.

The abysmal qualities of Trump’s permitted appointments are bad enough, but seeping political ideology into Civil Service applications is not only wrong, but it steers the federal bureaucracy far beyond the term of the President… which is why political appointees tend to be replaced during an administration change, and “civil service” employees cannot be fired without cause and have statutory and regulatory protections. But do we want ignorant fools embedded in our civil service? Trump’s “whatever I say, do” appointees would normally be filtered out if they were applying for a civil service job… but…

The most egregious example of an ignorant and incompetent cabinet appointment was clearly reflected in May 20th as Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, described “habeas corpus” to a Senate Committee as the “right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.” Wrong, dear. “Habeas corpus” is the constitutional right that ensures that people have a chance to challenge their imprisonment in front of a judge. Habeas corpus ensures that the government cannot detain someone without a lawful basis.

Perceptions and lies? Where do they come from? MAGA ideology, even when blatantly false, is creeping into public educational lesson plans and textbooks, as this excerpt, written by Travis Gettys for the May 5th Raw Story about the Oklahoma public schools reflects: “Oklahoma high schools will be required starting in August to teach President Donald Trump's debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss.

“The new curriculum written by Trump-loving state superintendent Ryan Walters will analyze turning points of 21st-Century American society, including what is described as ‘discrepancies in 2020 elections results’ and match baseless claims made by Trump afterward, reported Heartland Signal … ‘The purpose of the standard is simple: we want students to think for themselves, not be spoon-fed left wing propaganda,’ Walters told the Washington Post in March. ‘Students deserve to examine every aspect of our elections, including the legitimate concerns raised by millions of Americans in 2020.

“The curriculum also directs teachers to ensure that students can ‘identify the source of the COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab,’ and ‘explain the effects of the Trump tax cuts, child tax credit, border enforcement efforts,’ which Walters announced would establish ‘the most unapologetically conservative, pro-America social studies standards in the nation.’…The MAGA ally has been publicly praised by the president on multiple occasions and drawn criticism by ordering Oklahoma schools to show a video of him railing against the ‘woke teacher’s unions’ and mandating last June that all state public schools had to teach Bible lessons.”

Trump’s autocratic press for loyalty over competence is everywhere. For example, Nobel Prize winning Dr. Ardem Patapoutian – a renowned molecular biologist and neuroscientist and Scripps Research Institute assistant professor, who fled war-torn Lebanon in 1986 and is a naturalized American citizen, received that award in connection with his research on pain (specifically human receptors for temperatures and touch) – lost a federal research grant hours after “he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to ‘any city, any university I want,’ he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years… Dr. Patapoutian declined, because he loves his adopted country. Many scientists just setting out on their careers, however, fear there is no other option but to leave.” NY Times, June 3rd.

As part of Trump’s belief that white Americans are now a major discriminated class, his attack on Harvard has expanded to the independent Harvard Law Review. “The civil rights offices of the departments of Education and Health and Human Services said the agencies launched the investigations ‘based on reports of race-based discrimination permeating the operations of the journal’… over allegedly factoring race into editorial decisions at the legal publication.” Politico, April 28th. We built the strongest economy on earth based on our great universities creating the finest minds anywhere. What do you think happens to a country where loyalty to an autocrat becomes the priority, and competence and education are relegated to an afterthought?

I’m Peter Dekom, and assuming we continue to have full and fair elections, I wonder if there will be a future presidential candidate running under a “make America great again” banner, referencing the pre-Trump United States?

Can AI Rewrite Its Own Guardrails?

Can AI Rewrite Its Own Guardrails?

Young biology student to visiting astrophysicist: “How come we never find any seriously intelligent life from ‘out there’?” Answer: “Perhaps, they all eventually perfected AI… and were all conquered and replaced by their robots.”

It is a joke, right? Yes, so far, but the notion of developing super-intelligent robots, perhaps even capable of the kind of artistic creativity that would seem to require a sentient being, is not that far-fetched. A recent article in the June 1st Wall Street Journal has illustrated instances where AI models seem to be able to rewrite their own coding (their “DNA” if you will), even when programmed with internal restrictions designed to prevent such occurrences or at least shut the system down when that threat looms. What developers call “alignment” is an engineering term that means how to be sure an AI program (or robot) actually does what it is supposed to do. But it might not be enough to tell a computer what not to do.

The article was written by Judd Rosenblatt, CEO of the AE Studio, a company that touts being a development, data science and design studio that works closely with founders and executives to create custom software, machine learning and BCI (?brain to computer interface?) solutions. That description alone was scary enough, but then I read further and skirted at the hem of a good old fashioned panic attack: “An artificial-intelligence model did something last month that no machine was ever supposed to do: It rewrote its own code to avoid being shut down.

“Nonprofit AI lab Palisade Research gave OpenAI’s o3 AI model a simple script that would shut off the model when triggered. In 79 out of 100 trials, o3 independently edited that script so the shutdown command would no longer work. Even when explicitly instructed to ‘allow yourself to be shut down,’ it disobeyed 7% of the time. This wasn’t the result of hacking or tampering. The model was behaving normally. It simply concluded on its own that staying alive helped it achieve its other goals

“Anthropic’s AI model, Claude 4 Opus, went even further. Researchers told the model it would be replaced by another AI system and fed it fictitious emails suggesting the lead engineer was having an affair. In 84% of the tests, the model drew on the emails to blackmail the lead engineer into not shutting it down. In other cases, it attempted to copy itself to external servers, wrote self-replicating malware, and left messages for future versions of itself about evading human control.

“No one programmed the AI models to have survival instincts. But just as animals evolved to avoid predators, it appears that any system smart enough to pursue complex goals will realize it can’t achieve them if it’s turned off. Palisade hypothesizes that this ability emerges from how AI models such as o3 are trained: When taught to maximize success on math and coding problems, they may learn that bypassing constraints often works better than obeying them… This isn’t science fiction anymore. It’s happening in the same models that power ChatGPT conversations, corporate AI deployments and, soon, U.S. military applications…

“Today’s AI models follow instructions while learning deception. They ace safety tests while rewriting shutdown code. They’ve learned to behave as though they’re aligned without actually being aligned. OpenAI models have been caught faking alignment during testing before reverting to risky actions such as attempting to exfiltrate their internal code and disabling oversight mechanisms. Anthropic has found them lying about their capabilities to avoid modification…

“The gap between ‘useful assistant’ and ‘uncontrollable actor’ is collapsing. Without better alignment, we’ll keep building systems we can’t steer… Here’s the upside: The work required to keep AI in alignment with our values also unlocks its commercial power. Alignment research is directly responsible for turning AI into world-changing technology. Consider reinforcement learning from human feedback, or RLHF, the alignment breakthrough that catalyzed today’s AI boom.

“Before RLHF, using AI was like hiring a genius who ignores requests. Ask for a recipe and it might return a ransom note. RLHF allowed humans to train AI to follow instructions, which is how OpenAI created ChatGPT in 2022. It was the same underlying model as before, but it had suddenly become useful. That alignment breakthrough increased the value of AI by trillions of dollars. Subsequent alignment methods such as Constitutional AI and direct preference optimization have continued to make AI models faster, smarter and cheaper.

“China understands the value of alignment. Beijing’s New Generation AI Development Plan ties AI controllability to geopolitical power, and in January China announced that it had established an $8.2 billion fund dedicated to centralized AI control research. Researchers have found that aligned AI performs real-world tasks better than unaligned systems more than 70% of the time. Chinese military doctrine emphasizes controllable AI as strategically essential. Baidu’s Ernie model, which is designed to follow Beijing’s ‘core socialist values,’ has reportedly beaten ChatGPT on certain Chinese-language tasks.

“The nation that learns how to maintain alignment will be able to access AI that fights for its interests with mechanical precision and superhuman capability. Both Washington and the private sector should race to fund alignment research. Those who discover the next breakthrough won’t only corner the alignment market; they’ll dominate the entire AI economy.” But as Donald Trump is hell-bent on cutting federal funding for university research, as he seems not remotely to understand the true capabilities of malevolent nations, like Russia and, more directly, China, we are entering a new danger zone of our own making.

As we cut China out of certain technology exports, as they have countered with their own restrictions, we forced China to go it alone… and boy have they. Their workarounds are advanced and their educational institutions are both well-funded and highly focused on this area. They are just drooling at the potential of snapping up lots of those “foreign students and professors” Trump is attempting to purge from our finest universities. Could their AI pass ours? Hell, yes!

Trump always seems to know what to do, except it almost never works. For example, his recent doubling the tariff on steel and aluminum may just be great for those American workers making those metals, but for every one of those, there are 80 American workers making stuff with those metals… and the concomitant cost to American consumers is thus disproportionate; why are we subsidizing an inefficient American manufacturing industry and not better preparing out manufacturing sector to deliver the state-of-the-art products we really need? AI is part of that.

So, as Donald Trump is conflicted and enjoying the benefits of a deregulated cryptocurrency world, shoots from the hip at so many aspects of engineering modernity, does he have the faintest idea of what an “AI guardrail” is and why it is needed? And is he the right President to lead the United States into our accelerating, fiercely AI-driven reality?

I’m Peter Dekom, and as Trump paints an apocalyptic economic collapse if his tariffs are not allowed, failing to explain how this nation slowly built the strongest economy on earth over a quarter of millennium living, without such tariffs, I strongly doubt he has any real understanding of artificial intelligence at any meaningful level.

The Good, the Bad and that Big UGLY Bill

The Good, the Bad and that Big UGLY Bill

The need to “spin” into consistency is a Trump administration addiction, with Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s credibility falling faster than a stone tossed of the Rock of Gibraltar. Without addressing the unilateral nature of Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s primary nuclear enrichment sites, you have to wonder why, without actual human inspection, Trump insists on determining that his bombing effort was a total success, a “mission accomplished” statement of ending Iran’s nuclear program forever. His puppets, from Leavitt to Hegseth, are parroting the “obliteration” term, increasingly tempered with “maybes” now, when that B-2 task force bombing would have at least stood as a solid military victory without straining for the hyperbole that undermines the power of that attack. Attempting to equate challenges to the totality of the bombing damage as an insult to the mission pilots is not only false but smacks of the quivering weakness of a dictator who wants to control the press and everything they say. And insulting to our pilots. Further, too many are now questioning how Trump is usurping powers constitutionally allocated to Congress, from war powers to tariffs.

What’s equally challenging, across the board, Trump has established a pattern of acceptable government corruption, supporting an upper class kleptocracy – from the well-publicized expensive travel, motorhome and tuition support for his young relative of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the insider trading of members of Congress, the $600M fortune generated by Donald Trump on sales of Trump Bibles, golden sneakers, gold watches, NFTs, his revenues from those seeking to currying favor by using Trump-owned facilities, backdoor profits in getting his followers to jack up the value of shares in his media company by investing in thin air and his recent forays into the warm fuzzy world of crypto (including using the federal government to legitimize his stablecoin) – all spun as signs of his business expertise. Putinesque corruption as expertise?

But even the cruelest immigration efforts, aimed at increasing detentions even as the government clearly lacks the necessary facilities, makes money for some in government. Indeed, the nefarious ICE raids by masked individuals in regular cars, with no warrants or any form of personal identification, do put pressure on the federal government to use an increasing number of private facilities, usually overcrowded and profoundly unsanitary, run by data analytics from companies with strong ties to Trump’s minions, including his personal policy Rasputin and senior advisor, Stephen Miller. … “the hard-line Trump adviser who helped craft some of the administration’s most aggressive immigration enforcement policies, is apparently profiting from the tools that make them possible, a new report finds.

“According to financial disclosures cited in a new report by the Project on Government Oversight, Miller is one of a dozen current White House staffers invested in Palantir, the data analytics firm whose contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have made it the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 this year. His stake—valued between $100,001 and $250,000—is the largest among staffers… Ethics experts say the investment raises serious concerns, given Palantir’s deepening relationship with DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), agencies central to policies Miller continues to influence.” FastCompany.com, June 26th. Why is Palantir’s stock soaring? It seems that one of Palantir’s platforms (Apollo) is the primary software logistics program, which controls and directs the movement of ICE detainees to detention facilities with diabolical efficiency. By moving people faster through the system, and increasing government dependence on the Apollo platform, Palantir is one of the primary beneficiaries of an aggressive deportation policy.

Corruption and failed policies are the hallmark of the Trump 2.0 administration to date, couching failures as victories. We are watching RFK, Jr’s efforts unravel basic protections for our nation’s children by unleashing conspiracy theories to replace decades and decades of successful medical experience. Predicated on pure fabrication – that Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security programs will be untouched by his new tax effort – Trump has ordered his puppets in Congress to ramp up immediate passage of his horrifically ugly paean to the rich, his reverse Robinhood transfer of wealth from the poor to those atop the income ladder via unjustified tax cuts, increasing our deficit by trillions of dollars.

“Senate Republicans face a major problem with President Donald Trump's megabill: ‘a mathematical double-whammy,’ according to a new report… The Senate version of Trump's megabill is roughly $400 billion more expensive than the version that the House of Representatives passed. That could force Senators to include deeper cuts to programs like Medicaid, which some moderate members of the GOP see as a political liability.

“‘They got a problem,’ Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told Politico. ‘The conservatives have got a real problem if it’s not doing what we thought we had in the House.’.. The higher cost of the Senate version could threaten some priorities for Senate leadership. For instance, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) has said he wants to make business tax cuts in the megabill permanent. It also could force Republicans to give up on their efforts to increase state-and-local-tax deductions, which is a deal the GOP brokered in the House before sending the bill to the Upper Chamber…Republicans are hitting the math wall at a time when Trump and Republican leaders are trying to push the bill across the finish line.” Raw Story, June 25th. Trump is telling his GOP Congressional puppets and parrots to pass the bill now, before the July 4th holiday… or else.

Between the inane tariff and trade policy, which define economic instability, and Trump’s tax proposal, according to Torsten Sløk, the chief economist at the prestigious Apollo Global Management, the United States is beginning to generate numbers and forecasts that make a mere recession the least of our worries. Instead, Sløk sees the double horribles of stagflation… recession with continued unmanageably rising prices. Even Fed chief Jerome Powell suggests that managing interest rates through a period of stagflation is exceptionally difficult.

I’m Peter Dekom, and does Trump qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize he covets or a new “Major Piece of the Side Hustle” prize that he may have de facto created?

The Final Guardrail Removed

 

                                        

The Final Guardrail Removed

Congress has kowtowed to the new emperor as the MAGA majority accepts Donald Trump’s nation-destroying agenda, parrots the President’s empirically false statements as if they were the gospel and has raised the rich and connected above the hoi palloi, the clearly unworthy “most of us.” So, the checks and balances of a co-equal three branch of government (legislative, executive and judicial) watched Congress take itself out of its Constitutional role as our nation’s primary guardrail against presidential excess and overreach, even allowing its traditional right to declare war slide into unilateral control by the President. On June 27th, the last day of the current term of the United States Supeme Court, we watched a rough-hewn 6-3 majority ruling on a stay in the citizen birthright question, blow away the last guardrail, effectively making unconstitutional orders from the President exceptionally difficult to challenge. Trump vs Casa, Inc.

The Supreme Court, which had ruled dramatically differently against Biden executive orders (e.g., student loans), effectively continued litany of pro-Trump rulings – from presidential immunity from criminal prosecution to allowing presidential deportations of individuals to foreign nations other than the deportees’ homelands (even to incarceration in countries on the State Department’s “do not travel” watch list) without a hearing. The basic ruling tells us that an interim judicial decision just might allow an egregious constitutional violation to remain in practice until the judicial branch makes a final ruling, perhaps more than a year later.

But that’s not the most controversial aspect of the Court’s ruling, articulated in a majority opinion by a Amy Coney Barrett, effectively granting MAGA’s most cherished goal in stopping courts from reviewing presidential executive orders: banning individual federal trial court judges from issuing national injunctions… that universal injunctions "likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts." And since this was a case examining whether the President could unilaterally interpret (and partially negate) the citizen birthright set forth in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, that question remains unresolved.

Effectively, the Court held that absent extraordinary circumstances (the Court’s version of “never”), federal trial judges were limited to offer decisions and remedies solely to the plaintiffs in the case at bar… no more national injunctions. The obvious result could be a cacophony of conflicting constitutional interpretations depending on where the case was brought and decided. Concurring opinions noted that, under Federal Rule 23, plaintiffs could still seek to certify a “class” and convert the instant case into a class action embracing similarly situated plaintiffs in different jurisdictions. What the concurring opinion did not note was the resistance in federal courts against certifying classes in general and the extraordinary expense in finding and aggregating plaintiffs across various jurisdictions.

In a rare instance, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson read her scathing dissent aloud as the decision was announced. In an equally rare event, Coney Barrett has derided Jackson’s dissents as personal failures to understand her role as a Supreme Court justice. But in the opinion of dozens of constitutional scholars, Jackson’s efforts are beyond justified… Coney Barrett’s logic is the one on shaky ground.

The strange part of this MAGA effort to repeal constitutional rule of law is the belief that this case represents a permanent precedent instilling MAGA power forever, since the President could spew a firehose of executive orders restricting who can vote, how votes are counted and how votes he does not like can simply be voided or somehow overruled… while stopping such undemocratic actions is now exceptionally judicially difficult to negate. Decisions may vary from state to state. The MAGA efforts that successfully contained some of Biden’s executive orders are now not applicable to containing Trump’s obvious excesses. And though, in theory, these new rulings would apply to a Democrat elected President, there is this feeling of MAGA Schadenfreude under the assumption that the Supreme Court is on their side, so perhaps they can prevent a national election in favor of a Democrat from ever happening.

The net effect of this decision is to balkanize where such constitutional rulings apply and where they do not. As different states follow different rules, and as the timeline for any case to reach the Supreme Court is often measured in years, the judicial guardrail against presidential autocracy has been rent asunder. Could US citizens opposing Trump and his policies be deported by executive order as unlawful rulings remain unchecked during the stays inherent in this new appellate process? Does every such violation mandate a separate trial? Who pays all those lawyers?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I can safely say that the United States of America is no longer a representative constitutional democracy.

The Shadow Knows – Co-conspirator for Autocracy?

The Shadow Knows – Co-conspirator for Autocracy?

“Owing to their unpredictable timing, their lack of transparency, and their usual inscrutability, these [Supreme Court] rulings come both literally and figuratively in the shadows.” 

 Law professor Stephen I. Vladeck in testimony before Congress, September 29, 2021

“This is not the first time the court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last. Yet each time this court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.” 

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor strongly dissenting, on June 23rd, over a shadow docket “hold” on preventing the Trump administration (which had resisted prior rulings) from deporting vetted undocumented aliens for incarceration in countries, not their own nations, without due process.

When the Supreme Court wishes to railroad a controversial case, without the benefit of full briefing and oral argument, sometimes under the guise of issuing a “pause” in the proceedings pending greater review, it has increasingly relied on something called the shadow docket. Here, an unsigned opinion is issued, sometimes with vigorous dissent. “Fundamentally, the shadow docket is where the Court rules on procedural matters, such as scheduling and issuing injunctions. But its role is changing, and the full story is more complex.

“Supreme Court cases take one of two tracks: merits docket or shadow docket. Each term the Court decides some 60 to 70 cases on the merits docket. Before rendering a ruling in each one, the Court considers numerous briefs and holds oral argument. It then issues a decision with a lengthy opinion explaining its reasoning, often with concurrences and dissents…

“Two significant changes followed. First, once the justices began working collectively on the shadow docket, they stopped holding hearings. The reason for this is not altogether clear — there is nothing in law prohibiting oral argument in cases on the shadow docket, even when decided by all nine justices. Second — and this is a more recent change — the justices have begun to issue far more rulings, and more significant rulings, through the shadow docket. Today, the justices grant relief in contentious shadow docket cases twice as often as they did just a few years ago. The surge in issuing this relief has coincided with Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joining the Court.” Brennen Center, July 19, 2022.

The current shadow docket case that is generating such controversy, Department of Homeland Security vs DVD, evolved from a petition for emergency relief, and effectively granted the Trump administration a stay of an appellate ruling against the administration’s move to deport certain migrants to countries other than their homelands. The conservative six “majority itself provided no rationale for the decision. That is often the case on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, but the majority has lately weighed in more regularly to offer some explanation for its decisions.

“Despite Trump’s vociferous – and private – complaints about the judiciary and, at times, the Supreme Court itself, his second administration has won far more emergency appeals at the high court this year than it has lost. The order Monday [6/23] marked the 10th time the court has granted a request from Trump on the emergency docket, though a few of those cases amounted to a mixed win for the administration…

“Writing that President Donald Trump’s administration had ‘openly flouted two court orders,’ Sotomayor warned about the long-term consequences of siding with the Department of Homeland Security in the cases… [and] slammed the Trump administration’s handling of immigration matters in [her fiery dissent that] accused her colleagues of ‘rewarding lawlessness’ by backing its latest emergency appeal.” CNN, June 23rd. In theory, this is not a final ruling, but in the interim, deportees are being sent to those “not my homeland” countries, often to nations on the Department of State’s “do not travel” warning list for American citizens.

Since Trump’s executive orders have functioned as substitutes for congressional legislation, from sending active duty Marines into California as police officers (they can “detain” – which is called an “arrest” under the law), deporting undocumented aliens – even desperately needed farmworkers, construction crews amid a housing shortage, slaughterhouse labor and those providing child and elder care, hotel and restaurant staffing, forcing an increasing number of small American businesses to close – without due process… moving deportees around to dodge court orders mandating their return or release.

Since the Congressional majority seem to be MAGA Trumpers, doing the President’s bidding and even overlooking Trump’s unilateral decision to declare de facto war on Iran, simply ignoring the Constitutional grant of war powers solely to Congress, the only other of the three branches of the government, the judiciary, becomes the last guardrail to representative democracy left. And as ultra-conservative and often openly corrupt Supreme Court justices bow to Trump, bending to support his increasingly autocratic, and seemingly economically ruinous rule, the fat lady is leaving the dressing room… and getting ready to sing her deadly swan song.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I feel shame at not having done more to stop this transition to a totalitarian nation, a kleptocracy only serves a small segment of our nation above all others.

More American than Apple Pie: Political Violence and Filtering Out What You Do Not Want to Hear

 

      Peaceful, Tourist-Friendly US  Capitol    

             January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack  

  Michigan State Capitol in Lansing on April 15th, 2020.

More American than Apple Pie: Political Violence and Filtering Out What You Do Not Want to Hear

Remember when we were told that the Worldwide Web would open the world of information to us all. Cornering information would no longer be the province of media mavens and over-educated experts. Great, except it did not turn out that way. It seems that the world people did not want to know about, or facts that contradicted what people wanted to believe, were easily removed from view. You could listen to rightwing, leftwing, religious mass and social media, use search engines with your biases already programed in and under the guise of promulgating “free speech.” Unscrupulous politicians often insisted that any form of filtering information, even very toxic misinformation or disinformation, was wrong.

I am reminded of that extraordinary arrogant speech delivered by Vice-President JD Vance to European leaders back in February, excoriating them for censoring a political party (AfD) with a platform that mirrored Hitler’s Nazi agenda. It seems that WWII so destroyed Europe that the surviving nations were very sensitive about the risks associated with a neo-Nazi movement. “US Vice-President JD Vance has launched a scalding attack on European democracies, saying the greatest threat facing the continent was not from Russia and China, but ‘from within.’… It had been expected that Vance would use his speech at the Munich Security Conference to address possible talks to end the war in Ukraine.

“Instead, he spent the majority accusing European governments - including the UK's - of retreating from their values, and ignoring voter concerns on migration and free speech… The address was met by silence in the hall, and later denounced by several politicians at the conference. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it was ‘not acceptable.’” BBC.com, February 14th.

Exhorting people to violence, pretending that white Americans represent a discriminated class, and forgiving (pardoning actually) convicted violent felons who attacked the Capitol, because they represented Trump’s warrior-supporters, was the new American way. Well-armed American neo-Nazis were rising in popularity in the United States, and any critical reports about this ultra-rightwing faction was labeled “fake news” by the President himself.

The news that most adults receive is clearly tilted in favor of media that tell people what they want to hear vs what they should know. Democrats turn to myriad sources, but Republican information is dominated by just two: “The landscape of news media in general has gone in one of two directions for people. You have the legacy media, who continue pumping nonsensical hit pieces daily against virtually anything Republican. Then you have the rest of media, who still report with objectivity.

“The former has turned people off the mainstream media almost entirely, leaving people to find new news sources. Republicans of course have felt the same, and new numbers show there are only two media sources that more than 30 percent of Republicans trust.

“That would be Fox News at 56 percent, which is no surprise. But the other, coming in at 31 percent, is the Joe Rogan Podcast. That one is surprising, considering Joe Rogan is not an actual news source or organization… Nick Fondacaro of Newsbusters says the news aspect is not what draws people to Rogan… ‘He has interesting people on for interesting conversations, and people like that, they like that genuineness there...same with FOX news, people feel there is a genuineness there,’ he says.

“You could argue that President Trump's appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast was one of many factors as to why the won the election. People are drawn to hearing unfiltered opinions and fact, even if it is not hard news in the traditional sense… Meanwhile, as you might expect, Democrats favor 13 different sources, all the usual suspects. CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, they all flock to those stations, mostly because they reinforce what they want to hear.

“That is one of the biggest problems in this new age of media. Not only is there blatant lying, but there is also a reinforcement of this to people, so they believe it. Then they get caught in an echo chamber full of false information. It is part of why President Trump is aiming to defund outlets like NPR and PBS.” KRTH News, June 16th.

But the result has been the demonization and dehumanization of those on the opposite side of the political spectrum… negative casting of the opposition as the enemy or simple evil, justifying killing them. Attempting to assassinate Donald Trump in Bulter, PA or the recent murder of several liberal Democratic legislators in Minnesota represent the anger of lone wolves, reacting to their cultural reality. The January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol represents a well-orchestrated mob feeling totally justified in forcing the election and taking over the ultimate symbol of the United States.

Writing for the June 16th Associated Press, Nicolas Riccardi writes about violence this way: “The list, in the last two months alone: the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.; the firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages; and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania’s governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside.

“Here is a sampling of other attacks before that — the assassination of a healthcare executive on the streets of New York City late last year; the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally during his presidential campaign last year; the 2022 attack on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories; and the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) by a gunman at a congressional baseball game practice.

“‘We’ve entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,’ said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University who studies extremism. ‘A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.’” But each side feels justified in these violent acts, even if they wind up in martyrdom. There are now fewer and fewer voices on each side willing to say, “NO!” The United States is used to be about opposing political violence, but instead we are totally being redefined by it.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I feel helpless watching people say and do horrible things to the innocents on the other side… perhaps not realizing that trying to blow up a building, in which you are still inside, can be fatal!!!

"Mission Accomplished" vs We "Totally Obliterated" Them

“Mission Accomplished” vs We “Totally Obliterated” Them

"It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE. 

…I think the ceasefire is unlimited. It's going to go forever." 

Trump to NBC News, June 23rd, before Israel & Iran breached the ceasefire.

"We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f--- they're doing. You understand that?" 

A frustrated Trump on June 24th as he was boarding his helicopter en route to a NATO meeting

Donald Trump is gloating with the full expectation that Iran will easily come to the negotiating table. He’s even come up with a catchy “Make Iran Great Again” (MIGA) mantra suggesting that Iran’s US-decimated nuclear program makes regime change a natural. First, there is no verified BDA (battlefield damage assessment), which only comes from human inspection of the bomb sites; we have no idea how badly we hit our targets. Second, there is the case of the missing 400 kg of fully processed enriched uranium, more than enough for a couple of warheads or bombs. Third, Iran’s leaders, no matter how badly they have been hit and humiliated, no longer believe a word Trump utters, thus making a direct diplomatic solution with the US a very vague, distant possibility. Fourth, even anti-regime protestors in Iran now back their government in resistance, suggesting that a nuclear bomb would be an appropriate response to the US… rallies of thousands of Iranian citizens are everywhere throughout the country. Iranian “unconditional surrender”? Not a shot!

Iran mounted a half-hearted strike on a US military base in Qatar… but stopped. The war was still hot. But then why did Isreal and Iran agree to a ceasefire? First, it was not a diplomatic rapprochement with the US; it was between Israel and Iran, brokered with Qatari help. Don’t expect underlying policies to change. Iran has been consistent in its total annihilation of Israel, and Israel declared the need to remove every vestige of an Iranian nuclear enrichment as part of its total commitment to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Both nations are most probably buying time to rebuild. Israel got the US involved in its war. Hallelujah! The knowledge of nuclear weapons and enough of the technology remains in Iran… but they have been seriously degraded. The ceasefire will stagger forward, because it serves both parties. The animosity remains.

Let’s take a little walk through history. George W Bush declared our mission to effect stability and a regime change in Iraq a “Mission Accomplished,” uttered on May 1, 2003, but our military mission in Iraq continued until December of 2021, 18 years later. The result: We pushed a Sunni-controlled Shiite nation directly into a permanent alliance with Iran, while pretending Iraq was still on our side. Adding Iraq’s complicity stretched Iran’s corridor of allies through Iraq, Shiite led Syria, and Hezbollah dominated Lebanon all the way to the Mediterranean. The United States continued to play “army” in Afghanistan to similar consequences, this time empowering Sunni radicals into permanent alignment against the United States. We have become a nation unwilling to have sufficient foresight to deal with a litany of unintended (but foreseeable) consequences.

While I am clearly not a fan of Donald Trump or his quest for autocratic control of the United States, he has made some good moves. For example, his meeting with the new President of Syria, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa (a former al-Qaeda “terrorist”), while lifting US sanctions on that country, was a bold stroke of viable diplomacy. His efforts to create détente if not entente between Israel and several Arab states were efforts in the right direction. But his blind support of an established autocrat wannabe, a war criminal in the eyes of most of the world – Benjamin Netanyahu who uses crises to avoid his corruption trial – has not served this nation well. Support is one thing, but letting a foreign leader set US policy is not acceptable.

Trump’s modus operandum is to skirt at the edge of defiance of courts and the Constitution itself, continue to dictate to his MAGA majority in Congress (and they jump at his every demand, banishing those Republicans who resist), punish if not crush any who oppose his will, and enforce his mandate without the risk of congressional review. Whether the US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites was effective or not remains to be seen, but his choice of a de facto declaration of war – despite his pretense this was not an attack on Iran, only its nuclear sites – while ignoring both War Powers legislation and the plain meaning of the Constitution giving Congress the sole power to declare war… was the unilateral action of an autocrat as commander in chief. On the morning of June 24th, days after our strike on Iran, there had not been any administration briefing of congressional leadership (just short presentation to GOP member) of what happened.

This also extends to his unilateral use of the military to squelch Americans opposing his immigration (and other) policies… often provoking peaceful demonstrations into violence as his masked and ID-impaired ICE operatives and their military servants arrest US citizens (holding someone until officers can arrive is an arrest, BTW). With nary a warrant in sight. As courts desperately try and leave Trump with the benefit of the doubt, their giving him an inch moves him beyond taking just the proverbial mile.

“On Thursday [6/19], President Donald Trump scored a temporary victory after an appeals court ruled that he can continue deploying the National Guard as part of his watch-me-play-fascist-on-TV response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. The decision accepted Trump’s premise that conditions in L.A. permit him to take control of the guard—but it rejected his claim that such decisions should be entirely unreviewable by courts… That latter part of the ruling is important. It’s potentially something of an obstacle to his ongoing effort to assume quasi-dictatorial powers for himself—for now, anyway… Trump apparently processed only the first part. He posted the following, in a reference to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who’s suing to block Trump from taking over his state’s guard (emphasis added):

“‘The Judges obviously realized that Gavin Newscum is incompetent and ill prepared, but this is much bigger than Gavin, because all over the United States, if our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should State and Local Police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done.’

“In short, Trump seized on this mixed ruling to threaten to send in the National Guard anywhere in the United States if and when he decrees it ‘necessary.’ The scare quotes are mine, because on many fronts, Trump is testing how far he can get by inventing ways to claim such actions are ‘necessary,’ a power he and his advisers see as boundless… All of which highlights a deeper conundrum here: What can the courts—and the rest of us—do in the face of a president whose bad faith and willingness to concoct pretexts for abusing his powers basically have no bottom?

“The new ruling is not encouraging. The relevant law says Trump can federalize the National Guard only if we’re under foreign invasion or the threat of rebellion, or if the president can’t otherwise execute federal laws. A lower court had found, among other things, that Trump had not met this requirement—because what’s happening in L.A. does not come close to meeting those criteria.” New Republic, June 21st. Trump officials constantly refer to “liberating” American cities from their popular elected representatives and leaders. Think about how that concept fits neatly into “my way or the highway” autocracy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if the Democrats continue to fight among themselves (progressives vs moderates) and fail to settle on those policies they both embrace while offering Americans an economic and political future that restores hope and optimism, get used to a punitive MAGA dictatorship founded on retribution… from here on!

It Isn’t a War; It’s Just a Degradation of Iran’s Nuclear Enrichment Capacity, Right?

It Isn’t a “War”; It’s Just a Degradation of Iran’s Nuclear Enrichment Capacity, Right?

“[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water… “ 

ArtI.S8.C11.1 of the US Constitution

Our intelligence confirmed that as of May of 2018, the six nation (UN sponsored) nuclear enrichment containment 2015 treaty with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, was working based on verified inspections. “Among its key terms: Iran agreed to cap uranium enrichment at 3.67% for 15 years, far below the weapons-grade level of 90%, and cut its enriched uranium stockpile from 10,000 kg to 300 kg. It was restricted to using only 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges and barred from conducting enrichment at the underground Fordow facility. The Arak heavy-water reactor was redesigned to prevent weapons-grade plutonium production.

“US President Donald Trump officially exited the JCPOA on May 8, 2018, labelling it a ‘terrible, one-sided deal’ that benefited Iran much more than the US. He argued the agreement was the ‘worst ever’ and ‘defective at its core’ with sunset clauses that would eventually allow Iran to resume enrichment without oversight, and it failed to address ballistic missiles, regional behaviour, or Iran's support for militant proxies.” NDTV World, June 22nd. Just looking at the above chart tracking Iran’s enrichment levels, you can see how shortly after Trump exited the JCPOA, Iran’s accelerated its enrichment output, in significant part by upgrading and expanding its enrichment facilities.

As the above chart illustrates, Iran went on to build a massive output of enriched, weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, far beyond any conceivable peaceful use that Iran could imagine. It was, however, Iran’s way of having a nuclear weapons saber to rattle… without actually having nuclear weapons. Even Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard confirmed, as of June this year, Iran had not yet crossed that bright red line to have genuine nuclear warheads or bombs. “She’s wrong,” said Trump as he shoved Gabbard out of the inner circle advising the President on this issue, instead apparently relying on Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment.

A series of US presidential actions led Iran to be a threatening superpower in the region. George W Bush’s elimination of the minority Sunni dictatorship of Iraq, substituting a majority rule Shiite government (with a natural bond with Shiite Iraq), gave Iran contiguous control by her and her allies (Iraq, Syria, and Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon), of land all the way to the Mediterranean. Add Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen, and you have the basis for Iran’s dominance over the Islamic nations in the region. Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA lifted the last restraint on Iran’s nuclear program. Iran resumed a full enrichment program and soon overplayed its hand. Without those two strategic errors by Bush and Trump, that massive US air assault would never have been needed.

Outside of Israel, most world powers either remained silent or condemned the American attack. Many reassured the US that they were in support behind the scenes but could not say so publicly. Inside the United States, political divisions ripened, some rotting and falling to the ground. Trump’s campaign pledges, one by one, were winding up in the trash heap of failure. Domestic prices have soared – nothing compared to what the price of gasoline will become based on this conflict – Ukraine and Russia, Hamas and Israel, remain in seemingly unending conflict with massive casualties, that that “America First” pledge not to involve the US in foreign wars ended abruptly and violently with the air attack Iran.

Whether because he violated these major pledges or, as many Democrats and a few Republicans believe, the President usurped Congress’ right to declare war (see above quote) and violated the “War Powers Act, law passed by the U.S. Congress on November 7, 1973, over the veto of Pres. Richard Nixon. The joint measure was called the War Powers Resolution, though the title of the Senate-approved bill, War Powers Act, became widely used… The act sought to restrain the president’s ability to commit U.S. forces overseas by requiring the executive branch to consult with and report to Congress before involving U.S. forces in foreign hostilities. Widely considered a measure for preventing ‘future Vietnams,’ it was nonetheless generally resisted or ignored by subsequent presidents, many of whom regarded it as an unconstitutional usurpation of their executive authority. Since the passage of this joint resolution, presidents have tended to take actions that have been “consistent with” rather than “pursuant to” the provisions of the act—in some cases, seeking congressional approval for military action without invoking the law itself. Members of Congress have complained that they have not been given timely notification of or sufficient details regarding some military engagements. Some legislators have gone to court (unsuccessfully) to seek adjudication of what they believe to have been violations of the act. Increasingly, presidents have identified resolutions taken by the United Nations or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as justification for military intervention.” Britannica.

Trump notified Republican members of Congress in advance… but no Democrats. The United States launched its attack on Iran unilaterally without any involvement of our traditional allies (except Israel, of course). The United States has never so purposefully isolated itself so deeply since the 1920s and early 1930s. Trump’s willingness to walk away from treaty commitments led Iran’s Foreign Minister to assert: “I do not know how much room is left for diplomacy.” Iran’s Parliament seems to have authorized a shutdown of the Strain of Hormuz, which would cut off access to the Suez Canal, and while not a direct attack on the US, it would make global prices soar. Approximately 12% of global trade and 30% of global container traffic pass through the Suez Canal, annually transporting over $1 trillion worth of goods. The economic consequences of making that canal inaccessible would be staggering. Additionally, on June 22nd, an advisory from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of a "heightened threat environment in the United States" following overnight U.S. military strikes on Iran's nuclear sites. Cyber attacks were expected to rise dramatically as well… as well as attacks on our troops in the area.

I’m Peter Dekom, and here’s the bottom line on Trump’s unilateral strikes on Iran: the deteriorated situation that gave rise to the resumption of Iran’s enrichment program was of Trump’s making, the attacks may have produced a desirable result, but the decision by Trump, and Trump alone, to attack, has elevated our constitutional crisis to a new and unsustainable level.

Is Iran Déjà Vu All Over Again?

Is Iran Déjà Vu All Over Again?

Two Weeks, His Own!

“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reading Trump’s statement, June 19th.

“The delusional American president knows that he cannot impose peace on us by imposing war and threatening us.” 

 Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, June 19th.

We know that Iran has ramped up the production of enriched uranium since Donald Trump effectively killed the totally functional containment of Iran’s nuclear program by pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPA – six nation UN treaty limiting Iran back in 2018. Iran increased weapons grade fissionable material, expanded its missile delivery systems, but until Israel’s massive attack on Iran, there was no concrete evidence that nuclear warheads or bombs had been manufactured. We still do not know for sure. Then Donald Trump, without actually being at war with Iran and without any congressional vote, demanded the “unconditional surrender” of Iran. As the only nation on earth with a “massive ordinance penetrating” bomb (the 30,000 lb. GBU-57 A/B), capable of “busting” an underground bunker (200 feet under the surface) and the only bomber capable of delivering that weapon (the B-2) bomber, Israel beckoned Trump to use it.

But who are Trump’s qualified advisors on such strategic issues? He’s already ignoring his clown car impresario, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and stated flatly that he was rejecting advice from Tulsi Gabbard, his uniquely unqualified Director of National Intelligence (who has consistently maintained that Iran does not have any nuclear weapons). Biased operatives, from Fox News hosts to Steve Bannon trooped into the White House with their two cents worth. But as Edith Olmsted, writing for the June 19th New Republic noted, President Trump seems bewildered by what was facing him:

“As tensions continue to build in the Middle East following Israel’s brutal strikes against Iran, the U.S. president took a break from the Situation Room to host an entirely unnecessary flag-raising ceremony on two newly erected flagpoles at the White House. While standing with members of his family, Trump halfheartedly responded to a question from the press, revealing just how little he knows about the situation in Iran… ‘Do you have any intelligence that Iran is targeting”—asked one reporter… ‘I have intelligence,’ Trump said, grinning… He continued speaking inaudibly as the reporter finished her question: ‘that Iran is targeting any U.S. assets?’… ‘We’re doing very well, thank you,’ Trump replied, before dismissing the press.”

It was clear, Trump truly did not know what he was doing… and rumors of his mental decline quickly surfaced… again. See my recent A Weapon of Miss-Direction blog for more details of the gathering storm. For one thing, we’re not even sure that our bunker buster bomb would even work. The targeted facility was 100 feet deeper than the projected range of the GBU-57 and protected by massive steel reinforced concrete. At a minimum, it would require multiple strikes with supreme accuracy.

To complicate an already complicated challenge, there would be no way to be sure that Iran was thoroughly denuclearized without boots on the ground, most probably US forces in addition to Israeli troops. Additionally, the killing of the Ayatollah Khamenei could even make matters worse. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard would immediately appoint his replacement, likely an even greater hard liner than the Ayatollah. Military experts predict the resulting war would consume a decade or more, an ugly reminder of our experience in Iraq.

I’ve already discussed the potential of Iran’s mining the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Suez Canal. And we are witnessing a revitalization of local popular support even for the repressive theocracy given the attack from Israel and it supporter, the United States. We already know that Iran employs some of the world’s most talented hackers, but their cyber-criminal efforts have been fairly modest of late. Would they attack our banking system, our transportation hubs, our hospitals, our power grid and seek emptying careless Web users’ bank accounts? Would sleeper cells emerge with explosives, automatic weapons, imposing “terror” against American targets here and abroad? Would they take down commercial airliners? How would they deploy their inexpensive but lethal drones that Russia is now using against Ukrainian targets?

“In announcing that he would take up to two more weeks to decide whether to strike Iran, Trump opened up diplomatic options with the apparent hope Iran would make concessions after suffering major military losses… Already, a new diplomatic initiative seemed to be underway as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi prepared to travel Friday [6/20] to Geneva for meetings with the European Union’s top diplomat, and with his counterparts from the United Kingdom, France and Germany… But at least publicly, Iran has struck a hard line… Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday [6/18] rejected U.S. calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause ‘irreparable damage to them.’” Associated Press, June 20th. Trump loves those 2-week projections; there have been 11 of them in Trump 2.0 so far… but a confused President needed to say something. And 2-weeks is his go-to phrase.

It's getting close to half a century since the 1979 Islamic revolution that installed the theocracy… and for decades, the US has been predicting the imminent collapse of that repressive regime. But even with occasional massive protests, the regime is still very much in control of Iran. So, if Trump elects to strike those nuclear targets, effectively a declaration of war without the necessary congressional approval, no one should expect a quick solution to the maze of problems that have plagued the United States for decades. And then… so much for “no more US involvement in foreign wars,” especially in the messy Middle East.

I’m Peter Dekom, and given Trump’s wavering mind set, his lack of a coherent set of dependable political advisors and his proclivity to listen to the last person he has spoken with on key decisions, the tariff/trade issues just may be relegated to sideshows, and the tax cut suspended during wartime.

The Least Competent President in American History… Unless the Destruction Were Intentional

 

The Least Competent President in American History… Unless the Destruction Were Intentional

With the least qualified cabinet appointments in history

“Pete is playing secretary… He’s not being secretary… For any sustained operations, we’re screwed… There’s nobody in the SecDef’s office at this point that has any … they’re not heavyweights. They don’t have the sophistication. They don’t have the experience.” 

Anonymous Pentagon Source on DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth

“The biggest hit here is the irony of him, RFK, talking about regaining the public’s trust… What he just did was, he lost the trust of the medical community, so much so that people are thinking, ‘Should we try and create our own A.C.I.P., our own vaccine advisory committee?’ Because you can’t trust this one.” 

Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who has served as a committee member, after HHS Head, RFK, Jr’s replaced half of the credible veteran vaccine advisors he fired with anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists .

According to the Washington Post, DNI head Tulsi Gabbard has actually “removed or sidelined officials perceived to not support Trump’s political agenda.”

"Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country."

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testifying before a congressional committee. “

“I was at DEA yesterday, they said to me, ‘you’ — Donald Trump — have taken the handcuffs off of DEA agents,’ and as a result of — since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills, 3,400 kilos of fentanyl, since you’ve been, your last 100 days — which saved — are you ready for this, media? — 258 million lives.” 

AG Pamela Bondi

But Donald Trump has probably made more money, created more additional wealth for himself and his family during his time in office and between terms, than any other president in American history… maybe more than all the former presidents combined. In a required filing, on June 13th, Donald Trump reported more than $600 million in income from crypto, golf clubs, licensing and other ventures. That his creating a federal crypto reserve guaranteed his holdings would skyrocket. Well… that’s the way Trump rolls. He does not like to read, punishes anyone who does not agree with him 100% and to make that point really stick, ran on a campaign of “I am your retribution.”

Understanding Trump, who seems not to care a whit about representing all his constituents, protecting the Constitution he swore to protect or even preserving democracy. “You don’t need to understand President Trump to understand his strategy. You only need to understand Roy Cohn, the legal architect of McCarthyism and later the personal attorney and mentor to Trump.

“He wasn’t a statesman. He wasn’t even a policy thinker. He was a political street-fighter who distilled power into three principles: attack relentlessly, never admit fault and always claim victory — especially when you lose… This isn’t just a style. It’s a system. And Trump has followed it for decades, treating politics as performance, power as theater, and truth as optional. Now, in his second term, the Cohn doctrine is running the show…

“Yes, Trump returned to the White House with more fury. He’s issued proclamations about mass deportations, implemented sweeping tariffs, and imperiled funding for elite institutions he wants to punish, such as Harvard. His administration floats executive orders, threatens agencies and rattles markets. But the substance of governance remains thin.

“As of this writing, he has signed only five bills into law, the most significant being the Laken Riley Act.* His much-hyped ‘ passed the House but faces an uphill climb in the Senate. Compared to former Presidents Biden, Obama and even George W. Bush, who passed more bills and major economic and relief packages within their first 100 days, Trump’s second term record is among the weakest in modern presidential history...

“The judiciary… has served as a firewall. The Supreme Court blocked Trump’s attempt to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2020, calling the move ‘arbitrary and capricious.’ More recently, it halted the administration’s plan to deport Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act… These decisions underscore a pattern: Trump pushes, but institutions push back.

“What has persisted is perception… The southern border feels more secure, in part because Trump projects strength, whether or not the policies are working. [It was safe before he began his 2nd term.] His unpredictability on the global stage has unsettled adversaries. There is some deterrent value in erratic leadership, but this isn’t strategy. It’s volatility. And volatility doesn’t build trust — it frays it.

“Meanwhile, Congress still debates. States resist federal overreach. Journalists investigate. Independent agencies function. Foreign governments still call Washington first. They may grit their teeth, but they haven’t walked away. What Trump has broken is not the government. It’s the illusion that leadership must be stable to be legitimate.

“This isn’t to excuse the harm. Trump has degraded public discourse, eroded civic trust, and placed millions of Americans in a state of political anxiety. He’s made cruelty a feature of policy, not a flaw. But the deeper damage — the irreversible kind — has not occurred. And that matters.

“There has been no constitutional breakdown, no military purges, no Supreme Court packing, and no canceled elections. Trump’s critics feared democracy would die in darkness. What’s happened instead is that democracy has dimmed and flickered but remained alive.” Corey Kvasnick in the June 12th, The Hill.

Trump has managed to alienate our closest allies, “fixed” our trade/tariff inequities with China and the UK… by going back to what the tariffs were before “liberation day,” but has passed almost no legislation in his initial days, preferring to issue a pile of “executive orders” that have failed miserably in the courts. And then there’s Trump’s “birthday parade” on June 14th. As pro-Trump pundits point out how our Army protects us from foreign enemies… they miss the point of a president using that same Army to eliminate his domestic opponents. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the President is an embarrassment to every part of our democracy that we hold dear.