An Increasing Tolerance for Corruption, The Double Standard New Normal

 

Nazi war criminals, 12 of who  were hanged, as WII war criminals

                                                        

An Increasing Tolerance for Corruption, The Double Standard New Normal

"It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL… Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET." 

Trump on Truth Social, November 20th responding to Democrats saying that soldiers need not commit war crimes if so ordered.

This blog is a “part 2” to my recent If You Can’t Make It Right, Make It Legal; America Enters Its Banana Republic Phase blog, but after Donald Trump’s White House detoxification-washing of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), lauded as a champion of human rights who had nothing to do with the 2028 extra-territorial execution (dismemberment) of Washington Post Journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul – despite legions of evidence to the contrary from multiple reports from our own intelligence agencies – I am pressed to go one more step into our relatively passive acceptance of corruption that seems to define the entire Trump administration. MBS also bagged a pile of advanced microchips and a few F-35s as well.

Be certain of one thing, the Teflon President has weathered criminal convictions, imperious executive orders that have made a mockery of the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers annunciated in the first three articles in the Constitution and plunging polls. There are so many outs in the Epstein documents release bill, that I wouldn’t hold my breath at complete disclosure. The bill orders release within the law, which will given Trump’s personal law firm, the entire Department of Justice, reason withhold or redact documents, filled with the very information most people want to see… if they are related to current investigations – gee, the DOJ just happened to mount a pile of new Epstein investigations – or were produced pursuant to a grand jury inquiry (secret absent a specific court order to the contrary). Of course, we do not expect such redactions or exclusions to be used if the named individuals are prominent Democrats. By the way, through much of his long personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Trump was a registered Democrat.

Since I started with this White House visit by the de facto Saudi chief of state, let me start with this little excerpt, in the November 19th New York Times, by opinion columnist, Jamelle Bouie: “This week, President Trump welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia with a lavish reception at the White House. Part of the president’s relationship with Prince Mohammed includes lucrative ties between the Trump Organization and Saudi firms, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. It is for this reason, perhaps, that the president angrily dismissed the idea, evidence of which U.S. intelligence long ago gathered, that Prince Mohammed ordered the killing and dismemberment of a Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, in 2018. The crown prince denies it. ‘Things happen,’ Trump said.

“Earlier this month [November], top Swiss business leaders arrived at the White House bearing lavish gifts fit for a king. The chief executive of Rolex gave President Trump a gold-plated desk clock. Not to be outdone, the chief executive of a gold-refining company presented him with a 2-pound gold bar engraved with 45 and 47, in honor of his two presidencies. A week later, the president rewarded Switzerland with a favorable break on tariffs, reducing them from 39 percent to 15 percent.

“This summer, The New Yorker reported that the Trump family had earned $3.4 billion through deals it had arranged since Trump entered the White House in 2017. The Trump Organization is also expanding its operations around the world, developing more than 22 properties in at least 10 countries, whose leaders have every incentive to flatter the president with gifts and handouts.

“And ProPublica reports that Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, directed more than $220 million worth of funding for an ad campaign to a consulting firm with ‘longstanding personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at D.H.S.’” Through all of this, Trump’s closed-door signing of his much-reviled Epstein release bill (knowing that the bill was veto-proof), Trump continued his signature vitriol and demonization unabated. Not only did he attempt to shift “Epstein” malignancy from him to prominent Democrats, who welcomed a genuine investigation (come what may), but he found solace in admonishing a Bloomberg journalist with a “quiet piggie” insult. Pig memes, anti-MAGA/anti-Trump are all over the Web.

Additionally, as constitutional scholars find no legal basis for Trump’s practice of blowing up small boats in the Caribbean, without approval by Congress or any courts, merely by saying (with no tangible proof) that these blasts are simply killing “narco-terrorists,” Trump seems oblivious to the jeopardy he is placing on US military and intelligence offices whom he has ordered, through his reservist major DOD head, Pete Hegseth, to implement the killing. The above black and white photographs are a few of the Nazis convicted of post-WWII war crimes (often under US military judges) when their defense, “we were just following orders,” was consistently rejected.

“President Donald Trump demanded the arrest and trial of several ‘seditious’ Democratic lawmakers over a video in which they appealed directly to serving military and intelligence personnel to ‘refuse illegal orders’—and said their actions were ‘punishable by DEATH!’ He also shared a social media post calling to ‘hang’ the Democrats… Democratic leaders called Trump's remarks ‘unhinged’ and condemned what they said were ‘disgusting and dangerous death threats,’ urging Republicans to ‘forcefully do the same.’ They told Trump to delete the posts.

“Trump's incendiary rhetoric comes amid serious bipartisan concern about rising political violence in the United States in the wake of high-profile assassinations, including those of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota.” Shane Croucher, writing for the November 20th Newsweek. Indeed, as former Trump ally, Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, opposed Trump resistance to releasing the Epstein papers, she immediately faced standard-issue MAGA death threats. No, Trump has not read the tea leaves, accepted the recent election results or recognized the consistency of his horrific polling.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as strongman Trump issues death warrants, I wonder from whom he received his 007 license to kill?

If You Can’t Make It Right, Make It Legal

If You Can’t Make It Right, Make It Legal

American Enters Its Banana Republic Phase

In excess of $3 billion, some experts maintain… the increase in Trump family wealth, modestly estimated, from Trump’s tenure as President. I’ve gone over all of this before. I’ve covered “donors” to Trump’s various projects, from inauguration day to the construction of his completely regal ballroom (taking out the entire East Wing of the White House completely on his own), to all the products, assets and services hawked from his presidential perch, his campaign coffers… most of whom need the federal government on their side. For contracts, approvals, exemptions and even pardons. He has his own private law firm, masquerading as the Department of Justice (his “retribution” armada of lawyers), own private police force (anonymous ICE agents who do not need warrants and eschew due process to arrest anyone at will) and even his entire military able to attack boats at sea and threaten invasion of any nation he personally labels as terrorist or narco-terrorist… free of congressional or judicial oversight.

Our DOJ and the DOD have struggled with definitions of “torture” before, legitimizing what was globally acknowledged as torture – from waterboarding, exposure to extreme temperatures, hanging on the wall for hours at a time, religious and sexual humiliation and abuse, sleep deprivation, etc. – during the Iraqi and Afghan wars. But blowing boats out of the water, killing almost 100 without any proof of narco-trafficking, completely at whim… with a mini-Dr Evil Hegseth enjoying every deadly moment?! But the question arises, for every soldier of every rank who swore to protect the Constitution, we have to ask, if soldiers see obvious statutory or constitutional violations in their orders, do they have to follow them?

Retired Navy Captain, Jon Duffy, writing for the November 18th Los Angeles Times, addresses that issue: “If killing men in boats at sea were truly legal, we wouldn’t need a secret memo to say so… According to the Washington Post, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel quietly assured the Defense Department last week that U.S. service members cannot be prosecuted for the more than 20 ‘boat strikes’ that have killed at least 80 people in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. A memo like that does not speak the language of lawfulness. It speaks the language of guilt management and accountability avoidance. When a government must preemptively promise its warriors immunity, it is conceding that it has crossed a line.

“This is not an isolated excess. It is the continuation of a moral collapse that has unfolded, memo by memo, across decades of American warfare. The George W. Bush administration wrote the first of these permission slips when its lawyers redefined torture as ‘enhanced interrogation.’ The Obama administration rescinded those opinions — then used the same machinery of justification to rationalize drone strikes, including one that killed an American citizen in 2011 and another that killed his 16-year-old son. The party in charge may change, but the grotesque logic endures: If you can’t make it right, make it legal.

“President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth have brought that logic to the open sea. Missiles fired from American aircraft are obliterating small open-hulled speedboats suspected of carrying drugs. There are no declarations of war, no charges, no trials. The Pentagon insists these killings are ‘lawful orders,’ vetted by lawyers ‘up and down the chain.’ That line should chill anyone who has ever worn a uniform. No law of armed conflict permits execution without combat. No one in those boats justifiably can be labeled a combatant. There is no moral universe in which vaporizing human beings in the middle of the ocean is an act of justice… Our allies see what we refuse to admit. The United Kingdom reportedly stopped sharing intelligence for these missions, unwilling to be complicit in acts that violate international law…

“Officers trained through their careers on principles like proportionality and restraint have outsourced their conscience to legal process. The logic goes that if the lawyers have signed off, ethics need no longer enter the equation. The “legal” justification acts as a sort of moral anesthesia. But every order carried out under that logic erodes the institution that gives it — and the soul of the person who obeys it… The phrase “lawful orders” has become the military’s institutional sedative. We repeat it to absolve ourselves of thinking, to pretend that justice can be delegated to paperwork. No matter how many knots a lawyer ties themselves in to get there, legality is not legitimacy.” Is that true? Pardon me? Exactly!

Also writing for the LA Times, columnist Jonah Goldberg ask whether the abuse of the presidential pardon power needs to be limited to what our Forefathers believed was a safety value for judicial missteps and excess. They assumed that anyone elected to the presidency would be a person of integrity and of good character. Wrong on both counts. “The problem: Congress’ impeachment power has proven to be a dead letter in the modern era of hyper-partisanship. Just as presidents cannot be trusted to use the pardon power responsibly, Congress cannot be trusted with the responsibility to hold presidents accountable. Without checks, there is no balance.

“There still should be room for pardons and clemency in our system. But leaving it solely in the power of presidents has led to evermore abuse. Indeed, I think it’s almost a certainty that Trump will use the Biden precedent to preemptively pardon much of his administration, his sons and himself before he leaves office. Given the ongoing weaponization of the justice system — and his abuse of it — he’d almost be a fool not to… The Constitution was written with men like George Washington in mind. When Washington opted to step down after two terms, it established a two-term tradition that endured until Franklin Roosevelt violated it. Afterward, we amended the Constitution to codify what had been a tradition.” But wait, there’s so much more.

The November 17th The Hartman Report, knowing that the Epstein papers were going to released at least at some level, Thom Hartmann wrote:

• Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking ring are demanding Congress release all the files, and Trump was attacking Republicans for even considering going along with them (now he’s opened his own ‘investigation,’ which will prevent their public release regardless of Congress as he pretends to call for them to be made public.

• Trump incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol after insisting, against all evidence and over 60 court losses, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. That wasn’t protest: it was a violent assault on American democracy itself that led to the death of three police officers and the hospitalization of over 140 others. Yet the GOP continues to use Trump’s lie as a political weapon...

• He’s incited hate against those least able to defend themselves, promoting a culture of violence and intolerance. From people fleeing murder and rape in their own countries to those merely seeking a better life to American communities of queer people and religious and racial minorities, Trump has licensed the most base and disgusting elements in our society…

• His trade wars gutted American credibility, paved the way for bribes to himself and his boys, all while punishing the very supporters he claimed to champion.

How much corruption is enough? MAGA officials believe it is a perk of power, and that rigging elections is OK. Trump may hit some bumps after his Epstein loss, but he is already trying to turn the focus on Democrats… and there are so many “legal reasons” why the only “Epstein papers” we’re likely to see from the DOJ will be heavily redacted. Trump isn’t a lame duck yet, his MAGA minions are not going go away quietly and follow the Constitution… but until they do or are severely punished for not protecting what they all swore to protect…

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is really hard to see where the United States is on morally higher ground these days than some of those brutal banana republics, where money flows upward… and people who disagree just disappear.

History is What We Say It Is

                                     

                                                                                                  NAZI Gestapo: “Papers please!”

       

History is What We Say It Is

America Can Do No Wrong

“The new Florida standards you [AP] write about are appalling. History should never be rewritten to match the politics of the day, as history has valuable lessons to teach.” 

November 12th email from Mitzi Trumbo, daughter of screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, imprisoned and blacklisted during the anti-communist Red Scare fomented by disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy, post-WWII.

“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology… This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” Trump statement accompanying his March 27th executive order to “restore truth and sanity to American history… remove improper ideology… [and] prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”

For my readers, you know I am a history buff. I very much believe in the admonition from 19th century philosopher, George Sanayana: “Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.” Today, there are vast swaths of the United States where anything negative in US history, particularly involving white Americans, is simply being banned or erased. School districts and public libraries in red states have banned books depicting slavery as oppression or the annihilation of Indigenous peoples (including taking their lands) as shameful. Including Andrew Jackson’s abrogation of treaties with such peoples followed by his horrific force-march of thousands of Native Americans from their eastern homelands into unfamiliar the western plains, the infamous Trail of Tears.

African American war heroes from all of our wars are disappearing from books and exhibits while traitors to the Constitution, champions of dehumanizing slavery willing to overthrow the US government, are heralded; statues of Confederate leaders are restored and revered. Imagine if Europe followed our model. Hitler’s statue and those leading the Nazi death camps would be proudly displayed in European cities?! Nowhere in Europe can you find such “memorabilia.” In Germany, public high school students are required to visit preserved concentration camps with lots of grim reminders and photographs. It is not uncommon for those students to break down into sobs.

But in Trump’s America, as a Versailles-like grand ballroom is replacing the East Wing of the White House, roughly a third of Americans see this erasure of America’s darkest hours as a necessary proof of patriotism, and that those who oppose this wholesale effort to cleanse our mistakes are un-American “vermin” who should themselves be erased. The latest such effort, ironically led by a graduate with a history BA from Yale University, is Governor Ron DeSantis, who leading a whitewash in the ultra-rightwing historical revision for Florida public schools.

“The standards approved Thursday [11/12] for middle and high school students by the Florida Board of Education include instruction on the use of ‘ ‘McCarthyism’ as an insult’ and how using the terms ‘red-baiter and Red Scare’ is identified with ‘slander against anti-communists.’

“The standards soften decades of criticism of former U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led a political movement to root out what he labeled communism in government, the civil rights movement and artistic communities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The public inquisitions, ideological loyalty tests and firings of that period are widely viewed as a shameful chapter in U.S. history.” Mike Schneider, writing for the November 15th Associated Press.

If you think about all those horribles that have happened as nations have pushed even elected leaders to new autocratic forms of governance, what imagery do you see? Soldiers marching into their own cities and rousting their own citizens, anonymous government officials demanding papers and arresting people who look like they’re criminals or undesirables, transporting them to distant “detention centers,” unsanitary, inhumane while being denied access to a full and fair legal system with impartial judges? What lessons are we not learning? What historical wrongs are we repeating? And where does loyalty to a single human being trump due process, free speech and those other fundamental constitutional rights?

In a government gone rogue, who in the current Trump administration are the functional equivalents of extreme versions of what we could become? Who might become our future Heinrich Himmler, who was second in power to Hitler, Hermann Göring, who was a leader of the Nazi Party and one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state, Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda and a fervent follower whom Hitler selected to succeed him as chancellor, or Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister and chief negotiator of various treaties? We’re certainly not there… yet… but why do senior administration figures and those state officials, who follow along, choose practices and models that were used in other totalitarian regimes (real and wannabe) in their ascent to power? Can it be they never studied history… or for those who majored in history, that they very much want the same totalitarian state they actually did study?

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who are enjoying their newfound power to lord it over others, can they remotely understand it might be like for them if the roles were reversed?

The President Who Always Blames and Cries Wolf

 

The President Who Always Blames and Cries Wolf

“Emergency!” “Radical Leftists!” “Hoax!” “Witch Hunt!” “Fake News!” “I am Your Retribution”

"Those illegal aliens came from a myriad of situations, whether they were criminals or individuals that were taking jobs from Americans… And I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what's going to happen is, we're going to go even harder on the streets… If he releases those 650, we're going to apprehend 1,650 on the streets of Chicago… We're ratcheting operations up in Chicago… That's a very corrupt system in Chicago, whether it's those elected leaders like Pritzer or those out-of-control judges."

U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino, in charge of the immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, after federal judges/magistrates ordered a review of the 600+ detainees to determine which are eligible for release immediately (or can post bail) and which are too dangerous to release.

“The Democrats are doing everything in their withering power to push the Epstein Hoax again, despite the DOJ releasing 50,000 pages of documents, in order to deflect from all of their bad policies and losses, especially the SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT, where their party is in total disarray, and has no idea what to do… Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish. Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem! Ask Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Sommers about Epstein, they know all about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!... I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.” 

Posts Trump wrote on his Truth Social, November 14th

We’re either watching the beginnings of a civil war or coup d’etat, on the one hand, or the Trump administration and roughly one-third of Americans are living in a parallel universe based on “alternative facts” (which do not exist in reality) and some rather extreme conspiracy theories. Trump’s Solicitor General, John Saur, made a fool of himself arguing before the Supreme Court that tariffs weren’t taxes and that under the guise of regulation, he could declare a continuing 50-year trade deficit an “emergency,” and impose an entire global tariff scheme. There is almost universal acceptance that Trump erratic tariff program has failed miserably.

As 70% of Americans polled are experiencing higher prices across the board – clearly due to tariffs and trade restrictions imposed personally by Donald Trump – Trump lamely presented the price cut in Walmart’s Thanksgiving dinner package, was 25% lower than last year, a his evidence that prices are falling… only to be challenged that Walmart had reduced the packaged items by removing chicken broth; fresh onions and celery; poultry seasoning; Marie Callender’s pecan pie; frozen whipped topping; mini marshmallows; Jiffy Corn muffin mix; and three bags of sweet potatoes. Three items also were downsized: cranberries (from a 14 ounce can to 12 ounces of fresh berries), mushroom soup (two cans to one) and crispy fried onions (from 6 ounces of French’s to 4.5 ounces of Kinder’s). So much for increased affordability and a good economy.

As ICE brutality is increasingly featured the news media (social and mainstream), combined with blue cities’ (some in red states) being quite literally invaded by federal or federalized troops, Americans are feeling very uncomfortable with what looks like a masked private police force loyal only to Trump and the transition of our military from the protector of our Constitution to elevating loyalty to Donald Trump above all else as the ultimate dictator over the military. Writing for the November 14th Newsweek, Hugh Cameron writes that Trump is also losing serious parts of this MAGA base: “Ten months into his second term, President Donald Trump is being challenged by the very base he prides himself on creating, and he finds himself besieged by an army of issues that could threaten his MAGA support and spell trouble for lawmakers who remain by his side…

"‘I think the MAGA base is splitting,’ said Peter Loge, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. ‘Donald Trump will never lose his core support, but what it means to be MAGA or a true Republican is now suddenly being debated.’… Loge, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, told Newsweek that the combination of snafus embroiling the administration, rather than any one issue specifically, seems to indicate Trump might be losing his footing… ‘We connect the dots to make pictures, and the recent dots include Epstein, the election, the court being very skeptical of Trump's tariff policies, increasing economic insecurity, falling poll numbers,’ he said. ‘These bits of information, these dots, paint a picture of a presidency in trouble.’”

One giant wedge is Trump’s seeming guilt-ridden effort to bury the Epstein papers. Yet, he has failed to keep the GOP-led House of Representatives from passing a discharge petition forcing the DOJ into a public release of a mass of the relevant underlying documents which, if nothing else, show Trump’s longstanding knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking network and his constant efforts to cover it up… thus keeping those documents from the public’s eye. Since pedophilia is one of the worst crimes to most of his MAGA base, Trump’s cover-up puts him increasingly at risk. Sensing that if he could just “deliver” that deep state pedophilia conspiracy that MAGA had assumed was purely comprised of high-level Democrats, Trump tried another stab at deflection.

The US justice department has confirmed it will investigate pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein's alleged links to major banks and several prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton. On social media, President Donald Trump had said he would ask Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI to look into Epstein's “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others "to determine what was going on with them, and him." Bondi later responded that this would be pursued "with urgency." Clinton has strongly denied he had any knowledge of Epstein's crimes.

Trump is aware that if full and fair elections were allowed for the 2026 mid-terms and the 2028 presidential race (whether can avoid term limits is still in doubt), it is very likely that the Republicans are likely to lose one or both the Senate and the House. Thus, his efforts at making sure those elections are rigged has become his obsession. Texas rigged their congressional maps at Trump’s request; California responded. Relying on a remarkably thin argument that California’s Proposition 50 was a racially biased effort – still governed by the remaining Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that was otherwise eviscerated by the Supreme Court in Shelby County vs Holder (2013) – the partisan Department of Justice joined a lawsuit on November 13th brought by California Republicans that seeks to block the state from adopting a new congressional map and thwart Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to help Democrats seize enough seats in 2026 to control the U.S. House.

This wildly popular Proposition 50 California constitutional amendment generated 64% of the vote to counter that legislative redistricting effort in Texas favoring Republicans. Of course, the highly partisan DOJ did not file a comparable lawsuit against Texas that was equally biased. Trump has recast the DOJ as his private law firm, and combined with new private ICE police force, his almost total control of the military, a Supreme Court that has expanded the presidency into autocracy, over 100 state election officials ready to dismiss Democratic votes, and a Congress that is now mostly his aggregation of obsequious minions, he just might be able to stage a coup and assert actual dictatorial control of the country before the next election.

I’m Peter Dekom, and to those skeptics who say a dictatorship cannot happen here, I think they need to be objective, look around, and realize IT IS!

And the Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year is Parasocial but Should Be ….

 

And the Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year is Parasocial but Should Be ….

BULLSH*T… FYI, Parasocial is an adjective defined as: involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc., or an artificial intelligence.

“I agree with President Trump, with the Department of Justice, with the FBI that you need all credible evidence and information out there… That word ‘credible’ is important. And why? Because you have to protect innocent people’s names and reputations whose names might be, as you noted at the outset of the program, intertwined into all these files…

“These are minors in many cases who were subjected to unspeakable crimes, abject evil…They’ve already suffered great harm. We do not need their names being unmasked. The Massie and the Khanna discharge petition does not have adequate protections.” 

Delay-master, House Speaker Mike Johnson, immediately before the Epstein-papers-release discharge petition was overwhelmingly passed by a bipartisan groundswell, after even Donald Trump admitted defeat and allowed GOP votes in support.

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax.” 

Trump on Truth Social, November 16th, after he realized the discharge petition would pass with GOP votes.

As Donald Trump tells us that we have the best economy ever, robust full employment, such a tsunami of tariff revenue that he wants to give ordinary Americans a “tariff bonus” of $2000 each, we now have global admiration and respect, that “Biden era” inflation is now under control, no more money will be wasted on that “climate change hoax,” that blue cities (even in red states) are facing or will face crime rate plunge as federalized troops insure that result and undocumented residents will be shipped out as quickly as they can be detained, and that he always favored full “Epstein scandal” transparency, I am beginning to notice that a growing number of his MAGA supporters no longer trust him.

Is Donald Trump so used to fabrication that he cannot help himself, or is his growing proclivity to create a parallel universe, devoid of facts, just a sign of accelerating mental and physical decline that reminds me of his description of Joe Biden in the 2024 campaign? We are experiencing record levels of layoffs, prices are soaring, crops are rotting in the fields, more and more construction sites are empty, China is walking behind our missteps and making new trade deals and trade exchange workarounds all over the globe, soldiers and masked secret police are marching into some of our biggest cities (they don’t even ask for “papers, please” anymore), federal agencies are defying court orders and except for the fattest of fat cats, very few Americans can tell you they are better off than they were last year at this time. Fewer and fewer people are living in that Trumpian parallel universe.

Meanwhile, Noem (DHS) and Patel (FBI) are flying around in fancy new jets, Patel uses his plane and a contingent of FBI “protective” agents to support his relationship with a Nashville based country singer. Roughly a third of FBI agents have been pulled off their traditional serious crime case work to join immigration enforcement. Many FBI agents spent months redacting Trump’s name from Epstein documents under DOJ control. The DOJ has so hollowed out its cadre of super-qualified prosecutors such that virtually any lawyer, regardless of experience of education, who applies to any US Attorney’s Office, is likely to be hired. As reservist major Pete Hegseth likewise hollows out the military, morale among our troops is at an all-time low. White House ballroom, anyone? How about extra-judicial killings at sea without congressional approval?

As House Speaker Johnson decried the lack of privacy that the discharge petition would unleash, even as the victims of Epstein’s debauchery clamored for release anyway, he repeated Trump’s statements that the entire scandal was on Democrats (that “Democratic hoax”) and that the Dems sat on those same papers during the Biden era. That the underlying prosecutions were underway during the Biden era, which have required the DOJ not to release most of the relevant documents, was never mentioned. That Trump was registered Democrat during much of his time with Epstein also seems to have fallen between the cracks.

Even as Trump-ally GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene broke with Trump as he fought against the document release, she noted that this disagreement was tearing MAGA apart. She even faced death threats for going against fearful leader. Indeed, until Trump’s Truth Social post noted above, President Trump had consistently denounced calls for the release of the Epstein files as a Democratic hoax. Yet, with one no vote, the House and Senate passed the petition, with the President still maintaining that this scandal was merely a Democratic hoax… even after agreeing to sign the bill. He added he wanted the investigation to shift to culpable Democrats.

Trump had dispatched aides to warn Republicans that backing it would be seen as a “hostile act.” He placed personal calls to those who dared to do so, and even dispatched his attorney general and FBI director to meet with House Rep Lauren Bobert (R/CO) in the White House Situation Room in efforts to get her to flip her support of that discharge petition. In the end, will Trump be forced Nixon-like from office? He may transition into true lame duck status, and these events are severely damaging to him, but remember he was reelected notwithstanding the fact that he was a convicted felon. I think Trump will probably survive. And if he can rig the midterms to retain MAGA control of Congress, he may well thrive. Shame on America!

But those seeking fame and glory, creating what appear to be credible attacks on legitimate people, have a new ally beyond conspiracy theory-laden social media: artificial intelligence. Take this attack, reported by Gina Kolata in the November 4th New York Times: “Letters to the editor from writers using chatbots are flooding the world’s scientific journals, according to new research and journal editors.

“The practice is putting at risk a part of scientific publishing that editors say is needed to sharpen research findings and create new directions for inquiry… A new study on the problem started with a tropical disease specialist who had a weird experience with a chatbot-written letter. He decided to figure out just what was going on and who was submitting all those letters.

“The scientist, Dr. Carlos Chaccour, at the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra in Spain, said his probing began just after he had released a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine, one of the world’s most prestigious journals. The paper, published in July, was on controlling malaria infections with ivermectin, and it appeared with a laudatory editorial… ‘This has to be A.I.,’ Dr. Chaccour decided.

“A large language model must have been used to compose the letter, Dr. Chaccour reasoned. He thinks that, searching for references in a niche field where there aren’t many, it popped in two of Dr. Chaccour’s own papers… The study involved an analysis of more than 730,000 letters to journal editors published since 2005. It has been posted online ahead of submission to a peer-reviewed journal…. ‘Something happened in 2023,’ Dr. Chaccour said. There was a sudden emergence of authors who had published few or no letters before then but who suddenly had letters appearing on a regular basis — going, Dr. Chaccour said, ‘from zero to hero.’” The initials of that lead letter-writer? B.S. We are living in a society where truth is devalued, marginalized and ignored. Anonymous attackers and conspiracy theorists have unprecedented power.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how our economy and our quality of life, even our form of government, can continue if lies are now routinely given the authority that once was accorded to truth.

 

What’s Worse – That Trump Knew or That He Worked So Hard to Cover It Up?

What’s Worse – That Trump Knew or That He Worked So Hard to Cover It Up?

"He feels alone and is nuts!!! I told everyone from day one. Evil beyond belief. Mad, and most thought I was speaking metaphorically. It's obvious he could crack. Stormy Daniels? Lies after lies after lies." Jeffrey Epstein’s response to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ inquiry about Trump (2018)

After many unprecedented delays orchestrated by Trump-lockstep-loyalist House Speaker Mike Johnson (R/LA), Representative Adelita Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona who won a special election back in September, was finally sworn in to her House seat, and did precisely what Johnson did not want her to do: become the 218th representative to sign the bi-partisan “discharge petition’, passing a House effort to force the DOJ to release their treasure-trove of Epstein files.

Let me start with my basic assumptions, based on the Epstein materials that I have seen or which have been reported by credible sources who have reviewed those materials in depth, even in anticipation of the files that will be released by that discharge petition. First, so far at least, I do not believe that Donald Trump personally participated in any direct, unlawful contacts with any of the Epstein victims. Second, I do not believe he procured women for Epstein’s sexual trafficking network. That said, those who have trapsed through the recently released files from the Epstein estate, tell us that Trump’s name is mentioned more frequently than anyone else other than Jeffrey Epstein himself. More even than convicted co-trafficker, Ghislane Maxwell.

Where’s smoke, there’s fire, and there are very few GOP members of Congress who truly believe in the accuracy of Trump’s repeated statements that the Epstein scandal is merely a side show (a “distraction,” he claims, from the “Democrat’s shutdown”), at best a Democratic hoax aimed at discrediting the President with total lies. But by so desperately trying to stop the dissemination of the very documents he pledged to release if elected again, Trump seems to have failed to convince a majority of Republicans, even as many stand by his censorship efforts, and an increasing number of MAGA members, who particularly hate pedophiles and those who hide them.

The evidence is mounting, and VP JD Vance, normally a very loud Trump supporter, seems to have fallen into a silent phase, evocative of VP Gerald Ford’s silence just before rising evidence forced Richard Nixon to resign under an equally dark cloud. Sam Sifton for The Morning, 11/13/25 (NY Times news feed) sprinkles some reminders of this nasty unfolding of events: “Every now and then, nuggets of news emerge. In July, the Justice Department put out a report saying there was no Epstein ‘client list.’ The Times reported this past summer about his Manhattan lair and this fall about the bankers who served him after he’d been convicted of a sex crime.

“And yesterday [11/12], Democrats released three emails in which Epstein talked with others about Trump, suggesting the president may know more about the sex trafficking than he has acknowledged. Hours later, Republicans dropped 23,000 more pages of documents from Epstein’s estate. It led to a mad scramble in our newsroom… ‘We still have a lot to look at and don’t totally know how much of the universe we have seen,’ [NY Times journalist Kirsten Davis] said. But here’s some of what the emails have revealed so far. Please note: The documents are riddled with typos, which we have preserved when we quote from them.

“Epstein’s emails suggest he was close with Trump.

• In 2011, in an email to his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, he wrote: “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Redacted victim name] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”
• People repeatedly emailed Epstein asking for advice in dealing with Trump, but he wasn’t always forthcoming. In one email, Epstein advised: “donald is close to no one. . he talks to many people. he tells each one something differnt.”
• In an email to the author Michael Wolff in 2019, Epstein wrote of Trump, “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

2. But Epstein also frequently disparaged Trump.

• In 2018, during Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, Epstein wrote, “you see, i know how dirty donald is.”
• When a former Obama administration official emailed Epstein and called Trump “so gross,” Epstein replied, “worse in real life and upclose.”

3. Wolff seems to have served as an adviser to Epstein.

• Some of Wolff’s emails suggest that Epstein could have contradicted Trump’s claims — or held back in exchange for a favor. In 2015, before a presidential debate on CNN, Epstein asked what they would want Trump to say about his relationship with the financier. Wolff wrote: “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.”
• Wolff also said Epstein could use information about Trump to shift attention off himself. In 2016, before a book about Epstein was released, Wolff told him: “You do need an immediate counter narrative to the book. I believe Trump offers an ideal opportunity.”

4. Epstein chatted casually with a wide network of powerful people.

• He gave Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary, advice about his interactions with a woman: “no whining showed strentgh,” Epstein wrote.
• He talked politics with Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser. In 2018, after Epstein invited Bannon to Europe, Bannon replied, “their is a crazed jihad against u — ive never seen anything like it — and I’ve seen a lot.” ”

In the end, this saga will play out. If it gets serious enough, and Trump is unable to stop the expected Democratic landslide by election rigging (gerrymandering, partisans in election offices messing with the results, troop seizing ballot and election machines, etc.), a Democratic House is highly likely to impeach Trump again… and the disclosures to impeach could be pretty juicy. Who knows if this time the Senate without enough Senators to block a conviction… just might force Trump to resign or face an embarrassing conviction? But then, we get President JD Vance.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as lurid as this story gets, remember that this is as much as a description of contemporary America as it a tale of a governmental leader gone … possibly… terribly wrong.

Financial Insanity – Betting on Oil, Rejecting Green Alternative Energy

 

Financial Insanity – Betting on Oil, Rejecting Green Alternative Energy

While Donald Trump is a master at manipulating, particularly those gullible enough to believe in simple answers to complex economic and political problems that can be summarized in a very short, catchy label, he almost always has to lie, promise what he cannot deliver and blame others for his litany of shortfalls. The weird part of all this is despite his litany of failures is that he has amassed an unbreakable of diehard aggregation MAGA followers (roughly 30% of the electorate) who believe almost everything he says (maybe generating some doubt over the extent of his knowledge of the Epstein nasties). What’s worse, he's made that following an essential constituency for any Republican seeking primary victory in any congressional race and has somehow convinced his 6-3 reconfigured Supreme Court to de facto amend the Constitution repeatedly to raise the executive branch as the most powerful branch of the federal government, with limited (if any) checks and balances from either the legislative or judicial branches.

Notwithstanding the Supreme Court skepticism over his inflation-accelerating tariff policy and the startling voter rejection over the economy evidenced by the November 4th clean Democratic sweep in just about every election conducted on that date, a clearly aging President Trump remains tone deaf to the rising anti-Trump voices all around him. His polling is falling faster than a stone tossed off the Rock of Gibraltar. And that’s just in the United States. Overseas, most of the rest of the world is figuring out workarounds against his use of the military to wage war without congressional approval and to bully nations into adopting his warped vision of the world. The complete failure of the Trump administration to send anyone to the COP30 climate conference in Brazil is such a blessing to China; it’s hard to overstate the damage he is foisting on American competitiveness, particularly the rising global opprobrium over his inane climate change “hoax” stance.

As China sails her third and newest nuclear powered aircraft carrier – this one mirrors the our Navy’s use of magnetic catapults to launch aircraft – China has also both spread AI into daily use consumer items (creating the standards for AI consumer use) and completely dominated the mega-growth alternative energy marketplace, one which Donald Trump has announced is the pathway to economic destruction for any nation that believes this fossil fuel avoidance strategy could ever work. Except it is growing like wildfire and delivering!

As Trump told the UN that China builds big ugly wind turbines but never uses them herself, China leader Xi Jinping must have cracked a bid wide grin. China is indeed the largest user of wind turbines and solar in the world. As AI places extraordinarily increased demands for more electrical power, Xi knows the only answer is alternative energy. In the United States, massive file server farms that are needed to support AI sit unused for lack of electrical power. Today, China accounts for 74% of the global investment in alternative energy systems and now sells three times the number of cars (virtually all electric) globally as does the United States.

Writing for the November 12th The Morning (NY Times newsfeed), Somini Sengupta and Brad Plumer, tell us: “‘Emerging economies are a very important part of the story,’ an environmental advocacy researcher told The Times. ‘The reason we should be paying attention is that they have the most people in the world, they have the largest number of poor people in the world, and their energy demands are growing. If these economies don’t change, there’s no chance for the world to get to a safer place.’

“[For example,] Ethiopia has banned the importing of new gasoline-powered cars, they write. Nepal has lowered import taxes for electric vehicles so they’re cheaper than gas ones. Brazil raised tariffs on imported cars to help persuade Chinese automakers to build plants there.

“And China is investing heavily — nearly a quarter trillion dollars since 2011, they report, with most of that money going to what’s known as the global south. Adjusted for inflation, that is more money than the U.S. put into the Marshall Plan after World War II.

“A decade ago, the U.S. and Europe were pressuring developing nations to take faster action on climate change. Now the economics have changed, and developing nations are delivering what appears to be good news for the planet.

“India, for example, recently announced that half of its demand for electricity can now be satisfied by renewable energy from wind, sun and water, five years earlier than the 2030 target it had set in the Paris Agreement… Countries like Brazil, India and Vietnam are rapidly expanding solar and wind power. Poorer countries like Ethiopia and Nepal are leapfrogging over gasoline-burning cars to battery-powered ones. Nigeria, a petrostate, plans to build its first solar-panel manufacturing plant. Morocco is creating a battery hub to supply European automakers. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has electrified more than half of its bus fleet in recent years.”

It seems that poorer nations find that the cost of importing or even extracting fossil fuels (for the few that have such resources) is no longer competitive with sustainably cheaper green tech. By decentralizing electrical power generation, likewise, they can save on the massive wiring infrastructure required to transfer power from huge power plants hundreds of miles away. The idea of being released from the fossil fuel bullies that dictate oil prices is particularly appealing to less affluent nations that have better use for their limited capital resources.

But ever-so-wise Donald Trump is determined to lead the United States away from this lucrative and exploding market, saddling us with an obsolete power-generating model for the future, just when the demand for electricity has never been so high. China is deeply grateful for Trump’s blind retro push for a non-growth industry facing decreasing demand. Even US-based oil companies are not exactly heeding Trump’s call for “drill baby, drill.” They are shying away from investing the billions Trump wants to see in oil. Just look at how many US refineries are shutting down!

I’m Peter Dekom, and the notion of going long on fossil fuel extraction and short on green energy power generation is just one more step to reduce the power of the American economic marvel and allow China to zoom past us to the top spot.