Trump’s Rasputin – The Real Power Behind the Throne

 

Trump’s Rasputin – The Real Power Behind the Throne

Stephen Miller – Self-appointed constitutional expert with no legal training

“Stephen Miller works around the clock to implement President Trump’s America First policy agenda, and he is doing a phenomenal job… The president fully trusts Stephen and for good reason — he delivers.” 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt

In what is an increasing trend in the Trump administration: appointments to high-level cabinet and sub-cabinet level jobs in fields of extreme complexity often requiring advanced degrees and specific experience… are individuals lacking both. Head of the Department of Defense: Pete Hegseth, who never advanced beyond the rank of major in the Minnesota National Guard but was a weekend Fox News host. Surgeon General Nominee: Dr. Casey Means, a conspiracy theorist and advocate of psychedelic drugs as a bona fide medical treatment, whose medical license is listed as “inactive.” Head of Health and Human Services: Robert Kennedy, Jr, an environmental lawyer with no medical or health-related degrees who is infamous for his questionable conspiracy theories about medical science. Etc. But the most powerful and most senior advisor to the President is a 39-year-old former speech writer and self-proclaimed legal expert (particularly on matters of constitutional law) with no legal training whatsoever. Stephen Miller.

As rumors of Miller’s taking the recently departed Mike Walz position as senior National Security Advisor to the President spread, Trump asked why Miller would accept such a demotion within his administration. Miller seems to enjoy embracing extreme rightwing positions, many times requiring that constitutional provisions be downgraded or ignored and often embracing positions that would seriously harm Trump’s constituency. But the underlying psyche of so many MAGA constituents seems to welcome such harm, as noted by Jos Joseph writing for the May 15th The Hill: “We have watched as they said no to educational, health care, environmental, wage and economic improvements while voting for politicians who seem hell-bent on keeping them in their current position, no matter how bad it may be… Despite all the doom and gloom, his core support has not eroded, according to poll numbers.

“The answer to this is pretty simple. Trump voters are okay with suffering, as long as other people hurt more. To them, it shows that the status quo is being preserved and the changes to America that they fear are being mitigated.” And when it comes to inflicting that kind of pain, no one has been more effective than Stephen Miller, Trump’s most senior advisor. Writing for the May15th NBC News, Jonathan Allen, Matt Dixon, Katherine Doyle and Sahil Kapur, describe the most powerful presidential advisor since Dick Cheney who, as VP, helped direct George W Bush’s presidency: “Outside of President Donald Trump, no White House official has accumulated more influence in this administration than Stephen Miller, the 39-year-old anti-immigration crusader whose brain and bare-knuckled tactics have been deployed to drive the agenda for the commander in chief.

“Not Vice President JD Vance. Not chief of staff Susie Wiles. Not anyone else…. It is Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, who loaded up scores of executive orders for Trump to sign in his first months back in office — on topics ranging from the declaration of a national emergency at the southern border to dismantling diversity programs in the federal government and withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization…‘Stephen is the president’s id,’ said one former Trump adviser who knows Miller well. ‘He has been for a while. It’s just now he has the leverage and power to fully effectuate it.’…

“A staffer for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Miller was an early enlistee on Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016 and took over speech-writing duties and an immigration portfolio in Trump’s first term.” As Trump’s unambiguous guru, Miller has embraced Trump extreme anti-immigrant and anti-citizen-by-birth demonizing vectors with the zeal of a hand-rubbing villain in literature’s most diabolical tales.

As the gleeful implementer of the policies of Project 2025, Miller is the force behind Trump’s rolling tsunami of executive orders, his embrace of Trump’s treating Attorney General Pam Bondi and the entire DOJ legal team as Trump’s personal law firm with a clear directive to overwhelm the entire judicial system with extreme positions in the hopes of rendering the judiciary helpless to deal with the pressure. And Miller has enough lawyers within Trump’s ambit to support that unrelenting attack on the system… and the individual judges who fail to tow the party line.

“One of the first executive orders he prepared for Trump, signed on Inauguration Day, would end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that people born in the United States are automatically citizens. [In early May], he said that the White House is considering suspending the right of habeas corpus — a constitutional protection against unlawful detention — as the administration seeks to continue its deportation program. Like the birthright citizenship order and many other Trump actions, parts of the deportation effort have been impeded on constitutional grounds by federal judges.

“Miller’s voice is the one arguing vociferously — and without evidence — that ‘Marxist judges’ are executing a ‘judicial coup’ by identifying limits on the president’s authority. ‘President Trump built much of his current political success by standing with the American people on immigration, and doing what others have been unwilling or unable to do: close the border,’ said one top Trump adviser. ‘There has been no bigger advocate of that in the history of the country than Stephen Miller. That, at its core, is why the president trusts him so much, and relies on him to a degree that is matched by very few.’ …That trust is a big reason Miller’s reach extends far beyond the immigration policies for which he became famous during Trump’s first term, which included separating migrant families as a deterrent to illegal immigration.” NBC News

As Trump begins to deploy the US military is a recently manufactured 170-mile Army base along our southern border – to trap migrants into an unwitting criminal trespass as they enter this vast and often unmarked new installation, facilitating immediate deportation without due process – you can see Miller’s handwriting all over this initiative. Miller has worked tirelessly to push Congress and the judiciary aside so that Trump can rise as America’s autocratic leader. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and I suspect very few of us would really like to live in Stephen Miller’s vision of America, which he has been so effective in creating.

A Weapon of Miss-Direction

  

A Weapon of Miss-Direction

An Oxymoron: Trump National Intelligence Team?

“I’m not looking to fight… But if it’s a choice between fighting and having a nuclear weapon, you have to do what you have to do… [Later] I may do it, I may not do it… I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.” Trump to reporters on June 18th.

Iran has played havoc with several US presidents since its 1979 Islamic revolution: Jimmy Carter’s failed US hostage rescue, Reagan’s Iran Contra-Affair and Trump’s own 2018 termination of the nuclear enrichment accord (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPA), the latter despite clear and convincing evidence from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Trump’s military and intelligence advisors and later, even from the Israeli intelligence office… that Iran was in full compliance with that accord. Notorious for not reading intelligence briefings and basing his opinion on his gut and the pressures from his loyalists, Trump’s cabinet and subcabinet level appointments, who are woefully and profoundly unqualified to provide meaningful input on international security matters, are of no help whatsoever.

Furthermore, MAGA is clearly split between isolationists believing in Trump’s pledge for “no more foreign wars” and pro-Israeli hawks sensing a unique opportunity to denuclearize Iran once and for all. Iran may not have those weapons yet, but its massively accelerated enrichment program teeters on the edge of having a successful nuclear warhead… possibly delivered by Iran’s modern missile fleet. But Trump’s strategy is both unfathomable and seemingly ill-devised.

After all, who in their right mind (???) would demand “unconditional surrender” from a religiously validated leader in a totalitarian theocracy, who has never compromised on anything since the JCPA, when we are not even at war with that nation? If the Ayatollah Khomeini had accepted that demand, exactly what would the US do next? Threats, direct and suggested, to kill the Ayatollah, an old man in bad health, would, if implemented, only serve to create a new Shiite martyr who would simply reignite even stiffer opposition from the remaining religious rulers. Instead of a more studied and carefully crafted “all options are on the table” public statement, Trump opted for the most inflammatory and least likely to succeed surrender demand.

Trump’s third-rate advisors were in disarray. His Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was sidelined, presumably based on her consistent statement against the US involvement in another war in the Middle East. Pete Hegseth, fresh after going out of his arrogant way of alienating members of a congressional committee with his “cute, smart ass” evasive answers, was hardly the obvious go-too strategic advisor to anyone on whether the US should preemptively attack Iran’s most heavily protected nuclear sites. His incompetence is so clearly evident.

The most obvious military target, Fordo in northern Iran, was apparently an intentionally deep underground nuclear-development bunker: 300 feet according to experts. As the only nation possessing both the necessary “bunker buster” bomb (a multilevel, titanium-tipped massive 30,000 lbs. GBU-57 bomb) and the bomber (the stealth B-2) capable of carrying that load, the United States is uniquely positioned to deploy the only weapon capable of targeting and destroying such deep underground bunkers.

But there is a litany of catches, starting with the technical capability of the bomb itself. The GBU-57 bomb has a listed capability of 200 feet, which can explain why Iran’s bunker is 300 feet underground. That would require more than one well-aimed strike of a deeper bunker. Most probably, the air wing that would escort multiple B-2s carrying their explosive cargo would include top-of-the-line fighter protection, electronic anti-missile detection and destruction aircraft, refueling tankers, etc. While air superiority has clearly been established by the Israeli Air Force, there is always the threat that Iran has kept weapon systems in reserve to repel such an effort.

But even in success, the costs are unpredictable and potentially globally economically devastating. Iran has always maintained that it has deployed clandestine sleeper cells, well-trained and well-armed, all over the world, waiting for a signal from Tehran to unleash carefully planned attacks… against their enemies’ civilian and military targets with a heavy emphasis on essential infrastructure.

We have witnessed the increased deployment of cheap, Iranian-made drones by Russia in its war in Ukraine… drones (matched with Russian missiles) that can be sent in massive, indefensible waves. That the US has added an aging aircraft carried (the USS Nimitz pictured above) to its regional command is interesting… because that ship was destined to be retired next year. But the real shock to the system would be Iran’s shutting down the Red Sea gateway to the Suez Canal, a global trade route that is essential particularly to Europe. The Strait of Hormuz. 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.

The obvious main Iranian weapon would be mines, and many experts believe that Iran has already deployed a “mine field in waiting,” on the sea floor, ready to be launched at the flip of a switch. The array of available Iranian mines is impressive: “Iran is believed to maintain a variety of naval mines. They include small limpet mines containing just a few pounds of explosives that swimmers place directly on a ship’s hull and typically detonate after a set amount of time. Iran also has larger moored mines that float just under the water’s surface, releasing a hundred pounds of explosive force or more when they come in contact with an unsuspecting ship.

“More advanced ‘bottom’ mines sit on the seafloor. They use a combination of sensors — such as magnetic, acoustic, pressure and seismic — to determine when a ship is nearby and explode with hundreds of pounds of explosive force.

“The Navy has four minesweepers in the Persian Gulf, each with 100 sailors aboard who have been based in Bahrain and are trained in how to deal with underwater hazards. Should Iran place mines in the Strait of Hormuz or other parts of the Persian Gulf, a small Navy contingent in Bahrain called Task Force 56 would respond… Usually led by a senior explosive ordnance disposal officer, the task force would take advantage of technologies like autonomous underwater vehicles that can scan the seafloor with sonar much more quickly than the last time Iranian mines threatened the strait.

“And while the Navy has been experimenting with underwater robots to destroy mines, the task force will still need to deploy small teams of explosive ordnance disposal divers for the time-consuming and dangerous task of approaching each mine underwater and carefully placing charges to destroy it.” New York Times, June 16th. The release of those hidden mines could be sequential, and it wouldn’t take much to shut down the Strait. Even a delay would be costly. Mr Trump, already despised by many leaders in what are traditionally supposed to be our allies, could just preside over a huge global economic catastrophe. Some legacy… and he knows that. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and Trump’s massively unprepared administration has clumsily boxed itself into a thoroughly incomprehensible diplomatic situation with no obvious off-ramps… even if the existing regime topples as hoped.

U.S. is Way too Overcrowded? – RFK, Jr Has an App for That

  HHS Secretary RFJ, Jr.                        Surgeon General Casey Means              DJT         

  

U.S. is Way too Overcrowded? – RFK, Jr Has an App for That

Out of Cite, Out of his Mind

“Moms (and families) will not stand anymore for a country that profits massively off kids getting chronically sick… Nothing can stop the frustration that is leading to this [wellness] movement.” 

Future Surgeon General and “no longer licensed” medical doctor, Casey Means, on X, Jan. 30.

“I, and my co-authors, did not write that paper… It does make me concerned given that citation practices are an important part of conducting and reporting rigorous science.” 

On a MAHA report fabricated citation attributed to Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes.

If you can just steer clear of overwhelming factual evidence and keep trained and experienced health scientists out of the mix, you can certainly issue a report with a conspiratorial end-result that reads well… ok some of the citations imitated that famous “road to nowhere.” AI hallucinations? Not that everything in the RFK, Jr’s Make America Healthy Agreement (MAHA) is wrong; some of it makes a lot of sense.

There are clear benefits to eating healthy, natural foods, exercise and generally applying “common sense” taking care of yourself. OK. But then with Trump’s environmental protection cutbacks, the prescription of pollution free water, pesticide free crops and breathable air might be a little hard to come by for most Americans. RFK, Jr.’s rehash quest for the cause of autism is also an expensive “been there, done that, a long time ago” wasteful taxpayer journey. Sorry Robert, for sure it ain’t vaccines!

LA Times Opinion Writer, Michael Hiltzik (June 3rd) pulls no punches: “Serious followers of healthcare policy in the U.S. didn’t expect much good to emerge from its takeover by Donald Trump and his secretary of Health and Human Services, the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr… But the agency and its leadership managed to live down to the worst expectations May 27, when HHS released a 73-page ‘assessment’ of the health of America’s children titled ‘The MAHA Report’ (for ‘Make America Healthy Again’).

“A sloppier, more disingenuous government report would be hard to imagine. Whatever credibility the report might have had as a product of a federal agency was shattered by its obvious errors, misrepresentations and outright fabrications of source materials, some of it plainly the product of the authors’ reliance on AI bots…

“What’s important is its context: concerted attacks by Kennedy and his associates on the fundamentals of public health in America… Those attacks have profound implications not only for Americans’ health, but on pocketbook issues and the U.S. economy generally. HHS bowed toward the latter issue by asserting in the report that the health profile of American children poses ‘a threat to our nation’s health, economy, and military readiness.’

“As it happens, the recent actions at HHS and its subagencies, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, increase those threats… Take the agencies’ May 20 decision to remove COVID boosters from the CDC’s list of recommended vaccinations for healthy children and pregnant women. The decision opens the door for insurance companies to start charging full price for the shots, rather than covering them without copays as the law requires for preventive services… That could mean out-of-pocket charges of $100 or more each booster, which could itself discourage families from getting vaccinated. This is a reminder of how family economics affect health…

“And although the report mentions that safety net programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — SNAP, or food stamps, school lunch and breakfast programs, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC—could play a role in promoting healthy eating, it doesn’t mention that those programs face severe budget cuts from the Trump White House.

“Last month [May], HHS canceled nearly $800 million in grants to the pharmaceutical company Moderna for the development of a human vaccine against bird flu, part of a Biden administration effort to prepare for possible future pandemics, the potential social and economic impact of which should be self-evident, given our experience with COVID. Bird flu already has devastated the dairy and poultry industries in many regions and sickened dozens of farmworkers.” This unscientific mantra is not just everywhere in the report, it typifies high level HHS appointments.

For example, Dr. Casey Means, quoted above, is our anti-vaxxer Surgeon General now. “Her opposition to California’s stringent childhood vaccine mandates, enthusiasm for magic mushrooms, and obsession with all things ‘clean’ and ‘natural’ have endeared her to everyone from raw milk fans to anti-vaxxers to boosters of Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of a healthcare chief executive who regularly receives fan mail while awaiting trial in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.

“‘We’ve never had anyone in that role [of surgeon general] who almost anyone knew who they were,’ Dr. Joel Warsh, a Studio City pediatrician and fellow MAHA luminary, whose book on vaccines ‘Between a Shot and a Hard Place’ came out this week. ‘We know the public loves her.’” LA Times, May 22nd. Really, Dr Warsh? Loves her? If the United States had followed her precepts during the pandemic, tens of millions of Americans would have died from COVID-19.

The United States has already killed enough people in Africa and Asia by shutting down the food and medical services of USAID, closed by DOGE, so now, with HHS mandates, we have a path to cull the American population as well.

I’m Peter Dekom, and every once and a while, I have to wonder if (a) I am having a bad dream or (b) I must not be living in the United States of America.

Hire a Vet?

 

Hire a Vet?

As the “keeper and maintainer” of Isabella (a Bengal kitty) and Lily (a sweet doggie mix) – not pictured above – who are our furry companions and spirit lifters, I have been watching as private equity firms in the Los Angeles area, rolling up veterinary hospitals and clinics… with treatment/surgical prices rising very fast. We pay several hundred dollars a month for pet insurance with lots of exclusions and co-pays. The incredible shortage of veterinarians, the high cost of veterinary school (which mirrors American medical school tuition) and the willingness of Americans to Make Pets First, can explain the massive entry of private equity into an industry where consumers are truly ready to pay.

“As pet ownership increases, so has the willingness of owners to spend on pet care. That has made investments in veterinarian medicine very popular among corporations and private-equity firms, according to a report by The Atlantic. Corporate-owned clinics see pet care as a viable revenue source, causing prices for visits to increase. Mars Inc., the makers of Skittles and Snickers candies, is the largest owner of stand-alone veterinary clinics in the country, operating more than 2,000 facilities under the names Banfield, VCA, and BluePearl, according to the Atlantic report.” Anthony Solorzano, Los Angeles Times, May 22nd. The analytics for veterinarians explain reality in a nasty and cruel way…. With lots of love inside.

But the trigger for this blog was this excerpt from the Solorzano piece: “A 2019 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that veterinarians are as much as four times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. In an interview with National Public Radio, psychologist Kerry Carafa attributed the high rate of suicide in the pet-care field to the balance of care they must shoulder. A veterinarian needs to care not only for the pets, but for the owners and for themselves.” We don’t talk much about it, but having a pet is an important part of life for so many. Having healthy vets is a necessity too.

Virtually every pet keeper (I hate the notion “owner”) I know will go miles and miles, extra yards and yards, to keep their pet healthy and well fed, even if the human has to cut back. Look at the plethora of pet food advertised in every medium imaginable. Organic. Expensive ingredients. Visuals that make even humans drool. We tend to ignore the highly educated cadre of veterinarians that are there for our little loving critters… and us. With pet adoptions soaring during the pandemic, with government austerity a roiling tsunami that threatens to drown a vast cadre of Americans, whose mental health often depends on having a great companion pet, having a pet and keeping him or her health ain’t cheap no more.

And after a natural disaster, reality is dispersed and lost pets, the destruction of their homes too and layoffs at local government, spelling disaster for humans and their companions alike. California, which is better off than most of the rest of the country, is not having a particularly good time either. Solorzano continues: “A recent survey by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found that more than 344,000 shelter animals in California do not have adequate access to veterinary care staff. Across the state, about 60% of shelters say they have unfilled veterinarian positions and approximately 54% have unfilled registered veterinarian technicians positions, according to the SPCA.

“The lack of animal medical care has led to overcrowded shelters, a rise in pet illnesses and an increasing rate of adoptable animals being euthanized, according to the survey. The shortage of veterinarians also leads to a lack of medical care available for pet owners, which leads to more animals being surrendered to shelters, according to the survey.

“‘The pandemic really elevated a crisis that was probably brewing in the background for the last 20 to 40 years, but really accelerated it when many new people adopted pets,’ [John Tegzes, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University] said. ‘The demand for veterinary services started to increase exponentially quickly in Southern California.’… Western University College of Veterinary Medicine is one of only two veterinary schools in California. The U.S. has 33 schools for veterinarian medicine, each with a cap on students being admitted. For Western University, the number of students accepted into its four-year program is limited to 120, Tegzes said. Its 2025 graduating class will see 104 students entering the profession.

“Tuition for veterinary students at Western University costs roughly $67,000 per year, which means most graduating students are leaving school with large student debt….” We are becoming a nation that does not care about other people or the little furry critters that look to us to take care of them… with a bureaucracy that finds it cheaper to kill these helpless friends than try and take care of them. And that does not reflect particularly well for any nation. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and I can tell a lot about the character of a person by their relationship to their pet(s)… noting that Donald Trump doesn’t have any.

Rule of Law in Tatters: Our Era of Strategic Neglect

 

Rule of Law in Tatters: Our Era of Strategic Neglect

“I spent much of my childhood in the very house where Donald grew up. The cruel, weak, and deeply insecure man who brought our democracy to the brink of disaster is the same man I have always known.”

Dr Mary L Trump, PhD (Psychology), the President’s cousin

“The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” 

US Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger … nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”

US Constitution, 5th Amendment and, by extension to the states, the 14th Amendment.

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” 

US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1

So much of the MAGA/Project 2025 agenda is not possible unless the entire basis for the United States is dramatically restructured via constitutional amendment. The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate (which has not happened since the earliest years of the republic) or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures.

Suffice it to say that constitutional amendment, in highly polarized times, is not possible. The exceptions to the above constitutional requirements literally demand an insurrection, invasion, war or in the case of matters ceded by Congress to the President, very limited tariff power, a very specific emergency, which, by definition, cannot mean a sudden presidential awakening to his perception of long-standing pan-global “unfairness.”

So, to achieve those MAGA/Project 2025 objectives, nothing the President has mounted by executive order rises to the level an insurrection, invasion, war or a sudden global emergency targeting the United States by a severely limited single nation or nations. A logical President, being of sound mind, would be stymied to implement those changes without such an amendment. But as Dr. Trump would be willing testify based on direct observation, Donald Trump suffers from a compendium of mental disorders, ranging from obsessive compulsive (as with his misdefinition of the true nature and impact of tariffs), narcissism, and anti-social personality disorder… and perhaps exacerbated by onset dementia associated with his age. He’s the perfect autocratic leader to lead a bloodless clue to usurp and reinterpret the US Constitution, as his cult-controlled GOP congressional contingent supports his every whim, and as the once functional federal bureaucracy is dismembered and defunded.

We know what happens with bad leadership, but we have never faced a time of purposeful “no leadership,” especially when there is obviously no intention to replace it. We are left with presidential whim and the sycophants he has appointed or supported for election who are willing to reach into the garbage pile of justifications to support those whims. Writing for the May 9th The Hill, Aron Solomon, chief strategy officer for Amplify and who has formerly taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, opines: “There’s an old adage that says you can tell a lot about a country by how it governs in a crisis. But lately, it’s hard to shake the feeling that America isn’t being governed at all.

“Whereas the media often frames the administration’s problems as incompetence or deliberate chaos , I think the truth might be more alarming: What if it’s not that the car is being driven poorly, but that no one is even in the driver’s seat?

“Take, for instance, the hollowing out of federal agencies. During President Trump’s first presidency, there was a well-documented purge of career civil servants, scientists, diplomats and department heads. But what followed wasn’t a thoughtful reconstruction, however ideological. It was a slow fade into nothingness. Positions simply weren’t filled. Appointments were left pending for months, even years. Entire sections of departments, like at State and the EPA, became ghost towns… This wasn’t sabotage in the traditional sense — it was more like strategic abandonment.

“In Trump’s second term, the administration is doubling down on its strategy of management by absence. The presidency — and now the president’s party — is defined not by a coherent philosophy but by a refusal to govern unless there is something immediate to gain from it. It’s government via headline. An illusion of action only when the cameras are rolling… We see this neglect everywhere. In public health, lessons from COVID-19 have evaporated into a partisan fog, such that pandemic preparedness offices remain underfunded. In environmental policy, regulations are repealed but no new frameworks are proposed. In immigration, cruelty often seemed like the point, but even cruelty requires planning. Now the system is simply jammed — not out of some calculated malevolence, but because nobody showed up to fix it.

“You don’t need a grand conspiracy to get government dysfunction. You just need people to stop doing the work. And when apathy trickles down from the top, the rot spreads quickly. Mid-level managers take their cues from the inaction above. Good-faith civil servants burn out or check out. Soon, systems very finely and intentionally designed to respond, regulate and reform start wheezing like old radiators in an abandoned house. And when the alarm bells go off — a train derails, a border crisis flares or a hurricane hits — there is no one to pick up the phone, much less coordinate a response.

“Of course, the Trump administration, like every administration, has its die-hards, its loyalists, its cult of true believers. But increasingly, their job seems less about governing and more about defending the lack of it. They hold press conferences, write posts and give interviews not to lay out plans or update the public, but to justify why good, functional governing isn’t happening.”

Whether it’s economy destroying illogical tariffs, arresting and incarcerating people on US soil and transferring them to foreign concentration camps without any effort towards a trial or depriving persons facing horrific imprisonment of any semblance of access to due process, a psychologically unfit president decimates our governance, with full complicity of a GOP congressional contingent ready to sell their nation down the river with the receding hopes of being reelected... and with way too many judicial rulings that offer way too much deference to a rogue, scoff-law President, we are sailing a massive combat vessel is rough seas… without a crew. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and as Andrew Solomon says, “At the end of the day, a democracy can survive bad drivers. What it can’t survive is nobody driving at all.”

Autocrat 101 - Transitioning the Military into a National Police Force

 

Autocrat 101 - Transitioning the Military into a National Police Force

“It’s still simmering a little bit… But not very much.”

Donald Trump, June 9th, to reporters at the White House

“This is a provocation, not just an escalation… This is intended to sow more fear, more anger, and to further divide.” 

 CA Gov. Gavin Newsom an interview with The NY Times

The Pentagon is reviewing a Department of Homeland Security request to deploy more than 20,000 additional National Guard troops to aid the Trump administration's widening crackdown on illegal immigration around the United States, according to officials and documents. USA Today, June 10th

I live in Los Angeles. Sending in 2000 federalized California National Guardsmen and 700 active-duty Marines, without request from the Governor and with zero coordination with local police, to contain maybe a couple of hundred protestors scattered around Los Angeles (e.g., Paramount, Compton, downtown LA) – LA City alone has 3.8 million people with a significant police force that has said it could easily handle this situation… and did – is a bit like tenting your house because the stray cat in your back yard has fleas. Watching National Guardsmen sitting around doing nothing was hard to understand. But they have lots of nice military vehicles to take care of. Yet Trump told the press on July 10th that but for those troops (looking for something to do), Los Angeles would be “burning to the ground.” Hard to prove what didn’t happen, huh?

Donald Trump, and his gangsta ICE shot-caller, Tom Homan, have also issued direct threats to arrest California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass if they do anything that, in the opinion of Trump appointees, is viewed as interfering with ICE or these completely unnecessary troops. The National Guard, useful to the Governor in times of emergency, has some training in domestic crowd control; the Marines have no such training! We still do not have a good explanation as to why those troops were/are necessary.

But California, particularly Los Angeles and San Francisco, is the quintessential blue opponent to everything Trump stands for, even though there are large areas of Republican control. If Trump can bring these bluies to their knees, the rest of the nation would, in his opinion, follow. As much as the June 14th Trump birthday “autocrats street destroying” massive military parade is supposed to be a celebration (pictures above) – incidentally celebrating the 250th anniversary of the US Army (one day older than our Declaration of Independence) – we know it is a show of force to blue America that “you vil follow orders!” Hundreds (thousands?) of massive No Kings protests, all over the United States, beg to differ, political assassinations in Minnesota notwithstanding.

Some analogize the current protests to the roiling anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s that brought down Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson hated those protests, mostly because he came to the realization that we would not win that conflict; they were right. But those angry, mostly younger Americans (many facing the draft), were protesting US involvement in a foreign war. BIG DIFFERENCE to what is happening today: now protestors are fighting for their constitutional rights in their own country! And it’s not just the opinion of pitiful few. It is a massive and growing movement against an autocratic, blame-driven autocrat with clear evidence of mental and physical deterioration, the architect of economic instability and soaring prices.

Trump has reveled in appointing exceptionally unqualified cabinet leaders, most of whom have the following characteristics: they have a strong media presence taking very controversial positions (whoever thought Fox News would become a government recruiting service?), they are woefully ignorant (or just don’t care) about stuff like the Constitution and federal statutes or court rulings, they place Donald Trump’s orders above all other authorities, they really abhor democracy, they are science and fact averse, they will never contradict the boss and any person anywhere who disagrees even slightly is the “enemy of the people.” Appended to today’s blog are a couple of quotes from US military, current and retired, on their views on being used as cops.

That these Trump appointees are so obviously unqualified appears intentional. First, they vil follow orders. Second, their statements and actions so infuriate such a large segment of the public that they provoke protests everywhere. Protests are just what Trump wants; it gives him the ability to use all kinds of ambiguous, exceptionally old federal laws, to declare some kind of emergency or invasion and thus use the entire US military as his unleashed private police. Kind of like his using the DOJ as his private lawyers. The MAGA clan is rolling like a pig wallowing happily in mud at the destruction of the “deep state” (where was that?), the elevation of their treasured conspiracy theories above the federal experts anchored in facts, and the attack on hallowed institutions of hated elites (job creation, scientific research and medical cures notwithstanding).

A strong example of this idiocy is the recent RFK, Jr’s firing of all 17 of the CDC’s panel of medical superstar advisors on vaccine policy, something he pledged not to do, in his confirmation hearing, to Dr Bill Cassidy, the Republican Senator from Louisiana. Doctors across the land, insurance companies setting coverage and state healthcare agencies have long looked at this advisory board for guidance on vaccine use. RFK, Jr fabricated that this advisory board was rife with conflicts of interest. But this pisses off just the blue folks that Trump loves to provoke.

Protests justify Trump, under his vision of the law, at every turn. “The founders wanted to prevent the president from using federal troops against ‘we the people’ because of the way the Red Coats used warrants to do whatever they wanted in people’s homes. But National Guard troops are local citizens; they live in their communities. So they’re allowed to help with police work — until they’re federalized. Which is what Trump did last weekend. Then they became indistinguishable from active-duty military. All they can do is defend federal workers like ICE agents, and federal buildings like an ICE detention center.

“So the California National Guard and the Marines can’t contain the protests?... Not unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act! That law lets troops police our streets to suppress insurrections and help execute federal law in the face of rebellion… Trump said yesterday that the protesters were ‘insurrectionists.’ What counts as a rebellion?... It’s very vague — the law doesn’t say. It could be people trying to stop ICE agents from doing their job. I don’t think courts are going to want to argue about what constitutes a rebellion. The founders gave the president discretion here, so if Trump does invoke the Insurrection Act, [he has a case].” The Morning newsfeed, June 9th, from the New York Times. According to the June 10th Newsweek, “The Pentagon said Tuesday [6/10] that it expects its 60-day deployment of the California National Guard and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to cost at least $134 million, primarily covering travel, lodging, and meal expenses, according to Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, the acting chief financial officer at the Department of Defense.” The Guardsmen just hanging out is a profound waste of taxpayer money!!!

Will courts limit Trump’s obvious gradual and normalized use of the US military as his personal police force, intended to scare everyone? Is there enough to justifying exemption from the 144-year-old Posse Comitatus Act bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement except when expressly authorized by law? California is suing the Trump administration to find out. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am watching Trump’s overkill use of military force here in Los Angeles as a front row witness to one of many Trump-government’s extreme efforts to end democracy and the rule of law under the Constitution.

American Governance, Trump Style

 

American Governance, Trump Style

Ignorance (Feigned and Real), Blame, Surrounded Only by Loyalists, Fabricate, Deny, Double-Down

“I run the country and the world,” 

President Trump to reporters for the Atlantic in April, by way of explaining how his current presidency differs from his first.

“We both agree on this war and how terrible this war is going on, and we are both looking for ways to stop it very soon. And I told the president … he is the key person in the world who can really do that now by putting pressure on Russia.” 

 German Chancellor Friedrich Merz after White House meeting on June 5th.

“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy. They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled… Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart. And I gave that analogy to Putin yesterday. I said, ‘President, maybe you have to keep fighting and suffering a lot’ because both sides are suffering, before you pull them apart before they’re able to be pulled apart.” Trump to reporters while hosting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office.

It’s never comfortable to reach the conclusion that the President of the United States is most likely seriously mentally ill. Certainly, that’s what his cousin (he grew up with her) believes… Mary Trump, a psychologist with a PhD. Trump lives in a world that exists only in his own mind, the product of being abandoned by his mother and raised into ruthless “pragmatism” by an autocratic father, according to Dr. Trump. It is reinforced by making sure no one who disagrees with him is anywhere near him, going out of his way to disable, punish and destroy those who oppose him any way he can. We can no long trust statements and policies from his coterie of subpar cabinet appointments, much less those uttered by the President himself.

The above quotes say a great deal about that “other world.” We know that children fighting in a school yard bears no resemblance to a struggle for existence by a nation invaded by another country covetous of its land, a war that has taken well over a million lives. In reality, Trump’s and his former “co-president’s” exchanging vituperative social media posts seems more to resemble those pre-adolescents exchanging “schoolyard” barbs… but very much unlike a massive exchange of crushing drone and missile attacks that just keep killing.

Remember when, during Campaign 2.0, Trump said he was unfamiliar with and had not read the 900-page Project 2025 (I believe he never actually read it, but …), yet as soon as he took office, step-by-step, his executive orders marched single file down the Project 2025 agenda. LA Times columnist, Jackie Calmes summarized Trump’s foreign policy, immediately implemented by his sycophantic Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, like this: ”The ‘Trump Doctrine’ revealed… The president’s foreign policy is ‘Me, Myself and I’ — strictly transactional and motivated less by national interest than what’s in it, personally and politically, for him.” Today, after decades of unscrupulous business deals, the only part of Trump’s “me first mind” that operates on seeming autopilot is his unsatiable quest for money – by grift or influence pedaling – and power.

There seems to be a particularly cruel and blithefully incentive streak that seems to illustrate how Trump’s retinue seems particularly to enjoy the pain and suffering they can inflict on others. For those in his MAGA constituency, who harbor admiration for a strongman with no moral or legal guidelines – a perception of masculinity – Trump’s behavior is just what they wanted: to take down and destroy what MAGA millions have defined as their elitist oppressors, a conveniently fabricated woke, liberal, child-predatory “deep state.”

This MAGA constituency press for religious doctrine to replace the kind of “elitist” intellectual rigor that is too complex to understand. They outsource their opinions to their perceived savior. But that empowered leader’s policies and legislative/executive order agenda are focused to separate the United States into the rich ruling class, to whom society is beholden, and the “rest of America,” increasingly expendable as their income falls, that no longer matters. Under Trump, all the definitions of success are money-based metrics (even though he is quite willing to manipulate those numbers if they do not jibe with his “reality”), government as a business with a P&L statement, instead of the measure of health, welfare and enrichment of the people as a whole. Contrary to popular belief, the United States is not a brand, it is a nation of people.

Jackie Calmes continues: ”Aside from his vague ‘America First’ (white) nationalist sloganeering, Trump speaks and acts in ways that reflect little appreciation for the national interest or democratic ideals. He’s all about himself and his interests — increasingly, that literally means his business interests…

“Which is why, contrary to past presidents for decades, Trump twice now has made his first foreign trip as president not to allies in Europe or North America who share America’s values, but to autocratic Saudi Arabia. There, and in the smaller, oil-rich Middle Eastern monarchies he also visited last month, Trump is plainly comfortable, amid the opulence and the shared language of deal-making. In fact, Trump explicitly told reporters soon after his inauguration that he’d likely travel first to Saudi Arabia — if it agreed in advance to spend about $500 billion in the United States. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gamely offered $600 billion over four years.

“Ultimately, Trump came home from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates boasting of bagging $5 trillion — that’s trillion, with a T — or maybe $7 trillion, he said, along with a Qatari royal jet for his own use. What details there were suggested that the trade deals for which the president was taking credit — no surprise here — included some commitments dating to the Biden administration.

“In any case, Americans shouldn’t necessarily count on the promised investments: Saudi Arabia’s MBS similarly vowed to spend up to $600 billion in the United States back in 2017, when Trump first took office. Yet a study by the Arab Gulf States Initiative concluded that over Trump’s first term, U.S. exports to Saudi Arabia totaled $92 billion — below the $110 billion in exports during the preceding four years under President Obama.

“But here’s what you can count on: As the Wall Street Journal has reported, the Trump family business is signing more deals internationally than ever before, mostly in the Middle East but also in India and eastern Europe, for 12 projects including residential high-rises, luxe hotels and golf courses. Beyond real estate, there’s the Trumps’ $2-billion cryptocurrency deal with the United Arab Emirates state fund. America First?... ‘We’re the hottest brand in the world right now,’ son Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization, told the Journal. That’s good, I guess, because the American brand under Trump has hit the skids.

“The other noxious sign of Trump’s personalization of foreign policy: his constant references to foreign leaders in terms of his own relations with them. Trump’s problem is that his supposed friends — the Saudis’ MBS, Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping — have ideological and national interests that, unlike for Trump, transcend their personal feelings and stakes.” A US president is supposed to be the caretaker of the nation in its entirety, sacrificing for the betterment of the country he/she has been entrusted to lead under his sacred oath of office. An oath that has been rendered meaningless by Donald Trump. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and as GOP candidates panic as their constituents lose medical benefits as costs around them skyrocket – don’t worry MAGAns; the Dems lack a coherent platform or unifying leadership – they understand full well that if the provisions of that Big Beautiful Bill pass even remotely as drafted, the people who voted for them will be “the biggest losers.”

 

Gaslight, a 1944 Movie or Donald Trump’s Legacy?

[According to Prevention.com,] It’s a sign that someone is gaslighting you if they are:

• Constantly minimizing or invalidating your feelings
• Avoiding taking responsibility for their actions
• Lying
• Regularly recalling events differently than you
• Using words like paranoid, overreactive, dramatic, overly sensitive, or crazy
• Experiencing self-doubt
• Acting reactively or intensely where it’s unwarranted

"The mob violence is being stomped out. The criminals responsible will be swiftly brought to justice, and the Trump administration's operations to arrest illegal aliens are continuing unabated." 

Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary

Fox News Correspondent, Gillian Turner on June 12th speaking with Donald Trump:

TURNER: Mr. President, if this turns into another summer of unrest, what are you prepared to do, sir?

TRUMP: About what?

TURNER: If this turns– well, the protests have spread now to 16 cities across the U.S. If this turns–

TRUMP: Well, that’s what you’re saying. Do I believe you? I don’t think so.

TURNER: Well, I got that from the Fox News brain room.

TRUMP: I can tell you, what we have, what we have a situation in Los Angeles that was caused by gross incompetence. They didn’t have the police to handle it.

"Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace…This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!"

Trump on Truth Social, June 12th

As the anti-ICE protestors first gathered near Los Angeles’ downtown, where government buildings are focused, the “usual suspects,” a small coterie of vandals and arsonists, did what they always do, sometimes after a local sports team wins a national championship. They tag buildings and burn a few cars. The deserve the prison time they will probably get after they are tried and convicted (yes, “due process”), but they are at best fewer than 1% mixed in with those deeply offended at Trump’s immigration policies against a city, formerly a part of Mexico, that is 35% Hispanic with a culture that permeates Southern California.

My cousin, living in Virginia, sent me a panicked email asking if my wife and I were OK as LA was burning and erupting in riots. “Huh?” I asked. “Riots? Here? Major fires? Not happening here!” I responded. Trump assured the nation that but for his illegal (a federal judge’s determination) call-up and deployment of California National Guard, Los Angeles would have burned to the ground. My lawyer and accounting friends, with offices downtown, told me that there was some traffic disruption, but they did not feel threatened and that they could access their office buildings without fear of being incinerated by local “terrorists and paid activists.”

In a city (without counting the little cities around us) of 3.8 million people, that our police and sheriffs were purportedly unable to contain the “violence perpetrated” – by a thousand or slightly more Angelenos standing up for their heritage … and the immigrants that form a labor backbone of this city – is absurd. But gaslighting requires lies… assisted by some clever editing that makes little moments HUGE. Oh, and the only picture above that depicts truth is that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s real hand (the one in the blue plaid shirt), now back in US from that Salvadoran prison.

Even as Trump was beginning to realize that there soon would be no food on grocery store shelves if the undocumented farmworkers were pulled from the fields, Immigration Tsar Tom Homan and White House Senior Advisor Stephen “Rasputin” Miller, cheered on by Trump’s now-personal lawyer AG Pamela Bondi, were pledging to deport all “15 million illegal aliens” in the United States (probably more like 11 million) without regard to their innocence of value to the country. Meanwhile, combat-trained Marines made their way to “violence torn” Los Angeles, an illegal use of the military under the Posse Comitatus Act.

For our military sworn to uphold the Constitution, Trump’s recent visit to one of the Army’s premiere training facilities and home to a number of operational divisions shattered any pretense of military neutrality. “Instead, what unfolded Tuesday [6/9] at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, bore little resemblance to the customary visit from a president and defense secretary. There, President Donald Trump unleashed a speech laced with partisan invective, goading jeers from a crowd of soldiers positioned behind his podium -- blurring the long-standing and sacrosanct line between the military and partisan politics.

“As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom -- amid the president's controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles -- as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump's diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship…

“For this story, Military.com reached out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's office as well as the Army and the 82nd Airborne Division directly with a series of questions that ranged from the optics of the event to social media posts showing the sale of Trump campaign merchandise on the base, to the apparent violation of Pentagon policies on political activity in uniform.

“Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance… One unit-level message bluntly saying: ‘No fat soldiers.’… ‘If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,’ another note to troops said.” Military.com, June 12th.

Trump is a showman with a dangerous agenda. He takes credit for fixing the damage “only he can fix.” That HE caused! That tariff/trade negotiation with China, for example, a struggle of Herculean proportions according to Trump, seems to be nothing more than a return to the same tariff structure that existed before Trump’s “liberation day.” The UK deal has yet to be fleshed out. Still, the Republicans in Congress are struggling with that Big Beautiful Bill that reduces taxes mostly for the richest in the nation, but that seriously increases our deficit and requires cutting Medicaid, Medicare and maybe even Social Security.

And all that without referencing a certain expensive birthday parade with enough personnel and military hardware to invade and conquer most countries on Earth. Army’s 250th? No, the main theme is Trump, Trump and more Trump. “No Kings” protests all over the country showed a vastly more accurate reflection of who we are. I used to read that democracy was a fragile experiment here in the United States… one that requires constant support and protection. I used to believe that view was a tad pessimistic and unlikely. I do not feel that way anymore.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am watching the unraveling of everything I hold dear in this country by an angry, destructive minority and a lackadaisical majority that still believes that it can’t happen here as it is in fact happening here.

Three Parallel, Non-Intersecting Universes – MAGA, Progressive & The Rest

Three Parallel, Non-Intersecting Universes – MAGA, Progressive & The Rest

But Is There a Fourth Universe with Total Power over Them All?

Most of the United States is mired in “the rest,” just wanting to live life, survive and even prosper and not deal with massive changes and extreme views. Money and technology have changed our expectations, and as we have all surmised for a long time, money not only talks, it screams. What money wants, it seems to get; it is clearly dividing the nation into the mega-wealthy (i.e., the “rich get richer”) and the rest of us. Oh, and by the way, the rich own the technology, own most of the truly valuable land and control financing like only mega-billion-dollar institutions can.

They use their money to dominate the housing marketplace like no other, with ads like “I want to buy your house,” they can write checks without applying for mortgages like the rest of us must, access streamlined repair structures and flip into a lucrative rental market. Over the past three decades, small local developers have been largely supplanted by publicly traded national builders, who can offer below-market mortgages to attract buyers to their cookie-cutter properties. Guess who benefits most from an over-valued residential marketplace? Some existing homeowners for sure, until they want to move and upgrade. Scarcity, a paucity of affordable housing, drives up prices! And those mega-homebuilders love that. They can access volume purchases and are the most likely to find workarounds against Trump’s inane tariffs. Their ability to slide into the upscale rental market also allows them to sidestep that there are an estimated 500,000 fewer homebuyers than available homes for sale. Raising tariffs on steel and aluminum increases that housing scarcity pricing.

If you look at the three obvious constituencies above, none of the three is truly able to navigate an affordable lifestyle remotely mirroring that of earlier generations… because there is a fourth power grouping that has slowly redesigned the United States to serve their interests at the expense of the lower-middle class and the working class and below. Donald Trump – the first president in US history to generate billions of dollars for himself and his family while in office – is their designated autocrat. The “Big Beautiful Bill” benefits the rich and punishes almost everyone else… but is the slow is an extension, continuous legacy following the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v FEC, which took the cap off of rich-SuperPACs using massive cash to fund their causes. Most of that new money funded causes that gave vastly more political control to conservative wealth.

We have elected a House majority that has been completely co-opted by wealthy interests. Donald Trump’s power over the GOP – operating under a fearful threat of losing Trump’s base perceived as a necessary component of being reelected – makes too many elected members of Congress act against the best interests of those who elected them. Writing for the June 4th The Hill, Mark Mellman provides this realistic perspective: “It may be hard to imagine, but Republicans are exploding the budget deficit and the national debt while slashing health care and education, all to give more tax breaks to billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

“The facts are clear… The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the House GOP bill would result in ‘an increase in the federal deficit of $3.8 trillion.’... House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pooh-poohs the CBO, failing to recognize that the agency’s director, a veteran of Republican administrations, was appointed jointly by Democratic and Republican leaders. With typical partisan hypocrisy, the Speaker was happy to rely heavily on CBO when they declared Democratic budgets would add to the deficit, but demurs when the shoe is on the other foot… However, CBO is hardly alone. While there are differences on the exact number, every nonpartisan analysis agrees on the underlying fact that the Republican bill will increase the deficit.

“The Tax Foundation says the GOP bill will raise the deficit by $2.6 trillion, while the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget argues the bill ‘would add $2.5 trillion to primary deficits over the coming decade, adding $3.1 trillion to the debt including interest. If its temporary provisions are extended without offsets, we estimate it would add $5.1 trillion to the debt including interest.’ The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates ‘the House-passed reconciliation bill increases primary deficits by $2.8 trillion over 10 years.’”

While the stock market, rising and falling on tariff news, is the most obvious financial indicator… it does not reflect the national “red alert” danger metrics in the debt markets, the true measure of economic stability. As US treasuries have recently been downgraded, as credit-default-swaps (the hedge against debt failure) are showing that the United States is now riskier than most major European purveyors of bonds, as the talk of ending the dollar’s hegemony as the leading reserve currency (by which most commodities are valued) is increasing exponentially, as US interest rates are rising fast and as the international markets are beginning to devalue US assets (including the dollar itself), our attempt to appease the rich, who still try and convince us that any tax cut will drive job creation (yet they do not believe in the equally plausible Easter Bunny). The interest on our deficit bonds has never been higher.

Look at the above graphics. Do you feel well-served by that class of billionaires? Do you really want to give that class of billionaires and near-billionaires a tax cut if it makes everything cost more, deprives millions of healthcare and ensures that housing unaffordability becomes a permanently embedded feature of the United States? Look at all the issues the billionaire Trump is championing, the more outrageous the greater the focus in the news… and ask yourself if he really cares about most of that… Or, as important as most of those issues may be, are they really a distraction to create legislation to allow the piggy billionaires greater access to slorp at the trough of YOUR MONEY?

I’m Peter Dekom, and when the masters of subterfuge with unlimited access to corrupt politicians (with fewer laws containing them) and an ability to rile up their opposing press, are brilliantly hiding how they are remaking America to serve them… and no one else… do you care?