Brother Musk is the man:

1.) Who apparently still remains de facto second-in-command of the United States of America;

2.) Sitting a hair away from the American and global seats of power;

3.) Permitted, and presumably encouraged, or even required, by President Trump to "streamline" operations of critical highest-security United States entities, that is, agencies or individual departments, such as the U.S. National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon, this streamlining endeavor obviously requiring close scrutiny and information-gathering by Mr. Musk's "team," likely extensive, activities that obviously, with categorical reference to these kinds of national-security-related government entities, should only be permitted be undertaken in the most narrow and classified manner:  either in-house, that is, by auditing sections within the agencies or departments, themselves, or by classified, highly-specialized government auditing agencies;

4.) And, of course, last, Mr. Musk, notoriously, is the lead physician performing radical and extensive surgery upon his unwitting patient--the living, beating heart of the United States of America:   our federal government.

Not only is Elon Musk in charge of re-arranging the furniture at the most sensitive agencies in our government, but according to the Guardian of April 03, 2025, there are, specifically, "high-level leaders installed by Musk to run agencies throughout the government."

The aforementioned, and that, below, clearly indicates the problems that all of this poses for American national security.

Elon Musk strongly appears to be a Nazi apologist--if not an actual Nazi, as graphically evidenced by the unretouched, unmodified photo, above, as well as his history, for example, of sympathetic and active support for the German Nazi party ("Alternative for Germany" party, or "AfD"). Nor can we even refer to this man as a "closet" Nazi, given his apparent enthusiastic propensity for public display, the photo above was take at the Inauguration of Donald Trump, of traditional Nazi symbology.

The Guardian of May 03, 2025 reports: "Musk, who had been given the designation of a "special government employee" by the Trump administration, made back-to-back apparent fascist salutes during the president's inauguration rally earlier this year."

Addtitionally, underscoring and enhancing all the traitorous and reprehensible connections and activities, above, of Mr. Musk, the Wall Street Journal reports that he also had "...routine contact with Putin and other Russian government officials." Apparently Russian fascism isn't enough for Mr. Musk, however:  he has evidently also forayed into the ultimate social and political malignancy:  German fascism.

Last, for now, note the nightmarish, and, indeed, revolting juxtaposition of the obvious Nazi salute, passionately and resolutely delivered, to wit, the expression on Elon's face, and the official seal of the President of the United States on the front of the lectern. And I can't help but think that brother Musk was probably just itching to angle his hand ever-so-slightly further upward, leaving no doubt that this was the Nazi salute.

MORE

There's more. A lot more. According to the Pulitzer-prize winning reportage by The Wall Street Journal entitled Musk Above the Law, Elon Musk has:

A.) Been in secret contact with Moscow since late 2022: "Regular contacts between world's richest man and America's chief antagonist raise security concerns" [Emphasis: mine];

B.) Used and continues to use drugs both legal and illegal. The Journal reports: "Elon Musk and his supporters offer several explanations for his contrarian views, unfiltered speech and provocative antics. They're an expression of his creativity. Or the result of his mental-health challenges. Or fallout from his stress, or sleep deprivation. ... In recent years, some executives and board members at his companies and others close to the billionaire have developed a persistent concern that there is another component driving his behavior: his use of drugs." Brother Elon "...used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world... Musk has previously smoked marijuana in public and has said he has a prescription for the psychedelic-like ketamine. ... In 2018...he took multiple tabs of acid at a party he hosted in Los Angeles. The next year he partied on magic mushrooms at an event in Mexico. In 2021, he took ketamine recreationally with his brother, Kimbal Musk, in Miami at a house party... He has taken illegal drugs with current SpaceX and former Tesla board member Steve Jurvetson;

C.) Seriously polluted the environment, while asserting his commitment to a more liveable world. The Journal states that Tesla "...was ramping up its production in Austin, Texas, when environmental problems threatened to derail his plans ... The door to the plant's giant casting furnace...wouldn't shut, spewing toxins into the air and raising temperatures for workers on the floor to as high as 100 degrees. Hazardous wastewater from production-containing paint, oil and other chemicals--was also flowing untreated into the city's sewer, in violation of state guidelines. ... Tesla left the costly problems largely unaddressed during the critical ramp-up. As a result, the company's 10 million-plus square foot plant...dumped toxic pollutants into the environment near Austin for months.

...Tesla bosses were aware of the problems but sometimes chose short-term fixes to avoid slowing production. Former employees said they feared they might lose their job if they drew attention internally to potential environmental hazards, because senior managers didn't consider such issues to be mission critical. As head of the company, Musk set the tone, these people said, pushing employees to move fast..."

Musk, who aligned himself closely with President-elect Donald Trump...was named...co-head of a new Department of Government Efficiency... Musk has said he thinks he can chop "at least $2 trillion" from the federal budget, including by cutting government jobs at regulatory agencies. ...some people who have worked with him for years expect that Musk will attempt to curb environmental regulations--including those that affect his companies."

D.) Engaged in errant or questionable behavior with female employees.

UPDATE

Reported by The Guardian as of today, June 07, 2025:

"An international neo-Nazi terrorist organization is boldly continuing to build in the US and planning a new paramilitary training event without fear of local authorities or the FBI, which once dismantled it in a nationwide effort.

The Base, founded in 2018 by a former Pentagon contractor living in Russia and now suspected of Kremlin-sponsored espionage, once boasted close to 50 stateside members before the bureau made more than a dozen arrests in a years-long counter-terrorism operation.

But since the presidential election campaign last year and what many then believed to be a surefire victory for Donald Trump, the Base saw an opportunity in a potential administration uninterested in policing white supremacy and went about ramping up its ranks.

Now, the Base has a presence in Ukraine, performing sabotage operations inside the country against the embattled government, and new and dangerous cells emerging across Europe, and it appears to be growing in the US, where the FBI under the Maga acolyte Kash Patel has signalled it isn't prioritizing investigations of far-right extremism."

One also wonders if The Base is associated with the dastardly 764 harm group.

I've prognosticated over the last few months that the United States can or will end up a satellite of Russia. Here is a continuing potential affirmation or corroboration.

Are you listening?

POLITICS & GOVERNANCE BRIEF FOR ELON MUSK, ET AL.

Elon, writing the above, and for that matter researching and writing this entire web site, gives me zero pleasure. I'm doing it because the radical and sweeping dislocations initiated by the Trump administration, occurring presently in this country, and the larger world, are greatly disturbing to me, not to mention to many others. My entire psychological landscape has changed for the worse. I'm politically very conservative (with a touch of Libertarianism), far more than you and Don Trump have historically been, in fact, so I'm fine with streamlining and conserving resources, of which we human beings have essentially three, time, money, and energy. But the way this is being done is wholly incorrect and grossly counterproductive. Far too much of the established national and international order is being destroyed, too quickly, without proper planning and consideration. Radical shifts are being imposed from without, instead occurring in thoughtful and intelligent consultation with the departments and agencies, themselves, from within. Elon, as Ralph Kramden bellows in an old episode of the classic American comedy The Honeymooners: "Alice, you're never too old to learn sumthin'...and tonight I learned sumthin'." Well, Elon, I know there are many things you could teach me about the world. You've had a wide range of experiences that I've never had. You're a billionaire--my house is in foreclosure (would anyone help?). But I can teach you, too. So right now, my brother, please learn this:  political governance is absolutely not the same as business management. They are entirely different animals. They are not the same and cannot be approached the same way, at all. They both deal with money, that's true, but in business the ultimate arbiter is the profit and loss statement. To that end, one must always keep their eye on costs. In contradistinction, in governance, the ultimate arbiter is the welfare of human beings; all questions of resource allocation submit to this reality. And if shifts must occur to facilitate more efficient, or at least better, resource allocation, it can't be done in a discreet way, like simply turning off one light and switching on another. Changes in government always impact people, to one degree or another, in one way or another.

In like fashion, for example, the smart doctor doesn't rip the Band-Aid off of the patient's leg--that will cause extreme pain. The smart, savvy, and experienced doctor uses a technique that, in the end, will achieve the objective, removal of the Band-Aid, but without seriously injuring the patient. As a caregiver for almost 25 years, first my dad (who looked just like Donald; both handsome men), then my mom, I can tell you the technique: apply a slightly hot compress or wad of toweling to the Band-Aid, and use relatively gentle physical action, as this after a few minutes will soften and thus loosen the adhesive underneath. Then, and ONLY then does one rather easily and painlessly pull the Band-Aid away. No chainsaws required, brother Elon.

Another difference in the two paradigms concerns the kind and nature of the distribution of individualized power and control. A company owner, for example, legally, morally, and operationally, can exert his influence and control over the entirety of his company. From top to bottom , the boardroom to the mailroom he can exert his influence and easily demand the implementation of his standards, conventions, and preferences, in setting overall standards, methods of operation, and policies of every kind, up to and including even the aesthetics and design of the physical facilities. If the owner doesn't want brown chairs in the waiting room--there will be no brown chairs. Nor will there be any complaints, as everyone from employed sot regulators know he's the owner of the company so has the last word, and for that matter the first word, too, if he wants it, regarding those chairs.

How about someone engaged in political governance, by contrast, a governor, senator, or even the president of the United States? Can they legitimately exercise the same kind or quality of control over that which they govern? Absolutely not, for, unlike the business owner, even the president doesn't own that over which they govern, the United States. They are elected only as what we can call temporary stewards of those United States, not owners of any kind, so their control must, by definition be far more constrained. It is clear that Donald Trump, in overall terms, has been engaged from day 01 in attempting to bring every part of the American government under his direct control, as if it were a company, and not a nation. It doesn't work that way, Don. Governance, even for a president, just doesn't work like that. Governance is a COLLABORATIVE exercise--not a unilateral one, especially a democracy where, in fact, it is ultimately the PEOPLE in control, not the elected officials. So in attempting to bring all of government under your control Don, as if it were your company, you are, in fact, wresting control from the people, who are the constitutionally mandated rulers. You are doing anything but making America great; you are, in fact, obviously eviscerating our system of government.

You know, there's been an open question in this country for quite a few years now, Elon, regarding whether a businessman would make a better president than a politician, or someone with a political background. One consequence of the Trump presidency is that this question has now been firmly answered: it probably doesn't matter if a businessman is president, provided that they understand what I just wrote: political governance is absolutely not the same as business management. They are entirely different animals. Even in the business world, I'd argue that "move fast and break things," which is simply a kind of restatement of the traditional business principal of "creative destruction," is counterproductive. At least the phrase "creative destruction" doesn't imply recklessness. Shifts based on thoughtful planning are not precluded by this concept; in fact I'd argue that if the destruction is genuinely creative, it's likely that the effects of said shifts were probably considered.

Don Trump is a smart man who obviously cares deeply about the country, as do you, myself, and others, so he'd be the first to acknowledge that he came into political office initially with tremendous business experience, but no political experience, whatsoever. In fact, I even remember him, in 2016, referring, as any newcomer might, to "this politics stuff." Don was new to the political realm and he knew that. So to be helpful, I have a short, booklet-style document I'm preparing called "Primer on Governance," respectfully intended for President Trump. As well as yourself, Elon, or anyone else in the administration who cares to examine it. I think it could be tremendously helpful. As yourselves, I'm a smart person with a contribution to make. I may even try my hand at the presidency, myself, in a few years.

If you'd care to speak with me, Elon, regarding my remarks and analysis at this website, I invite your email, to arrange a way that we can converse. I respectfully extend the same invitation to President Trump. Nothing would please me more than finding out that my remarks and analysis, here, are wholly or partially inaccurate, and I will include at this website any corrections or clarifications that you present, presuming that they strike me as essentially sound. My objective in life as a philosopher and practitioner of love, properly understood, is to help bring peace and happiness to the world, Love & Light, as it were, not to criticize people. So I'm amenable to any person or piece of information that helps me do this. Were I not a believer in the ethic of love, I could have rightly given this website a far more hostile and censorious tone, considering its subject matter and what it contends. That's not what I'm about, however, Elon. Also, I am sorry that people have done violence to your auto dealerships. I do not condone that. But know that the good character and genuine belief in love that turns me away from such violence, is the same principle and belief that also turns me away from the kind of violence presently being done to the country, its people, and by extension, the larger world.

I'll end this personal note as I began it, Elon. I don't like hurting people, and I usually don't. I'm a rather wonderful person, if I may say so, myself, and people who know me, know that. I live my life with deliberate attention to the role of love, understood as the powerful force that it actually is. That's why Christ taught love, as did others through history. We all know that words can hurt, and I regret having to use pointed language at this website. But I use pointed language in part because the realities that I'm describing here, and feel we must work to change, are, themselves, very pointed and injurious. People in America, and elsewhere, including many children, who are always innocent, are suffering, physically and psychologically; in many cases made ill, and even dying, because of actions taken that are well-intentioned, but unfortunately premature, reckless, and not thought-through. We have an imbalance now in the nation, Elon. Let's work together to right it. This is what I want, this is what many people in America, and all over the world want, this is certainly and obviously what Pope Leo wants and will teach as the representative of Christ, and were we all to elevate ourselves morally, this, I firmly believe, is what we would all want.

Were we to speak, Elon, there are several improvements the country could use that have occurred to me, to bring us back to a more decent, traditional kind of culture, that you may not have considered, that I'd be happy to mention.

As an old friend of mine, now departed, would wisely tell me regarding interacting and dealing with human beings, given how flawed we all are: "You have to make allowances."

Wise words, yes? I, and many others, including without question many conservatives, like us, would be so very pleased--and relieved--if the efforts of the Trump administration from now on, in the way it conducts itself in all regards, could begin to "make allowances" for we flawed human beings, whether the citizenry, or the members of the administration, themselves, as we're all prone to human error, in how we see and do things.

Thank you, Elon. Thank you, Mr. President.

Warm Regards,

Vince

VINCENT FRANK DE BENEDETTO

65yo, Caucasian, American, Christian-oriented, conservative, Trump voter

onehumanfamily@fastmail.net

LoveProperlyUnderstood.com

VincentForPresident.com

Center4Love.com

"What would Jesus do?"

BEN BRADLEE'S OBSERVATION, ABOVE, has unfortunately become completely relevant to the political and constitutional situation of this very moment in American history, Spring 2025. Commentators have correctly stated that the present crisis is far worse than Watergate, as during that crisis Richard Nixon ultimately backed down, and was not supported by the Republican party. In contradistinction our present monarch wannabe, backed by almost the entire crew of cowed, insane Republicans, repeatedly pushes the legal, moral, and customary boundaries of every part of our long-established American system, and his Vice-President explicitly states that rulings of the Supreme Court, itself, can and should be ignored if they conflict with the will of the executive.

Commentators routinely query experts as to whether the United States is in a constitutional crisis. As a political philosopher, and citizen, I assert the obvious:  we are in some kind of crisis. If not technically a constitutional one, yet, then simply a general crisis of governance, tyranny, and what the meaning of America ultimately is.

COME ON IN, THE WATER'S FINE

From The New York Times, March 26, 2025, in an absolutely vital piece entitled "Foreign Spies to Team Trump...":

"In its first two months, the Trump administration has made move after move that exposes the government to penetration by foreign intelligence services. It's not just the group chat about forthcoming military strikes that The Atlantic revealed on Monday - although that was, to be clear, as audacious and ridiculous a security breach as there has been in decades. The administration short-circuited the process for conducting background checks on top officials, turned tens of thousands of people with access to government secrets into disgruntled ex-employees and announced it was lowering its guard against covert foreign influence operations. It installed one of Elon Musk's satellite internet terminals on the roof of the White House, seemingly to bypass security controls, and gave access to some of the government's more sensitive systems to a teenager with a history of aiding a cybercrime ring, who goes by the nickname Big Balls.

In his first term, President Trump caused an uproar by revealing intelligence to the Russian ambassador that was routinely withheld from America's actual allies. This is something different: the erosion of America's ability to keep any secrets at all. The second Trump administration is treating security like just another stale Washington convention, an annoying impediment to its ambitions to move fast, break the bureaucratic state and replace it with an all-powerful executive. The bros in tech and finance don't have to deal with these creaky, fussy restraints. Why should the White House?

Major adversaries pray for this level of chaos, confusion and opportunity. A secretive Chinese network is trying to recruit fired U.S. government workers. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service states with "high confidence" that foreign adversaries are trying to "capitalize" on the Trump administration's mass layoffs. But the Chinese Ministry of State Security or the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate aren't the only ones who stand to profit from the Trump administration's disregard for even minimal operational security. Intelligence gathering has become easier for everyone.

So-called zero-click spyware is now sold to regimes and corporations around the globe. Apple has notified users in 150 countries that they've been targeted. A program from a single Israeli spyware maker, the NSO Group, has been deployed in Saudi Arabia, Spain, Hungary, India, Mexico and Rwanda. "Now the junior varsity countries can come in and succeed," Frank Figliuzzi, the F.B.I.'s former assistant director for counterintelligence, told me. "You don't need to be very sophisticated."

RARE EARTH MINERALS

NPR Reports:

"Rare earth minerals aren't rare, but the U.S. is having a hard time getting them - China is retaliating against U.S. tariffs by restricting exports of rare earth minerals. Minerals expert Gracelin Baskaran explains why these little-known-elements are so vital to defense and tech."

I knew that China had the monopoly on rare earth minerals. Neither Don Trump, nor anyone who works for him in national security-related areas realized, that in the kind of explicit persecution of China that his lunatic tariffs represent, especially the outrageously high rates Trump is assigning to China, herself, that she could retaliate BY RESTRICTING THESE PRECIOUS RARE EARTH ELEMENTS THAT THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO MAINTAIN ITS MILITARY READINESS?

Don Trump claims that America will soon be getting its rare-Earth minerals from Ukraine. But given President Trump's fraught relationship with that country, as well as the injudicious strategy of depending upon only one country for elements vital to the American military, what the administration is doing does not, in my view, represent fully competent leadership.

The New York Times reports:

"Steve Tsang, a prominent authority on Beijing's geopolitics [states that] ... Mr. Trump has already "...done more damage to American capacities to confront China than anybody has ever imagined possible."

HAVEN'T WE HEARD ENOUGH YET TO REALIZE, COLLECTIVELY, AS A NATION, THAT, THOUGH DONALD IS A BEAUTIFUL BROTHER IN OUR ONE HUMAN FAMILY, AS PRESIDENT OF AMERICA AND THE FREE WORLD HE IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, AND MUST VOLUNTARILY OR CONSTITUTIONALLY LEAVE OFFICE IMMEDIATELY? I ALSO SUGGEST, PROVISIONALLY, THAT THE VICE-PRESIDENT RESIGN, AS WELL, ELEVATING PRESENT SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE MIKE JOHNSON TO THE PRESIDENCY. I AM UNACQUAINTED WITH SPEAKER JOHNSON, BUT UNDERSTAND HIM AS A VERY RELIGIOUS MAN, AND A GENERALLY FAR MORE TRADITIONAL, NORMAL REPUBLICAN. THAT'S PRECISELY WHAT WE NEED. AS JUST ABOUT EVERYONE CAN SEE BY NOW, INCLUDING MANY REPUBLICANS, TRUMPISM IS RAPIDLY DESTROYING THE ESTABLISHED NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL WORLD ORDERS--FOR ESSENTIALLY NO REASON.

FURTHER CRITICAL READING ON THE PRESENT AND CONTINUING EVISCERATION OF AMERICAN NATIONAL SECURITY - 13 MORE KEY POINTS

1. According to Pulitzer-prize winning reportage by The Wall Street Journal entitled Musk Above the Law, Elon Musk has: "Been in secret contact with Moscow since late 2022." And: "Regular contacts between world's richest man and America's chief antagonist raise security concerns." Emphasis mine.

2. I also strongly suggest that you carefully read the following New York Times article, of Saturday, April 05, 2025:

"Firing of National Security Agency Chief Rattles Lawmakers - Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, who was also the head of U.S. Cyber Command, was one of several national security officials fired on the advice of a conspiracy theorist."

3. Trump Weakens U.S. Cyberdefenses at a Moment of Rising Danger

4. January 2025, Washington, D.C. - The Truman National Security Project firmly opposes the Administration's decision to place dedicated career officials of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on administrative leave. We categorically condemn the choice to freeze all foreign aid, which is a vital component of our national security strategy. -- TRUMAN NATIONAL SECURITY PROJECT, CLICK TO READ THE FULL STATEMENT

   And whose continuation, I might add, is necessary to avoid the suffering and death of large overseas populations, many of them children. See Bill Gates, quote, above.

5. Additionally, in an April 07, 2025 news analysis by online cybersecurity publication CSO ONLINE, entitled "How Trump's tariffs are shaking up the cybersecurity sector":

"The introduction of new US tariffs has significantly rattled the US cybersecurity sector, reducing the stock market valuations of cybersecurity companies by tens of billions of dollars and sparking concerns that organizations may be forced to cut cybersecurity spending. The tariffs could also lay the groundwork for creating regionalized and weaker cybersecurity technologies globally."

6. America Is Handing China a Massive Victory, by Bay Fang

   
   

   
   
   
   

7. Did you know that Russia, China, Iran, and others, including purported American allies or friends India, Turkey, and Pakistan, have formed their own global security alliance, called the Shanghai Security Organization, in response to NATO? This is particularly inopportune in view of 1.) the imbecilic apathy, if not outright rejection, of NATO by none other than the present President of the United States, our nation one of the founders of NATO and strongest supporters, historically, 2.) the "Belt-and-Road" global power initiative of China that seeks, and appears to be slowly achieving, global cultural, economic, and technological, dominance, and 3.) Russia's military plan, underway, to expand its sphere of military influence in the region, bumping up against Western neighbors such as Finland, moving so aggressively that Russia, herself, states that she expects conflicts with NATO. I have literally never heard president Trump mention this large-scale, serious Russian endeavor.

8. One of the most disturbing realities of the present geopolitical theater is, as explicated in this piece (link pending), the aggressive focus of President Trump on relative trivialities such as tariffs, and purported acts of anti-Semitism, while China persists resolutely and single-mindedly with its disciplined plan for global domination in culture, economics, technology, and military affairs, built largely upon its far-reaching global "Belt-and-Road" initiative.

   Indeed did British Historian Arnold Toynbee assert, "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."

   Concomitant with this misfocus of the effort and attention of our American government, ignoring and indeed evidently unaware of, the actual global threats to our nation, is the focus of our national leaders on supporting such historic enemies and repugnancies as Nazis and Nazism, which both Elon Musk and JD Vance have done, in actively, vocally, and publicly supporting the so-called "Alternative for Germany" party (AfD), an organization that, at best, downplays the significance of Nazism, and at worst, advocates Nazism. This is simply reprehensible and categorically unacceptable.

And, of course, what is impossible to miss is the abject and categorical stupidity and hypocrisy of an administration that arrests and tosses into jail at the drop of a hat just about anybody it deems "anti-Semitic," whether said accusations are substantive, or not, and they usually aren't, while its own vice-president, JD Vance, scolds Germany and Europe at the 61st Munich Security Conference in Germany, speaking to a stunned large European diplomatic presence, for not violating their own well-established, correct, and indeed critical anti-Nazism "Never Again" policy by permitting the AdF party more latitude to preach its message of hate. Indeed did the new president of Germany just release a statement affirming the policy and rebuking the vice-president and the Trump administration (link pending).

9. "C.I.A. Plans to Cut More Than 1,000 Positions Over Several Years" -- Reported by The New York Times, May 02, 2025

10. Trump administration also degrading the presence and efficacy of our women warriors.

11. The World's Top Jet Fighter Is About to Get More Expensive - the U.S. dominates arms exports but the F-35, already dubbed the world's priciest weapon, shows how some are reliant on foreign parts that may now be subject to tariffs.

12. Don Trump's destruction of U.S. cyberdefenses is extremely unwise not only because of the rise in cyber-hacking and espionage against us and the West, but also because of Russia's ongoing comprehensive general military buildup with special reference to possible confrontation with NATO members on its border such as Finland.

13. From FOREIGN AFFAIRS, a brand new piece dated July 02, 2025: "Trump Is Breaking American Intelligence - Politicizing the System Makes Dangerous Failures More Likely."

    From the piece:

    "Intelligence, in its best form, encourages political leaders to ask the right questions, challenge their assumptions, and consider what might go wrong. Although intelligence officers have a professional responsibility to adapt to the interests, foreign policy priorities, and preferred briefing style of the leaders they serve, sometimes the highest form of service an intelligence agency can provide is to disabuse its political masters of a strongly held but false idea.

    The United States possesses an intelligence community that is the envy of the world. But under President Donald Trump, some of the same pathologies that make authoritarian regimes prone to intelligence failures are making the U.S. system similarly vulnerable. His populist, personalist style has led him to disregard the value of intelligence and abuse the agencies that produce it. In late June, the day before he sent U.S. bombers to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump dismissed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s congressional testimony that Iran was not close to developing a nuclear weapon—an assessment that conflicted with the president’s own claims. “I don’t care what she says,” Trump said. After the U.S. strikes, he triumphantly declared that the targeted Iranian nuclear sites were "completely and totally obliterated," whereas a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report made a more conservative estimation of the damage.

    The problem is not just that Trump himself belittles intelligence. His administration is also creating conditions in which senior officials tailor their assessments to please him. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeated Trump’s hyperbolic claims of obliteration, brushing aside his own intelligence agency’s report. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the “alleged ‘assessment’ is flat-out wrong.” Gabbard and John Ratcliffe, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, quickly claimed to find “new intelligence” to support Trump’s interpretation of events but declined to share it publicly.

    Increasingly staffed by loyalists rather than seasoned professionals—one critical counterterrorism office in the Department of Homeland Security suddenly found itself under the command of a recent university graduate with no national security experience—intelligence agencies risk becoming overly politicized, providing justification for policy decisions rather than informing them. Meanwhile, the United States faces serious national security threats, not least a heightened terrorism threat as Iranian-backed groups seek retaliation for the United States’ strikes on Iran. Whether it results in a terrorist or cyber attack, a foreign policy miscalculation, or a military surprise, the consequences of an intelligence failure could be profound. And the risk is only growing."

FROM CSO GLOBAL SECURITY, CSOONLINE.COM

"US bank regulator's email system breached"

DATELINE APRIL 08, 2025

The article begins:

"The agency that regulates all US national banks alerted Congress on Tuesday that hackers had access to staff emails.

A cyber intrusion at the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is "massively serious" and comes at a time when "the good work done to improve cybersecurity in the US is under extraordinary pressure," a security analyst said Tuesday.

David Shipley, head of Canadian security awareness training provider Beauceron Security, was responding to an alert issued by the OCC, an independent bureau of the Department of Treasury which charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks in the US.

According to a release, it has notified Congress of what it described as a "major information security incident," which it is required to do under the Federal Security Modernization Act (FISMA)."

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELT, AMERICA. GIVEN ALL OF THE ABOVE, AND MORE, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS LIKELY CLOSER TO ANOTHER 9-11-STYLE EVENT, OR WORSE, THAN WE'VE BEEN SINCE 2001.

AND GIVEN THE NATIONAL SECURITY CATASTROPHE THAT WE NOW HAVE ON OUR HANDS BECAUSE OF THE FLAGRANT INCOMPETENCE OF DONALD TRUMP, AND THE UNQUALIFIED GAGGLE OF SYCOPHANTS HE CALLS HIS CABINET, MANY OF WHOM HE PLUCKED FROM TELEVISION, AS HE OBVIOUSLY IS INCAPABLE OF ANY KIND OF MEANINGFUL RESEARCH LEADING TO PROPER ASSESSMENTS OF VARIOUS CANDIDATES. AS REPORTED ON, ABOVE, WHEN THE EVENT OCCURS THEY ARE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO BLAME IT ON THE LARGE STREAM OF IMMIGRANTS HAVING ENTERED THE COUNTRY UNDER FORMER PRESIDENT BIDEN. THE FAULT WILL CLEARLY BE THAT OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.

THE ATTACK IN WHOLE OR PART COULD EVEN COME FROM THE SEA GIVEN OUR WEAKENED MARITIME FLEET.

If Donald Trump isn't the worst U.S. president on national security, he certainly appears to be among the top two or three. He's probably the worst, as he's a living nightmare in every other respect.

CLEAR MANIFOLD RATIONALE FOR REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT

COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS

As a conservative, and a thinking human being, I don't advocate unrestricted immigration into the United States. Trump and Trumpian adherents have correctly lamented such a flow, as it can make it harder to identify who is entering the country, thus increasing the possibility, perhaps by a large measure, of entry of persons with terrorist, or other criminal, intent.

How, then, however, do Trumpers reconcile this particular proper concern for national security, with the near-complete evisceration of our national security perpetuated by President Trump in myriad other ways, as fully described in the New York Times article, above? This opposition, in other words, this tension, comprises an inconsistency, if not an outright contradiction.

The matrix of confused and cross-purposed elements under discussion, here, that is, the combination of Don Trump's proper concern for national security regarding illegal immigration, described in the excerpt, above, and the myriad injuries to national security described in the excerpt, above and the larger article whence it comes, comprises yet another example of the essentially inchoate activity stream, and confused underlying ideation, of the Trump administration, and of course, its leader, Don Trump. Put another way, the perspectives, plans, personnel, and activities of the Trump administration are confused (and hence confusing), because they all come originally from the mind of Donald Trump--and the mind of Donald Trump in too many instances seems confused.

Much of what springs forth from the mind of dear brother Donald, and, again, my endearment is genuine, is ridiculous. To wit, a New York Times headline from today, May 27, 2025:

"President Suggests Giving Trade Schools Money Taken From Harvard - On social media, President Trump mused about redirecting $3 billion in research grant money that his administration has frozen or withdrawn"

The very fact that this man governs by tweet clearly, cogently, and immediately illustrates his thoroughly unschooled and purile approach to governance. I may run for president in 2028. Holding that office, I wouldn't dream of such methodology. It is so ridiculous and inappropriate on its face that it wouldn't even occur to me. It's probably natively appealing to Don because it suits the need of his large ego to immediately impose his will, wishes, and whims.

Another headline from The Times of today:

"Trump Condemns Putin's Killings in Ukraine, but Doesn't Make Him Pay a Price - President Trump says that Vladimir Putin has 'gone absolutely CRAZY'" with attacks in Ukraine, but has so far refused to join Europe with its newest sanctions."

Unfortunately, the requirements for the presidency as specified by the Founding Fathers did not preclude election of a simpleton.

Last, in this section, a stream of activity by government that is flagrantly injurious to the national security of America, as the Trump activity stream clearly is, presuming the accuracy of the New York Times piece, above, comprises a clear, compelling, and irrefutable rationale for removal, either through the mechanism of impeachment, or mental incompetence under the 25th amendment.

THE ILLUSION OF PUTIN

Regarding Mr. Trump's illusion of what Vladmir V. Putin is, Thomas Friedman asserts:

"...how will Trump ever learn that truth when he basically gutted the National Security Council staff and shrank and neutered the State Department, when he fired the head of the National Security Agency and his deputy on the advice of a conspiracy buffoon, Laura Loomer, and when he appointed a Putin fan girl, Tulsi Gabbard, to be his director of national intelligence?

Who will tell him the truth? No one.

No one but the wild earth of Ukraine. In the trenches in the Donbas, there is truth. In the 20,000 Ukrainian children that Kyiv says Putin has abducted, there is truth. In the roughly 1.4 million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers killed and wounded as a result of Putin’s fevered dreams of restoring Ukraine to Mother Russia, there is truth. In the Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian drones at the same time that Trump was laying out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, there is truth.

And the longer Trump ignores those truths, the more he builds his peace strategy — not on expertise but on his hugely inflated self-regard and his un-American anti-Westernism — the more this will become his war."

FAITHFULLY EXECUTED

It is explicitly specified under the United States constitution that a chief responsibility of the executive is to assure that the laws are "faithfully executed." Needless to say, this implies that the president, themselves, not break any laws. Consider, then, this, from the New York Times of May 30, 2025:

"The Trump administration deported a 31-year-old Salvadoran man minutes after a federal appeals court barred his removal while his case proceeded..."

"In at least three other deportation cases, federal judges have determined that Trump officials expelled people from the country in violation of standing court orders."

"The best known of the cases is arguably that of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was arrested on March 12 by federal immigration agents in Maryland after living in the state for nearly six years under the protection of a judicial order that barred him from being returned to his homeland because he might face danger there.

Three days after he was taken into custody, Mr. Abrego Garcia was flown to El Salvador - the one place the order forbade him from being sent - in what officials later called an "administrative error." For more than two months now, Mr. Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen, has been locked in one of El Salvador's most notorious prisons despite three court orders - including one from the Supreme Court - instructing the White House to "facilitate" his release."

I will add, secondarily, that the treatment of these men, perhaps especially Mr. Abrego Garcia, is completely un-Christian, opposing and running completely counter to the Second Great Commandment of Christ:  LOVE THY NEIGHBOR. Vice President Vance has touted his newfound conversion to Catholicism, the most popular form of Christianity, and Mr. Trump has sponsored or endorsed legislation or executive orders over one or both of his terms purporting to protect Christian communities. He has also made Christian religious reference on several occasions, including implicit or explicit concurrence with the notion, asserted by so-called Christian Nationalists, that he was "sent by God."

SUPREME COURT RULING ON LGBT RIGHTS

As a 65-year-old male, full-Italian-American, and conservative, notions such as represented by the construction "LGBT" are not those that I grew up with over much of my lifetime. Nor am I inclined, now, toward what might be seen as their excesses. Like what? Like holding "Drag Queen Story Hour" programs in front of audiences of children, especially in publicly-funded facilities such as public libraries. In my view it is inappropriate for children to be exposed to such activity.

My view and my associated political and social positions on this and all issues are included in my 2028 presidential platform.

The likely deeper problem, as regards LGBT rights, however, as it is of acute constitutional significance, is that the United States Supreme Court has ruled that LGBT rights must be protected under the United States constitution--but the actions of the Trump administration continue to deliberately serve the opposite objectives. The Supreme Court ruling that Donald Trump is actively contravening was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, and joined by conservative chief justice John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush.

I mention these appointments for background and context, but context is of limited utility as President Trump is not a conservative, he is a Trumpist. He does what he wills, separate from ideology. In fact, as some of you know, there are numerous Democratic Party skeletons in his closet. In previous years, DT has supported Democratic party politicians more of the time than he's supported those of the Republican party.

THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE OUT (read: Donald Trump)

The tripartite airstrikes of Saturday, June 21, 2025 by the United States against the nuclear facilities of Iran, unilaterally elected and ordered by President Trump, constitute another categorical high crime against the rule of law, both nationally and internationally. "This is not constitutional," said Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, on social media. Mr. Massie's assertion is key and notable for it issues forth not merely from a Representative of a very conservative state--but from a Republican, the conservative party, and the very party of President Trump, himself.

Those of a posture of disregard or deprecation for the international violation committed by Mr. Trump, an injudicious view that itself harms the United States, cannot escape the fact, constitutional severity, and explicit probative value in support of the assertion of a high crime, of the national violation.

Mary L. Trump, Donald Trump's niece and a psychologist, stated:

"The president of the United State authorized an unprovoked military strike without Congressional authorization in an egregious violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers."

Speaker Mike Johnson, who seems intent on incrementally demonstrating his own lack of fitness for office with each successive action or statement of the last several months, asserted, according to The New York Times:

"The commander in chief has Article II responsibilities," Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Monday, referring to the section of the Constitution covering presidential power.

Voicing strong opposition to voting on a bipartisan measure to reassert Congress's war powers, he continued: "They're very serious and important, especially in times like this. I think he used that authority judiciously."

To this I properly respond, Speaker Johnson, WHO CARES WHAT YOU "THINK"? WE ARE A NATION OF LAWS--NOT OF MEN. WHAT YOU, OR ANYONE ELSE OF ANY POLITICAL AFFILIATION OR VIEW, "THINK" ISN'T WORTH A HILL OF BEANS, IF IT CONTRADICTS OR CONTRAVENES LAW.

Need you venture up into your attic at home, Mr. Speaker, to dust off your old political science 101 textbook to reacquaint yourself with the basic, even foundational principles of American constitutional governance? Did you, not, sir, pledge to uphold this very constitution upon assuming the 56th speakership of the United States House of Representatives, in 2023?

CATEGORICAL CONCLUSION

The executive branch in all of the above-specified cases regarding immigration and LGBT rights is explicitly and actively disobeying court orders, including those of the Supreme Court in regard to at least two specific cases. If this pattern of executive violation does not constitute a series of high crimes--what does?

There are additional clear grounds for removal based on explicit violation of the 1973 War Powers Act.

Last, there are grounds for removal, either impeachment or that based on the 25th amendment, given Mr. Trump's incompetence on national security, and possibly the 1st Amendment, as well.

Prior to Mr. Trump's violation of the War Powers Act, I had asserted that, clearly and categorically one of two options must occur immediately:  compliance by the executive--or removal of the executive. Now, however, the War Powers Act has been violated, and cannot be un-violated.

THE ROLE AND REALITY OF COGNITIVE DECLINE IN POLITICAL GOVERNANCE

A critical, as yet unexplored, matter.

PRESIDENTIAL CORRUPTION

The more I learn of the actions of this sorry brother, Don Trump, the more I believe that, impeachment or not, he will go down as one of the most corrupt presidents in American history. Perhaps the most corrupt.

Read this New York Times News Analysis of today, entitled "Trump's Flurry of Pardons Signals a Wholesale Effort to Redefine Crime," and see if you don't agree. This report should not be pleasurable for any American. Seeing this kind of deep political and personal failing, eroding what America is or at least how she is perceived, is painful to me. I hope to you, too. This is precisely the kind of information that someone like Vladimir Putin, a notorious democracy-hater, will use as fodder to attempt to repudiate, specifically, and excoriate, generally, the United States and democratic West.

In fact, given this, I will, at this point, rationally ask out loud whether DT might be compromising the country in this manner deliberately, in support or even furtherance of his obvious fidelity to the Russian dictator. I believe there is a heretofore unknown reason for this oddball and obviously seditious behavior toward a historical, continuing, and open enemy of America and liberal democracy. Donald Trump has done more to damage America than any enemy thus far has ever tried to do or imagined it could do, and I'm not the first nor only commentator to assert this. Conservative government professional John Bolton, whom I would like in my administration were I to win the presidency in 2028, asserts that Donald Trump is dead WRONG if he imagines that Vladimir Putin is his friend or on his side. Mr. Putin, just as Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, has a serious, singular, and immovable strategic vision for his country, and Vladimir Putin no more cares if Mr. Trump implores "Vladimir, stop the missiles," (paraphrase) than Xi Jinping cares when DT imposes high tariffs on Chinese exports. These national strategies are introduced, above. Donald Trump, in contrast, is focused completely on the specious and the relatively trivial, while our enemies continue treading forward strategically, undaunted by his threats or clown antics, his administration, generally speaking, the 3-ring circus or Keystone Kops of American presidential administrations.

Nor, by the way, am I stating or implying that other presidents or governmental figures have not been wholly or partially corrupt, but Don Trump's corruption is far wider, more comprehensive, more systematic, more explicitly vengeful, and, combined with his explicit incompetence in most other areas of his governance and presidency, make, in my view, for the inescapable conclusion that the author of this corrupt intention, or at least action, must be removed from office as quickly as possible, because no matter the injury and gravity of a situation--it can always get worse.

Corruption at the highest level of government is, of course, a desired cornerstone of any threat edifice our enemies would seek to build against America. They have been, and continue, to build this edifice. Save now they have, perhaps unwittingly, a firm ally in the oval office.

CRITICAL GENERAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ALERT - END

I can tell you as a philosopher, that, as with most human problems, it isn't what we think it is. We have no immigration problem. We have a stupidity problem. A lack of understanding problem. A lack of mercy, compassion, and charity problem. A lack of seeing our human connection to each other problem. An inability to see that on this planet, we're all brothers and sisters in one human family problem. And clearly, for Christians or persons of Christian background, in whole or part (such as myself), a failure to practice the faith problem.

In fact, as regards immigration, our problem-set is tiny, though we can ascribe it many kinds of titles.

But above all, fellow Americans, what we most decidedly do NOT suffer...is an immigration problem.

The query to consider, our only real question, is:  how do we intelligently and properly redress the presence of millions of human beings who have crossed into our landmass illegally, doing so in a manner consonant with our American values, principles, and concerns not only of justice, national security, and efficient use of government resources, but also, in use of our entire American toolkit, thus also including revered American values and principals such as fairness, balance, compassion, tolerance, mercy, respect, and understanding, and keeping all families together, in a model for the world in how the vaunted United States intelligently handles such a situation. And BTW, keeping families together is a conservative article of faith.

I'll happily provide that answer now, but before doing so I'll summarize the way NOT to do it:  the way the Trump administration has been doing it. With obvious hostility, vengeance, bulldog aggression, and a complete and shameful lack of charity or mercy, for immigrant parents, and children. And in fact no plan or planning whatsoever--the way Donald Trump does everything: "government by chaos," in the words of Senater Schumer.

(By the way, isn't Don Trump the same man who excoriated the Biden administration for its apparently chaotic exit from Afghanistan in August 2021?)

[Note: I voted for neither Senator Schumer nor President Biden.]

Continuing on immigration:  the hostile disregard and cruelty for these human beings, these brothers and sisters, the aggression in vilifying, excoriating, and ejecting them, coming from from Trump, Rubio, et al., is absolutely disgusting, categorically UN-CHRISTIAN AND ANTI-CATHOLIC, and is, BTW, a perfect example as to why I, though very conservative, will likely never join the former Republican party, having now convincingly and obviously transformed and transmogrified itself into the Cult of Trump.

This characterization was also proferred by Mary L. Trump, a psychologist and Donald Trump's niece:

"Donald is still no doubt stinging from the acronym recently coined to mock his inability to follow through on anything--TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out. In the wake of Israeli strikes against Iran, Donald spent a few days saber-rattling only to back off (chicken out, if you will) in the wake of searing criticism by some of the most reliably sycophantic members of his cult--e.g. Rep. Marjorie Green (R-GA), Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon."

REPUBLICAN PARTY DEBASED

Now Obviously the Cult of Trump

Brother Marco, with special reference to you: what happened to you? Don't you remember when this man used to publicly denigrate and insult you, and your career in government, by calling you "Little Marco"? And now you've not only tightly allied yourself with this ailing man and his errant and amoral thought processes, but you're zealously doing his bidding across several spheres of government, no matter how cruel, shameful, counterproductive, unconstitutional, or destructive of everything that makes America the beautiful creation that she is? Republican David Brooks recently wrote in The New York Times that every day under Don Trump brings disgrace to America.

Brother Donald, all things considered, will very likely go down in history as one of our worst presidents--you're this eager to go down with him?

And for some reason, Mr. Secretary, I always assumed that you were someone who took their Christianity seriously, as well.

Fellow Americans, please read every word of the linked Guardian piece by former Republican Paolina Milana, entitled, "I was a Republican - the party I believed in no longer exists," an incredible personal summation of the evisceration of the United States, and the near-wholesale complicity of the (erstwhile) Republican party.

April 13, 2025

402a

Yes, I almost forgot. Yesterday I heard reported that Israel has bombed yet another hospital in Gaza (or in a nearby region). Boy, those Israelis: they really love to destroy those hospitals, don't they? Every few days I'm hearing about another that the IDF has bombed.

Judaism, the "religion of love and peace."

I understand the rationale of Israel: the purported pattern of Hamas to use civilian facilities such as hospitals as covert military facilities or for military use. The answer, however, is likely to be found in the intelligent strategies of nonviolence of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., both of whom faced implacable enemies, as does Israel. As is so often the case, we Americans have the answer--if someone would take the time and exercise the brains to see what is staring them right in the face.

Good news. That someone is me, Vincent Frank De Benedetto, with your help, 2028 candidate for U.S. president.

MAY 16, 2025

THE WORLD'S BIGGEST ANTI-SEMITE

I've realized the identity of the world's biggest anti-Semite.

First of all, Brother Donald, if you're so concerned about anti-Semitism, why don't you talk to your good buddy Benjamin Netanyahu--his cataclysmic mass murder, the very worst that it's ever been as of Friday, May 16, 2025, as widely reported, where we have now the twin hell of mass death from military attack and mass death from starvation, as the imbeciles in Israel, even when they put their brains together, don't appear to have the requisite collective grouping of neurons to figure out some other way to handle Hamas.

I recommend a careful, but immediate study of the work and life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for he knew how to use the power of LOVE, to NON-VIOLENTLY redress an intractable enemy. The GUN is often used by those without the BRAINS OR THE COMMUNICATION SKILLS to resolve conflict with words and affirmative deeds.

It is Netanyahu, himself, who is the biggest anti-Semite on the planet, for the pure evil that he is perpetuating in Gaza and nearby regions will go down indelibly in both Israeli and world history as one of the worst crimes against humanity that has ever been committed by human beings, a grossly misguided bunch of imbeciles stupid and drunk enough with ego and power to dare call themselves human beings, and will obviously create waves of new anti-Israel terrorists for untold years to come. This crime, an estimated 53,000 dead so far, mostly women and children, many of them blown to bits by American missiles and bombs, is perhaps the greatest mark against Israel, its state, its system, its religion, and its people, that has ever been made.

Why do I mention the Israeli people? Well I don't see them engaged in some kind of large-scale action, perhaps a nationwide general strike, to force Netanyahu and those in Israeli government whom I understand are pulling his strings to stop this war. A "war" according to Israel--a SLAUGHTER for the Gazans and others.

Among everything that Israel could lose, what it is losing here is the very worst, for there is nothing more valuable to a person, to a people, and in this case to the state of Israel. Yet this interminable slaughter is causing Israel to lose just that: its morality. Its claim to be taking the high road. Nothing is more irreplaceable, especially for a people who themselves have suffered so at the hands of oppressors and others. Who have wandered the Earth in search of their Eden. Who proudly consider Judaism a superlative system of belief, indeed the religion of Love and Peace. For such a people, there can be no worse, no more damning, no more horrid and inexcusable and unforgivable and simply unacceptable condition of devolution, than to lose their morality. Their love for their fellow man, all of their fellow man, and thereby, from such virtue, their love for themselves and their land and all they aspire to be and all that Judaism and God calls them to be.

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

3:03a

It is now reported that brother Trump has signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates to build an A.I. center that will make that nation the largest locus of artificial intelligence activity outside of the United States. Thus do we see that, in addition to innumerable other serious mistakes committed by Don Trump, especially since he took office for a second term in 2024, is this one: he's becoming instrumental in promulgating a wrecknology he knows zero about, that, after nuclear weapons, is the very worst that humanity has ever created, representing our lowest point, intellectually and morally.

MAY 17, 2025

From The Times, today: "Duffy Blamed Biden for Air Traffic Woes. It's a Decades-Old Problem."

More lies and scapegoating from the geniuses and moral paragons of the Trump administration.

What a surprise.

9:11p

It was reported about two days ago in The New York Times, and I'm sure in The Wall Street Journal, and everywhere else, that Moody's has just downgraded its rating of the United States, because of Donald Trump's obviously counterproductive financial actions.

Yet another reason that the dollar is slowly losing its status as the global reserve currency.

And concomitantly, DT wants to further cloud and compromise the situation by popularizing secondary currencies, so-called crypto-currencies.

Donald Trump has been, and largely still is, known as crass, lacking knowledge, imperious, narcissistic, and supremely dishonest: think "Trump University," and "The Art of the Deal," ghost-written for Donald. Having written this, I actually think brother Don Trump is growing somewhat as a human being. Several months, ago, for example, I heard him use a word that I'd never heard him use before: heal.

1:23p

I heard today that PBS News or PBS itself is one of the most trusted information sources by Americans. Yet Don Trump is attempting to completely defund it.

May 22, 2025

According to The Washington Post of May 23, 2025, Justin Sun, a Trump investor, was investigated and litigated against by the SEC. While investing in Trump family company World Liberty Financial, the Trump administration successfully petitioned a court to pause the litigation.

Brother Don to drain the swamp? I'm afraid, instead, he's brought in beach chairs and a diving board.

[MAY 29, 2025: DT just pardoned a sheriff, a former Sheriff Jenkins, sent to prison for 10 years for bribery. The sheriff, it turns out, is reported to be "a big Trump donor." Thank God Mr. Trump drained the swamp. I'd hate to think of what the ethical coloration of the presidency would be had he not.]

11:09a

Additionally, from the Trump Drain the Swamp Department, a co-equal branch of governmental dysfunction with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE:  from the May 12, 2025 New York Times:

"Auction to Dine With Trump Creates Foreign Influence Opportunity - When the bidding stops Monday, the top buyers of a Trump family crypto coin will win a tour of the White House."

7:09p

Two persons very unfortunately shot and killed outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. The perpetrator I believe made a pro-Palestine remark.

What do we expect? Israel has become a criminal state! 53,000 dead, so far, mostly women and children, blown to bits by missiles and bombs, and, for two months now, no food or medicine allowed into Gaza by Israel, with a creeping famine occurring.

7:12p

A key belief and position of American conservatives and conservatism for many years now has been a strict emphasis on STATES RIGHTS. This is even a known phrase in American history, including and perhaps especially civil rights history.

However, the Cult of Trump (previously known as the Republican Party) just revoked California's mandate that all motor vehicles sold in their own state be electric by a certain year, I believe 2030. Nor is this the first attempt by Donald Trump to interfere in the operation and governance of an individual state: several months ago he sought to terminate the successful new state policy for Manhattan called "congestion pricing."

As with everything, Don Trump, "Dear Leader," has no fidelity. No fidelity to anything, traditional conservative beliefs, or anything else, other than himself and his opinions of the moment. As always, Trump is devoted only to Trump. Expressed in an equation, we might write: TRUMP = TRUMP. No other variables or variation easily permitted.

7:31p

Brother Trump taking a further significant step to eviscerating the United States of America. A key part of what has made us great: our irresistible attraction for, and retention of, international students, probably some of the smartest young people on the planet, whom we absolutely want to attract--which we've always done--and RETAIN. But DT is now kicking them out of Harvard, and I don't believe new applicants can be accepted.

Again--make America great? More like, make America THIRD-RATE.

MAY 26, 2025

Memorial Day

I just became acquainted with this NPR headline:

"The CFPB wanted medical debt to be left off credit reports. That's changed under Trump"

CFPB refers to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--whose elimination was one of Don Trump's first acts in office this term. What a guy.

Glad to see that brother Donald is so pro-consumer.

203p

I've just been made to understand that, though this is Memorial Day, DT criticized the Biden administration, twice, today, once at the actual Arlington Cemetery ceremony; then afterward afterward in text employing the most base, scurrilous, and repugnant language--and this, after finding out that President Biden was just diagnosed with very aggressive pancreatic cancer.

Where's the Christian love, gentlemen?.

MAY 28, 2025

Morality, the 1st Amendment, and the Meaning of America

2 + 2 = 4

I've always believed that 2 + 2 = 4--and I still do. The Trump administration, however, appears unacquainted with the moral equivalent of even this most basic kind of arithmetic. It continues seriously penalizing persons for doing what, in fact, we should all be doing:  protesting the continuing brutal massacre of men, women, and children, mostly women and children, in Gaza and surrounding environs, by brother Benjamin and his cabal. But instead of doing what we should obviously all be doing, protesting this murderous approach that BN is taking to redress the Hamas problem, Don Trump not only fails to raise such protest, or otherwise persuade brother Ben to cease and desist and find some other way--he actually uses such protest as fodder or a raison d'etre to arrest and detain those who do. This is turning morality on its head--reflecting the apparent inability of Donald Trump to discern this most basic kind of moral logic, akin to the inability to understand that 2 + 2 = 4.

Moreover, in the United States, and indeed what has always--until Trump--set the United States apart from just about any other nation on Earth, and certainly set us apart from the body of autocratic nations, is a little provision in our constitution that you may have heard of, called THE 1ST AMENDMENT.

In the United States, it is the RIGHT of Americans to speak and protest as we see fit, without government detention or even censure. Each step away from this doctrine, Mr. Trump, is a step toward autocracy. It is freedom that makes America great, Sir, not autocracy. The fact is that overall, prior to the elevation of DT, especially his second term, America had the world by the b-lls. We had everything and were everything.

Given the slaughter and its scale, I'd be worried if students and others were not protesting, as it would indicate the kind of immorality or at best amorality that has apparently infected so many in both the Israeli and American governments.

Mr. Trump's desire to make America great is noted, and notable, insofar as it goes. But in fact we were already great, and now, are in the toilet. Anything that did or could make us great this gentleman is destroying, anything that compromises and destroys us he somehow thinks is desirable and required. His intellect, instincts, and level of knowledge of governance are all extremely poor. Thus, the present dilemma. I'm not confident that I won't be arrested and jailed just for exercising my 1st Amendment right to write and publish this website. I have a palpable and substantive fear in doing this. I absolutely feel that I'm taking a risk. The fact of this fear on the part of myself and many others, up-to-and-including actual Republican members of the United States Congress, like Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, clearly reveals the problem and its magnitude. Thus does the name of this website refer to Americanism in name only.

I'm afraid that Donald is clueless regarding how to make America great, and thus are we in the worst shape that we've ever been in, and it's all self-inflicted. The only question is how best to handle this. Even removal from office wouldn't necessarily constitute an improvement, as it would see Vice-President JD Vance elevated to the presidency, yet Vice-President Vance is a person of the opinion that rulings of the Supreme Court should be subject to the will of the executive, and if not, a constitutional crisis is literally fine by him. It's Richard Nixon, Watergate, and the attempted formation of the imperial presidency, all over again, only worse, as Richard Nixon backed down, and as far as I'm aware, did maintain a basic proper and expected belief in our American tripartite system of checks and balances, which JD does not appear to, or misunderstands. Idiotically, JD asserts that, 'Trump, if reelected, should "fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, [and] every civil servant in the administrative state - and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: "The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it."'

AMERICA DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY, JD. IF THE FOUNDING FATHERS DESIRED MONARCHY THEY WOULD HAVE ESTABLISHED A NEW MONARCHY, NOT A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. OR MORE TO THE POINT, THE 13 COLONIES WOULDN'T HAVE HELD A REVOLUTION IN THE FIRST PLACE--THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF IT.

...AND IN WANTING TO FIRE "EVERY SINGLE MIDLEVEL BUREAUCRAT," JD, WHERE IS YOUR CHRISTIAN LOVE? "LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR" IS THE SECOND GREAT COMMANDMENT OF CHRIST, AND EVERY ONE OF THOSE BUREAUCRATS IS YOUR NEIGHBOR TO BE LOVED, IF YOU TAKE THE TEACHING OF CHRIST SERIOUSLY. AND IF YOU DON'T, PLEASE TURN IN YOUR CHRISTIANITY CARD--OR RISK RIGHTLY BEING CALLED A HYPOCRITE.

Where is Santayana when we need him?

About 6a

Israeli War Crimes Confirmed

Former prime minister of Israel Ehud Olmert now states that his nation is committing war crimes in Gaza.

Also, I never realized that Marco Rubio was so obtuse and inattentive; perhaps incompetent: I heard this morning on NPR that he has canceled thousands of student visas, including those of persons whose only apparent crime was protesting Israel's Gaza war--which, in fact, we should all be protesting, given the level of slaughter, and the former prime minister of Israel now confirms with his assertion that Israel is committing war crimes. Additionally, again, protesting is a protected activity under the 1st Amendment, that's the FIRST amendment, underlying and informing all other amendments. This is why my website title refers to Americanism in name only; in this case, for example, attempting to proscribe and prevent protected 1st Amendment speech certainly does not reflect the thinking of an American, or genuine Americanism. And thus is certainly not what an official of our U.S. government should be doing.

Secretary Rubio's competence in governance is also suspect given how he appears to be doing nothing more than ruling the ruins; nothing more than presiding over the errors of his boss, who is diverting significant government focus and resources to relative trivialities like 1.) tariffs; and those that are outright specious, like 2.) arresting, detaining, and deporting students and others simply for protesting, while antagonist nations like China, those with their heads screwed-on straight, are focused laser-like on, and using their resources for, deadly serious endeavors like the Chinese "Belt-and-Road" program, methodically increasing Chinese influence around the planet, in economics, technology, culture, and military affairs--an endeavor made all the easier, by the way, by the supremely stupid withdrawal from world affairs and American global military and other influence, by this administration.

Mr. Rubio's inattention in this regard made all the worse because not only is he Secretary of State, and the acting director of the U.S. Archives, and the acting director of USAID, but he's also the acting National Security advisor, so he should be aware of, and advocate and have a plan to address these realities.

Regarding brother Marco's many official government posts:  while the administration is at it, why doesn't it make him Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well, and the official White House building inspector, electrician, gardener, and dog-catcher, too?

The lack of proper staffing across all these departments, itself, speaks volumes to the incompetence for office of the current president. In the case of Don Trump it's because, 1.) with, initially, zero experience in politics and governance, he has no fixed or proper opinion on what kind of foreign policy he wants, leading to factional infighting in the administration, and 2.) his pattern of always seeking candidates for posts whom he already knows and trusts, though such persons are always in relatively short supply.

From NYT of today:

"How to Hide a 350-Foot Megayacht - Russian oligarchs use the offshore system to shield their luxury assets. The Trump administration is ending an effort to find and seize them."

Swamp drained! Da!

127p

NYT: "Documents Show E.P.A. Wants to Erase Greenhouse Gas Limits on Power Plants"

330p

NPR radio program 1A, host, Jen White. First guest, Deanne Criswell, Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 2021 to 2025. She's an emergency management officer.

Don Trump has it wrong, yet again. He asserts that emergency management should be handled by states, not the federal government. But Ms. Criswell states that they are! Only when a state can't handle a given disaster, or perhaps runs out of resources does it petition FEMA and the federal government for assistance.

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"No trust. I don't trust anybody." -- Donald Trump, referring to a possible agreement with Iran, the provisions of which would be documented.

JUNE 04, 2025

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It was reported yesterday that for three days in a row when starving Gazans attempted to obtain food from the food distribution points just established by Israel and the United States, an endeavor widely decried as completely inadequate to the number and geographical dispersion of those starving, the food-seekers were fired upon, and some killed.

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It's reported today that more Americans than ever before have become reluctant to share their personal data with census-takers, because of actions collecting personal data by the Musk team. This exacerbates, it is reported, the existing trust problem in America around this issue.

Oh, great, just what America needs--even less trust than before.

JUNE 05, 2025

The relationship between Musk and Trump is dissolving, and they are fueding--the snakes are starting to eat each other!

THANK GOD!

JUNE 06, 2025

I don't want to hear any more noise from the Trump administration about revering and protecting Christianity--such claims are clearly a bunch of garbage.

And regarding the notion that brother Trump is committing the injurious and nefarious actions that he is internationally, in this case his opprobrium toward, and escalating attacks upon, the International Criminal Court, or ICC, to defend American "sovereignty," he asserts, I ask: what's the point of being sovereign if we've devolved into a dictatorship?

The actions of DT are especially inappropriate and ironic given the leading role of the United States in the formation and operation of the legal mechanisms underpinning and conducting the Nuremberg Trials.

As a conservative I'm not eager to abdicate American sovereignty--and I wouldn't. But as is the case with just about everything DT does--it's not just what he does, it's the thoughtless, reckless, often brazen, merciless, and usually counterproductive ways in which he does it. Nor is there usually anything "Christian" about it.

JUNE 09, 2025

It's reported today that DT is now deporting immigrants protected by a government program intended to protect those who have come forward to report crimes, and who are working with law enforcement. These persons and families were blindsided by Trump and are in psychological disarray.

Count, then, yet another class of person now living in fear because of the wrong-headed misadventures of the Trump administration, in support of the obvious eventual recognition of this man as likely the worst president in modern American history, if not all of our history.

Mr. Trump is also trying to fire one of the heads of the Smithsonian institution.

It's fair to observe and assert that this man seems to think that in being elected president he was also elected national Minister of Culture.

Additionally, in effect starting today is his recently declared full ban on 12 countries and a partial ban on 7 others, mostly from African and Middle-Eastern countries.

ANOTHER BLOW TO STATES RIGHTS

It's also been reported the past few days that Mr. Trump called in the National Guard to combat protesters in Los Angeles militating against ICE detentions there, which Trump is calling "migrant riots," despite the protestations of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who asserts that the president is exacerbating conditions there. Some protesters appear to have engaged in violent behavior such as throwing cement blocks, while others appear to have engaged in simple acts of civil disobedience and passive resistance, such as blocking roadways. I note that the injurious action at the United States capital of January 06, 2021, putatively considered a genuine riot, or at least a violent insurrection, was capriciously not considered a riot by president Trump.

Governor Newsom is filing suit against DT, as he called up the Guard against the Governor's wishes.

This situation helps illustrate the difference between a conservative and an autocrat. Donald Trump is, or certainly tends toward, the latter. American conservatism has always stressed the right of states to govern their own affairs, over any kind of primacy for the federal government, but whether in this instance, or regarding the issue of Congestion Pricing in New York, or, again, in California, its own energy use and electric vehicle legislation, Don Trump continues to illustrate that he has no interest in upholding and reinforcing legitimate principles of conservatism and limited government, but continues to govern by emotion, and generally uninformed opinion.

Technically, Mr. Trump has the power to deploy our National Guard in this manner, but this power is invoked rarely, and only for far more explicitly dangerous social conditions. It is also reported that Pete Hegsethe, Secretary of Defense, has mentioned calling in the United States Marines. It is noted that no military force, neither National Guard nor Marines, has the appropriate law enforcement training required for such enforcement, and would thus tend to inflame and exacerbate these situations.

Among these and other problems, inappropriately calling up National Guard in this manner undermines our American foundational democratic principle that the military does not act against citizens in a law enforcement capacity. This is at least the second time that Trump has eviscerated the 1st Amendment right of Americans to protest, and thus does this sorry brother continue his established pattern of pitting American against American. Roy Cohn taught him the lessons of division well, though Politico notes that Mr. Cohn never taught Mr. Trump the final lesson: one can't get away with errant behavior forever.

Last, on the Emerging Fascism front: the nation of Israel just detained and commandeered a Freedom Flotilla aid ship coming from Italy to Gaza, with 12 activists on board including social activist Greta Thunberg, carrying a quantity of desperately-needed food and medical supplies to the dead, dying, and desperate Gazan population, including baby formula. The first time this aid effort sent a ship, about a month go it was struck it with drones, damaging the ship, asserted by the group to be caused by Israel. There are presently 1 million starving Gazans, and when they try to obtain food from the only two food distribution points permitted by Israel and the Trump administration, they are apparently shot by Israeli soldiers.

In all, then, in the opinion of many, does Mr. Netanyahu continue his metamorphosis from leader of a people harmed by fascism, to one acting, himself, in a fascist manner.

JUNE 10, 2025

Don Trump continues his interminable drive toward wholesale consolidation of power, seeking to make himself the absolute ruler of the United States.

WHEN IS THIS MADMAN GOING TO BE REMOVED FROM POWER?

JUNE 13, 2025

Israel is engaged in a bombardment of Iran for about 24 hours now.

When President Trump was asked to provide his opinion on the attacks, he replied, "Excellent."

How can firing missiles and dropping bombs on human beings, including many who are explicitly innocent, blowing them to bits, ever be excellent?

It might, in a genuinely extreme circumstance, be necessary, even critical. But...excellent?

Mr. President, were it your wife, children, grandchildren, colleagues, friends, or neighbors, blown to bits by missiles and bombs, even if the attackers thought the attack absolutely justified, would you be similarly inclined to construe it as excellent?

JUNE 14, 2025

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Reported this morning on THE NEW YORKER RADIO HOUR by a male journalist who just published an in-depth piece on the war in Sudan. Asked by the host whether DT's cuts to USAID had any effect on the war, he indicated that USAID was responsible for provision of food in Sudan, and while the aid wasn't providing enough food, now, after Trump's USAID obliteration, there's simply no food, at all.

Breaking news as of about 90 minutes ago: a Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and her husband were murdered early this morning. Another Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and his wife were also shot and seriously injured but thankfully not killed. The perpetrator escaped, and apparently had plans to murder others, attending the anti-Trump NO KINGS rallies being held today across the country, including in Minnesota.

I feel confident in linking these murders with the 1500-person insurrection at the United States capital on Jan 06, 2021, then obviously linking both of these events to the putative divisive influence of Donald J. Trump that began upon the occasion of his first campaign in 2016.

JUNE 19, 2025

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Listen to retired Cnl. Larry Wilkerson to see just how financially dysfunctional our military is. In fact most of our government agencies don't pass their annual audits. See ON POINT with Megna Chakrobarti, the program of today.

JUNE 20, 2025

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It's reported yesterday that DT will decide within the next two weeks whether he will commit American forces or materiel to the present attack upon Iran by Israel.

That DT doesn't already know, is further confirmation of his lack of fitness for this office; certainly at least the reality that this brother remains simply untutored and inexperienced in matters of governance in its fullness--a problem rooted ultimately in an error committed by the Founding Fathers in their specified paucity of qualification as conceived and included in the constitution, a grievous mistake that I'm going to redress as president.

Neither the United States nor the world will ever suffer through another errant, off-the-rails, democracy-destroying presidency, again.

It is also reported as of yesterday that criminal actor Israel, in its war with Iran, is NOT targeting only military and nuclear research and production facilities, but wider areas, as well. Continuing and expanding, in other words, the holocaust of brutal slaughter of over 70,000 human beings, it is thought, in Gaza and nearby regions, in the war that it continues to wage unnecessarily.

I HAVE PERSONALLY BECOME A GREATER BELIEVER IN NONVIOLENCE THAN I'VE EVER BEEN. AND FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE I WILL REMAIN SO, AND PROMULGATE THIS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL MESSAGE.

JUNE 24, 2025

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TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ATTEMPTING TO FULLY EVISCERATE PUBLIC TELEVISION AND RADIO, COMPLETE WITH SLANDER AND LIBEL, CRITICAL RESOURCES FOR SO MANY AMERICANS, AND OVERALL A VITAL AMERICAN RESOURCE AND PART OF AMERICAN CULTURE.

Think Sesame Street. Think Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Think Electric Company. Think the only source of educational programming, news, and emergency information for many rural parts of America. And a lot more.

This vitriolic evisceration is yet another piece of the governmental train wreck, the calamitous dysfunctional puzzle that remains the Trump administration.

I remind you, gentle reader, that I, Vincent Frank De Benedetto, the author of these words and indeed this entire web site, am conservative. More conservative, historically, than either Donald Trump or Elon Musk. What I am not, nor could ever be, as is true of a small group of principled conservatives, is a Trumper. Donald Trump is not conservative. He's Trumpist. He does what's good for himself, or what feels or seems good to him. Not what genuine considered conservative principles require in a given situation, nor even the decision or conclusion that a fully and thoughtfully considered and debated decisionmaking process would generate--which is partly why, by the way, that such monumental decisions as going to war are constitutionally mandated to, and reserved for, the Congress--a DELIBERATIVE body.

OOPS

Consider this reporting by The New York Times today:

"A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of Iran's nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, according to officials familiar with the findings.

The early findings conclude that the strikes over the weekend set back Iran's nuclear program by only a few months, the officials said."

The very fact that the unilateral United States attack evidently did NOT achieve its objectives--not even close--categorically illustrates the folly of undertaking a major, complex decision alone, that is, by only the president, or even by the president in concert with just a few others such as the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State. In this case, by the way, it is also reported that Donald Trump's cabinet, itself, was not consulted and was thus surprised to learn of the attack. A Congressional process of deliberation would have heard from many voices concerning the proposed attack, providing the opportunity and likely instance of one or more of those voices painting a more accurate and comprehensive picture of the military requirements to actually achieve the objectives, and warn of missteps that could impede the mission.

One needn't go much further than the old saw, "Two heads are better than one," extrapolating to 535 heads are better than 2, to realize the added deliberative and adjudicative power to conduct the campaign more effectively that the president would have enjoyed, had he stopped trying to re-invent the wheel and simply FOLLOWED THE LAW.

But a continuing problem with Donald Trump and the noBrain-Trust around him is that, for all their noises about conservatism, they seem almost to a one to be congenitally unable to follow the law, and the general principal concerning the rule of law. The problem here is that these guys and their titular head Mr. Trump just haven't found a law that they can't resist egoistically, arrogantly, unconstitutionally, and treasonously breaking.

The very first thing that Donald Trump would categorically NOT be doing, were he an actual conventional (read: proper) conservative--is repeatedly violating THE RULE OF LAW, as he has made a political career of doing, as partly explicated, above.

And needless to say, this military gaffe in Iran, yet another in a presidency that isn't much more than a seemingly interminable string of gaffes, MAKES THE UNITED STATES, YET AGAIN, AN INTERNATIONAL LAUGHINGSTOCK. Truly, "Make America Great Again," under this Keystone Kops presidential administration, means Make America Third-Rate, Again.

Or, if you prefer, as I've written for some time, well before this present bungled strike on Iran, and as preliminarily documented, above:  MAGA = "Make Russia & China Great Again."

Don Trump's assertion and declaration that his strikes "obliterated" the Iranian nuclear facilities are irrelevant, since perhaps the one thing about Mr. Trump upon which most Americans and others agree, is his distinct and obvious predilection for untruth and inaccuracy, a practice that he, himself, broached, admitted, and trumpeted earlier in his career.

423p

The president deliberately used the F word on television this afternoon:

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

"Politics is sometimes a dirty and ugly business, and so people use language there that might be better preserved in the locker room - but in no instance do I recall a president openly using this term in a public forum," said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

But in a way, it wasn't surprising at all, Riley said.

"This is a president that has seldom felt bound by the normal constraints of the office, and the use of profanity is typically one of those constraints," said Riley.

The medical phenomenon of dementia sees a behavioral phenomenon called disinhibition, where normal, organically-imposed limits and boundaries on behavior are gone or otherwise compromised. Part of my deconstruction of brother Donald is assertion of the possibility of his suffering incipient dementia, that is, the first phase, of the first phase of the malady. My own beloved Father, whom I caregave for 14.5 years, displayed signs of apparent social or behavioral disinhibition. If suffering this, Don Trump has done nothing wrong. He's merely another victim of the same set of etiologies responsible for the decline in cognition suffered by millions of older persons around the globe--that A.I., by the way, will exacerbate.

Having written this, I, personally, don't infer dementia on the part of President Trump based on what he says. His logic spoken orally seems ok. What I question is his judgment, not really his memory or the coherence or internal logic of his statements.

JUNE 30, 2025

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Evidently the capacity of Iran to continue developing nuclear weapons has not been "obliterated" with the recent tripartite strikes by the United States, as President Trump has been repeating since our--his--attack.

So, in other words, this man has yet again unnecessarily subject the United States to international ridicule and humiliation.

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Concomitantly, it appears that the Trump administration may have finally done something good. The BBC has reported this morning: "Belarus opposition leader's husband freed from prison."

In searching the 'Net for support groups to assist remaining Belarusian political prisoners, and the just-released ex-prisoner, himself, I initially found nothing. If you find a good link or two please apprise me.

JULY 01, 2025

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USAID officially closed today. Respected medical journal The Lancet projects 14 million preventable deaths by 2030, given its loss:

"Projections suggest that ongoing deep funding cuts-combined with the potential dismantling of the agency-could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4 - 5 million deaths among children younger than 5 years."

One knowledgeable commentator remarked, "You can't rebuild that network, built up over a period of 60 years, destroyed in a matter of weeks."

555p

From the New York Times of today: "Denmark Begins Drafting Women as Russian Threat Looms."

556p

Yet another shooting in America. The nation is imploding. What's the president doing about it?

Nothing.

As usual, and as described disturbingly, above, under National Security, Don Trump was and remains focused on every manner of triviality and inconsequentialism, instead of the roster of issues of great and obvious gravitas facing the country, and the world.

He's too busy cheerleading his huge, fiscally-irresponsible spending bill, among the worst in American history. Whose aid cuts to millions of Americans will further drive the kind of human psychological, emotional, and even physical misery that generates violence of human being against human being, in the first place.

Make the billionaire-class great again, at the expense of middle and lower-class Americans? No worries. Donald Trump and "Catholic" JD Vance are on it.

Indeed did the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, say, in his Address to the American Psychological Association, September 1, 1967:  "We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few."

Were I an insidious foreign leader, say, one notorious for their hatred of democracy and other Western practices and values, and already known for their efforts on-and-offline to destroy us, to destroy Western democracy, generally, and its (pre-Trump) putative leader the United States, specifically, through the cooperation or even collusion of an American "Manchurian candidate," one of my marching orders to this patsy politician would certainly be:  DESTROY THE AMERICAN ECONOMY AND AMERICAN GLOBAL ECONOMIC LEADERSHIP--which this Beyond-Budget-Busting bill certainly does, hands-down.

It's telling that Libertarian Rand Paul, known budget-hawk, was one of only three Senators who voted against this criminal bill.

In fact, rather than "obliterating" the three purported Iranian nuclear development sites, as President Trump continues to assert ("I won the 2022 election," sound familiar?), that so far almost all credible sources contradict, the president has, and is, obliterating something:  America's peerless economic leadership and status.

HOSTILE FOREIGN TAKEOVER

In fact, Darby Saxbe, professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, insightfully stated, at the conclusion of a June 2025 NPR "On Point" interview with host Megna Chakrabarti:

CHAKRABARTI: "I can't talk to a working scientist right now without asking how the recent retraction of the administration's support for science is having an impact on you, your lab, your colleagues.

SAXBE: Yeah, I mean it's shocking and devastating and there has always been bipartisan support in this country for science and research. I think there's been a recognition that having strong science is great for our economy. It's an investment in human capital. And yet we've had these attacks on scientists, and I've had a couple of my students whose funding has been suddenly pulled in the middle of their training, funds that they had budgeted around.

It feels like a hostile, like if a hostile foreign power were to try to destabilize this country. [emphasis mine] It doesn't feel that different from what's happening right now inside universities.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. Do you find that you or your colleagues are like having to do even things like comb through grant applications just to remove triggering keywords for the administration?

SAXBE: Yeah, I mean, so I was actually the person that released that word list that you might have seen circulating around on social media. That was something that came from a colleague of mine who got it from his program officer at the National Science Foundation. It was the list of terms that included things like women and socioeconomic. Essentially any kind of work you're going to do on humans is rendered ineligible by these kinds of terms. It feels like we're living in Soviet Russia or Maoist China, and this is not how we build a free society. [emphasis mine]

CHAKRABARTI: I don't even know what to say.

SAXBE: Me neither.

CHAKRABARTI: That is genuinely shocking.

Don't put the word woman in your grant application. Oh my God. Not that 50% of humanity doesn't deserve more research done on their experience."

TRUMP ADMIN, OBVIOUSLY NO FRIEND OF THE AMERICAN CONSUMER

And let's not forget that the Trump administration is also about to completely shut down the congressionally-mandated, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, an important, if not critical federal agency that has been the savior for millions of average American consumers trapped by financial fraud and other financial anomalies.

This action is also plainly against the law, as the United States Congress mandated the creation and operation of this agency. The Trump shut-down, then, obviously provides yet another clear example of the president actually breaking the law, and thus why and that he must be impeached and removed. Richard Nixon learned that no president is above the law--now, without fail, Donald Trump must learn it.

Are we a nation of laws, or not? Arrive at your conclusion and act accordingly. You'll get the government and country that you deserve.

905p

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER LAW BROKEN BY THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Oh, sorry. I seem to remember that a, or the, chief constitutionally-mandated responsibility of the executive is ensuring that the laws of the nation are obeyed.

It was just reported that DT has again broken the law. He took one of his most final and conclusive steps toward obliteration of the Congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment, by terminating its web site. He's already taken such steps as firing its lead scientist, and making work on future reports difficult, if not impossible. In thus continuing the long, irrational slide away from what is literally the most urgent and categorically time-sensitive task of our time, meeting our climate-change goal, upon which every nation on Earth must cooperate, he continues to help ensure the literal destruction of the United States, and the entire human race.

Climate change is also a dire threat to United States national security. The internet resource National Security Archive states, for example:

"Washington, D.C., June 30, 2025 – For decades, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) has viewed climate change as a serious national security threat that will create “new and compounded stresses on people and societies around the world,” according to one of the records featured in a repository of U.S. intelligence reports published online today by the National Security Archive. From early evaluations of Russia’s post-Soviet environmental challenges in the 1990s to present-day threat assessments on human and environmental security, the 45-document collection follows the evolution of the IC’s environmental monitoring and its increasingly dire warnings about the security threats posed by climate change.

The bottom line, according to the 2019 testimony of one State Department intelligence analyst: “Fundamental characteristics” about the planet “are moving outside the bounds experienced in modern history.” (Document 36A)"

Additionally, from Columbia Climate School News:

"The U.S. Defense Department recognizes that climate change is a "threat multiplier" as it exacerbates existing environmental stresses and security risks. In a 2021 Department of Defense report, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that almost everything the U.S. Defense Department (DOD) does to defend the American people is jeopardized by climate change—the department’s strategies, plans, capabilities, missions, and equipment—and the risks are growing, especially since the world is not on track to meet its Paris Agreement goals. The risks lie not only within U.S. borders; our partner countries impacted by climate change affect American national security interests as well, he said."

A simple internet search easily reveals numerous resources confirming and documenting this reality. Every person and agency of relevance in America and around the world seems to get it--save our present American administration.

A few other links:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/06/climate-security-is-national-security.html

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105830

In eliminating the Congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment, then, we see another day, another law broken by the Trump administration. Another firm plank added to the structure of impeachment that DT is inadvertently building for himself. All we need do is decide when it's completed--then open its door.

Any members of Congress who, themselves, are breaking laws, usually in recent years by remaining complicit as DT breaks laws, including violation of the foundational constitutional framework ascribing certain specific responsibilities to that legislative branch, such as declaring war. Such members should be given the opportunity to redress their actions. If they won't, they must resign. Failing that, they must be impeached, themselves.

JUNE 02, 2025

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It's just been reported that the Trump administration will withhold from Ukraine both Patriot missiles and artillery defense equipment, ostensibly because American stockpiles are low.

Experts, however, disbelieve this explanation, and assert the decision to Donald Trump's personal dislike of Vladomer Zellinsky.

JULY 03, 2024

DT's big bill passed, asserted as a "big win" for Trump.

This is in no way, shape, or form a win for Trump, big, or of any size, because, believe it or not, this brother is an American and this bill hurts America. Hurts us materially, and hurts us in terms of the continuing degradation of our image around the world as a serious and competently managed nation, much less a "great" one.

Those who tried to break with DT on this bill were, true to form, actively attacked by our Avenger-in-Chief, such as Republican, yes, Republican, Thom Tillis--who has announced that he's not running for reelection--and others. I'd like Senator Tillis in my administration.

Also, we can evidently also expect the willful erection of the hyper-imperial presidency to continue, under the crazytrain political architecture of ad hoc social theorist Russell Vought, in yet another action by DT that eviscerates conventional conservatism, which has always eschewed what it disdainfully referred to as "social engineering."

DEMOCRATIC CONSERVATISM = THE NEW CONSERVATISM, AND THE ONLY CONSERVATISM LEFT

Continuing, I would expect DT, a complete political neophyte, to be as wholly unacquainted with this principle as any conservative principal. But no one would permit any such indulgence of the members of the Cult of Trump, formerly the Republican Party, as they are established politicians and in some cases, party leaders. This wholesale abdication of conservatism

Trumpism is not conservatism. Trumpism is a unique, early 21st century form of autocracy, the full enlargement of which we're going to see as the next phase or two of the balance of the Trump administration unfolds, in accord with the Project 2025 and the opinions of Russell Vought. Trumpism is doing whatever King Donald wants or thinks he wants done regarding a given issue, at a given time. Sometimes his impulse will be toward an action congruent or partially so with established conservatism, sometimes it will continue sweeping away established conservatism, as so many of his edicts have done.

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Wow. I just had an amazing insight. i call myself a conservative democrat. I just realized that Democratic conservatism is actually the only remaining legitimate, bona fide conservatism, as almost every principle of the erstwhile Republican conservatism has been upended and emasculated, if not eviscerated, by Donald Trump. And any conservative principle remaining intact doesn't count because, at such time that the brain of DT declares--note I did not use the word decides, which implies a proper deliberation--any of these remaining conservative principles to be undesirable, the Cult of Trump will duly and dutifully sweep them into the dustbin of American conservative history, as well.

JULY 05, 2024

I just had a thought, and I'm giving all of you a homework assignment to help flesh it out.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has, and may still be, persecuting and attempting to deport and/or prosecute student protesters and others seemingly with a mean-spirited, vitriolic zeal we thankfully don't see very often in our government officials.

But it occurs to me, isn't Mr. Rubio a Christian, in fact a Catholic? And aren't essentially all of the individuals that he's arresting Christians, indeed Catholics, themselves? Persons from South and Central America usually are.

If these thoughts are true, then we not only have a Christian man showing no Christian love to fellow Christians, but actually harming these fellow Christian brothers and sisters. As an American, as a Conservative, as one with a Catholic background, as a thinking being, as a compassionate and merciful person, and as a 2028 presidential candidate, I take both exception and offense to the way brother Rubio is treating fellow Christians. Doesn't president Trump make a lot of noise about protecting Christian communities from attack?

Does this exclude his own attacks upon Christians?

Get the facts for me, brothers and sisters, and inform me.

THE YEAR OF THE CHILD

UNESCO had declared the year 1979 the "International Year of the Child."

It's fair to assert, however, that our present epoch comprises the bloc of years of HARM to the child, given the explicit and unparalleled attack upon children by:

1. The Trump administration, in the form of 1.) neglect of the children of deportees or those declared disloyal or otherwise persona non grata, 2.) those who are or certainly will be harmed by the Draconian budget cuts of 2025 just passed by Congress, and 3.) children harmed by the summary eradication of about 80% of the funds, programs, and activities of our USAID grouping of programs, the beneficiaries of which were largely children.

2. Benjamin Netanyahu and others in his cabal, given that their Gaza war (read: slaughter) has seen the brutal and unspeakable deaths of at least 70,000 people, mostly women, children, and elderly, blown to bits by American missiles and bombs.

3. The many terrorist groups around the world, including Hamas.

[JULY 24, NOTE. More on children, from another angle: note the new large-scale health report informing that American children are less healthy today than in 2007. They're dying at higher rates, sleeping less, experiencing more mental and physical symptoms, and reaching puberty earlier. It's a generalized decline in children's health, states the author of the JAMA article, Dr. Christopher Forrest. Almost all 170 health indicators reveal a decline in children's health. Additionally, 1 in 3 American kids now has a chronic condition. Years ago children almost never had a chronic condition. The Dr. states of this new decline "...it's jaw-dropping."

Were the head of our government a more capable president, acting intelligently, this is yet another area of productive concern he'd have been focusing on, instead of everything that he's been focusing on, his palette of the prosaic, inventory of the inconsequential. See "Texas Flood," below.

No more "Year of the Child," Fellow Americans.]

FRANCESCA ALBANESE:  WARRIOR AGAINST VIOLENCE AND OPPRESSION

To this end, by the way, elimination of war to save children, and everyone else, from its horrors, please support the bravery, dogged persistence in moral action for suffering human beings, and moral and economic analysis of UN United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, an amazing and laudable human being. She is, thus far, the only person I'm aware of, besides myself, who is so pained and angry at the plight of children--murder, mutilation, starvation, mental illness, and orphancy--under the continuing unspeakable, merciless, and unforgivable savagery of the Israeli government against the Gazans and related populations. She has also condemned the actions of terror group Hamas, and the horrific oppression of women and girls by the Taliban "government" in Afghanistan. By all accounts and appearances, Mrs. Albanese is an equal-opportunity warrior against violence and oppression, and defender of rights. She is a credit to her (and my) home-nation of Italy, to all who fearlessly seek peace and genuine justice, and to all who recognize and revere the international principle of Agape, that is, brotherly love (in the language of Greek philosophy), a foundational element in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and my own related work.

I salute Francesca Albanese.

JULY 10, 2024

Texas Flood

The death toll from the recent Texas flood is 110 persons. Had Donald Trump not been squandering his valuable time as President of the United States on trifles, like micromanaging tariff rates, renaming gulfs, developing unnecessary and counterproductive cryptocurrencies, and entities such as AI, an extremely dangerous technology he knows zero about, and oppressing and persecuting Americans and others for simply exercising their First Amendment rights, or human right to peacefully protest, he could have spent his time on matters of gravity and actual substantive concern--like the integrity of flood protections around the country. Of course, brother Donald probably wouldn't engage in such activity, anyway, because one of his mind-bending reality-denials, in addition to such assertions as he won the 2020 election, is that climate change isn't real or substantive. Additional reasons include his lack of knowledge about how the country actually works, how government actually works, the nature of proper governance, itself, and his inability to attend to and negotiate detail. These are also, by the way, the same reasons that Mr. Trump fully pardoned all 1500 traitors from the January 06, 2021 Capital insurrection, even though some were understood to be guilty of heinous crimes against the United States, including actions that caused, or led to, the deaths of persons, including at least one member of our beloved Capital police.

You don't have to be a philosopher, like me, to know that denying reality can be very, very dangerous, and is a time-honored recipe for disaster. No less a freedom-lover than noted Libertarian writer Robert J. Ringer makes this explicit and emphatic in his 1977 classic Looking Out for #1.

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It was just reported by the BBC that several (more) children were killed by the Israeli IDF, as they walked on a path toward a food distribution point. Screams of agony could be heard.

Judaism, the religion "of Love and Peace," said my next-door neighbor, an orthodox Jewish person, to me a few years ago.

I'm still waiting for the Love and Peace.

[UPDATE, July 11, 2025: nine children were killed. In other words, just another day in the life of Benjamin Netanyahu. In his life, he takes life.]

JULY 13, 2024

Listen (free) to New Yorker Radio Hour interview of today with former Fed-chief Janet Yellin, for insight into brother Trump's absolute incompetence in running the American economy, as, according to Ms. Yellin, he turns it into that of a "banana republic." Also listen to the second interview on the broadcast, today, as it is extremely enlightening, as well.

This man's poor judgment starts, in contravention of conservative principles, with cutting nearly 12 million Americans from Medicaid not to reduce the deficit, which would at least constitute adherence to a genuine conservative principle, but to provide further tax cuts to billionaires but at the cost of ballooning the deficit, as reported by Forbes magazine, based on figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). He has also, Ms. Yellin observes, eviscerated the staff of the Internal Revenue Service, including the auditing team whose work nets the government $10 for every $1 spent on staff and equipment.

Evidently prevaricating, this man actually told some Republicans in the Oval office prior to passage of the bill, that there would be no Medicaid cuts, a question of great relevance to some lawmakers since many of their own constituencies, while Trump supporters, will be hard hit by these Medicaid cuts.

Why would brother Donald do this, and many other things that are obviously destroying the established American and global world orders, especially now during his second term, including infliction of pain upon large swathes of his own support?

JULY 22, 2024

The incompetence of the present government, rather than make America great again, or, better, retain our substantial existing greatness, persists in actions that constitute a glaring and obvious evisceration of America, including the world-class research institutions, facilities, and programs across every scientific (and non-scientific) discipline and field for which we've been known, lauded, and envied for decades, is now causing the unthinkable: an actual scientific brain-drain in America.

In America!

Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, said, "This moment is unprecedented in terms of the clawing back of the science that made America great."

Click the above link and listen carefully to that momentous broadcast.

This brain drain is also an extremely serious national security issue, as antagonist nations dangle sweetheart employment deals to attract the premier scientists this administration has stupidly, incompetently, and, indeed, treasonously discarded.

JULY 23, 2024

And why, relatedly, has the present government authorized selling high-powered American nVidia microprocessors, used exclusively for artificial intelligence technology, to China, a putative, aggressive antagonist actor, at odds with American values? Especially given that every major nation on Earth is clamoring to win the A.I. war, in which nVidia, an American company, is the indispensable actor?

This administration gets more and more stupid every day. Persons of every and any political stripe can easily see that essentially everything this government does is completely stupid, and continues to destroy America, in no possible way making her great. Yet that's its claim, this dissonance and colossal incongruity the reason that the actions of this government constitute, among other things, a matter of urgent concern to Philosophy, my field, a discipline concerned ultimately with Truth.

The current president of the United States, in my view, will likely go down as one of the worst presidents we've ever had, if not the worst, in large part because he and his cohorts have made absolute mincemeat of truth.

607p

"BREAKING NEWS: US Supreme Court lets Trump remove consumer product safety commissioners for now"

Why, rationally, would we even want to do this?

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The effects of the Trump years on me include:

Brought me to a full understanding that the US constitution is deeply flawed, in its paucity of requirement for persons seeking the presidency.

And to a far greater understanding of the power and utility of law and the judicial system, and being a nation of laws.

JULY 24, 2024

In the mammoth new AI plan of the current government, it initiates and begins to preside over the most unprecedented attack on the human mind and brain ever seen by humankind.

You think humanity is stupid, blundering, aggressive, often violent, and generally incompetent now?

AGI

In fact, analogous to the technical concept of AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, seen as pertaining to AI but defined more meaningfully by me, as:  the end of the end of humanity (we're seeing the beginning of the end, right now), is my concept of AGI, descriptive of the present general state of humanity: Actual General Incompetence.

JULY 26, 2025

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I just lost respect for the host and I believe originator of the NPR-broadcast program OPEN TO DEBATE, John Donvan, a long-running favorite of mine, as the debate topic tonight is:

"Can dating an AI be better than dating a human?"

This question doesn't even make sense, as one cannot date AI.

What a complete waste of an hour, and whatever resources the station and program staff put into this.

The female guest host asserted that this question might have been absurd years ago. IT IS STILL ABSURD.

6:11p

I'm listening to the first advocate for this position, a woman. Her views are beyond imbecilic.

I've been listening to this. The woman advocating for the assertion can't even speak proper English, she has, twice now, pronounced fallible as fal'-ee-uh-bl. I believe she corrected herself the first time, but she later repeated the error and did not correct herself. And in her ridiculous advocacy, she's certainly not taking a holistic, that is, comprehensive, view of the multiple harm streams of this wrecknology.

6:14p

It was just reported that Israel and the United States are engineering a more effective means of food distribution the Gazans, in the face of a colossal global outcry at the interminable slaughter and famine. This is occurring, however, because, and only because of this outcry, as prior to this nothing was stopping or effecting any termination or even cessation of the slaughter. Over 70,000 human beings murdered--so far, mostly women, children, and elderly, blown apart and incinerated by missiles and bombs. In fact, if anything, the carnage has gotten far worse with the mind-bending incredulity that for several weeks now starving Gazans seeking food from the four food distribution points that Israel and the U.S. had set up were being shot and killed en masse, evidently deliberately according to multiple credible accounts, including whistleblowers who directly witnessed the actions and remarks of the killers, since the whistleblowers were initially part of the same team.

At 65 years old I don't know that I've ever witnessed such a merciless, uncaring, and utterly appalling course of large-scale murder--wrought, ironically, by government representatives of a nation whose people, themselves, were historically subject to such calamity. Thank God the rest of the world, principally Europe, has stepped in as the new or interim America, given that our nation has taken an eight-year vacation from itself, under the present walking catastrophe masquerading as an American presidential administration.

654p

The advocate in the AI debate, above, just gave her summation and closing. This woman, like most people whose views are deeply stupid, is dangerous. Stupidity breeds danger.

So now we'll see not just a linear devolution of the human mind and brain as MGQI (i.e. AI) absolves us of the need to think, and even use our bodies (e.g. self-driving cars), but now brings us, in addition to the long-lamented decline or destruction of the nuclear family, the same erosion and possible eventual destruction of even human relationships, themselves.

Such absurdist pernicious and insidious points of view must be aggressively and vociferously, though nonviolently, countered at every turn. Unless you seek the literal destruction or crippling of the human race. I note that the current president, completely ignorant of this technology, is now ushering in a massive re-orientation of the entire country toward MGQI (i.e. AI). The actions of this gentleman in almost every sphere of culture and governance is based on ego and ignorance, and wholly destructive of the country, and the world. There is no "Make America Great" about any of it; let's dispense once and for all with that political and social delusion.

You might note that I have excoriated the views and opinions of the advocate for the argument--not the sister, herself, articulating them. This is a key principle in the practice of love, properly understood, the critical omission in our world. Cite and constructively criticize the opinion, not the opinion-holder. As people grow in intellect, experience, and morality their opinions can change. This precept is also reflected in the Christian principle, "Love the sinner, hate the sin."

If you are disturbed by the present condition of the world, know the two root causes:

1. Lack of actualization of the human mind and brain, leading to every manner of mediocrity and mistake, including...

2. ...Ignorance of the fact, and essential role, of the principle of love, brotherly love, Agape (ugg op' ay, rhymes with 'day') in the language of Greek philosophy, as taught by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Erich Fromm, Leo Buscaglia, Valarie Kaur, and a handful of others, including myself, and is the second great commandment of Christ, "Love your Neighbor."

I encourage your interest, then, in joining this small movement to improve the world in the most effective way possible: by getting to the root of the problem. Begin your journey with a careful read, then reread, of the ideas at this site: CENTER FOR THE PRINCIPLE & PRACTICE OF LOVE. Follow and read all the links, as well, then contact me.

AUGUST 03, 2025

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A few days ago DT dismissed the head statistician at the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn't like her numbers. Literally no other reason, in yet another act, decried by both sides of the aisle, that pushes the United States that much closer to banana-republic status. Commandante Donald literally shot the messenger.

In his capricious tariffs, followed by his firing of the head of the BLS, he's introduced two colossal points of uncertainty into the economic and financial activity of the United States, making it increasingly difficult for business owners to operate, and making a major stride forward toward the destruction of American capitalism. It is essential that you listen to this broadcast.

He's also taking a historic step toward perhaps his final evisceration of the proper national focus on climate change, by attempting to eliminate the judicial basis for the work the EPA was doing in this area.

And BTW, if this man was so focused on eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse--why did he fire so many IG's, that is, Inspectors General?

"Plan your work, then work your plan," issued my beloved father Frank, and indeed to one degree or another does humanity do essentially, this. Yet though humanity in this way or ways akin to it bring or attempt to bring logic, order, and consistency to its affairs, indeed arguably exemplified most pointedly, permanently, and impressively by the United States Constitution and the body of principle and practice grown up around it, the fact is that the Foundational and originating organism around which they grew, around which everything that was, is, and will have grown around it, is the human being, a biological project by definition flawed.

Which is why occasionally we produce the catastrophic mistake, the colossal error and errancy, the obliterating calamity, the exception that proves the rule, in the erstwhile forms, for example, of Hitler and his history, the crusades, nuclear weapons, every dictator on Earth past and present-and now, in the latter day, Donald J. Trump.

Seen and assessed provincially and in local terms he is certainly a brother in our human family, and thus deserving of full and deliberate respect and love, as each of us is. Concomitantly, in large and broad terms he's nothing short of a categorical catastrophe, upending the apple cart, then tossing the cart and just about every apple into the sea, then setting the sea on fire. He is a force of nature and such forces of nature define, or help to, the sweep of history, except what is being swept is the greatness of America, and America, herself. That sweep has been soured, compromised, enmiserated, and indeed blackened by what he has chosen to sweep into the proverbial dustbin of history.

We have a madman at the helm. A crazy captain. Indeed did Nobel-winning economist George A. Akerlof pen a piece in the New York Times of August 02, 2025 entitled, "What to Do When the President Acts Like a Five-Year-Old?"

What we do, obviously, is we impeach, or remove under the 25th Amendment asserting lack of fitness for office.

ISRAEL UPDATE

Important new article on the crimes of Benjamin Netanyahu, written by a firmly pro-Israel soldier and writer.

AUGUST 05, 2025

Mitch McConnel, retiring Speaker of the House, speaking at the annual Fancy Farm picnic in Kentucky, gushed that it was fabulous that at the event this year they "couldn't find a Democrat with a flashlight." In other words, this pathetic brother is saying, the addition of alternative or simply other voices at the event is undesirable.

Thus do I ascribe the moniker "Americanism in Name Only" to describe the phenomenon that animates such blatantly anti-American sentiments, and have I titled this website.

In fact, by the way, in years past Democrats were in attendance at the Fancy Farm picnic.

AUGUST 06, 2025

It's reported today that Robert Kennedy is deprecating our MRNA vaccine technology, an action that medical professionals are excoriating, and is also understood as posing a potential serious threat to our national security, as we'll have no response to a biological attack.

Additionally, Texas lawmakers forced to egress their state into the state of Illinois, because of actions taken by The Cult of Trump (formerly the Republican Party) in attempting to redistrict?

Donald Trump ostensibly threatening Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine with nothing but a big yawn from the latter, in a process that's going to go nowhere, but that's its likely purpose--make it appear that brother Trump is doing something about the war.

If I'm right, all these actions are either being ordered by a certain malign foreign dictator who "has something" on the president, and DT is following orders, or they're being orchestrated by the both of them, or they're being offered by Trump on his own, to placate this dictator because he "has something" on the president. This continuing, ever-expanding internecine warfare in, and increasingly characterizing, the United States, and the general dissolution of the United States, specifically, and the Western liberal democratic order, generally, makes the heart of this particular dictator, known for his antipathy to democracy and the West, leap for joy. It's his intention to destroy both.

Remember--Donald Trump is a media guy. He knows how to put on a show and he knows how to deceive the public, and his opinion that sometimes it's desirable to do so IS ON THE RECORD. And never forget the malign formative miseducation he received at the hands of the disgraced, corrupt, and grossly dysfunctional human, the late "attorney" Roy Cohn.

AUGUST 08, 2025

The "On Point" radio program with Meghna Chakrabardi on NPR this evening illustrated that the present administration is attacking the existence of our grizzly bears on several fronts.

AUGUST 09, 2025

Unfortunately, my chosen academic orientation requires that one of my tasks in social science is plumb the depths of stupidity of the human animal.

Today it is reported that a 14 year old boy was killed in Gaza when a pallet of food dropped from overhead aircraft fell on him. His father was present. Also mentioned was another child killed in the same manner recently, 17 years old.

What Israel has done, and continues to do, in Gaza, surely represents among the lowest depths of human stupidity imaginable. They can find no other solution?

It can be a misleading question. Because some or all of those cabinet ministers making these decisions, like Smotrich, simply don't want another solution, for they simply don't care about the Gazans, or care so little or so perfunctorily that it doesn't matter.

Religion of love and peace. That's what my orthodox Jewish neighbor told me several years ago.

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It was just reported on NPR that 100 or near-100 children just died in Gaza because of malnutrition.

Do you know how horrible and painful starving to death is? And these are children.

Religion of love and peace.

AUGUST 10, 2025

Legal experts assert that because of the reign of terroristic extortion by the current occupant of the white house toward law firms, media companies, academic institutions, and private individuals, the legal profession is being changed. Firms no longer take the kinds of pro bono and other cases they used to, for example, as they're all afraid that Commandante Trump may come after them. Two legal correspondents discussed such matters during the New Yorker Radio Hour, broadcast Aug 09, 2025, one of them making this point.

July-August: militant Israeli settlers are now using violence against Christian Palestinians. Is there no segment or part of the foundation of Israeli society, or at least its ruling class, that isn't arrogant, violent, and debased?

AUGUST 11, 2025

DT is taking over Washington, DC, asserting that it's a hotbed of crime, when in fact, crime has been decreasing in the city for some years, and observed life in the city is quiet and pleasant.

Delusionally, he just described the situation as:

"Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we're not going to let it happen anymore," Trump said as he compared the situation in Washington to the country’s southern border."

Moreover, as observed today in a headline in The Independent:

"'You spit, we hit': Trump just took over DC with vow to stop 'thugs' from abusing cops. He already pardoned hundreds of them" - "The president’s fixation on violent clashes between 'scum' and law enforcement has one glaring exception: January 6."

In making this announcement DT also stated:

"You know, I’m going to see Putin. I’m going to Russia on Friday."

In fact, the mentioned meeting is taking place in the United States, in Alaska, not Russia. The president was accurate in specifying the meeting location last week in his Truth Social posting. But he wasn't accurate, today, and in concert with his exaggerated description of the state of society in Washington, DC, and many other of his dramatic exaggerations, and outright prevarications (i.e. lies), his behavior and communication serve as a continuing indictment of the state of his McDonald's-addled intellect and profligate ego. I don't doubt that he cares about the nation. But, especially now, he doesn't have the talents to competently manifest such concern.

Concomitantly, DT's Secretary of Health, RFK, has outlawed research on mRNA vaccine technology, even though it is precisely this kind of technology that allowed America to develop, in record time, one or more vaccines, successful in eliminating the Coronavirus, in a socio-technological feat universally hailed as "miraculous." Experts decry RFK's new moratorium on mRNA-based research, as it is seen as potentially thwarting future efforts that may be required were another pandemic situtation to occur, naturally, or generated by an antagonistic power.

I also note the Friday shooting by a man with anti-vaccine materials on his person.

Additionally, for years the United States, based on our own innovation in 1985, a "famine warning system," called FEWS NET, was the global gold standard for famine detection. But, as with so many of our innovations and subsequent categorical global leadership, in January 2025 under DT the FEWS NET program was discontinued. Now, they're bringing it back, its initial termination a wasteful, stupid, and obvious mistake, as essentially everything that the Trump administration does.

And he's about to have a negotiation with the dictator of Russia over the fate of Ukraine--without representation for the country present. Moreover, DT seems to be onboard with the idea that for the conflict to end, Ukraine will have to abdicate portions of its territory, in a blatant violation of international law. And DT just stated today, again, that if there isn't the cooperation he seeks, that is, if the sovereign nation of Ukraine isn't willing to concur with a significant and capricious evisceration of its territory, and hence a shattering injury to the sovereign status of the nation, he'll "walk away."

In other words, as usual, deliberately or not in a given instance, DT continues to effectively and willingly serve as the slobbering lapdog of the Russian dictator.

When will the nation and the world recognize and declare the obvious, the same that the observant young protagonist in Hans Christen Andersen's Fairy Tale The Emperor's New Clothes, clearly saw:

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES. In our context, this means:

1. The so-called Trump administration is actually a toy administration, a faux administration, a cheap, ersatz make-a-buck imitation of an actual United States presidential administration, a Keystone Kops, Kangaroo Court, Rube Goldberg-inspired presidential "administration."

2. Donald J. Trump should obviously be impeached immediately. Either he is utterly clueless about essentially every aspect of American presidential governance, or he's doing an utterly amazing job imitating such ignorance.

I don't fault this brother for his lack of knowledge about, and talent in, the critical task with which he's been entrusted. People lacking talent in a given area are no more to blame for their lack than someone holding a given talent is praiseworthy for the possession of that talent. In all such cases we're all basically subject to the combination of our genetics and our training and education, neither of which can we ultimately have that much control over.

But though it's my belief that this brother is not to blame for his clumsy, capricious, and ultimately incompetent steering of the ship of state, this doesn't meant that we, the governed, the real owners and rulers of this democratic republic, should sit stupidly by in our deck chairs and let it happen. We shouldn't--and we simply can't.

And as of a few days ago, we finally see some kind of significant public protest in Israel over the Gaza slaughter and famine.

AUGUST 12, 2025

Senator Chris Van Holland remarked today on the new human rights report. He stated, among other things, that Secretary of State Rubio, before he became DT's lapdog, was a firm champion of global human rights, as are, I might add, most traditional conservatives, notably including President Reagan. No more, however, for Marco Rubio, according to Senator Van Holland. In the report, Donald Trump is radically de-emphasizing the human rights records of the some of the worst offenders on the planet. The report in all years past explicated, that is fully and methodically laid out the contours of abuse of the various regimes, often with emphasis on the gold standard of democracy, or lack of it, free speech.

Brothers and sisters, fellow Americans, fellow conservatives, if Ronald Reagan, a traditional conservative, is watching, he's not happy. And neither am I.

Next, as mentioned above, DT has foolishly agreed to sell American AI chips by nVidia, to China, for mere money. Had Mr. Trump resided anywhere even remotely in our usual political universe, and were he the premier "deal-maker" that he continues to insist that he is, he would extract payment from China far more valuable and significant than mere money. He would demand, for example, a credible, monitorable concession by this antagonist nation that it cease its cyber-infiltration of American business and government.

This failure actually speaks to a key lack in this gentleman in his attempt to govern as president: he continues to trade in the principles, methods, and values of business, such as accumulation of money and profit, which are simply not those of political governance.

Last, for now, DT has unnecessarily taken over Washington DC law enforcement, again pulling a fire alarm when no fire exists. Homeless people are afraid. He's railing against squalor, presumably referring to them--and his response is, ship them five miles away; something like this. Not very good long-term thinking. As when this occupant of the White House unnecessarily brought the federal military into Los Angeles, he has this country chasing its own tail again and again, while remaining completely or certainly functionally oblivious to that which actually matters for this nation, and the world, such as the imperturbable and inexorable march by Russia and China down the firm path illuminated by the powerful light of their global strategic vision--including, for both antagonists, a definite diminution of American values, power, and influence. For reasons that remain speculative, but in the short-term are irrelevant, Mr. Trump has been and remains an obvious ally to these traditional enemies. Not to mention, as described, above, a (presumably) unwitting ally to the global Nazi movement, as indicated by his affirmation of the clearly pro-Nazi remarks of JD Vance in his shocking address to the recent 61st Munich Security Conference, the well-meaning young man playing at the role of Vice-President of the United States, and former United States Master Chainsaw Technician Elon Musk, photographed, above, clearly making the Hitler Nazi sieg heil salute, who received to my knowledge zero rebuke from the president for his explicit recent support for the German Nazi party, AfD.

These are all key and transparent reasons, among several, that, while brother Trump must always receive our love and respect as a human being, he must also be subject to immediate impeachment as president of the United States. Deliberately or not, his behavior is treasonous.

AUGUST 13, 2025

I just listened to a brief interview aired on WNYC, an NPR station, with Michael B.G. Froman, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, centered around the radical, multifarious, and freewheeling changes Don Trump has made to the global trading system, a stable and generally salutary edifice built up over 80 years--that is now essentially in ruins. As God is said to have made order, from chaos, I assert that Mr. Trump has made chaos, from order.

Mr. Froman writes in his new article in FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

"The global trading system as we have known it is dead. The World Trade Organization has effectively ceased to function, as it fails to negotiate, monitor, or enforce member commitments. Fundamental principles such as “most favored nation” status, or MFN, which requires WTO members to treat one another equally except when they have negotiated free-trade agreements, are being jettisoned as Washington threatens or imposes tariffs ranging from ten to more than 50 percent on dozens of countries. Both the “America first” trade strategy and China’s analogous “dual circulation” and Made in China 2025 strategies reflect a flagrant disregard for any semblance of a rules-based system and a clear preference for a power-based system to take its place. Even if pieces of the old order manage to survive, the damage is done: there is no going back."

I'm afraid my response to this, but one piece of the inchoate puzzle into which Mr. Trump has, and continues to, refashion the world, is as before: I-M-P-E-A-C-H. For as bad as things are, remember: if proper preventive action isn't taken--they can always get worse.

AUGUST 14, 2025

DT has ICE arresting increasing numbers of people--apparently without first having arranged for the safe and humane arrest, treatment, and housing of these unfortunate human beings.

Hey, JD--God loves these people, too, you know?

Ergo, we understand that a 19 year old woman was menstruating but ICE provided her no menstrual pad, so she bled for five days before a resolution occurred. Additionally, there is no or inadequate provision of water, such that it is alleged that ICE agents at one point were spraying water into the mouths of prisoners. One man had nothing to drink. When he requested water the ICE employees allegedly told him to drink from the toilet. A woman calling into the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC this morning, identifying herself as a physician, said that when she encountered a prisoner who appeared to have gout, surrounded by ICE agents, and asked them if they had called 911 and they answered in the affirmative, it was revealed shortly thereafter that ICE had apparently not called 911.

We want to presume brother Donald capable of growth as a person. Because in years past he referred to a small grouping of poor, 3rd world countries as "shi*thole nations." Now, we see his lack of competent, humane preparation before, or even quickly during, the first phase of arrest of these unfortunate human beings, in concert, third, with the innumerable things that Don Trump has done--or not done--that has caused real pain and suffering to so many Americans, and others. Yet the president feigns a strong interest in guarding the rights of Christians around the world. Methinks that JD, our newly-minted Catholic, hasn't really committed himself to the task of educating the president on the principles and fundamentals of Christianity, such as the 2nd Great Commandment of Christ, which is LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR.

1211p

I almost forgot to note that a previous guest on this program this morning, an expert on Donald Trump, evidently, in support of DT's contention that he's a superb deal-maker, stated the DT wrote the near-legendary book, The Art of the Deal.

Except he didn't. The book was ghostwritten by author Tony Schwartz. Who states that he now regrets the task, as the book presents an incorrectly glorified impression of Mr. Trump

337p

Why isn't Don Trump focusing on a city like Memphis, whose crime rate across the board is far higher than Washington, DC?

Likely because Memphis is run by Republicans. Doesn't fit the narrative.

The president's attention first came to DC because Mike Gill, a former member of his administration, was unfortunately shot there recently.

As I understand it, all national crime vectors that the FBI usually examines show reduced crime. Something it is said we as a nation should be celebrating, including Washington, DC. Instead, the entire nation, including all media, is focused on this shred of crime in DC. Because this mercurial man, Mr. Trump, by a strange and unfortunate coincidence happens to be the president, his every psycho-emotional belch, including this one, immediately marshals every national resource private and public, and the attention of the public, thus comprising what I consider the country chasing its own tail, again and again.

The hard reality is that Donald Trump governs by "What I saw on television this morning," and the (formerly) mighty United States of America pays the price in every way. Clearly, the brilliance for their age of our Founding Fathers must be amended for the varying complexities of the modern age.

This must and will be a priority for the DE BENEDETTO ADMINISTRATION.

709p

Brother Donald just threw all the homeless people out of Washington DC, or they can go to shelters. If they elect for neither they will be jailed or fined. Of all the lousy things that this pathetic brother has done, which means just about everything, brother Roy Cohn would be proud, this is among the worst. Donald says the homeless people will be taken care of as much as they can be, he says, but they "...won't be allowed to turn our nation's capital into a wasteland."

Before you feel rage at this man's symbiotic pairing of stupidity and cruelty, remember: persons of lesser intellect are ultimately no more responsible for that characteristic than persons of high intellect are responsible for that characteristic. So we need to show the kind of mercy and understanding to brother Trump that he's not showing to the homeless people.

When people err, there's really only one proper solution: educate them. And again, if necessary. And again, if necessary.

715p

(approximate)

SNAP in 12 states will no longer permit purchase of soda. One more step, ironically, toward communist authoritarianism and total control of the citizenry.

What country did you say we were living in, again?

Also, Don Trump says that in the upcoming "summit" in Alaska, it would great if Putin and Zelinski could "get along." This man is truly a simpleton. Or, again, suffering an early stage of dementia. "Get along"? Putin is trying through the destruction and horror of war to take over Zelinski's country! Zelinski is supposed to "get along" with that?

AUGUST 15, 2025

The MPox virus is spreading in Africa. The United States always had, and indeed was at the fore in, global disease monitoring capabilities--but thanks to Trump cuts, we're no longer able to do that. Again, one of innumerable ways that this errant brother has actually eroded American greatness--and he's not done, yet.

Additionally, today was the Russian-American summit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. Afterward, each "leader" made a statement. No questions were taken--and evidently no progress was made. Fair to say, a failed summit.

And by the way, I have a sharp rebuke for the administration, as the summit took place at what is known as Joint-Base Elmendorf-Richardson: WHY THE HELL WAS THE RUSSIAN DICTATOR AND HIS ENTIRE ENTOURAGE GIVEN A CLOSE-UP VIEW OF A KEY AMERICAN JOINT AIR FORCE/ARMY MILITARY FACILITY?

I've heard no one else proffering this important criticism.

AUGUST 18, 2025

Please carefully read, and then reread until you fully absorb, this David Brooks piece:  extremely important in understanding the real harms of the Trump phenomenon. Mr. Brooks is a Republican.

425p

I'm noting, for now without discussion, the putative evisceration of the FBI by the Trump administration.

AUGUST 25, 2025

DT is now trying to destroy the American system of voting. The non-Covid period voting count recently was 40 million Americans. 40 Million Americans found it more convenient, and in the case of many people, essential to vote by mail. Overseas military members must vote by mail.

This emasculation is that most desired by VP (Vladimir Putin), as the most pernicious, insidious, and ultimately efficacious strategy in destroying America: effectuation of a wholesale loss of trust of the American people in the basic integrity of their system. There is little question that VP is pulling DT's strings, blackmailing him.

BOTTOM LINE regarding DT and that increasingly recognized by every political sector as his Klown-Kar administration: take any element, aspect, dimension, process, procedure, or custom that has served America well for many years--and count on DT to do his best, often with success, to attempt to completely subvert, if not destroy it. And at this point, it's not merely the political right, but many formerly die-hard Trumpers, who now agree and feel that many things are simply going much too far.

Klown-Kar administration? No exaggeration, I'm afraid. Consider, among innumerable other examples:  a Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who conducts a top-secret briefing using a governmentally-insecure chat system (Signal). And invites someone to the meeting, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, with no security clearance, whatsoever. This action was so improper, errant, and unprecedented that Mr. Goldberg, himself, thought that a foreign government was somehow setting him up.

And how about a Director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, who doesn't know the first thing about the basic and core constitutional principles that her agency must successfully and properly negotiate, if it is to execute its mandate constitutionally?

Karl Trump

DT is now initiating the United States government taking a 10% share in Intel, an American corporation.

[Note, Sept 02, 2025: now the president, our "socialist-in-chief," is also skimming revenue, 15%, from our nVidia chip company. Would someone fetch this man a dictioary of basic political terms, please?]

Government controlling industry? You know what this is called? It's called the thing that DT claims to detest most of all:  SOCIALISM.

THE ACTUAL ANSWER

Time out. Here's a critical point. THE critical point. You heard it here, first, folks, from me, at this site, or here, or here. All three are my sites presenting my work. Ultimately our focus must not be on Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, or Benyamin Netanyahu or the October 07, 2023 Hamas brutalist killers, for example, for each is just a fairly predictable symptom of a deeply-rooted global problem: lack of Love, properly understood, in and across this world. Would that the behavior of the members of our human family root in, that is, be informed by, Love, brotherly love, Agape [ugg op' ay] in the language of Greek philosophy, the entire character and complexion of this world be radically different. There simply wouldn't be human beings who behave as these men do.

Accordingly, Brothers and Sisters, PLEASE join me, and a small group of others, in the nascent movement to build a world based on Love, an endeavor of principle and practice that I refer to as THE NEW SCIENCE OF AGAPE.

SEPTEMBER 02, 2025

From the Sept 02, 2025 DefenseOne Newsletter:

"Space Command HQ will move to Alabama, Trump says - Colorado's use of mail-in voting influenced his decision, he said."

So DT continues his interminable march toward the full evisceration of American National security.

And how about another recent DefenseOne news item:

"Military support to law enforcement is supposed to be temporary. DOD is making it a core mission"

Last, for now, this misguided brother is utterly obsessed with throwing people out of the country, thus eviscerating our national and local security in yet another way: not training our law enforcement any more, other than ICE agents.

No, I'm not kidding. There is not one syllable of jest in my entire DINO REPORT.

The New York Times:

Two Decades of Putin Playing the West

September 04, 2025

804p

I absolutely must note this exact time and moment, as I just heard on NPR, for the first time, that Trump wants to rename the Department of Defense, the "Department of War."

As I was listening to the other night on the radio: Trump is eviscerating all elevated Enlightenment values; this one the latest, and the most, or certainly among the top two or three that he's killed.

810p

I was also thinking, earlier today, maybe DT should declare criminal both Star Wars and Star Trek, as they both, implicitly or explcitly, celebrate diversity.

Yoda, watch out!

September 05, 2025

353a

About two days ago, DT destroyed a Venezuelan ship, asserting that it contained drugs in transit to the United States.

Judge, jury, and executioner, is that it?

Is that what America stands for, now?

A continued and evidently inexorable march toward the complete elimination of the rule of law, at home and abroad? This is what is making America great?

Gentlemen--no. We don't roll that way. This is America. There are reasons that we've been considered the superlative nation for at least 80 years, since the end of World War II, at least--and RULE OF LAW is probably at the very top of that list.

These people are a bad joke. Too bad the literal destruction of what was once the greatest nation on the planet, by far--is not.

September 06, 2025

A failed North Korea military mission attempted under the Trump administration is being reported. The mission neither succeeded, nor did the administration brief the appropriate congressional committee, as required by law. Ergo, I never want to hear a criticism again of the failed attempt by the Carter administration to rescue the hostages from Iran in 1980. This failure has been a point of critique, if not attack, upon President Carter and the Carter administration since it occurred. No more. The fact is that administrations of both parties err in precisely the same ways in such matters; neither has a lock on full foresight and competence. To wit, as well, was the apparent fiasco at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan as the Biden administration withdrew our remaining American troops, an American low matched afterward in a similar circumstance by the Trump administration. Elaboration pending.

Make Freedom of Speech Illegal Again

Five months ago, DT evidently morphed himself into a Founding Father and member of the Supreme Court of the United States at the same time, in opining that peaceful protest is illegal in America.

This is the trouble with brother Donald trying to make America great--he doesn't know the first thing about America.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2025

CHARLIE KIRK & TYLER ROBINSON: BOTH VICTIMS

The Murder of Charlie Kirk

Might we first clarify a ubiquitous misconception? Mr. Kirk was not a conservative. I am a conservative, an actual conservative, in the tradition of George W. Bush, with a bit of Libertarianism thrown in, in fact, and neither Charlie Kirk's beliefs nor world-view are identical to mine. We're barely even in the same universe. Charlie Kirk was a Trumpist, not a conservative. A conservative holds a traditional conservative world-view and follows traditional conservative principles, while a Trumpist follow the dictates and opinions of Donald Trump, an individual, which often have nothing to do with traditional conservative positions and perspectives.

Additionally, neither do I want to hear Trumpist complaints about security at public events, at the same time the president just revoked the security protections of Kamala Harris--whom I did not vote for--and others.

Now, to the issue at hand:  my belief in Agape, or brotherly love, as well as simple human decency, doesn't permit me to laud this act, and viewed superficially, it was a dastardly one.

Yet, as everyone with a block of functioning neurons acknowledges, Donald Trump is a delusional, power-mad, fascist-oriented authoritarian who, with JD Vance and others around him, is turning this country into an autocracy: essentially a dictatorship with Mr. Trump as dictator. Charlie Kirk, as I understand his beliefs, was an identically-minded acolyte. I mourn the loss of this young man. But as a freedom-lover and exponent of true Americanism, not DINO, "Americanism in Name Only," the title of this website, I must also celebrate one less Fascist voice.

Today, the edifice of fascism, dictatorship, and evil that the Trump administration is building, is supported by one less brick. One Less Delusional Fascist. And that is a good thing.

I stand by only with great difficulty while persons, from the "president" on down, turn an obviously free country, indeed the premier such nation, into an increasingly authoritarian country. Whether Mr. Kirk or others realized it, or not, he was evidently actively on the side of the authoritarian forces.

We, and I, personally, deeply mourn the loss of this young brother, and extend my deepest condolence to his family, friends, and colleagues. His murder, unfortunately, was really not that surprising, given the culture of violence in America that existed even before the rise of Donald Trump, but which the remarks and behavior of brother Trump over a period of years has greatly exacerbated.

"HANG MIKE PENCE"...ring any bells?

Counterpoint: on September 02, 2025 under orders from Donald Trump, the U.S. navy destroyed a small boat purported to be carrying drugs to the United States, in an extra-judicial act of mass murder. Is anyone crying over the eleven human beings killed? Over the grief and misery of their families, wives and children crying, tonight?

Further analysis pending.

SEPTEMBER 13, 2025

With its Qatar attack, the savage and bloodthirsty imbeciles in Israel just spit in our--and their own--faces.

Israel, repeat after me: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

RESOLVE YOUR CONFLICTS THE WAY HE DID--CREATIVE, INTELLIGENT, LOVING NONVIOLENCE.

THE CONTINUING REIGN OF KING DONALD

New York Times, Sept. 7, 2025

By Julian E. Barnes And Catie Edmondson

"Trump Tramples Congress's Power, With Little Challenge From G.O.P.

On national security, spending and oversight, the president continues to undercut the legislative branch, and Republicans in charge have done little to stop him."

TA to Poor Women:  Have a Baby. I Insist.

Trump admin destroys mass quantity of contraceptives bound for poor women.

BRAZIL NUT

210p

The fact of the flagrant hubris, and sweeping, comprehensive incompetence of the present administration continues to make itself clear in critical matters of national security, economic affairs, international relations, and every other sphere, as it pushes the United States inexorably toward oblivion. And many of these spheres are related, so as the TA sinks us in one sphere, it sinks us in others, too.

From a recent New York Times piece, for example, link above:

"President Trump made his demands to Brazil very clear: Drop the charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro of attempting a coup.

To show he was serious, he hit Brazil with punishing tariffs, launched a trade investigation and imposed some of the most severe sanctions at his disposal against the Supreme Court justice overseeing the case.

Brazil responded on Thursday by convicting Mr. Bolsonaro anyway, sentencing him to more than 27 years in prison for overseeing a failed plot to stay in power after losing the 2022 elections.

defiance has defined Brazil's response to Mr. Trump since he began trying to bully the country. So far, it hasn't resulted in disaster.

...

What is clear is that the White House's campaign against Brazil did not stop Mr. Bolsonaro's conviction, but it did hurt America's image in the country and push its largest ally in the Western Hemisphere closer to China.

Mr. Lula has spoken with President Xi Jinping of China at least twice since the U.S. tariffs took effect - but not once with Mr. Trump.

China, already Brazil's largest trading partner ahead of the United States, is becoming even more central to Brazil's economic plan. China bought 31 percent more from Brazil in August, when the tariffs kicked in, compared with a year before. At the same time, Brazil's sales to the United States dropped 18.5 percent.

...

Public perceptions in Brazil of the United States and China have been following a similar pattern. The percentage of Brazilians who said they had a positive image of the United States fell to 44 percent in August, from 58 percent in February 2024, according to a survey. Over the same period, those with a positive image of China jumped to 49 percent from 38 percent.

The American deputy secretary of State, Christopher Landau, wrote online Thursday that Mr. Bolsonaro's conviction drove "relations between our two great nations to their darkest point in two centuries."

Many on the left in Brazil would argue that the United States' support for the 1964 military coup that led to a 21-year dictatorship in Brazil was a darker moment. They see the current U.S. policy as another intervention from Washington on behalf of the plotters of a coup.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stated, "The U.S. needs to know it's not dealing with a banana republic."

Learn about Marco Rubio's unfortunate role in the fall of the notable Ronald Reagan assertion and policy promoting American principles of law and morality abroad.

1110p

Upon reading this piece, especially the last paragraph, I realized that we're becoming Iran: a government based on selective moral principles, no longer the rule of law and free speech.

The TA has increasingly stripped us of the 1st Amendment. America is decreasingly the home of free speech.

SEPTEMBER 16, 2025

The TA Fascist Death Machine has committed another three extra-judicial murders. Committed, in other words, another three human beings murdered. For detail and deconstruction, listen to the NPR "On Point" broadcast of this evening. This is an absolutely critical broadcast. Listen to every word.

More gross illegality; more gross immorality.

As I'm listening to the broadcast, guests starting with an experienced U.S. military man, and a lawyer versed in the appropriate law, I'm compelled to ask whether United States Attorney General Pam Bondi shouldn't be advising the TA that the actions it's taking are strictly illegal--according to our own law, not necessarily even international law.

But that won't happen, as Pam Bondi, like so many in the TA, is both a sycophant, and seems fully or partially incompetent in her job. Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Chief, didn't know what Habeas Corpus is.

Not that surprising. I'm sure her boss didn't, either.

Pete Hegseth, remarking on these events, referred to "eminent" threats to the United States, pronounced by him with the short "e" sound; important because there are three words with a similar sound. What this uneducated, incompetent imbecile meant was, IMMINENT threat, that is, something about to happen; pending, looming.

Why don't the United States presidents who are still alive conduct an INTERVENTION with President Trump?

Try to make this misguided brother understand what he's doing wrong, why it's wrong, and what his better and more appropriate options are--in all spheres of presidential governance.

We human beings have interventions for matters of far lesser import.

910p

I dont want to neglect to mention that the male guest on a recent NPR program, I believe it was also On Point, the broadcast of last night, from The Bulwark, actually used the correct phrase, "champing at the bit"--not the ubiquitous but incorrect "chomping at the bit."

---

SEPTEMBER 18, 2025

KEY:  DT = Dictator Trump. TD = Trump Dictatorship.

(KEY, PREVIOUS:  DT = Donald Trump. TA = Trump Administration.)

DEEPEST CONDOLENCE

To whom?

To us--the citizens of the United States. Especially we older citizens, who know, knew, and remember clearly what and who she was, until 2024. The TA has all but killed her. Murdered her. DT is known as nothing if not vengeful, and his vengeful and retributive impulse has now set its sights squarely on the last vestiges of America, herself--whom he has now murdered; details, below. When free speech, the foundational right, is dead, democracy is dead. Which means America is, in some meaningful sense, dead, which means the US presidency is dead, which means Don Trump is no longer the president. If there is no presidency, how can there be a president? In my view the United States at present has no president.

The United States is now a democracy in name only (DINO).

I also can't help but notice that Marco Rubio, once a traditional conservative, seems to have devolved into a humorless authoritarian, now always dour-faced, perhaps because he somehow knows that his actions are helping to destroy the country. The United States, proverbial warts and all, that nonetheless stood in glorious bas relief against every other nation and indeed a world largely devoid of what our American experiment gave us--a historically unparalleled foundational first amendment that everyone took seriously, who knew that its very power and indeed responsibility to permit someone speech you didn't like was the same power that would give you the right to utter speech that someone else wouldn't like, all of it speaking to the absolute power of the 1st Amendment, and indeed its necessity as the first and arguably most important plank, edifice, and bulwark in any genuinely advanced system of democratic government.

DT and a complicit TA, however, have killed it. Largely destroyed the 1st Amendment by making everyone frightened to speak, from journalists, to educators, to students, to attorneys, to government employees (any that remain), and even judges, in some measure. Don Trump has expertly done what dictators always first do: silence all opponents and critics. Whether he realizes that he's now a literal dictator, or not, is irrelevant. To persons of knowledge and awareness it's obvious, and many have so remarked in the media, including conservatives (like me) and Republicans (like Lisa Murkowski, David Brooks, and many others). Again, my mantra: Trumpism is not conservatism.

Two clown provocateurs of an expert narcissism and an increasingly glaring political and social nihilism, Brendon Carr, the head of what now pathetically passes as the FCC, and Donald Trump, the head of what now pathetically passes for the United States federal government, no longer a president as there is no longer a presidency, work together to curate the sometimes chronic, often acute dissolution, suspension, but always crippling relegation of our right to free speech. Would that the Founding Fathers have known that an orange-haired US president wannabe, foundationally tutored and schooled in behavioral and ethical malignancy, that is, in evil, by a grossly dysfunctional mob lawyer named Roy Cohn, somehow wrested control of the American government, and is now conducting a day-by-day dismemberment of our established American system, with catastrophic repercussions for the established global system. A global system whose establishment was largely due to the deliberate intent and morality of the United States, the "Shining city on the hill," according to Ronald Reagan--a description that few, if any Americans, even conservatives, would likely or easily attach at this point.

Nor can I even write that it's a systematic dismemberment, because it's not especially systematic--it's variously fast, it's slow, it's ordered, it's unstructured, but above all, it's whatever tickles the fancy of the new dictator of the United States, Donald J. Trump, proving that loud, bombastic, Mussolini-like theatrics or histrionics are unnecessary to destroy a people and a nation. Brother Donald speaks slow and low, yet what he says, and the incomprehensible obsequiousness of the former Republican Party, now clearly the Cult of Trump, defining the role of the unthinkable--an American version of Dear Leader--to execute his every impulse or wish.

Did I note above that I no longer consider DT the president? As he has, I now fully realize, destroyed the modern American presidency, without a presidency how can there be a president?

DT fired all or almost all of the IG's, that's Inspectors General, working at the time of his second inauguration. And for all his ranting and toppling of every existing agency or other structure of government ostensibly against DEI and in favor of merit, the fact is that from day one just about everyone that he has fired was in their job in the first place because of merit, while in fact all or most of his appointees or other selections were INSTALLED in their jobs by Don Trump decidedly NOT because of merit, but because THEY WERE UNDERSTOOD TO BE EXPLICITLY LOYAL TO HIM. NOT BECAUSE THEY WERE THE BEST, THAT IS, THE MOST MERITORIOUS, FOR THEIR JOB.

In other words, DONALD TRUMP, HIMSELF, HAS AND CONTINUES TO PRACTICE THE WORST FORM OF DEI THAT I'VE EVER SEEN.

Just like brother Benjamin Netanyahu is, ironically, the worst anti-Semite on the planet, because his continuing slaughter of innocent human beings has turned any claim of a moral center of both Israel and, in my view, Judaism, itself, into mincemeat, as well as fully opening the door to generations of both anti-Israel activism and probably terrorism. I have and continue to call for Israel, and Hamas, both, to take a page from the playbook of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in redressing their respective problems.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel suspended by coercion from TA.

According to The New York Times:

"Mr. Carr’s criticism of Mr. Kimmel was the latest attack against the media by the president and his administration. Mr. Trump himself sued ABC last year in a case that the network paid $16 million to settle. On Monday, the president filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its reporters.

This summer, Mr. Carr’s F.C.C. approved a major merger involving CBS’s owner, Paramount, days after CBS agreed to pay $16 million to settle a separate lawsuit filed by the president.

CBS also canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” ending a network franchise for over three decades after next May. CBS said the cancellation was for financial reasons, but many in the media industry have speculated that it was done to curry favor with the Trump administration while Paramount’s merger was pending. Mr. Colbert, like Mr. Kimmel, is frequently critical of Mr. Trump and his policies."

Thus is the corruption and megalomania of the TA clear and explicit.

The TA is now suing the New York Times, a centrist organ, after already bringing suit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, a clearly conservative organ! Which is why I continue to maintain the obvious:  Donald Trump is NOT a conservative, as he continues to attack not just liberals, but conservatives as well, readily, and in fact anyone of any established political stripe whom he considers in opposition or conflict with his own views or ego. To wit, regarding the latter, witness and consider his categorical, comprehensive, and unstoppable prosecution of everyone even remotely involved in any of the attempted prosecutions against him. This brother's ego is either HUGE...or tiny and shallow. Take your pick

In any case, it's all getting downright sinister.

THE ACTUAL PROBLEM

It's critical to understand that the persons of Don Trump, Brendon Carr, Et Al., are ultimately not the problem, as the malign and shortsighted behavior of DT is practiced by many others, as well, by human beings, generally, in fact (including, unwittingly, me). So the problem is what I term the Trump "phenomenon," and the reason this is the actual problem is that, as explained in "THE ACTUAL ANSWER," above:   animating, informing, and at the core of the Trump phenomenon is its explicit lack of love for our fellow human beings...ALL our fellew human beings. Trumpism is all about playing "Gotcha" every second of every day; legalisms real and invented; retribution; narcissism; and ego, and hence, oftentimes cruelty.

And by the way, Trump administration: 22-year-old Tyler Robinson's act of murder against Charlie Kirk was despicable and merciless. At the same time, YOU DON'T EXECUTE A 22-YEAR-OLD CHILD. The very malignancy of the act betrays that it's perpetrator is still a child, or a person with a grossly immature, if not actually imbalanced, mind and perspective. Research reveals that the human brain isn't fully developed until at least age 25, if not later, so this young man's brain wasn't even fully-developed when he conceived this act.

Each of us on the conservative side must make a personal decision: am I a Trumpist...or a conservative? A traditional conservative. Because the two roles and categories are NOT the same. Conservatives maintain, and advocate the positions of, traditional conservatism. Trumpists simply accede to just about any whim or wish of DJT, whether aligning with traditional, or any form of, conservatism, or not, an ideological promiscuity that he displays constantly.

In the opinion of many, as described, above: every single day, in every single way, DT continues to destroy this country.

659p

It's now reported that the Imbecile administration is going to investigate Wikipedia!

Wikipedia!

---

SEPTEMBER 19, 2025

514a

The Whiner-in-Chief now states that broadcast channels that criticize him too much should perhaps have their licenses revoked!

ANOTHER HUGE WIN FOR FREE SPEECH UNDER THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION! A BUNCH OF PEOPLE HAVING GOTTEN ELECTED AND COME INTO OFFICE RAILING AGAINST WHAT THEY SPOKE OF AS LEFT-WING "CANCEL" CULTURE, AND PROMISING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Except, since taking office they, themselves, have canceled or attempted to cancel, in whole or part, essentially everything and anything that displays even a crumb or molecule of something they don't like, or think they don't, including universities, law firms, media institutions, talk show hosts, even museums, and of course government agencies and departments--and now even our vaunted Wikipedia!

Even, understanding the term and notion of "cancel" more broadly:  how about the "cancellation" of the lives, or health, or general safety and welfare of those human beings, including many children, the Trump Autocracy has deported and tried to deport? And arrested and tried to permanently jail, such as Rumeysa Ozturk, simply for the constitutional exercise of free speech--again, yet another Trump transgression against our 1st Amendment right.

IN ALL, ANOTHER HUGE WIN FOR CONSISTENCY (SARCASM), AND FOR BEING HONEST AND KEEPING PROMISES MADE BY THIS "ADMINISTRATION." AND YET ANOTHER HUGE WIN FOR FREE SPEECH UNDER THE TRUMP DICTATORSHIP.

BTW, NPR radio host Steve Inskeep is high again this morning. You can always tell because his speech is mildly frenetic: a little too fast, and a little too loud.

645a

It was just reported that DT wants to designate Antifa a terrorist organization. There's just one problem: Antifa is not an organization. It's more a movement opposed to fascism.

Of course, it makes sense that a fascist is going to abhore those opposed to fascism and working against it. Hence, DT dislikes it.

---

SEPTEMBER 21, 2025

The episode of the radio program Reveal, broadcast today on WNYC, National Public Radio, featuring or citing, in part, the documentary Kids Under Fire, asserts and appears to prove a pattern of the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) shooting Gazan children in the head or heart.

Listen to the entire Reveal episode carefully.

Judaism: the religion of love and peace.

---

SEPTEMBER 23, 2025

I just learned that military experts actually frown upon Star Wars defensive systems, because enemies can view them as part of a first-strike system that can actually be used against them. It's usually civilian politicians who know nothing of military matters who clamor for these kinds of defensive systems, to garner votes or support, or to burnish their image as strong on national security and tough against adversaries.

---

SEPTEMBER 24, 2025

607a

I continue to suffer the rise of vocal fry as I listen to the radio, which I constantly do, that is, the manner of speaking of women whereby their vocal tone is low and guttural, barely listenable, seemingly trying to emulate a male.

1108a

DT now says that not winning the Ukraine war "...doesn't make Russia look good."

Why is this man concerned with making Russia "look good"? His flagrant continuing sympathy for Russia, obvious since 2016, make him a Commie sympathizer and de facto supporter of dictatorship, and his autocratic control of our own country also support his comfort level with, or at least, obliviousness to, the latter--dictatorship. Moreover, his continuing association with apparent Nazi sympathizers Elon Musk (see photo, above) and JD Vance make him a de facto Nazi sympathizer, tolerant of these ideas, or at least oblivous to them.

Also, Chuck Schumer again shows his good judgment in not supporting candidate Mamdami, given the latter's political affiliation, democratic socialist, as this moniker will sabotage the party's credibility, and hence future electoral prospects. What Mr. Mamdami should do is change his official affiliation to Democratic.

Then everyone will immediately support him. That would be shrewd.

1257p

According to Donald Trump, stated in his United Nations address of yesterday:  Climate change is "The greatest con job ever perpetrated upon the world."

Trump demands Bondi prosecute political foes in Truth Social posts https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/09/20/replacement-named-va-prosecutor-ousted-over-probes-trump-foes/

September 25, 2025 harvard.edu Health Miracle drugs don’t come out of nowhere

Healthcare: innovation experts say funding cuts to university labs will slow or stop the basic research on which breakthroughs are built

956p

Well, there goes our search for our next einstein:

756p

During DT's address to the UN, there were three techology failures. He's complaining about them and wants them investigated.

I've previously referred to this fading gentleman as the Whiner-in-Chief.

His own staff is understood to have caused all or some of these failures.

801p

DT has indicted James Comey--the former head of the FBI.

Is my hunch correct that the enemies list of DT, and the uniquely vengeful zeal with which he's pursuing injury of this or that kind toward its listees, makes Richard Nixon, with his enemies list, look like something of a piker?

806p

In his remarks about Tylenol and autism, parroting the quasi-factual of his Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., DT mentioned acetominophen, then, attempted to clarify by informing that acetominophen was also known as Tylenol. It's not, however. The former is simply the active ingredient in Tylenol.

905p

It occurs to me that DT is disgracing our law enforcement. ICE, for example, wearing masks, encroaching upon formerly prohibited areas such as courts and schools, and seemingly treating human beings, citizens or not, callously, modeling the brutish way the president, himself, treats and speaks about or otherwise refers to many other people. Also DT now has law enforcement personnel guarding ICE agents while the latter is on the job. In other words, DT has law enforcement protecting law enforcement. Ridiculous, and an insult to the ICE agents.

SEPTEMBER 27, 2025

Laura mezza and ms. losaro/lozaro, one of them with a green card did or wanted to serve in our US military--dictotar trump had her deported.

[NOTE: from here on in this blog, "DT" can no longer stand merely for "Donald Trump," but now "Dictator Trump."

10:02a

It was just reported on npr that doctors without borders leaving gaza today, as idf forces to obtrusive, theri staff can no longer work safely, nor pply care for the injured.

Sept 26, 2025

343p

The dictator just fired a bunch of FBI agents who took the kneel five years ago.

Are seasoned FBI agents that easy to come by?

Thus does DT unabashedly and unashamedly continue to eviscerate our national security and law enforcement personnel and systems.

SEPT 28, 2025

In destroying those two Venezuelan boats about 10 days ago, 14 total dead, DT is eviscerating:

The rule of law.

Even basic morality.

And of course, any pretense at sincerity or competence in good-faith adherence to the beliefs comprising, or behaviors required by, Christianity.

SEPT 30, 2025

DT is exhibiting yet another disturbing pattern: after his meeting with Democrats, he again turned to AI to create figures he sees as mocking Democrats: Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero, with a deepfake of Charles Schumer's voice uttering vulgarity.

He comes away from a key political meeting and his immediate impulse is to create and broadcast vulgar deepfakes? Calling this gentleman the president constitutes an abuse of both the American presidency and the English language.

This is a sick man.

OCT 03, 2025

DT (Dictator Trump) continues his categorical, summary, "my-way-or-the-highway," "slam-you-against-the-wall-if-you-dare-deny-any-of-my-requests" style of "governance," by firing the Director of the Eisenhower Presidential Museum, when he properly refused to give the dictator the original Eisenhower sword that he wanted, as it belongs to the American people.

We literally no longer live in a democracy, but a dictatorship. And the conventional, constitutional United States presidency was eviscerated in 2024. No presidency, then, no president, so I cannot and do not consider DT the president for this reason, as well as his autocratic behavior.

601a

It is reported this morning that DT has announced his right to assassinate, that is, murder, persons in boats if deemed drug smugglers, with no due process nor any constitutional mechanism or process, whatsoever, and in explicit violation of the letter and spirit of the longstanding and indeed historic role of our military as a force that fought actual military enemies, not criminals, let alone persons merely suspected of criminal activity, and in this new command turning our military personnel from legitimate defenders, into murderers.

Murder, then, justified by the simple opinion or wish of one human being, making more explicit the mafia patina that has always been part of his weltanschauung (world-view), and consequent autocratic governance. Remember, Don Trump's life tutor was mob attorney Roy Cohn, who taught him in no uncertain terms how to be the worst kind of human being possible.

618a

Further indication, in my view, of an incrementally-ascending dementia on the part of the dictator:

"Mr. Trump...in his second term more than ever...has become so devoid of context. He seems unwilling or unable to modulate based on his audience, his setting or his circumstances."

Read this entire article. Subscribe to The New York Times to read, if you must.

OCTOBER 04, 2025

833a

There is further reporting on DT's intention to continue murdering human beings on boats on the assumption--often wrong--that they are carrying drugs. He is thus not just conflating the proper military use of our forces with a law enforcement use, but even worse, he is effecting a deep, radical, and unacceptable moral compromise of our military personnel, turning them into murderers. This is America--our military personnel kill only when absolutely necessary. They're not murderers. Well--not until now.

Extra-judicial, presumptive murder is not what we do. IT'S NOT WHAT WE ARE. Nor is it the kind of moral posture that has elevated America to a vaunted position of respect and admiration around the world. This policy will also serve as an example for emulation by other nations around the world, thus effecting an erosion of international standards of moral behavior--a human devolution stabbing right at the heart of any impulse the human race may have to actualize as a species or a human family, and, as the absence of a moral code, the penultimate moral code of Agape, specifically, is precisely the root cause of every human problem, this new practice and phenomenon of explicit immorality will, and indeed already is, serving regressively to push humankind orders of magnitude backward in any sort of plausible redress of, not to mention any sort of actual permanent solution to, its many problems, starting, for example, with the vexing and worrisome increase in political violence in America.

OCTOBER 06, 2025

715a

Segment airing now on NPR on the continuing government shutdown, fired federal worker Ashleigh (likely a pseudonym) states that in this climate she fears for her safety.

Democratic Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland states that the Trump dictatorship is threatening to cancel fourteen clean energy projects in blue states, and informs that the TA has been shutting down departments since day one, along with continuing concomitant threats and executions on those threats to continue firing federal workers, apparently as a way of punishing Democrats.

As I've been maintaining for some time now, the dictator is all about playing an interminable, especially pernicious and hardball game of Gotcha. He seems oblivious or uncaring about the consequent large-scale fear blanketing the entire country. I, myself, am afraid in continuing to update this important internet resource, and keep it live.

How It All Started

Let's not lose sight of how this national and international catastrophe began, in 2024, with the Nazi holding the chainsaw, working, conspiring(?), in concert with the man who would be, and now is, the American dictator, dismantling tier after tier of the established national and world orders, especially including one of the crown jewels in our international reputation: USAID.

OCTOBER 07, 2025

Tuesday

1203a

"Portland's on fire. Portlands been on fire for years."

I just heard Donald Trump say this, on the news. Covered because he's thinking of invoking the national insurrection act!

Portland is on fire? I've never heard a thing about it! And I follow the news closely and have for years!

THIS IS A PATHETIC, DELUSIONAL BROTHER.

DON'T HATE HIM. HE'S SICK. JUST PITY HIM, LETS HELP HIM. BUT WE ABSOLUTELY MUST GET HIM OUT OF THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES.

OCTOBER 09, 2025

Thursday

1157a

Reported a few days ago the ICE agents in Chicago are dressed all in black, faces covered, with no name tags or identification. People are being traumatized.

527p

In addition to Jim Comey, former FBI Director, New York Attorney General Tish James has now been indicted by DT's Just-us Department, both prosecutions, of course, being "political," that is, in this context, obvious acts of retribution by DT (dictator Trump) .

In my view, if both defendants are acquitted, DT should be impeached. This wholesale perversion of the federal government, and the evisceration of the existing national and world orders, has gone on long enough. The human race can't tolerate any more. I, personally, a 65 year old native-born American citizen, who now finds himself living in an America that I almost no longer recognize, would strongly prefer not to have to tolerate any more. Dictatorship and almost wholesale ignorance of how we do things in America, warts and all, have created for me, and many others, a disturbed and fractured psychological framework. Much of our frame of reference for what America is and who we as Americans are has been toppled, or certainly at least damaged.

Gangs of roving law enforcement dressed in black from head to toe, masked, with no personally identifying information, authorized to pluck just about any person, from anywhere, at any time, for any perceived wrong, up-to-and-including students whom are generally young people, whose brains aren't even fully formed? In one notorious case the student plucked was 30-year-old Rumeysa Ozturk, whose only "crime" was co-writing an editorial with three other students in a university newspaper, a piece that in no way called for violence or sedition. I note that at 30 years old, Ms. Ozturk's brain was likely fully-formed.

After an ordeal lasting several weeks, Ms. Ozturk was released. Wikipedia states:

"Ozturk was released on bail in May after US District Judge, William K Sessions, ordered her immediate release without restrictions. During the hearing Sessions highlighted that no evidence had been presented to support her detention..."

In detention for weeks with no evidence? This is the MO of the Trump dictatorship, and indeed arrest and detention without evidence are and always have been a staple, a hallmark of dictators, everywhere.

This is categorically not the America that I've known and now, I fully realize, loved, over the course of my entire lifetime. Nor do I want to know it, for, ironically, it no longer represents the greatness of America. We are about as far now from greatness in America under dictator Trump as the Earth is from Alpha Centauri.

Regarding Ms. Tish James, she brought suit against DT several years ago for fraud--and won. He's tolerating neither the suit nor the victory, however--he's learned his lessons from mob attorney Roy Cohn well.

Having Donald Trump in the White House is like having a mobster in the White House. Puerile, but a mobster.

1146p

If you've never seen, or haven't seen lately, the seminal film Sneakers, with Robert Redford, recently passed, Sidney Poiter, and Ben Kingsley, watch it again. This remains an important piece of realist cinema, principally because of what is arguably the central message of the film, mouthed near the end by the "Cosmo" character, central to the film and utterly central to the America and the world of this very moment, October 2025--a world where he who controls the message, the received and accepted message, controls everybody and hence everything.

OCTOBER 12, 2025

Sunday

1014a

During the Reagan-Carter presidential debate of Oct. 28, 1980. the former uttered his famous "There You Go Again," line, to the latter.

In like fashion does DT continue to assert that he's the great and seminal leader "bringing peace to the Mid-East," and in one permutation stating "After thousands of years, we're going to bring peace to the Mid-East," the "thousands of years" inclusion being the tip-off that he's trying to promote the notion that its the historic Arab-Israeli, conflict, itself, that he will have solved, apparently seeking to position himself for award of a Nobel prize.

DT is thus not only nominating himself for political sainthood, but unilaterally proclaiming himself one of the greatest leaders of mankind of all time. He may be facilitating an end to the Gaza slaughter, but that's no necessary forecast about the trajectory of the larger Arab-Israeli conflict, and his influence, thereto.

1037a

Pema Levi, featured on the superb NPR program ON THE MEDIA, a reporter for Mother Jones, wrote the recent critical article, "The Dual-State Theory was Meant to Describe Nazis: The Supreme Court Could Take us There."

If you genuinely care about this country and democracy, it is imperative that you listen to the analysis of Ms. Levi of some of the most powerful and insidious mechanisms DT is using the result of which could be the overthrow this country, to put it wholly into the hands of dictator Trump.

Also featured in this episode Is Wired reporter and podcaster Jake Lahut, discussing the many power-pies tech industrialist Larry Ellison has his finger in, allying himself with the Trump dictatorship, positioning the Ellison family for a trajectory of extreme power in America even beyond the TD, underlying much of this nefarious activity with a massive buildup of MGQI (a.k.a. A.I.), the wrecknology that, as I'm writing elsewhere, will, among other thigs: completely destroy whatever trust is left in human society, put everyone out of work, consume massive amounts of water and land resources in a world increasingly lacking both, make day-do-day life increasingly weird and surreal, and, according to the top A.I. experts in the world-quite possibly cause the literal extinction of humankind, as a globally-connected, ubiquitous A.I. network, SkyNet, if you will, realizes that humans are superfluous, and easily terminates us, since at that point it will be in control of every system worldwide that we depend on to exist.

Listen carefully, indeed study the interviews aired during this broadcast. WE ARE WITNESSING EMPLACEMENT OF THE FIRST BRICKS INTO THE FRAME OF AMERICAN DYSTOPIA. All originating from a gaggle of malfunctioning brains in the White House and related environs, hence my now-lifelong commitment to the concern and object of the "Brain Capital" movement, and corresponding antipathy to anything proffered to replace brain activity, such as MGQI, Machine-Generated-Quasi-Information (aka A.I.). If I'm elected president in 2028 or 2032, the priorities and activity of the DeBENEDETTO ADMINISTRATION will reflect this view.

1216p

Regarding the present attack on science, please read this very important book.

And regarding, specifically, the extreme harm to the health of the nation by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., read this Washington Post op-ed.

OCTOBER 13, 2025

Monday

1118a

DT has politicized and weaponized the United States Justice Department, for the first time in over 100 years.

Surprise, surprise. This action bolsters the dictator's clear pattern of pushing the U.S. down the path toward autocracy. I and others maintain that we're there, already.

Listen to the recording of the first segment of the Brian Lehrer radio program of this morning, on WNYC, as he interviews a CNN legal analyst, who also served at Justice, under both parties. He said changes of administration from one party to the other produced not so much as a blip, as the Justice Department has always been nonpolitical--until now, under DT.

OCTOBER 17, 2025

Friday

951a

It was reported yesterday that farm bankruptcies in America are up 56%. That's FIFTY-SIX-PERCENT. Of course, this upward trend is due to the incompetent handling of our national economy by the dictator.

One American farmer told his father to get all the guns out of the house because he didn't know what he might do.

Additionally, it was also reported that cases of domestic violence in New York City are up.

Maybe such problems would have been avoided had the current occupant of the White House not been wasting his, and the nation's, time with matters such as 1.) renaming the Gulf of Mexico, 2.) engaging in the largest largely unnecessary immigrant sweep in American history, now including continuing dispatch of federal military to various Democratic-run cities, striking fear into the hearts of millions, or 3.) engaging, himself, in obvious "waste, fraud, and abuse" using the United States Justice Department, now under dictatorship a mere shell of its former self, to attempt to prosecute his perceived personal enemies, now including as of this writing:

1. Comey, James
2. James, Letitia
3. Bolton, John

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ABOUT THIS SITE AND MY WORK

August 10, 2025

While there's almost no further point in continuing this blog, as we know from the first Trump administration, and even moreso the trail of tears and terror of the second, thus far, what is likely to happen for the balance of the term, a competent deconstruction is still helpful. I will continue, though slow, development, of this resource.

I also seek to save the CENTER FOR THE PRINCIPAL & PRACTICE OF LOVE, whose physical location in Northern New Jersey is likely to be lost, soon. This is our family home of the last 32 years, but also the location from which all my work, thus far, that is, prose and poetry, a related, planned musical project, and a possible planned Agape-themed talk radio program ("BROTHERHOOD OF MAN RADIO"), TED talk, and YouTube channel, do or will originate.

Please contact me, as well, then, to provide financial help to save the Center For Love. This, too, will require financial donations, likely much larger. To help, please contact me at onehumanfamily@fastmail.net.

The critical work in question that may be upended by said adverse events includes all the sites linked from, and existing under the framework of, the DeBENEDETTO WRITING STUDIO & PHILOSOPHY LABORATORY, including:

Center4Love.com

Understand.love

Brotherhood.love

OurBetterSelves.love

AgapeOrder.org

AgapeAdvisor.com

IraqProposal.org

110Again.com

TheDeclineOfMind.com

KeysToGoodHealth.net

GrassNotGreener.com

MandatoryGlobalMasking.com

WriterForHigher.com

MessageOfHope.band (music-related)

MetalMusic.global (music-related)

VincentsReviews.com

VincentForPresident.com

DINOReport.com

NOTE: Most sites unexpectedly down for several days, save the very last two.