July 25, 2025: Opposing Barbarism, Pilgrimage to Ionia, Curious and Instructive

 

Last weekend, I made a pilgrimage back to Ionia, Michigan to pay my respects to my old friend Gloria Cook. Gloria was the wife of David Cook, former president of the Kent-Ionia Labor Council and former Chairman of the Ionia County Democratic Party.

In 1968 I was installed as the new Chairman of the Grand Valley State College Democrats by the Merrick Machine. I had met Dick Merrick in Professor Tevebaugh's 19^th Century American History class in the spring of that year and, along with Steve Pekich, was tasked with producing two 50 page papers on the political life of the century. Dick was then Chairmen of the College Democrats and an alternate delegate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Later in the year I was introduced as the newly elected Chairman at my first meeting with the group having been elected in abstention.

Similarly, I was installed by the Cook Machine decades later as Chairman of the Ionia County Democratic Party in 1994, although I had attended meetings and been previously elected Secretary a couple of years earlier. The Cook's, known in the jurisdiction as Mr. and Mrs. Democrat were then the moving force behind the local Democracy. When governors and United States Congressmen and Senators passed through town, they were sure to stop at the residence of David and Gloria Cook.

In any case, in 1995 the political community was under siege by a group calling itself the Ethics in Good Government Committee or, as they fashioned themselves EGG. EGG was called into existence to oppose Zoning, Ionia then being one of a handful of counties in Michigan totally unfamiliar with the concept.

In any case, on my sojourn back to my old haunts I stopped by the library to retrieve from oblivion a letter to the editor that I submitted in the heat of the battle. What follows is a transcript of that letter along with a cover letter I sent to my daughter who went to school with the Cook's granddaughter and who, like Cook's descendant is a staunch Democrat. The cover letter, addressed to my dear “Shoes” will put the matter in context.

Scottville, Michigan

July 19, 2025

Shoes,

Enclosed please find documents relating to the political fight back in 1995 between the forces of good and the barbarians at the gate. A little background:

The EGG group, see documents for reference, was a bunch of yahoos funded by the county's most notorious slumlord, and fronted by a lay preacher at some local Baptist Church named Cliff Lazarus. The group's benefactor, your mother informed me, would sell properties with huge balloon payments, meaning low or no down payment with balance due in four or five years knowing that his clients wouldn't be able to get a mortgage to meet the payments. He would then evict them. He also sold properties with no floors and with toilets and plumbing simply running out in the yard. He was a known disgrace to the real estate profession and general all around scumbag.

Here were the driving forces behind this movement. Plain greed and unlimited political expediency along with a smattering of idiotlogical nonsense.

Gathering momentum, they launched a recall drive against several township officials over zoning, although I was never aware of any zoning proposals being forwarded by anyone, this being Ionia County. But, nevertheless, here it was.

Ray Vogt, then Ionia County Prosecuting Attorney and Chairman of the Ionia County Republican Party made his monthly appearance on WION's “Viewpoint” program, hosted by newsman Steve Howard. I happened to be in the office when he was on and decided to wait until the program was over to speak with him. At conclusion I went into the studio, sat down and said “Ray, we need to talk about what to do about the barbarians at the gate”. He asked me what I had in mind. I replied that we should join forces and endorse all our elected officials of whatever party, that is I would get the Democrats to support Republican officials if he would get his party to do the same. He asked if I were serious. I replied that I was damn serious and would resign if my party didn't approve the strategy. He agreed.

Fortunately the monthly party meetings were at hand and I immediately raised the business of joining the Republicans to support our beleaguered comrades. There was much murmuring, as you would expect. The Cooks, for instance, were skeptical. I assured them that we wouldn't go forward unless the Republicans voted to join us and that I would resign if we didn't initiate this. It passed, albeit, with all due reluctance.

I then called Ray to give him the news. The ball was in his court, but he had the knowledge that the Democrats were in earnest and that the initiative had been approved by the other side. He carried the day, albeit with similar reluctance.

Armed with support from both parties we met in his office at the County Courthouse and hammered out a joint press release which appeared a few days before this letter to the editor on the front page of the Ionia Sentinel-Standard. This touched off a response from the EGGheads claiming we were denying them their 'constitutional right to speak'. Enclosed is my reply.

This produced, in the aftermath, an immediate visit by Lazarus on our front porch in which he spent between 2 and 3 hours trying to convince me of the righteousness of his and Bob's position. I countered by pointing out the hidden agenda that Cusack was prosecuting, finally telling Cliff that I know the Lord works in mysterious ways but this is ridiculous and that he could lob this lame shit up to the plate but he must know that the ball will leave the yard. This shot cleared the light standards, I told him, that I can do this at will. I told him that the question before him was how long and how often he wanted to subject himself to this. I, and the community, didn't hear from him again.

They did recall one township official in Orleans township, but lost all the other recall elections which, if memory serves were about 7 in total. After that the group disappeared.

This is, in my humble opinion, is a textbook case of what can happen when the power elite closes ranks. It is what should have happened on the national stage when Newt Gingrich raised his ignorant ugly head. It is certainly what should have happened when the Orange Turd began stinking up the place ten years ago.

Anyway, something you can share should you encounter your classmates.

Love,

Daddy.

Here is the letter to the editor:

EGG Should Read Constitution

To the editor:

Ethical Good Government for Ionia County Committee's reaction to the resolutions of both the Democratic and Republican parties in opposition to their recall efforts is both curious and instructive.

It is curious because the leadership of EGG was quoted as saying that we are “depriving them of their constitutional rights to speak”. That is fatuous nonsense.

No one, least of all the major political parties, has prevented them from expressing their views. In fact, their views have found ample expression in print, radio and at several public forums.

No one, least of all the major political parties, has stopped them from recalling local officials. In fact, both major parties have historically supported the Citizen's right to petition, referendum and recall.

We simply oppose EGG's current use of recall as a costly misuse of the political process in the furtherance of agendas that do not warrant such extreme measures.

It is instructive, because at the first sight of opposition, the EGG leadership flatly declared that those opposing them were violating the group's Constitutional rights.

This is both a spurious and singular reading of the Constitution of the United States, revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of the democratic process.

While the EGG organization would prefer to remain unopposed, the facts of political life in a free society are otherwise, and we who have worked hard to elect good people to do the public's business can be relied upon to stand in their defense.

EGG is free to speak; it is speaking. EGG is free to advocate; it is advocating. EGG is free to organize; it is organizing. We are free to oppose; we stand in opposition.

No matter how much they cast themselves as the modern reincarnation of Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and Adams, these would-be constitutional experts must come to understand that our opposition does not in any way constitute an infringement upon anyone's constitutional rights.

It is, in fact, a free exercise of our rights. EGG may not like our opposition, but that does not make it unconstitutional.

We suggest EGG follow its own well-publicized advice and reread the Constitution of the United States, this time with the help of someone who can explain to them what it means.

Joe Camfield

Chairman, Ionia County Democratic Party. (1)

On the day following the publication of this missive I found myself walking the Main Street of the City of Ionia making my sales rounds when John MacNamara, then City Attorney, came out of his offices shouting “Way to go Joe!”. I met a similar response from the assembled at the annual G. Mennen Williams Tent Dinner at the Ionia Free Fair a few days later. EGG, as noted above, was successful in recalling only one township official and then crawled back under the rocks from which it had emerged.

This is how you deal with the barbarians at the gates. This is what leadership looks like. This is what the major parties should have done to the Teabaggers and the Maggots had they the courage of two local county leaders. Instead they opted for unlimited political expediency betraying a cowardice that has put the republic itself at risk.

Impeach and Imprison

__________

1,Published in the “letters to the editor” section of the Ionia Sentinel-Standard, Tuesday July 15, 1995

July 13, 2025: Banana Republic, What I Predicted, Full-blown Fascism

 

As Donald tRUMP, on the eve of his second maladministration, stood on the podium flanked by a line of billionaires it had become clear who had 'won' the election. No longer feeling compelled to hide behind the curtains the money mongers stood like a phalanx behind their puppet in an open display of contempt and power. They had bought the election; they now own the republic.

What follows is an essay I posted in these columns in January of 2008. What I feared; what I predicted, has come to pass:

“In his acceptance speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Senator John Kerry pointed out that the middle class controlled a smaller share of the national economy than at any time since before 1929. He could have run on that issue alone in 2004 and won the presidency but decided instead to re-fight the Vietnam War. With median household purchasing power declining by $1,500. Annually the situation has not improved.

What has improved, since the last election cycle, is that all of the Democrats and Mike Huckabee have discovered it. Even Mitt Romney, as he visits at last the gutted remains of the Michigan he once knew, has discovered the fearful plight of the old working class as he tries to inject some air into his gasping campaign. This is important not as a partisan issue, nor is it important solely as a class issue, it is an important political issue that speaks to the condition of the very soul of the Republic.

What distinguishes us from the classic banana republic is that advanced democratic societies have a large, vibrant and controlling middle class. This is no accident. Emerging under the crushing oppression of the old feudal order, modern democratic systems arose to challenge the feudal aristocracies not only for political power but to use that power to improve their own condition. The result was both peaceful and violent. Relatively peaceful in England with the Reform acts of 1832, extending the franchise, and violent in America and France with their respective revolutions. The result was, broadly speaking, the same. Political parties made up of the new urban and industrial professionals, labor unions, and Farm groups replaced the old aristocracies and in varying degrees went about the business of constructing—through a sometimes painful century long process—a vibrant and controlling middle class. In America the process had a head start with some 80% of the electorate originally middling ‘yeoman’ farmers who quickly organized behind the aristocratic Jefferson to oppose the monied ‘eastern interests’ represented by Hamilton and the Federalists. To varying degrees American politics, a balance between conflict and consensus, has since been a contest between these two factions with the modern middle class taking it’s form with the New Deal and the monied interests having long since taken refuge in the Republican Party. Democracy then creates the middle class because politics are driven by numbers, Jeremy Bentham’s dictate that the purpose of any society is to provide the most benefit for the most people. Majorities have used their political strength to oppose concentrations of economic power, break up monopolies, regulate economies, redistribute wealth and construct safety nets for the elderly, impoverished and infirm. The middle class had become so controlling that both parties have had to pay homage to it for the privilege of exercising national power. So the Republicans pushed the expansion of the franchise, busted the trusts, began the environmental movement under Teddy Roosevelt, the Democrats under Wilson advanced on that theme then under FDR began the wholesale restructuring of the middle class after the debacle of the 1920’s. Not only has the democracy created a commanding middle class but the middle class has a vested interest in defending democracy. This was a point entirely missed by Her Hitler.

It is important for the Middle class to be strong enough to counter the weight of the extremes of poverty and wealth. If wealth is concentrated in too few hands then it will simply buy power, as is increasingly the case in the United States. If the poor begin to outnumber the middle class and society is bifurcated into two camps, the wealthy few and the impoverished masses, then the democratic experiment is bound to fail, as in the classic example of the banana republic or the French Revolution. The masses vote and elect huge majorities which quickly demand a redistribution of the fruits of society. The wealthy call out the military and the democratic experiment ends in failure. This is why it has been such a long and painful process to establish representative government in so many parts of the world. And this is why our Founding Fathers understood that the most important function of government is to prevent the rise of a new aristocracy. As Arthur Schlesinger points out in his “Age of Jackson” the revolution in America was not simply a question of home rule but who would rule at home.

Benjamin Franklin, so the legend goes, was stopped on the street as deliberations ended on the new Constitution: A woman walked up to him and asked “What kind of government are we to have Mr. Franklin?”

“A republic if you can keep it”, replied the old inventor.

If we can keep it….the founders knew this was an historical experiment, they knew their creation was a fragile one and many did not expect the republic to outlive them. As Schlesinger points out many not only distrusted the Eastern Mercantile interests but understood from their reading of history that a true republic must be born of a large and controlling class of middling station. And so in their reading of history the great undoing of the early experiments in Greece and Rome was not slavery but empire, and the consequent concentrations of economic power into fewer hands. The Lees and Henry’s of Virginia, not to mention Jefferson, understood the need for a middle class not only to create but be nurtured by a democratic process that would, as Bentham would so eloquently state a century later, bring the most benefits to the most people: A middle class by definition. This had the singular advantage of creating an umpire strong enough to mediate between the extremes of wealth and poverty, to create opportunity with as little oppression and exploitation as decent society will allow. They were quite explicit about this: Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that one of the most important reasons for adopting the proposed constitution is to regulate the economy. Writing in Federalist No. 22 of the defects rendering the Articles of Confederation “altogether unfit for the administration of the affairs of the union”, Hamilton continued, “The want of a power to regulate commerce is by all parties allowed to be of the number…It is indeed evident, on the most superficial view, that there is no object, either as it respects trade or finance, that more strongly demands a federal superintendence…”, something entirely overlooked by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society as they foist their reactionary vision of freedom to mask their agenda of exploitation.

Last week CSPAN televised a forum at the University of Oklahoma featuring, among others, the likes of Mayor Bloomberg of New York, Former Senator John Danforth of Missouri, Gary Hart and former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia. The topic was political discourse with the general consensus being that partisan politics have poisoned the well making it difficult to govern in the United States. I have much respect for the members of this panel but I must respectfully say that they have it precisely wrong.

The vitriol that now courses through the veins of American politics has been a long time in the making and whose origins can be traced to the opening statement of Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Taking his place at the podium to address a national audience as he accepted his party’s nomination for president of the United States, Goldwater’s screed ended with:

“Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”.

The house came down as the throng that had booed and hooted Nelson Rockefeller from the stage rose as one to cheer their new champion as he prepared to make war on the national consensus that was the New Deal. Goldwater had stormed the ramparts and taken the party. He had driven the eastern establishment, represented now by Rockefeller who, as Eisenhower and Nixon before him, had accepted the tenets of the New Deal and in their 8 years in power saw no reason to lower capital gains taxes of 45% and upper income taxes in the low 90’s. Nor had they tried to tamper with Social Security, privatize the TVA as Wilke would have done, or break the unions. The Cons went down to historical defeat at the hands of the arch-liberal Lyndon Johnson and all was well with the world.

But they had given birth to vermin. Stink tanks arose housing those who would lie sleepless at night masturbating to visions of taking America back into the 19th century, and recreating the working conditions of the Chicago slaughter houses. Foremost among them were William F. Buckley whose national socialist review became a mouthpiece for the new religion. Then there was Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. These curmudgeons fought for a decade and a half to gain entrance to the corridors of power but were blocked by the likes of Richard Nixon, perhaps America’s last liberal president. Finally, in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, the surtax and the stagflation, the country was introduced to a new element into the political arena, given legitimacy by a peanut farmer from Georgia, the religious right. Vaulting Carter into the presidency, Jimmy managed in four short years to alienate both his religious conservative base and the liberal wing of the party---for inflation, as noted earlier, is a cruel mistress. The result was that what would become the “Christian Coalition” bolted the Democratic Party and crossed the isle to become the foot soldiers in Ronald Reagan’s assault on the ramparts of the old guard. The rest, as they say, is history. Suddenly the Cons found they had an army at their disposal and could now match the democrats in the field. And so talking the talk of compassion, promising an eternal ‘morning in America’, the Reaganaughts marshaled their army to do battle against the old New Deal. The problem was that to do battle with the New Deal is to do battle with the middle class. To wage war on the New Deal is to wage war on the middle class. To wage war on the New Deal is, in the absence of another middle class Magna Carta, to wage war on the Republic itself.

And so it has been. Beginning with the war against organized labor, the Cons and their Larvae the Neo-cons have destroyed the bargaining position of the middle class in the marketplace. Moreover they have systematically dismantled the “countervailing power”, to use economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s term, of Labor to Corporate America. In the partisan war between the parties the Conservatives have waged a relentless war against the economic foundation of the New Deal not only reducing union membership to levels not seen since before the Wagoner Act was passed but making it imperative that the Democrats, in order to compete, seek funding from the same lobbyists and interests as the Republican Party.

This has produced, on the Democratic side, a complete disconnect between rhetoric and reality. While posturing rhetorically as the tribune of the people the Democrats have substantively offered up agenda’s and enacted legislation that can be characterized at best as “Bush-Lite”. In fact in the 1970’s, even before Reagan, it was the Democrats who championed deregulation and taxed unemployment benefits. But such bi-partisan consensus, born of the near Dictatorship of Capital, cannot mask the growing destruction of the old American Consensus that lies underneath and increasingly clamors to be heard manifesting itself in the tactics of ‘cut and burn’ that has been our politics in recent decades. In fact it has become increasingly important for the elites—representing now only the wealth—to use ever draconian measures to keep their hold on power. Reagan had to negotiate with the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. Bush used Willy Horton and the race card, tried to drive wedges into every fissure at the base of the republic to win temporary political advantage. ‘Ol Two-Cows” had to savage several war heroes and commit the outright theft of two national elections to get and hold power. And now, like any respectable banana republic we now have foreign observers monitoring our elections. It remains to be seen what outrages await us as this election cycle proceeds. Already Dennis Kucinich is questioning the ballot in New Hampshire, pointing out that Hillary won on electronic voting machines, Obama on the paper and mechanical ballots. Harbinger of things to come?

As our language becomes more strident you can hear the indignation from Fox Noise and the Neo-Con spin machine about fear mongering and ‘class war’, conveniently overlooking the fact that the wealthy have been waging war on us for three decades now. But the Liberals are not yet waging war on the rich. No one in the race has called for anything like socialized medicine or even a return to the tax codes of Harry Truman or even Dick Nixon. Still the rhetoric is heating up and will, in the succeeding election cycles, become white hot as the middle class goes the way of the pterodactyl. It cannot be otherwise. For the truth is that it is not the rhetoric that creates the class divisions but class divisions that give voice to the rhetoric. The panel had it precisely on its head. One does not heal class divisions by toning down the rhetoric; one turns down the rhetoric by healing class divisions. Read any speech By FDR referring to the “malefactors of wealth’ or his diatribes against bankers and Wall Street. But FDR healed the nation. In this context the panel at Oklahoma and Barack’s campaign ring hollow. If Barack is to be the transformational figure he portends, he must confront with righteous indignation as Martin, FDR and Lincoln did before him. He must introduce, like Bobby, the ‘other America’ and take his campaign and the cameras to the Mississippi Delta and the slums of New York, to the rural poor and the Indian reservations; foremost he must show the country what it already knows and walk, with the press in tow, the boarded up main streets of America. And he must do it in ways that inspire.” (1)

The Greeks, our history teachers taught us, gave us Democracy. What they didn't teach us is why they did so. The Greeks introduced democracy in order to wrest control of the polity, the polis, from the oligarchs. It was the maldistribution of wealth producing a self-serving 'elite' that gave rise to a democratic movement in ancient Athens. Democracy was birthed by wealth distribution or, rather, lack of it. The question of adequate wealth distribution is foundational to any democratic order.

It is for this reason that modern fascist movements have been at war with the Middle Classes. Among the first casualties of any fascist movement, when it gains power, is to eliminate the labor unions, followed by the creation of a crony capitalist order that rewards not efficiencies but loyalties to the governing elite, the governing oligarchy. Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile, Putin's Russia are cases in point. Once they seize power they immediately begin suppression of all other power centers that dare threaten their growing illegitimacy.

The decades-long assault on the New Deal, the assault on the Middle Classes, has now metastasized into full-blown fascism. Carter didn't understand it; Clinton didn't understand it either. Nor did Obama and Biden. And now here it is. The oligarchs have taken over the country. It is now pointless to call or write your congressman. Unless you contribute significantly to his or her campaign, you will not get a hearing. It is now pay to play. Hell, Caesar Disgustus' own larvae, Don Jr. has created what he calls “The Executive Club” where to become a member and, apparently, to gain quick access to the Orange Turd himself, you must buy a membership of at least $500,000.00. That's half of the current membership now charged at Mar-O-Lardo.

First they purchase power and then, failing that, they call out the military. Up next, I.C.E. And the national guard.

Impeach and Imprison.

__________

1. See Protagonist: January 13, 2008: Banana Republic, Transcendental Meditation

July 4, 2025: Big Stinking Turd, American Gestapo, Diaper Don's Dachau

 

“When the music's over

when the music's over

when the music's over

turn out the lights

turn out the lights

turn out the lights

----Jim Morrison and the Doors

As stated earlier in these commentaries, the question had become: could or would the United States elect another Dwight Eisenhower? The country answered in the affirmative when in 2020 we chose Joseph Biden as our 46^th president. But it was only after our Caesar Disgustus had made a complete pig's breakfast of things. The economy, by election day was hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs each month, thousands dying daily from the pandemic he refused to confront, and the markets in a state of paralysis. It appeared that our experiment of government by 'shitter' didn't work.

But, alas, poor Joe proved to not be very entertaining and, since at least Reagan, a premium has been set upon the ability of our chief executive to keep us on the edge of our seats. And so, the country, once again prospering but bored, and choosing excitement over competence, turned to the Orange Turd.

It didn't take long for the stench that surrounds our erstwhile Caesar to once again fill the nostrils and overpower our good senses. Once again we feel compelled, albeit with some trepidation, to every morning approach our living rooms, turn on the television, to find what steaming pile of shit he's left via 'shitter' or his own anti-social soil pipe he calls 'Truth Social” or, in tRUMPspeak “Untruth Anti-Social” or Anti-Social Lies.”

Today, being the 4^th, and our annual observance of national independence, we were presented with, to his mind, an appropriately huge gift. A gift in the form of a giant, steaming, disgusting, pile of shit he calls “the Big Beautiful Bill”. It is, in fact, a “Big Disgusting Turd”.

Fashioned by Maggot Mike Johnson, ReSCUMlican Speaker of the House, made worse by the ReSCUMlican controlled Senate, and sent back to the House for ratification the Scum rammed this turd down the throat of the nation in the dead of night knowing that if the country got whiff of it before we were forced to eat it, revolt would be at hand.

The Democrats were quick to point out that the bill takes 80 billion dollars out of Medicaid and Medicare. Estimates vary with a reported 11-16 million will lose health coverage. Rural hospitals, some estimates of over 700, will close. Nursing homes and assisted living facilities are in immediate danger. Head Start for the young and “Meals on Wheels” for the elderly will be gone. All this to give the top 1 percent and large corporations hundreds of billions in tax breaks. It will balloon the deficit and add between 3 and 5 trillion to the national debt.

They couldn't repeal ObamaCare. No. Now they just defunded it.

But that's not the half of it. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, responsible for federal response and relief to natural disasters, like hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires will be gutted. Ditto NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. The National Institute of Health and similar agencies responsible for, among other things, pandemic response will also be cut or outright eliminated as the war on science continues unabated. The bill is a perfect piece of tRUMPian dystopian legislation; of, perhaps, the final imposition of absolute tRUMPian ignorance upon the system. The crowning act of vandalism.

But his, dear god, is not the worst of it.

.By some estimates nearly 150 billion will go to fund I.C.E., the masked, hooded, gestapo that now roam the streets arresting and disappearing those with no documentation, those with documentation and, sometimes U.S. Citizens. This makes I.C.E., now larger than the FBI, and larger than most military forces around the world. They arrest people without identification, without warrants, and provide no due process as people are carted off to concentrations camps, El Salvadore, Guantanamo, and now a place in the Florida Everglades being made ready dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” and celebrated by the fascist scum. Forty-Five billion dollars has, with the signing of the “Big Stinking Turd” been appropriated to build concentration camps in the United States. Let that sink in.

“Alligator Alcatraz” has been dubbed 'tRUMP's Auschwitz'. It is more like Diaper Don's Dachau, the Nazi camp built within month's of Hitler coming to power. But this doesn't look, given the level of spending, like this will bode well.

We now embark upon the 250^th anniversary of the founding of our republican experiment. Caesar Disgustus and his fascist movement has marked this milestone by assassinating the republic. We have become a republic in name only. A banana republic, thanks to tRUMP and the oligarchy that he now serves.

The music's over....turn out the lights.

Impeach and Imprison.

July 1, 2025: Canada Day, Gotta Love Canada, Ridiculous Tariff Wars

 

he Canadians, it is reported, are celebrating their day. As is their wont, Canadians do things with little braggadocio or fanfare. Unlike the good 'ole U.S.A, it is always low profile. It is always understated. As former Member of Parliament Charlie Angus reminds us. But, unlike our Caesar Disgustus, the Canadians do not present us with cheap theatrics. They mean what they say and will back it up with action. One has only to consult the record of the last two world wars to understand Canadian resolve. When pressed it will be “over the boards, gloves on the ice, elbows up, Northern strong”. You got to love Canada.

As July 4 approaches.  As the United States begins it's annual orgy of cheap jingoism, and begins the commemoration of 250 years of existence, it is wise to remember that we have been blessed by not only abundant resources but by neighbors who have not only been cooperative, but have stood steadfastly by our side even though we have not always reciprocated nor behaved appropriately.

As in right now. Disgustus has alienated our most loyal allies with his ridiculous tariff wars. It has gone so far that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Clark has declared that the special relationship between our two countries is now at an end. Canadian oil and natural gas are now being re-routed to Asian and Western European markets. There is a nation-wide boycott of U.S. Goods. Canadian tourists are going elsewhere. More difficulties will follow until the Orange Turd has either been neutered or removed from office.

Impeach and Imprison.

June 15, 2025: No Kings Day, Tin Horn Dictator, No Millionaire's Son

 

Yesterday, June 14, 2025 marked a day of reckoning for the Orange Turd and a day of celebration for the Republic. Caesar Disgustus finally got that military parade, the grand spectacle that had alluded him for so long. It was a complete humiliation.

Billed as a celebration of our armed forces, specifically marking the 250^th anniversary of the United States Army, the event just happened to, coincidentally, fall upon the birthday of our celebrated simpleton.

But it didn't go as hoped; but perhaps, certainly as planned. If planning it can be called.

It went as well as just about everything else our erstwhile potentate has administered.

Reminiscent of the Tulsa Oklahoma fiasco in the 2020 campaign, the much ballyhooed event proved a colossal under-performance.

You knew it was in trouble when reports surfaced that the “organizers” were offering $1,000.00 in return for one's attendance if one agreed to wear red, white and blue apparel and perform with appropriate enthusiasm. Payment, however was in crypto coin which everyone knows is worthless. It's like being paid, if at all, with old mining script or S&H Green Stamps. There were few takers.

Repeating the fiasco in Tulsa, the public began to troll the tRUMPists by reserving their seats with no intention of attending the event. The result: a repeat of Tulsa where half the auditorium was empty.

And so, before the world, our would-be Tin Horn Dictator stood on a podium facing “risers”, that is bleacher seats, nearly empty as the tanks, accompanied only by the squeaking sounds of unlubricated wheels and the grinding of treads upon pavement, rolled ever drearily by.

To compound the spectacle the Army looked anything but the precision fighting machine it prides itself in being. Soldiers, who know how to march, simply shuffled past the draft dodging coward now posturing as Commander-In-Chief. The salutes were not crisp. The performance a demonstrable passive aggressiveness stemming from resentment for being treated so shabbily.

Further humiliations awaited the armed forces as corporate sponsors, principally Defense Contractors and sham crypto coin operations were announced to the audience. The Army retaliated by playing Credence Clearwater Revival's “Fortunate Son” through the public address system, a Vietnam anti-war classic, the import of which, I'm sure was lost upon the dullards in attendance:

“Some folks are born made to wave the flag

They're red, white and blue

And when the band plays “Hail to the Chief”

They point the cannon at you, Lord

It ain't me, it ain't me

I ain't no senator's son, son

it ain't me, it ain't me

I ain't no fortunate one

...It ain't me, it ain't me

I ain't no millionaire's son, no, no

It ain't me, it ain't me

I ain't no fortunate one” (1)

Take that, General Bone Spurs.

No one wanted to be there. Not Little Marco Rubio, late of the Senate now our neutered Secretary of State; not Peter Hegseth, our erstwhile Secretary of Defense under whose auspices this embarrassment was “organized”: certainly not the First Lady. Rubio yawned and looked like he wanted to find a place to nap, Hegseth appeared to be seeking an exit, and Melania looked upon our self-appointed Monarch with complete disdain with a countenance that betrayed a wish to be in the company of a real gentleman. Hegseth may well be shown the exit he seeks before the month is out.

And tRUMP? He looked like he was about to cry.

The White House, predictably, tried to “spin” the event with photo-shopped pictures of imaginary hordes in attendance, photos cropped so as to not show the crowd, or photos with backgrounds blurred so as to not reveal the truth. Spokesman quickly claimed a quarter million in attendance and the Wrong-wing echo chamber quickly picked up the chant. But it was to no avail. The truth was out: the “crowd” wasn't a tenth the size of White House reporting. tRUMP indeed cannot organize a two-car funeral.

Meanwhile the nation was having none of it. With this long-awaited event approaching organizers went into action. A coalition of about 150 civic groups an community organizations went into action” announcing a “NO KINGS” protest to occur across the nation everywhere except Washington D.C.

I first got wind of it about 3 weeks ago watching a podcast on YouTube in which Malcome Nance, the intelligence officer turned author, announced the event. I'm sure there were others doing the same. Within weeks it had grown from the major cities to include protests and marches in over two thousand cities, villages and crossroads all over the country as well as several foreign capitals and locations. When the sun set upon the day and estimated 5 million had participated with some estimates as high as triple that number. It was, by all accounts, the largest demonstration in the history of the republic.

The day proved the predictable humiliation it promised to be, perhaps a turning point. As the tariff nonsense unsettles world markets and makes a pig's breakfast of global supply chains; as inflation creeps up along with unemployment; as agricultural markets dry up, and as the labor force is unsettled by his ignorant and malicious immigration policies; Disgustus, his maladministration now in total disarray, looked longingly to a demonstration of power and grandeur. Instead, he produced the predictable fiasco.

Impeach and Imprison

_______

1. “Fortunate Son” by Credence Clearwater Revival, see lyrics.com

May 30, 2025: MacArthur Park is Melting, Intent on Intimidation, Reactionary Conclusion

 

“MacArthur' Park is melting in the dark

All the sweet green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain

I don't think that I can take it

'cause it took so long to bake it

And I'll never have that recipe again

Oh, No!”

----”MacArthur Park” by Jimmy Webb

“Spring was never waiting for us, girl/it ran one step ahead/as we followed in the dance”. So the song began.

It was the spring of 1968, around March as I recall, that the song hit the airwaves. It languished in the ratings until April 4, when Martin was murdered. It then assumed a meaning wholly unintended by the author for it did indeed take a long time to bake the cake that was the civil rights movement and, as we feared we would never have that recipe again.

The song quickly shot up in the charts and gained significant airtime fading, as all songs eventually do, as the spring wore on. By late may it had fallen significantly only to be revived by the assassination of Robert Kennedy in early June. MacArthur Park would become a signature song of one of t he most significant political years in our nation's history; a year that began with so much promise only to end with the elevation of Richard Shithouse Nixon.

It is telling that this maladministration would choose MacArthur Park as the place through which they would send a phalanx of armed police equipped with armored vehicles and on horseback through a peaceful park; a park which stands astride Wilshire Blvd and through which Robert Kennedy would be taken by ambulance from the Ambassador Hotel to the hospital on his way to his death.

Kennedy was the tribune of Latino's, especially the farm workers laboring in the fields of California, and MacArthur Park is adjacent to a growing Latino neighborhood. For this reason, one supposes, Kristi Noem (or is it Gnome?) and the Reich Dorkshiner Steven Miller chose to make this show of force at precisely this location. It was the theater of the absurd. Children running for home, fearing the safety of their parents, as the new American Gestapo, in the form of masked and unidentifiable ICE agents swarm the neighborhood rounding up whomever they can lay their hands on. The forces of fascism have arrested not only undocumented migrants but immigrants with papers and the occasional U.S. Citizen, spirited them off in unmarked vehicles and sent to camps and gulags sometimes in foreign lands like El Salvidore without access to any legal proceedings and without benefit of counsel. Here, it was merely a demonstration intent on intimidation. To Terrorize, that is the point. ICE is the greatest terrorist threat in the United States today.

Facing opposition, Caesar Disgustus has called out the national guard and, a few days later, the United States Marines. With 'rioting' at a level much less than the last time the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship, Disgustus declared an 'national emergency' with Gnome openly declaring that she was in town to take over the city and remove the 'socialists' from power. Clearly, she has no idea what the term 'socialist' means.

It is clear that “spring was never waiting for us, girl”. It was always one step ahead. The truth is that we didn't have a free and fair election in this country until 1968. We had slavery and Jim Crow. As late as 1964 only 5 percent of eligible blacks were registered in Mississippi, and fewer than 5 percent voted. It was much the same throughout the South and even in some Northern jurisdictions. It was only after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed that this country moved toward open and free elections making the presidential election of 1968 the first such quadrennial contest an fair and free election. It was also when the ReSCUMlican Party began it's war on the electoral process.

A lot went down in '68; and a lot is going down now as the damage done by the conservative movement in this country is reaching it's reactionary conclusion.

“I don't think that I can take it

'Cause it took so long to bake it

And I'll never have that recipe again”

Impeach and Imprison

April 30, 2025: 100 days in Sodom,

April 13, 2025:

April 9, 2025: Age of Ignorance,

April 3, 2025: Tariff the Penguins, Consider the Source, Idiot in Chief

 

Well, the fool has gone and done it. Yesterday our Caesar Disgustus demonstrated his breathtaking ignorance imposed tariffs upon the world, that is except for Russia and North Korea.

With unabashed and seemingly guileless ignorance, our erstwhile Caesar stood before a podium in the White House Rose Garden and before the cameras and the world shit himself to his socks.

Unaware that he was soiling himself and holding up a board which purported to show the tariffs imposed by the world's nations, the Orange Turd told the nation and the world with a straight face that we were being 'ripped off'. Citing astronomical tariff rates charged by nations around the world he presented his plan to retaliate by 'graciously' hiking U.S. Tariffs to roughly half that imposed by others.

Watching this unfold on television in real time and, coming as it did from the purported 'president' of the United States, I thought to myself “holy shit, I didn't realize that we were being charged so much.

Then I thought “remember your school lessons, son”; consider the source.

Consider the source. When, I asked myself, has this bastard ever told the truth? The answer is at once: never. I began to look suspiciously upon the presentation and then concluded it was all bullshit. In the first place we wouldn't be paying the tariffs. In the second place there was just something about the numbers that didn't make sense.

It transpires that instead of just looking up what is currently being levied by the European Union, or China, or Japan, or Vietnam, Disgustus had his staff do the calculating. Led by Harvard's very own Peter Navarro and other lights, they came up with a formula that took the total trade with a particular country and calculated the percentage of that trade that represented a 'deficit'. It went something like this. The trade with a country is say 10 billion dollars. We buy 3 billion more from them than they buy from us. Therefore, according to these geniuses, the tariff imposed upon the U.S. Is 30%.

No it isn't. The tariff, the real tariff is somewhere between 1 and 3 percent on average depending upon the country. What the White House staff calculated is not tariffs but the percentage of our trade deficit as compared with the total trade with a particular nation. Clearly, no one in the White House, nor in the Commerce Department, is capable of calculating such things, much less simply looking up the tariff schedules. And, more frighteningly, no one in this maladministration knows what the hell a tariff is, least of all the idiot in chief.

Hell, they made such a pig's breakfast of it, that they imposed tariffs on Diego Garcia, a U.S military base in the Indian Ocean, and two islands off Antarctica, Heard and McDonald Island, occupied by only penguins. Yes, the damn fool imposed tariffs on unsuspecting penguins.

He was going to staff his 'government' with “only the best, only the brightest”. In tRUMPspeak, where truth always lies at a bearing of 180 degrees from the direction he's pointing, this promise becomes frightening. Always believing he is the smartest man in the room, Disgustus has staffed his administration with people even more ignorant and stupid than himself. And, since he is the most ignorant and stupid man to ever soil the Oval Office, this is a terrifying prospect indeed.

What we have here is a dysfunctional and terminally incompetent maladministration in which the sycophants surrounding the Emperor must present him with data supporting his foregone conclusions, lest he shoot the messenger. To that end they present him with 'facts', “alternative facts” in the parlance of Kellyanne Conway, that correspond and support his woeful ignorance. That a staff could produce such garbage and, most disconcerting, that our Caesar would accept them as legitimate clearly indicates that this regime has long since become unhinged from reality. Dementia Don, never intelligent, does not have the mental acuity to evaluate the information he is being fed; and woe to the bearer of inconvenient truths.

And so, he stands before the world beshit, wholly unaware of how ridiculous the rest of the world looks upon him and the awful stench that surrounds him.

Impeach and Imprison.