I’m skipping Donald Trump with my photos here today. HIs mean, twisted, hooded-eye countenance and wide-open raving mouth offer little new day after day, week after week . . . So I’m going with a young white woman, an old white dinosaur and a seemingly just regular American guy (despite the attitude of disgruntled racists). Suffice to say for the moment that during Donald’s first year in office (2017) figures just released show that hate crimes in Washington State rose 32% (nationwide 17%). How his supporters and defenders will spin and excuse his empowerment of it all as a white nationalist, God only knows.
Meanwhile, the results of the mid-term election initially sent Donald pretty much into sulking seclusion to dream up distractions and distortions for his demented and dismal tweets. Now he seems to be turning to firing some more staff, alienating blue California as if it were a member of the European Union, taking extreme measures to fund his Great Wall . . . while many of us begin ticking off the days until the 2020 presidential election, when we can make more of a direct move on him at the polls.
Pictured at left above is Krysten Sinema (age 42), who won an historic victory in Arizona, becoming the first woman senator ever in the state. According to the New York Times, she is also the first Democratic senator elected in an open race in Arizona since 1976, as well as the first openly bisexual senator in the country. Sinema beat Republican congresswoman Martha McSally, and is taking retiring Republican Jeff Flake’s senate seat.
She should energize a great portion of the American public for a number of reasons, including the country (and world’s) quest for an inclusive society. It will be she, not the likes of a Donald Trump, who has a proper vision of the big picture of both today and tomorrow.
Center in the photos above is Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, GOP leader in the Senate, his mental engine locked in the low gear of old-guy Republicanism, who hypocritically is suddenly blathering about the beauties of bipartisanship, what with Democrats having taken over the House of Representatives—while also lashing out at the same House Democrats (just can’t help himself). My own mind at this point turns to his own past power-mad proclivities.
Such as declaring immediately upon the election of Barack Obama that the Senate would oppose each and every initiative that Obama as president might propose. He also delayed for the better part of a year the Senate’s taking up the matter of confirming Obama’s appointment of a Supreme Court justice, stalling along for a possibility that actually came to pass—Trump being elected and sticking the American public with Brett Kavanaugh as a member of the court, via a mad-rush confirmation hearing.
Yet immediately after the House majority changed hands Nov. 6, misguided Mitch was expounding “After years of rhetoric, it’s hardly news that some are more interested in fanning the flames of division than reaching across the aisle.” He who lorded over things for so long, ignoring protest, as his GOP held both parties of Congress, actually was trying to pin that remark on Democrats rather than his own Republican party.
May you suffer retribution, McConnell. You are just one of the remaining anchors on our ship of state. Years ago, at age 18, I stood lookout watch outside a destroyer bridge while at sea—and I consider that sort of a metaphor in many ways for what I will be doing during the stormy political months ahead.
At right above is Democrat Mike Espy, who is locked in a runoff race for the U. S. Senate Nov. 27 down in Mississippi. He has served as U. S. Secretary of Agriculture and was the first African-American and first person from the Deep South to hold that position. He also served as a U. S. Representative from 1987-’93. He has a degree in law. Espy has an enviable record of education, public service, etc. that should serve us all well in the Senate. His opponent, Cindy Hyde-Smith, has joked about public hanging and voter suppression, but bigotry still may win out in the run-off election Tuesday of next week. Some 16.5% of the vote was captured by a third mid-term candidate who displayed the Confederate flag on his campaign signs—and how that vote is reallocated Nov. 27 is a key factor.
Hyde Smith received 41.4% of the vote in the mid-term, Espy 40.7%.
SPEAKING OF HYPOCRISY—Striking out like a wounded snake after the mid-term election, and ever championing his personal concept of justice, Donald has doubled down on his rejection of special counsel Robert Mueller and "his gang of Democrat thugs . . . They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want," Trump wrote.
"They are a disgrace to our Nation and don't care how many lives (they) ruin," he said, branding the investigators "Angry People, including the highly conflicted Bob Mueller.” (Mueller, by the way, is a Republican. Look it up.)
Donald Trump, shouting and screaming in his obstruction-of-justice way about someone else not caring about how many lives they ruin—while Mueller has merely uncovered a few crooks so far among the privileged and entitled, criminals who otherwise would have gone their merry way unpunished. Donald, meanwhile, is pretty much single-handedly ruining a decent life for millions with his moves against migration, health care, food stamps, racial equality, etc. Never has a greater self-serving hypocrite headed our federal government. In this regard, he is “the greatest ever.” I’ve seen no evidence of Mueller having “ruined” the lives of any innocent, virtuous people. His work is meticulous and meaningful—and apparently pretty scary to devious and deceitful Donald.
IN DEFENSE OF GRAMMAR—As CNN reporter Jim Acosta entered a district court Nov. 14 to defend America’s Free Press against Donald Trump’s arbitrary suspension of his White House credentials, a man shouted to him, “Acosta, you should be lawfully hung!” Afraid I’ll have to mentally red-pencil that Trump supporter. Look it up. Pictures can be hung, but people are always hanged—past tense and a past participle of hang, in the sense of “to put to death by hanging.” Hung also turns up in “hung jury” or describing someone who “hung out” at the coffee shop. Use hanged when referring to someone suspended by a rope around the neck until dead. (In slang, “well hung” also has a whole different connotation.)
A CLOSING QUOTE ON DONALD—“As Trump reshuffles his administration yet again, we see remnants of the B and C teams replaced by the D team . . . from here on out it’s Whitakers all the way.”—David Brooks, New York Times
.
.
