I see pictured above a ploy for winning the support of military veterans who have served under this flag, along with their families and friends. Donald actually displayed his true colors—more yellow than red, white and blue—as a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. He has been presuming to act like a general, however, ever since taking office. His colossal ego also seems to have a paranoid fear of being upstaged by actual military experts, experienced diplomats, top intelligence officials, personal staff, whom he doesn’t hesitate to fire when they fail to praise his impetuous gut instincts. He insinuates at every opportunity that these instincts and his self-proclaimed superior intellect make him an historic legend in his own time.
I was serving in uniform under the nation’s flag when Donald was four years old. Here I am 90, and he’s still acting like a 4-year-old.
If the flag really belongs to us all and represents the principles with which it was imbued when adopted, it would stand for much more than the white nationalism championed by Donald. He’s also clutching it in the photo as if it were a mistress destined to become his fourth wife.
It seems to be true that Donald’s never been a drinker, but I sometime wonder what he might sprinkle on his cornflakes in the morning between tweets.
The pledge of allegiance to this flag concludes: “. . . with liberty and justice for all.” Which would seem to justify, along with First Amendment free speech, the Black athletes who have declined to stand in reverence to the national anthem and giant flags at football games—in protest of racial injustice and police brutality. Donald condemns them.
I’m surprised Donald hasn’t designed a battle flag for our troops still deployed in war zones. Something fringed in gold, possibly bearing a likeness of himself.
Coincidentally, it was reported March 8 that Trump will ask for a Pentagon budget of $718 billion for 2020 (a 4.7% increase over this year), part of an overall $750 billion request for defense. Officials told CNN that approximately $544 billion is being requested for the "base" defense budget with an additional $9 billion going to an "emergency" fund. The remaining $165 billion would go to "Overseas Contingency Operations," an account that pays for military operations overseas in places such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. That's a dramatic increase from the 2019 budget, which sought $69 billion for that operational account. Yet we’re supposedy drawing down combat troops.
It also doesn’t take a genius to deduce that that “emergency fund” is just a back-door effort to legitimize Donald’s recent declaration of a “national emergency” with regard to immigration at our southern border—and get funding, so far denied by Congress, for the folly that is his envisioned grandiose wall.
Even with other deep spending cuts (in social programs), the president’s plan would not balance the annual budget until the mid-2030s. Instead, Trump’s advisers allege that the budget would balance after 15 years because they presume that economic growth will continue at high levels and bring in more revenue, a prediction that many economists have said is not possible. And by 2035 Donald will be beyond caring. He would turn 89 that year. He should be in complete dementia before then—if his body survives his obesity.
Actually, the prediction sounds just like the convenient “pie in the sky” promised by Donald in promoting last year’s major budget slash for industry and the wealthy, which has led the way to the federal debt’s topping out over $22,000,000,000,000 just recently.
And the White House plans to expand its effort to cut anti-poverty programs. It will propose strict new work requirements for “able-bodied” Americans across a range of welfare programs, including health care, housing and nutrition assistance. While perhaps chopping a few zeroes off a figure such as the one above, that would create a disproportionately large amount of misery—largely among the type of voters the GOP is ever attempting to disenfranchise.
