HONESTY?

By Ruth A. Sheets

I was catching up on my reading this week when I came upon an article from washingtonpost.com.  The title, "Trump Could Be the  Most Honest President in Modern History" by Marc A. Thiessen.   It was dated October 11, 2018.  As I read the title, I anticipated a humorous article sarcastically mocking Mr. Trump's inability to distinguish truth from lies.

Alas, that is not what I found.  The writer claims that because Mr. Trump has kept some of his campaign promises, perhaps more than predecessors (although that is really debatable), he is somehow honest.

Wow!  Where do I begin with this one?  Since when is keeping promises the mark of honesty?

What are the promises?  
- Move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. - Yeah he did this one, but at what cost?
- bring back some jobs (Trump said MANY jobs) - We're still waiting!
- Middle class tax cuts (minimal at best since most of the breaks - 83% - go to the top 1%.  Mr. Trump claimed this was the greatest tax cut, ever.  (well, not even close, but for a while, the stock market was glad to have so many corporations buying back their stock and driving up prices.)
- Nominate mega conservative Supreme Court justices - yes, he did nominate Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, then whined when Kavanaugh didn't go through like a slip on a banana peel.  How honest is it to claim this man who lied to Congress was worthy of sitting on our highest Court?  We didn't get the truth about why Justice Kennedy retired either.  Hmmm!
- Mr. Trump told African-Americans they had nothing to lose by voting for him.  The African-American unemployment rate is reported to be at its lowest level ever.  So what if African-Americans and other people of color are losing voting rights all over Red America and police violence against them continues!  Mr. Trump thinks he took care of them, kept his promise.   Uh huh!
- The Donald promised to cancel clean air and water regulations.  In the Washingtonpost.com column, this is seen as honesty even though Mr. Trump was not honest about whom he was really making those promises to and to whom he was actually lying.  Clearly certain favored corporations benefit, while everyone else, including our general health suffers.
- Trump promised to withdraw from any international agreement made under President Obama (or any other Democrat) even if the American people didn't want that.  He lied to sell this to his supporters, saying we can go it on our own as a nation without allies and all that.  A lie, of course, but he kept his promise and is trying to continue the practice. 
- Mr. Trump and his Congressional allies (he likes that kind of allies) said they would give all the militarized groups more money and they did.  They forgot to tell the truth to the people about the fact that the military would use the money for things like building more weapons and helping out in wars that most Americans don't want. 

In short, Mr. Trump made a lot of promises on the campaign trail, many of which he later denied making.  After a while,. the fact checkers gave up trying to keep track of which were "promises" and which were just rhetoric to keep his blood-thirsty supporters rallied enough to go vote and to keep Democrats and Independents from believing their vote would matter.

So, if honesty is based on whether you keep promises, Mr. Trump is probably up there in the ratings.  If honesty is telling the truth, Mr. Trump rates at the bottom.  I cannot remember reading about any president who lied more regularly about everything, even the promises.  Mr. Trump reshapes campaign promises as he goes along, hoping people like Mr. Thiessen will see them as achievements and laud him for it. 

Let's face it.  Mr. Trump is not honest either about the reasons for his promises nor about the success of his promises kept.  His first big lie, he won the popular vote.  The second, he would "drain the swamp."  The lies continue at an appalling pace, day after day at his ego-boosting rallies and from the Oval Office.  He regularly shows disrespect for our nation, our democracy, our people, our media, our allies.    

He's like a cult leader that no one but his followers understand. They can't explain why they like him.  They make excuses for his lies and deceit, and they fall back on slogans and their perceived wrongs, their perceived invisibility to everyone else.  Mr. Trump knows he need not be honest with them because they don't care about honesty, just the power they think he wields on their behalf.  He doesn't.  His power is just for himself.  He can't even be honest about that. 

The GOP's End To Democracy

by muon

The word “coup” is defined as a seizure of power from the government, usually sudden and violent, usually having to do with military activity. But there’s another kind of subtle political coup that’s oh so much more diabolical because it happens slowly.

The government of the United States, as set down in our Constitution, is supposed to be a government of, by, and for the people. It’s a democracy in which its citizens ought to have the ultimate power by the use of their vote. And it was constructed with three branches ~ executive, legislative, and judiciary ~ which are supposed to remain independent of each other, so that no one man nor one group would be able to seize absolute power and destroy our democracy.

The Republican Party has been trying to do just that ~ stage a political coup at the Federal level of the government, and through non-democratic means. In order to maintain a majority in Congress, the GOP has developed gerrymandering and voter suppression to an art form. Because of Citizen’s United, they’ve been able to shift power from ordinary citizens to corporations and the very wealthy. Power has even been given to foreign interests who seek to fund candidates and influence elections.

In the past 2 years, the line between executive branch and the Republicans in the legislative branch has completely disappeared. Most GOP congressmen support Trump without question, giving him the confidence to act like a dictator, while they turn a deaf ear to the vast majority of voters. Laws these days aren’t legislated, but come down from the White House as executive orders, or as Trump probably thinks of them, empirical edicts.

Still, we used to be able to rely most of the time on the Supreme Court to be the fair and impartial conscience of the country (albeit, not always ~ Dred Scott, for instance). Now, beginning with the Merrick Garland fiasco, the GOP has repeatedly ignored procedures set down centuries before, in order to manipulate the judiciary to their own will instead of the will of the people.  The Kavanaugh nomination is only the latest symptom. Legal minds and institutions from all over the country say Kavanaugh doesn’t have the temperament for the Supreme Court. Even former Justice Stevens believes Kavanaugh shouldn’t be appointed. Yet, the GOP is plowing forward, ignoring prudence and precedence from the beginning. Nothing about this confirmation process has had anything to do with true democracy. It’s all about illegal seizure of power from the voters of the United States.

This is why the 2018 general election is so important. Voters on both sides of the political divide need to take their power back from congressmen who’ve been in office so long, they think somehow that it’s their birthright. We need to remove people from office who have no respect for the separation of the three branches of government, who think our government is about their own power and wealth.

Only one political party is seeking to merge the 3 branches of government into one. The Republicans are staging a coup, pure and simple. You need to vote this November before that right is taken from you as well.