Notes from Above Ground

 Yesterday, November 27, 2020, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals for Pennsylvania issued their judgement about  an important court case in our current Electoral controversy. This Court decision was a legal landmark in our Citizens’ battle to prevent Trump from stealing this election.

Trump’s lawyers lost this Appeal.  

Because this legal development is very important, I felt compelled to elucidate for you some of the principles by which this three-judge panel issued their decision. This is not easy to do with a 20-page legal document, especially since I am not a lawyer, and you probably aren’t either. 

So I thought I’d just clarify some of their techo-legal language by highlighting some important phrases and sentences. 

And I thought I could reasonably call this report “Notes,” which made me think of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1864 Russian novel, “Notes from the Underground,” which Jordan Peterson likes to talk about.

So this is going to be my little exercise in snipped folk-court-reporting. If you want to see the entire document you can download it from the Washington Post, as I did, or from some other source.

I think of it as a kind of paralegal poetry—lifting some important phrases and sentences, and because it is a high Federal Court . . . Notes from Above Ground, to whit:

“Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”

 . . . calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. 

The (Trump) Campaign . . . allegations are vague and conclusory. Nor does the Campaign deserve an injunction to undo Pennsylvania’s certification of its votes. 

The Campaign’s claims have no merit. The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly 81,000-vote margin of victory. 

So we deny the motion for an injunction pending appeal. 

Pennsylvania expanded mail-in voting. . . Now, any Pennsylvania voter can vote by mail for any reason.

In all, nearly seven million Pennsylvanians voted, more than a third of them by mail. 

Pennsylvania’s counties certified their election results by the November 23 certification deadline. 25 Pa. Stat. §2642(k). The next morning, the Secretary of State  certified the vote totals, and the Governor signed the Certificate  

We commend the District Court for its fast, fair, patient handling of this demanding litigation. 

We are issuing this opinion nonprecedentially so we can rule by November 27. 

. . . the (Trump) Campaign’s request fails as both inequitable and futile. 

Plaintiffs must do more than allege conclusions. Rather, “a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true”. . .

“Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice.” . . .

Campaign lawyer Rudolph Giuliani conceded that the Campaign “doesn’t plead fraud.” 

Though it alleges many conclusions, the Second Amended Complaint is light on facts. 

While legal conclusions can provide the framework of a complaint, they must be supported by factual allegations. Yet the Campaign offers no specific facts to back up these claims. 

. . . nothing in the Due Process Clause re- quires having poll watchers or representatives, let alone watchers from outside a county or less than eighteen feet away from the nearest table. The Campaign cites no authority for those propositions, and we know of none. 

. . . the Campaign litigated and lost that claim under state law too. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the Election Code requires only that poll watchers be in the room, not that they be within any specific distance of the ballots. 

None of these counts alleges facts showing improper vote counting. And none alleges facts showing that the Trump campaign was singled out for adverse treatment. 

These county-to-county variations do not show discrimination. 

Nor does Bush v. Gore help the Campaign. . . Bush v. Gore does not federalize every jot and tittle of state election law. 

The relief sought—throwing out millions of votes—is unprecedented. . . It cites no authority for this drastic remedy. 

. . . there is no clear evidence of massive absentee-ballot fraud or forgery. 

No stay or injunction is called for. 

As discussed, the Campaign cannot win this lawsuit. It conceded that it is not alleging election fraud. It has already raised and lost most of these state-law issues, and it cannot re-litigate them here. It cites no federal authority regulating poll watchers or notice and cure. It alleges no specific discrimination. And it does not contest that it lacks standing under the Elections and Electors Clauses. These claims cannot succeed. 

. . .  it challenges no specific ballots. The Campaign alleges only that at most three specific voters cast ballots that were not counted. 

And it never alleges that anyone except a lawful voter cast a vote. 

Without more facts, we will not extrapolate from these modest numbers to postulate that the number of affected ballots comes close to the certified margin of victory of 80,555 votes. Denying relief will not move the needle. 

Without compelling evidence of massive fraud, not even alleged here, we can hardly grant such lopsided relief. 

Granting relief would harm millions of Pennsylvania voters too. 

“Technicalities should not be used to make the right of the voter insecure.” 

Thus, unless there is evidence of fraud, Pennsylvania law overlooks small ballot glitches and respects the expressed intent of every lawful voter. 

Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections. The ballots here are governed by Pennsylvania election law. No federal law requires poll watchers or specifies where they must live or how close they may stand when votes are counted. 

Calling something discrimination does not make it so. The Second Amended Complaint still suffers from these core defects, so granting leave to amend would have been futile. 

We will thus affirm the District Court’s denial of leave to amend, and we deny an injunction pending appeal.

And that’s the way it is, November 28, 2020.

Glass half-Full

Now is the Time

 Now we the people of these United States have recognized a hard truth: this nation’s health and life is under a serious threat. 

A dread disease, alias Coronavirus, or Covid-19, has spread rapidly among our people, and continues daily to infect our people with a contagion that has proven to be destructive to good health and, in many cases, fatal.

Our public officials have responded, all across this wide continent in many different ways. Responses of our citizens have ranged from denial, to lackadaisical, to serious, to fearful, to fanatical.

Public policy has been all over the map. 

If you live in a so-called blue state, probably with high urban population, chances are the responses there—official and personal—are seriously restrictive and vigilant.

If you live in a so-called red state, probably with a population spread out thinly among smaller cities, towns and vast countryside, chances are the responses there are permissive and and somewhat libertarian. 

So this year, we have heard a lot of discussion and debate about public policies that recommend, mandate, or command us to wear masks, wash our hands, and practice social distancing, generally recommended as 6 ft.

That’s all well and good, appropriate. 

This writer fervently urges you to consider these practices to be acts of personal responsibility that truly do protect the health of yourself and our fellow-citizens.

The laws of our vast land have also manifested a wide array of social controls that are known to be effective in stopping the spread of Covid.

And we all know that the degree to which .gov—local, state and federal—have placed restrictions are controversial. 

Many citizens insist that lockdowns are the way to go.

Many others insist that lockdowns are a crock, and represent the first phases of socialistic control.

The States and their various Governors and Legislators have displayed a wide variety of responses to this public health crisis. 

The State of New York—God bless ‘em— was required, very early on in this pandemic, to take extreme measures to attack the coronavirus. Those Empire-Staters have been through a lot of pandemical pandemonium, medical overload and deadly tragedies that good ole boy Tom in Talledega and farmer Suzy in Sioux Falls would never even contemplate.  

So the State of New York had to crack down hard on the damn Covid, and this unfortunately required a restrictive crackdown on gatherings where the disease easily spread.

Gov. Cuomo proposed an appropriately restrictive plan, which was approved by the legislature, and instituted as law, to impose certain limits on to what extent citizens of New York could be together in commercial or public spaces and/or gather in public or religious spaces.

These mandates imposed certain limits on religious gatherings, for obvious reasons. But in so doing, the State of New York crossed a line of liberty that is set forth in the 1st Amendment of our US Constitution, to whit:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

So the State’s well-intended health controls were challenged in the Courts. Eventually, two cases were brought forth to obtain release from the Covid mandates that limited religious gathering . . .

Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo

 and Agudath Israel v. Cuomo.

These two Court cases sought to release certain religious groups to renew their practice of gathering  together to celebrate their faith.

Lower courts in New York decided in favor of the State’s mandate. The case was appealed, went to our US Supreme Court, and was reversed.

By order of the US Supreme Court, those two religious bodies (and ostensibly ?many or all? others) are free to renew their prior practice of gathering to worship.

I agree, and here’s why.

We’ve been dealing with this pandemic for the worser part of a year, and it’s time we learned to contend  against as grown-up citizens and localities without constant control from the nanny state.

We now know that masking WORKS, washing hands is only RIGHT (mama always said!) and social distancing makes perfect SENSE and furthermore its no big deal anyway. . . no terrible inconvenience. 

Just do it! 

And go back to church or synagogue or mosque or temple or whatever it is you do to pray or make hay with those who are like unto you. But be careful, and  remember: 

WEAR the mask, WASH your hands, DISTANCE yourself, and we’ll get through this as a free--and a free-living  people.

Now is the time for all men and women of goodwill to come to the aid of their country by washing hands, wearing masks and keeping their distance from fellow-citizens. 

King of Soul

Musings at Muir

 

Fourteen score and several years ago, our fore-parents brought forth on this continent a new enterprise, conceived in progress, dedicated to the possibility that all citizens might together form unto themselves a unique way to make abundance, and to produce progress and to make hay while the sun shines and to make a living. 

By ’n by, and moving right along, as the national impulse manifested it itself. . . a new wind of liberty and opportunity blew mightily in the land, across the land, from sea to shining sea. . .

For thee and for me.

In the midst of it all, and on the edge of it all, beneath the tall, tall, tall . . .we are moved to recall:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for the people to upgrade and improve  the industrial technologies by which they, together,  have prospered, and to justify the extractions by which nature and nature’s God have enriched them . . .

a decent respect for the people of the Earth, and the Earth itself, requires that we should declare our intentions to clean up our act(ions).

And so Therefore and Henceforth and from Now on:

*We ought not to trash anything except trash itself.

*Ask not what the earth can provide for you, but what you can provide for the earth

*Ask not  what the fat of the land can add unto thine own wealth, but what together we can do for the good health of us all.

And yet, and yet. . .

 as we take census and do inventory of who and what is all around us, and in what ridiculous social media we do now live and move and have our being, we discern, to whit:

All the Americans and Consumers herein have lately spent our time in nothing else, but to twit or fakebook some new thing.

So then we have stood in the midst of Capitol Hill and said: Ye people of America we perceive that in all things we are too contentious.

And so therefore and henceforth and 

In spite of all that, We the People, in order to retain a more healthy Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the the common welfare, and assure the blessings of our own responsibility to ourselves and to our posterity, do establish E Pluribus Unum and What’s it To Ya.

And hey, yeah even In God We Trust, if you can bear it.

Even so, by ’n by and in the midst of it all. . .

Human has got to do what Human has got to do and so therefore and henceforth . . . 

Forasmuch then as we are all Citizens, we ought not to insist that a true Citizen is like unto a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Socialist or a Libertarian, or any such identity, but rather . . .

Ask not what our country can do for you, but what together we can do for the betterment of humankind. And so, for starters, check it out:

This is a forest retrieval.

Glass half-Full

To Swallow a Camel

 Now the StormTrumpers are striving to eject the election and trounce the transition. Presently, they are straining out election minutiae, so they can consume a Second Term.

In so doing, they neglect the weightier matters of law, justice and mercy . . .to strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.

In our present  electoral situation, here’s a list of the gnats. 

These are the gnats that forever fly in the face of elections. The Trumper lawyers have strained them out for PA and MI Judges to see:

- those malicious mail-ins

- those pesky post-Tuesday ballots

- those sneaky signatures

- those bad ballots

- those malicious machines

- those snakey softwares

- those idiot i.d.’s

- those aberrant absentees

- those State certifications

- those voting Democrats

And this is the camel the lawyers will swallow, if their gnat-straining has the intended effect on the Judges:  A Second  Trump Term

These nitpicking lawyers are the proud StormTrumpers who have given up on the "Stand Back and Stand By" strategies. Now, in a last-ditch maneuver, they invade the courtroom in search of the humpback of Trump-PAC, aka the Camel of ComeBack.  

These are the lawyers who represent the people who, at the mention of George Floyd’s suffocation, want to remind you that he was trying to pass a fake $20 bill.

These are the lawyers who represent the people who, at the mention of police reform to better assure justice in law enforcement, just have to mention that “defunding the police” is a bad idea.

These are the are the lawyers who represent the people who, if you mention that US immigration policy enforcers separated immigrant children from their parents, fenced the kids in, and now are unable to reunite the children with their families . . . will tell you we just need to build a wall to keep them out.

These are the lawyers who neglect the weightier matters of law, justice and mercy . . .to strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. See the book of Matthew, chapter 23.

These are the StormTrumpers who strive to eject the election and trounce the transition . . . and thereby swallow a Second Trump Term.

 

Glass half-Full

Justice Must Roll

 It is true that our democratic republic has problems.

Since 1776, we have had a constant stream of troubles. 

Government of the People, by the People and for the People is no walk in the park, no easy matter. 

It takes a lot of work to make a Great Nation, but we did manage, by the sweat of our brows,with a little help from our friends, and the grace of God to weave this ragtag string of thirteen colonies into a Great Nation, a nation so great that millions of immigrants have come here to explore the opportunity that a 3000-mile continent and a bunch of hard-working people have developed and maintained.

But we have had some problems.

Our Civil War, 1860-64, was the worst.

But our Union survived that war.

At the end of that war, our Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act, which made provision for free’d slaves to get a foothold of their own in southern soil, and  to eventually earn, by the sweat of their brow, land ownership.

As the years rolled by, however, the constrictions of a segregated infrastructure, backed up by the KKKlan and other racist entities, some of them official-- strangled out most of the Homestead opportunities that that Congressional act of 1865 had provided for black folk in the South. 

A century later, during the 1950’s and ’60’s, I was growing up in that Deep South.

Nowadays, many of those old prejudices and abusive attitudes against black folk still linger in some of our institutions. 

Yes, even to this day, in the 21st-century, we discover, through social media, viral-video evidence of systemic injustice in law enforcement in many of our cities. Police brutality should have been worked out of the system by now. We have laws—both Constitutional and Common Law—that prescribe decent and just procedures by which citizens can be arrested after a crime is detected or suspected by a law enforcement officer, instead of smothered to death. 

Recently, as several instances of police brutality and even murder by police have been brought, via social media, to the attention of our attentive citizens, we in this tragic nation have witnessed a groundswell of discontent brought forth by our resolve to eliminate illegal abuse, especially in these cities—Minneapolis, Louisville, Atlanta, Baltimore, where systemic abuses have been, by viral video,  hurled unexpectedly into our awareness of our tragic failure to assure Justice throughout the land

Black lives do matter.

What we need is Justice applied the same everywhere, in every city, every neighborhood, every "hood."

Back in the day when I was raised up, we used to recite a pledge of Allegiance to the flag and to the United States of America; that pledge ended with this phrase:

“ with Liberty and Justice for All.”

We need Justice in Law Enforcement; we need Justice in the Courts. We need Justice in the hearts of our citizens. We need Justice--every citizen getting the same treatment-- in Law Enforcement.

Thousands of years ago, a prophet, Amos spoke correctively to our earliest forebears when he declared:

“Let Justice roll down like the waters, and righteousness like a might stream!

When I was about thirteen or so, an American prophet stepped forward and renewed that call for righteous treatment. Dr. King, echoing the ancient prophet, declared:

“Let Justice roll down like the waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

But there’s been a lot of water to pass beneath the bridge since those nascent days of our Make-America-Just corrective Civil Rights movement. 

Although I am a registered Republican, I have noticed that, these days, Democrats take that call to Justice quite seriously, and they want to work cooperatively toward rectifying unjust practices in the cities, where a few bad cops need to be reminded that black lives do matter.

Whereas, Republicans generally have their heads in the sand about these Justice issues, as they’re too caught up in their stock market casino or their comfy cave cocoon or our evangelical bubble to notice or even care about what’s going on down in the hood, or even down the block if mama is dark or daddy is detained. 

Even so, we are still all together now in the national quest toward liberty and justice for all.

We need to fix these injustice issues if we are ever going to be a great nation again. Being a great nation again does not mean we are fat 'n happy and whistlin' Doodah, snackin' and watchin' violent sexy videos on the god-forsaken internet while folk makin' maybe $11 bucks an hour are tryin to make by handin' out fastfood in the gas-guzzlin' drive-thru.

Why my evangelical brethren would, it seems, settle for enabling the stubborn rantings of a president who has by hook or crook manipulated six bankruptcies, evaded 26 accusations of sexual misconduct, slid past almost 4000 lawsuits, and presently obsesses on a very very big obstructionist refusal to accept his electoral defeat, which he was dealt at the hands of We the People in a validated national election. . . I cannot understand. And I will not condone.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, looking beyond this man's personal crises and lifelong mistakes, we the people need to move forward again without his dead dictatorial weight, and work together toward our  collective quest for liberty and justice for all.

Why my  so-called evangelical brethren would support that manipulative tyrant who is obsessed with promoting his own portfolio power profile-- instead of supporting the legally conducted election of a decent man who has served as a Senatorial lawmaker for 48 years-- a God-fearing Christian who speaks kindly instead of rudely and who wants to bring us back together again instead of provoking enmity among our citizenry-- a seasoned, reasonable leader who has already gathered the electoral majority of our  citizen voters . . .

Why my so-called evangelical brethren would support that rude tyrant instead of the kind statesman, hell if I know.

We Will have hell to pay if we don't get this mess this straightened out; and it looks like Mr. Trump is milking our last ransom payment for all he can get out of it.

Glass half-Full

My Friends at Vietnam

 In the days of our youth, 1960’s, Johnny Lambert and I were good friends. He lived in a home on a shady street two blocks away from us. We grew up in the shadow of the Esso refinery at Baton Rouge, which my dad had called the third-largest oil refinery in the world at that time. 

Johnny and I were best buddies through junior high, and most of the years through high school. Long about senior year, we began drifting apart. But after graduation we really  drifted apart.

Johnny went to Vietnam; I went to LSU. 

Johnny was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, not far from Saigon. Here's a pic of one of the R&R moments there:

Many years passed by. The war got hotter than a July firecracker for a few more years, and then we kinda slid outa there somewhere between ’73 and ’75. 

By the late 1970’s, I had gravitated up to the Blue Ridge.  I had drifted through a few  sales jobs. Being a worthless English major,  I settled into a carpentry mode as my line of work, since it was in my family history. So I was bangin’ nails, which is pretty much what I did for most of my breadwinner life. Nowadays my wife, Pat, ICU nurse, carries most of that bread-on-the-table burden.

Anyway, back in the ’80’s I was working on a crew as we were building a bunch of condos called Blue Ridge Village, near Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina.

That’s where I met Richard. He was a Semper Fi guy who had survived the Nam.

Richard Storie was different from the other guys in our crew . . . a crusty ole fella. I mean, I say crusty ole because he seemed so much older that the rest of us. He drove an incredibly blue old pickup, the early kind with the stand-out wheel fenders and running boards.

I can’t remember if it was a Ford or a Chevy. 

Well that was then. This is now. Actually, when I say now I mean, you know, 21st-century, post 9/11 and all that.  

Long about 2014, I started writing a fourth novel, which would cover what happened to America during Vietnam.

I was working at our local Lowe’s Home Center. One day, Richard came in and I cornered him and began firing Vietnam questions at him.

Along with his very helpful memories and explanations, Richard gave me a book to read. The Walking Dead, by Craig Roberts and Charles W. Sasser.

As King of Soul got spun out on my keyboard, I lifted a battle scene from The Walking Dead, rewrote it, and included  that real-world, real-war scene in the finished novel, 2017.

In honor of our Veterans who have fought for our nation and the free world, in Vietnam and all across the globe, here’s a glimpse of what our guys had to get through in order to make it back Stateside in 1969. . . a scene borrowed from Craig and Charles' Walking Dead, re-reported in chapter 13 of King of Soul:

 

        “Helicopter, this is Black Box Two-Niner . . .Black Box Two-Niner. Can You read?”

        No sound, no human sound, no scratchy reply sound was heard, but only the insane rattle of guns punctuated by the periodic whump! of a grenade exploding.

        Craig scrambled forward to get a better view. Just ahead of his log, two VC darted across the trail. Suddenly he understood their position was at the place where he had left the satchel boobied with a claymore. He hit the clacker. In a deafening explosion of dirt, rock, smoke, body parts, pink mist , stuff rained out the sky from here to eternity it seemed.

        A painfully short respite yielded to approaching death as the VC soon resumed their assault. Nine U.S. by-God Marines fired away into the slow-fast hammer of Viet Cong death being lowered against them—they fired away, into the shadows, into the valley of the shadow of death.

       A whine here, a ricochet there, an explosion, a smoky muffling of death’s staccato dance of death and then:

       The sound of a chopper.

       Craig grabbed the radio and dashed to the center of the LZ. He heard a human voice coming out of the radio, “. . .was that you, Black Box Two-Niner?”

        He saw the helicopter. Craig waved his arms like there was no tomorrow.

        “Is it a hot LZ?” the voice asked in crackling, fucking miraculous splendor.

        “It’s pretty damn warm.”

        “Get ready,” came the reply.

        The H-34 dropped out of sight beyond a hill. A few eternal moments later, the big lovable green insect came a-flyin’, swooping down low over the mountain of the shadow of death. MARINES was painted on its tail. The blessed bird flared and hovered above those stumps that had earlier been trees. And then there he was—the  United States by-God Marine leaped out while his gunner buddy on the chopper kept up the fire cover. Green tracers whizzed all over the damned place, some of them whacking the skin and the glass of the chopper.

         Craig was the last of the walking dead nine soldiers to get aboard. And so they were able—by  the grace of God and the fierce determination of them US by-God Marines—able to hover the hell out of there. And we were grateful. But we didn’t know it yet, because we could never really know, never truly understand nor appreciate,  all that he and his men had done that day: all the hell and high ordnance they had eluded that day, and just how  perilously close that day was to being the big chill for them, so damned close to requiring of them their last full measure of devotion. And the appreciation that would later be  shown to them was cast into the shadow of a gray granite wall in Washington DC, but that was to come much later. For now, let’s just say it’s good to be alive. At least that’s what Sgt. Shireman said when they got back to base, but he didn’t say it with much emotion. That would come later too.

As we approach Veterans' Day 2020, thanks to our brave soldiers who lay their lives on the line for our United States and the free world.

King of Soul

Philadelphia Freedom

 It is no surprise that our nation’s attention is now riveted on downtown Philadelphia.

Our national leadership is hanging in the balance as Americans wonder about what those 140,000 straggling Philly vote-counts will decide for the state of Pennsylvania and our United States of America.

It’s no surprise that our big question revolves around what happens in that big city. 

After all, our nation’s gravest problem is in our major cities.

What, pray tell, might that grave problem be?

~ Police disregard for the Constitutional rights of poor people and minorities. 

~ Governmental separation of men and children from their families, whether those families are in inner cities or the outer regions of our immigration-fed melting pot.

~ Police brutality.

What? You don’t believe me?

How else could  a phone video change the course of a nation? Something is out of whack.

How else could a botched-up murderous execution of a no-knock arrest warrant suddenly change the focus of our national attention?

Read between the tweets, folks.

We’ve got big problems with law enforcement in our cities. We need reform. Police Reform.

That “Defund Police” term that rolled into our public awareness a few months ago—it was an unfortunate nomenclature, because it gave Republicans and other law-respecting citizens an excuse to deny and reject our dire need for police reform.

We need to fix this. 

That’s why American attention is riveted on Philadelphia right now. We need to fix this—and not by throwing unidentifiable, masked, assault-weapon-toting unauthorized militia at the problem.

We need real cops— Cops who are trained to keep the peace, not destroy it. 

That’s why our electoral eyes are riveted on Philadelphia right now.

That’s why our attention is redirected to the city of brotherly love, the city of highest esteem in Jesus’ final statement to his churches that were being founded in his wake, and are still being founded, in his name. Pardon my risky language, but I am a Christian.

You’re not? No problem for me. Go in peace. My brother Peter advised me to: as far as possible, be at peace with all men.

Anyway, back to my Philly litany . . .

That’s why our electoral eyes are riveted on Philadelphia right now—the city that brought forth our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, pre-ambled with these words:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility . . .

. . . even though we’re a little cracked up right now.

You gotta love 'em, those voters in Philly!

 

Glass half-Full

Make America Work Again

Yesterday I received a text with this frightening question:

“Do you know what is truly terrifying? Dem’s TOTAL control:

—Higher Taxes—Defunding the Police—Packing the Courts”

I did not inquire about the identity of the sender(s). But a little later, I thought I might hazard a guess about the intent of this all-spooks-day message.   

My guess is that the senders are star-struck republicans who’ve been taken for a ride on the make-america-fear-againtrumper train.  But that train is scheduled for departure from the DC station on Wednesday, this week. Maybe they want me to hop on.

No thank you. Now is not the time to foment fear and suspicion. What we do need now is across-the-aisle cooperation. We need to get together and find  fixes for these covid condundra, our economic shortfalls and employment woes.

Now is the time for all men and women to come to the aid of our fellow-citizens.

Just like in the 1930's, there is plenty of work out there that needs to be done. 

But the bygone days of rampant resource recovery are gone forever. We find ourselves now in an age of rabid resource rapacity.

The truth is: We need to restructure--to update--most of our industrial base with an eye toward meeting the needs of a planet that is suffering from resource deficits.

Our beloved home-sweet-home is being depleted of the precious minerals and resources that made us great back in the days of Douglass, Carnegie, Bell, Vanderbilt, Carver, Louie Armstrong, Rockefeller, Morgan, Ellington, Gershwin, Thurgood, Rosa Parks and Go-Cat-Go!

We need business and industry leaders now, for the 21st-century, who are motivated by constructive, public-minded, practical creativity, instead of the obsolete, worn-out motivator of fat'n'happy pappy and their so-called "citizens united" politically-domineering profiteers. 

Along with that, We need a .gov executive branch that will bring Americans back together to get done whatever needs to be done--to keep us functioning as the already-great nation/planet we are.

But let me step off the soapbox.

Meanwhile back at the ranch . . .

In de-crypting yesterday's fear-monger message, I was puzzled about what entity could they be referring to in that mysterious “Dem’s”  reference.

My guess is its Democrats they’re alluding to.

But that didn’t make any sense, because one of the most effective, problem-solving Dems of all time delivered such a magnanimous challenge to us--to our make-america-great grandparents, in his inaugural address in 1933:

“ So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

So their fearmongering make-america-scared-again campaign won’t work on me.  Guess I fooled them!

Glass half-Full