Another letter to Sen. Dave McCormick

Dear Sen. McCormick:

Thank you for sending me the statement you made to President Trump at his latest Pennsylvania rally.  Fawning over the President not a good look for you.  

Trying to ingratiate yourself to a goofball who is about to involve us in a war with Venezuela, deserts our allies, wrecks the economy, tears down a portion of the White House to build a ballroom, takes away protection for 85% of our wetlands, says global warming is a hoax, deports children, calls women reporters piggies....  I’ll stop there, but I think you catch my drift.  You are trying way too hard to be the teacher’s pet, and it is pathetic.

I know you have five years left on your term, but I don’t think voters will forget.  And Pennsylvania voters are not as stupid as you may think.  The judicial elections in November were a reminder.

Sincerely,

     Roy Christman

Tonight's awards go to...

Indiana, where Republican legislators refused to bow to Administration threats and voted against  gerrymandering their congressional district lines to elect more Republicans.  There are members of the Republican Party who still uphold American values, and they deserve our thanks.

Bulgarian citizens,  who turned out by the millions in Sofia to protest their government earlier this week.  The Prime Minister resigned after the protest.  The demonstrators surpassed the 3.5% mark, and it worked.

 

The Declaration of War on Venezuela

It’s a really busy season.  Presents to buy and wrap, holiday cards to send, parties to attend, notes to write–the list goes on.  Somehow during all this activity, I missed the news about Congress declaring war on Venezuela.  I don’t know what the vote was, or the rational for the Declaration of War, or what the strategy will be.  Will the draft be re-instated?  Do we have allies in this war?  Will we use atomic weapons?

I need to pay more attention.

Seizing the means of communication

One of the first acts of authoritarians is to seize control of the news media.  It is difficult for the populace to know what is occurring if the only sources of news are controlled by the government.  We’ve already seen Zuckerberg bend to Trump’s desires.  The Murdock family is complicit.  Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post are bent, the L.A. Times is bent, Trump has “Truth Social,” X is full of misleading racist crap.  And now CNN, which has already compromised with Trump in various ways, is about to be sold to Trump’s lapdogs who will do his bidding. 

I keep thinking I’ll be approached with an offer from the Trump family to change the tone of this blog.  Would I do it?  Depends on how much they offer.

Learning new things from the Trump administration

One of the most interesting things about the Trump administration is learning all kinds of things I never knew.  Here is just one small example.  Today I learned that the Environmental Protection Agency has discovered that human activity does not cause climate change.

I did know that Trump was pushing oil and gas and coal.  What I did not realize until today was that none of that has anything to do with climate change, which is evidently a hoax.  

I also found out that the E.P.A. under Administrator Lee Zeldin is about to rule that climate change does not threaten human health.  Evidently that is only the belief of what an E.P.A. spokeswoman called a “climate cult.”

Also, did you know that vaccines cause autism?  And this is the greatest economy ever.  

I didn’t know any of this.

Mary Antin's first day of school

A mailer arrived today from the Heritage Foundation.  It included a vicious “poll” asking about criminal immigrants and hyping mass deportations.  Along with that was a warning that harboring an “illegal” immigrant was a violation of federal law.  

My heritage does not resemble that of the Heritage Foundation.  Mine goes back to Roger Williams and William Penn and the Declaration of Independence and Henry David Thoreau and even Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett.  “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”  I think I remembered that correctly.

These Heritage Foundation people are the same people who would turn in Anne Frank.  Their heritage is that of the Nazis, the Quislings, the Ku Klux Klan, the slave catchers.

Here is an antidote for you from Promised Land by Mary Antin about her first day at school.  It’s an America to fight for:

     Father himself conducted us to school.  He would not have delegated that mission to the President of the United States.  He had awaited the day with impatience equal to mine.  He took long strides in his eagerness, the rest of us running and hopping to keep up.

     At last the four of us stood around the teacher’s desk; and my father, in his impossible English gave us over to  her charge, with some broken word of his hopes for us that his swelling heart could no longer contain....  I think Miss Nixon guessed what my father’s best English could not convey.  I think she divined that by the simple act of delivering our school certificates to her he took possession of America.

Nurses are no longer a profession

Well, at least according to the Trump administration.  The “Big Beautiful Bill” evidently has a list of occupations that are no longer consider “professions.”  According to a list from Newsweek, non-professions include:

nursing

physician assistants

physical therapists

audiologists

architects

accountants

educators

social workers.

Why?