Preventing the Return of the Grifter in Chief

In the run-up to the November elections somebody needs to cover, release a, "Cliff's Notes," style summary of the, "Project 2025," document.

Trump is a front man for ultra-conservatives and their reprehensible causes. 

 

These aren't the MAGAt mobs, they are rich, megalomaniacal, oligarch wannabes, and seriously disturbing right, wing-nut organizations like the Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty. They want to present agendas, and pull the strings in the next (should the worst happen) Orange Menace administration. They're really not competent at much of anything, or productive, because everything they have is procured for them by others; see also: 45^th administration, inheritance, under-compensated employees and infrastructure provided by government (e.g., Internet, roads, bridges, airports, seaports, public schools, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC), water, waste water, electricity provision and distribution, etc...). These are insecure, white people who want, only for themselves, everything they can beg, borrow or steal; know naught the meaning of enough.

Why do they need a front man; grifter?

Because they can't sell what folks don't need, want or understand to a reasonably large and gullible audience. Can't connive to the masses if you can't get their attention, because you basically can't stand to be around said masses.

Hence, the front man. A successful con artist that has amazed the authoritarian wannabes by not, yet, being held to account by the people and organizations that have eventually realized that they've been victims of the sting(s).

Bolstering the aristocrat pretenders' egos and operations are the crowds of incompetent, near do wells who want someone else to blame for their perceived lack of success in life. They are also white people easily convinced that the, “scary,” non-white folks, that comprise minority-majority, “done it.” This fear of, “different,” people drives their political and social preferences to the hard, wing-nut, right; well beyond conservative norms.

Right, wing-nuts didn't just happen yesterday, during the Obama administration or even during the (un)Civil War years. There have been hard right, wing-nut, self-loathing, misogynistic, self-centered, or otherwise damaged people, and their regressive causes, around forever.

The current generation of self-centered, authoritarian wannabes lacked a leader to put them into position behind the curtain, pretense to a wizard in a retrograde society. They latched onto a grifter who had successfully promoted himself, via multiple methods (oft prone to being illegal), into the appearance of wealth and power without being held to account; yet.

Trump is old, but he's still a useful idiot for Putin, Qpublicans and the wealthy aristocrats in waiting. Folks using titles like: federalist, textualist and originalist... Organizations with names like: Moms for Liberty, Heritage and Family Foundations need his grifting prowess. None of these efforts yielded a leader capable of the kind of successful, enormous scale, grift like the one who became the 45^th President of these United States of America.

If there is a second, Orange Menace term we will see the, “Project 2025,” text become reality... Orwell's, “1984,” made real.

This needs to become common knowledge so that the aforementioned horror story doesn't become reality.

Campaign Speech: TX House_20 in 2024

Good Afternoon. Good to see y'all.

Many of us here today were alive, if kinda young, when expanded voting and civil rights were encoded into law in the mid-1960s, same for when Roe v. Wade became legal precedent in the early 70s.

We gained a certain level of satisfaction and went on with our lives. Surely these things will not change.

Here we are, now... All those things have, in fact, changed, because too many of us didn't show up at the polls to make sure those things would not be changed.

There were, and still are, folks who stewed in resentment about those issues, and more, who have come out from under the rocks, where they'd festered for decades, when an African, American man was elected President of these United States; twice.

Time to restore, and stand with, an America that works for all Americans.

I'm campaigning for TX. House, district 20, this year. Population growth has shrunk the district down to western Williamson county.

I'm running against an incumbent who votes to send public money to private schools...

Public education for all is the key to success, for all.

Doesn't seem to know anything about Climate Change.

We do not inherit the Earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children. We must strive to leave everything better than we found it, for ourselves and all who will follow.

Shows no knowledge of the crisis created around women's health care issues. The attack on a woman's, maternal, health care is dangerous, fatally so for some.

A woman's ability to control all aspects of her own health care is an essential right.

Doesn't demonstrate knowledge about international borders, and throws 100s of millions, to billions, of Texas taxpayer's money at the work that the Constitution assigns to the federal government.

Legislation to improve the situation at the border was hashed out in a bi-partisan, US Senate committee, then trashed, because Republicans want to run on problems at the US border with Mexico. Senator James Lankford (R-OK) was rebuked by the Republican party of OK for his work on said committee...

The audacity!

No good deed goes unpunished.

Arizona's SB1070 in 2010... TX's SB4 in 2024...

This is what happens when insecure, white people, who know naught about, “love thy neighbor,” are reacting to something called minority/majority. I find legislation like this to be idiotic, embarrassing and wrong; needs to be repealed.

“I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.”

Save America! Register to vote, check your registration and vote for Democrats for every office, in every election!

Democracy is in our hands!

If you don't believe that, you need to peruse the Heritage Foundation's, Project 2025...

Orwell's , 1984, realized.

The DOJ's Late Stage Evidence Drop...

The DOJ recently released 10s of thousands of pages of evidence related to the criminal charges facing the 45^th President, and some of his associates...

Why now?

Let's speculate...

Is it because some of the evidence was acquired via intelligence sources whose identities, means and methods need protection?

Did that information need be reacquired/verified, because intelligence agencies don't necessarily follow court approved rules for the collection of intelligence that has proven to be valuable as evidence?

Did the evidence need be sheltered from the personnel that the 45^th President seeded some federal agencies and offices with; folks whose loyalties were more to said 45^th President than to their oath of office?

At this stage of the prosecution of the many indictments against the 45^th President, and his associates, a bombshell, of the aforementioned nature, would be seriously appreciated.

TikTok's Shared Security Risks

TikTok uses, “cookies,” as well as other means and methods, to collect data about each and every user of their application (a.k.a., app)... So does every app in the computer/Internet universe. The data collected is for sale, internally or externally, to generate revenue/money/profits. Selling user data is very profitable; ask your tech mega-millionaires and billionaires.

Make, “cookies,” illegal, and make protecting any user data collected a legal obligation... Make selling user data, without specific user consent, illegal. Make vendors charge for their product or service up front, and payment data becomes another information cache that vendors are legally obligated to protect.

If vendors aren't able to protect user data that is criminal negligence, at best. Ignorance of illegal data access is not a defense against criminal charges; ignorance of the law has never been a defense. Getting “hacked,” is criminal negligence. Large, successful hacks are felonies for hackers and hacked.

If information is perceived as valuable it will be sought by criminal means if it is not legally available. Therefore, collecting and retaining user information requires vendors take appropriate protective measures, and are criminally culpable if said measures are insufficient.

Protecting collected data against unwarranted access is a universal obligation for any, and all, who collect and, no matter the time frame, store data.

Creating Multi-Purpose, Regenerative Villages

Try building a solar farm(s) tall enough that shaded villages may be built beneath them... 

Use solar energy to pump sea, or polluted water to the top of a tower of filters; 

Let gravity cause the water to pass through filters, and spiral turbines; 

Take nearly potable water to an electrolysis vat; 

Capture hydrogen for fuel cell generated electricity; 

Capture oxygen for waste water treatment; 

Electrolysis leaves micro and nano plastics at the bottom of the vat; etc...

Just a few suggestions.

Creating Affordable Indoor Living

When the last of Glass-Steagall (G-S) was repealed not only was Wall Street allowed to mix risky, any damn thing they can create and sell, with less risky investments, read: mortgages, they also were able to eliminate the boring, read: affordable, Savings and Loan (S&L) financial institutions. This allowed Wall Street to access, read: dominate, the biggest financial transactions most folks will ever make: home mortgages.

To get living indoors back to where most people can afford it will require a return of, something similar to, G-S, S&L and Postal (state) Banking.

My 23 year old house has gained, in price, over 100% of the cost to build it. We can't cash in on that value, because we (wife and I) would still need to purchase or rent another, overvalued, place to live.

My son, an engineer, and his wife, a registered nurse, can't buy a home in California, because they can't afford it! So, they pay ludicrously high rent; more than twice the monthly mortgage payment I pay in Texas.

The aforementioned is ridiculous, and can only be fixed by progressive Democrats restoring regulation to mortgage lending; reduced home prices and mortgage payments will force down apartment rents to prevent all the tenants from leaving.

That's why I am running for state House of Representatives in Texas and supporting Democrats running for office nation wide.

A Plan for Peace in the Middle East

The government of Israel is on the path to becoming a significant part of the problem in the current crises in the Middle East.

The terrorist actions of Hamas on October 7^th, 2023 required a response from Israel, and it has happened; is becoming, more and more, a part of the problem. A precisely targeted response in Gaza would have been appropriate in the eyes of many observers, but the serious overreaction by Israel has caused apprehension from some who had initially supported Israel's military activity.

If the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can't, can't be bothered to, demonstrate significant restraint might the Knesset try again to use a vote of no confidence to rein in said government?

The excuse of, ”during a war,” has been used in the first, failed effort at a vote of no confidence in the Knesset. The excuse is hard to believe since the war is, currently, mostly Israeli military activity. The war could be paused, and the IDF assume a defensive posture, while the Israelis fix the problem of a government perceived as cruel, perhaps criminal, in it's extreme response to the recent provocation.

If not, could the IDF use the opportunity to declare that it can not follow illegal orders. Criminal allegations, of genocide (by Israel), have been filed by South Africa in the International Court of Justice. Most of the citizens of Gaza, whose only fault was that they live in a place that Hamas has been allowed to occupy, bear the brunt of the IDF's assault. Hamas had started as the elected government of Gaza, and has stayed in power; refused to leave.

Next option to be considered might be an international intervention initiated by the United Nations. The assumption, that some have made, is that the USA could just order a cease fire, and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would readily capitulate, is just wrong.

Perhaps a two state solution, with a proposed new Palestinian state in the Sinai: sharing an eastern border with Israel; western border parallel, approximately 100km from the eastern border; northern border on the Mediterranean Sea; southern border on the Gulf of Aqaba.

Palestinian residents would move there, if they will, voluntarily from Gaza and the West Bank. The new territory would have the potential for significant economic prosperity; be objected to strenuously by the surrounding nations from whom little, to no, constructive help has ever been proferred.

Given the long historic/prehistoric tendency to violence in the Middle East the whole plan would require international insistence to succeed.

Something must change, and this is a proposal to consider.

Will SCOTUS Enable Democracy's End?

The orange menace knew that he'd lost the presidential election in November of 2020, and knew that leaving the office of the President would create an opportunity for civil and, potentially, criminal allegations against him to proceed. A life long ability to avoid being held to account could end.

So, the last few months of the 45th administration was spent attempting to find any means to avoid the inevitable exit of the orange menace from the White House.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” 45 tweeted on Dec. 19, 2020. Just one of several of his tweets promoting the day. “Be there, will be wild!” An open invitation to insurrection for 45's loyal MAGAt supporters on the day that a joint session of congress would certify the results of the recent presidential election.

On January 6^th, 2021 the exiting president spoke to the crowd gathered near the capital and invited the crowd to walk to the Capital while insisting that law enforcement and Secret Service agents remove the magnetometers that detect and stop those carrying guns from approaching the Capital.

These, and quite a few other means, were attempted to overturn the election, upheld against every challenge in the courts and certified in the US Congress, of a new president.

It has been proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the activities before, during and after the elections of November 2020 were an attempted insurrection. That the 45^th president encouraged and participated in said insurrection is clear. Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution is also absolutely clear in it's intent that such activity shall prohibit any who have taken, and broken, an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution from any office where said sworn oath will be required again.

It is not clear that the current SCOTUS justices understand this rather straight forward concept that would allow states to ban insurrectionists from the ballot for elected office in their state's elections.

If SCOTUS does not allow states the ability to control access to the ballots, in their states, they will forever be known as the enablers of the next insurrection.

Regulating AI

A state legislator, Scott Wiener, in California has recently proposed legislation to force companies working with AI to test code/software before releasing any product to market.  This is apropos because the business of business is profit and there is often a tendency to rush product/services to market to increase potential profits; consequences be damned.

I suggest the following as an addition to said legislation; any AI related regulation:

Creating and publishing fictitious content using AI technology in any way, shape or form without a disclaimer identifying the use of said technology can be assumed to have been created and published with malicious intent;

Creating, and publishing, an image  that bears any resemblance to an existing person(s), or write and publish text that uses the content from, or identity of, an existing individual(s) without a disclaimer identifying the work as fiction, and including notifications that consent was/wasn't attained, then the fiction can be considered to have been created and published with malicious intent;

If a publication, of any sort, allows fictitious content of their own, or of others, creation to be made available for public consumption on their site, it may be assumed that said content is shared with malicious intent.


I suggest this, and any other carefully considered, regulation of the use of AI to be necessary, because computer/telecommunications technology is incredibly powerful and omnipresent in the world today.  Said technology need not be intentionally malicious to be the cause of very bad consequences, but the results need be thoroughly reviewed to attain reasonable certainty, one way or the other; corrected, as needed.  It would be better if said adverse results were discovered, by sufficient testing, and averted before software/product has been released out into the world.

The federal government would be the best place for said legislation to occur, but they've been hampered, intentionally (by a Republican majority in Congress in 1995), when the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was defunded; effectively eliminated.

No legislative official can be expected to be fluent in everything that legislation must address, so investigative agencies (reporting to any legislative body) are essential.  The Republican legislators knew that when they destroyed the OTA.

The Government Accounting Office has created the Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) to do what the OTA had done.  STAA has recently, in 2024, published informative documents related to AI (GAO-24-106246 and GAO-24-107237).  

Sufficient understanding and regulation of technology, including AI, is both possible and essential.

Why Vote for Democrats?

First and foremost, that is voting in your own best interests (see also, the book: Bulls, Bears and the Ballot Box).

Furthermore, let Republicans tell you:

Senator James Lankford (R-OK) was censured by the OK Republican Party for his role in bipartisan border policy negotiations. Republicans had been demanding changes in (Mexican) border policy for years, and Senator Lankford sat on a committee that has just negotiated a bill that gives the Republicans almost everything that they had asked for, and was punished for presenting these favorable results during the Biden (Democratic) administration; in an election year.

The horror!

Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) requested, while speaking on the House floor, that any of his fellow Republicans, “give me one thing (that we've accomplished), one, that I can go campaign on, and say we did.”

Nobody could; nobody did.

Meanwhile, back in Texas: Republicans are planning to defy a Supreme Court ruling against activity that Gov. Abbott ordered, and multiple state agencies did, on the (Mexican) border.

The previous President recently was adjudicated to owe over $83 million dollars to E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after being convicted of her rape. That same former president still has 91 felony indictments against him.

This is the Republican party, in it's own words and deeds.

If this isn't enough reason to vote for Democrats, try this on for size: the Infrastructure Act; the Inflation Reduction Act; the Chips Act, etc... These bills were all passed into law during the first two years of the Biden administration. Monopoly and Anti-Trust Action by the FTC and DOJ continue to make progress during this administration.

The economy has experienced record growth and unemployment is at historic lows during this, Biden, administration.

Your vote matters.

How can you tell?

In states with Republican majorities in the legislature, and Republican Governors, they are doing everything they can get away with to reduce voting rights.

Register. Vote. Communicate with your elected officials.

 

The Big Myth Thrives...

 To the detriment of the vast majority of us all.

The book: The Big Myth; How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

...Details the enormous falsehood of, “The Market,” as the center of the economy, and society.

Check out (Internet search): Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) to begin to shred the, “Big Myth.”

Also, check out the books:

On the Wealth of Nations by P.J. O'Rourke. This book provides insight into what Adam Smith actually wrote about things like, “the invisible hand,” without becoming a door-stopper tome.

A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises by Richard Vague. Details how private, not government, debt is a leading factor, every time, in creating financial crises.

Republicans (too oft aided by, “neo-liberal,” Democrats) are funded by megalomaniacal billionaires (folks who kept billions of $ for themselves while 10s of thousands of employees did/do the work) that fancy themselves as an American aristocracy... Hope to set the USA on a course that returns us to a time before the 1860s.

In the mid-twentieth century the United States made significant progress on: civil and voting rights, women's health care and the aforementioned FFRDCs. Self-satisfied with that progress Americans went on with their lives, and forgot (paid no attention to) the fact that, from beneath their rocks, regressive, insecure, white people still festered.

In the early 21^st century the election of Barrack Obama, an African American (black) man, to two terms as President of these United States brought the worst of humanity (labeled, correctly, by Hillary Clinton as, “deplorables”) out from under their stones.

Under the guise of 'Federalists' and 'Originalists' the wealthy primed the courts, via their Republican sycophants in Congress (aided by the 43rd and 45^th administration), to dilute both voting and civil rights, then strip women of control of their own health care.

Fear of immigrants was stoked with the deplorable base while the means to solve the problem were impeded by the very Republicans in Congress who complained loudly, while campaigning on and about that very issue.

In order to preserve, and perhaps even advance, our Democracy and economy we all must register and vote for Democrats, while communicating satisfaction, or a lack thereof, with all our leaders; avail ourselves of every opportunity to act.