WHY SHOULD I VOTE?

“Vote early, vote often’ (quote often attributed to Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley 1955-1976)

In the Great State of Indiana I can vote by mail (some nonsense about being old and all that). Even got an unsolicited, mass mailing from state Republican Committee with built-in Absentee Ballot application. [Ain’t we life-long Republicans supposed to be against that this year?] All I have to do is ask a ballot be mailed to me which I then mail back. That’s assuming it gets to me and gets back to wherever mail-in ballots go to die – I mean be counted. From all reports if I don’t start and finish the process quickly it doesn’t matter whether or not I did.

[SIDEBAR: There is absolutely no reason to believe voting by mail bears inherent fraud. This is a line of desperation to create discord and distrust. Many states have used the process for years with imperceptible degree of misconduct. This past week Post Office sent reminder to vote by mail early. In this observation of 50 years voting, the problem is not in the casting, but in the counting.]

That said, I’d have to mail vote soon. In current situation mail from our home mailbox to Clay County Court House (about ¾ mi.) has to first go to Indy and then back.

The last time I made the effort to vote in person was 2012 election. As it happened this coincided with our wedding anniversary: and coincided with my once again being in the hospital. The doctor wanted me to stay and do a heart cath. I insisted on going home because I wanted to vote. Oh, yeah, because of that anniversary thing, too.

The polling place was in City Hall. There was no way I had strength to walk up steps, and they had no accommodations for we old folks. Ended up not voting. It didn’t matter. What I discovered is that my lone vote would have changed nothing. Nobody for whom I would have voted won.

Voting is a Right for which a great many people have paid a great price, and should be so honored. Some will say it is my ‘obligation’ to vote. It is not. Voting is a Right. not obligation. And as my father said, “you have no obligation to exercise every right you possess”.

Since 2012 not voting has become something of my way of protest against a system which does not now, and may have never worked. I have no money, know of no anti-vote group to join, and am much less able to march up City Hall steps than in 2012. The only way I have of ‘demonstrating’ my disgust with it all it to affirmatively refuse to vote.

I have it on best of authority that ‘the fix is in’

I live in a state which always votes Republican

I have no reasons to think any one vote matters

I am not sure non-Republican votes are counted

I have no hope for nation once known as America

I am not alone in this

Why should I vote?

Sept 11 2001 We Were There

 We were there

We were there when everyone from Maine to California said it was a beautiful day to fly

One of those clear days that gives a lie to coming events

We were flying for business reasons

We were flying for a deserved vacation

We thanked God we had not flown today

Something that would be new and different and troubling

We quietly waited to find out what would happen

We joined others thinking to take back what we did not know had been lost

We remembered all those horror stories and felt reassured in our vague fear of flying

We were there to appreciate the unbelievable view from the Bastilles

Few before noticed how far you can see on a clear beautiful day as they pass through on way to somewhere else

We sat at a desk absorbed by the day’s tasks

We stopped by the break room for some coffee

We feared what it might be like to work in a big building in a big city

When as always there was one more thing to do

We called home, leaving a message of love

We helped someone we’d never met before that day

We prayed for people we did not know and can never meet

We were there when radio and TV from Taneytown to Terre Haute to Tucson interrupted Special Report just in: An airplane, size unknown, had crashed into some building in New York

We ran to avoid the falling dirt, debris, the bodies and buildings

We knew someone who fell, knew no one who fell, knew everyone

We watched TV until we couldn’t remember what was live and what was repeated

We were there in far away as Indiana when no one knew how to respond

An odd sense of controlled panic gripped us -- a grip on a nation never loosed entirely since

We closed businesses in fear of something, somewhere

We stayed at our post, somehow unwilling to be defeated

We went home and hugged our husbands, wives, children, anyone

We were there when none on airplanes, none watching on TV, none living in small towns across the continent knew of how many trillions of dollars would be expended because of that day

We routinely handed photo ID to the guard

We checked pockets before going through the metal detector

We watched with suspicion perfectly innocent people as they went about their lives

We didn’t know it for awhile, but the world before that day would never come back

Future generations with no memory of life before that beautiful day to fly will not know why life is as it has come to be afterward. Seeing only a remote event and not our common experience, they’ll accept life as it now is

We were there

Latest Book Tour - Cohen

 

Latest Book Tour Begins (continues?)

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Ecclesiastics 12.12 (KJV)

In past year over ten best selling tell-all books about Trump have been released. These have been written by wide variety of insiders, experts, the reporters Woodward & Bernstein who ‘brought down’ President Richard Nixon, and by Trump niece Mary L Trump, PhD. [Note: as of now a new book, with tapes, is pending from Bob Woodward)

That’s just “scratching the surface” however. According to ‘Biography of Donald Trump’ on Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

“Prior to his 2016 campaign, Trump was already the focus of many books describing his life as a businessman and politician… Almost one year after his inauguration as president, The Guardian noted more than 4,500 English-language books about Trump had been published since he took office, compared to just over 800 works about predecessor Barack Obama during his first year in office.”

Now comes Disloyal: A Memoir – The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump by Michael Cohen, September 8 2020, distributed by Simon & Schuster Publishers

First, the obvious, Cohen is an admitted liar. At this point, though, while still technically a federal prisoner, he has to tell truth or face more jail time (and libel lawsuits). It should be noted fifteen-year business manager for Trump Family, Beverly Res, stated in televised interview she had read the book and didn’t find anything to which she’d object or which she found false.

All Cohen’s book can do, anyhow, is confirm the amoral, unethical, and at best law-skirting way Trump did the Family business. All of which has previously been chronicled in the prior revelations. The independent National Public Radio (NPR) review of Disloyal includes:

“Over Disloyal's 400-plus pages, Cohen rips through accounts of dozens of incidents, ranging from Trump allegedly cheating mom-and-pop vendors for services rendered at Trump properties to incidents of the president making racist remarks to his own involvement in trying to make a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow. That's in addition to Cohen's narrative of the payoff that Trump made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election — which was made via Cohen.”

However, one book does not necessarily reveal the completed picture. Not one eye witness. Not one piece of admissible evidence. Not one undisputed fact. It is the accumulation of these pieces making a case presented before an open-minded, fair jury of peers. Following are some of the pieces I have noted as they pass across my laptop screen.

BOOKS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED (Descriptions in Notes at end)

These best-sellers are vetted and fact-checked, with no ‘libel’ or ‘slander’ suits filed to date.

TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald by Timothy O'Brien, October 2005, Grand Central Publishing. (updated 2016)

IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America by David Cay Johnston, January 2018, Simon & Schuster Publishers.

DARK TOWERS; Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, by David Enrich, February 2020, Harper-Collins Publishing.

TRUE CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS: The Investigation of Donald Trump by Jeffrey Toobin, August 2020, Penguin-Random House Publishers.

VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES (Descriptions in Notes at end)

Donald Trump's Business Links to the Mob March 2016, British Broadcasting Corporation Newsnight documentary is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3B-tw2sB0&list=WL&index=54&t=0s

How Donald Trump Got Involved in a Global Fraud August 2017, The New Yorker Magazine available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIKhxohwYTc

The Family Business: Trump and Taxes November 2018, Showtime documentary available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQwsPcToCQQ&t=930s

*********************************************************************************************************

In this opinion, and solely in this opinion, it will take years to reveal and unravel the corruption and crimes of Trump and his administration. Meanwhile, if Candidate Trump is re-elected to the Office of President, Constitutional ‘rule of law’ will cease to exist in the United States of America, and the truth may never be unraveled. America will begin the decent into darkness demanded by the course of human history.

The reader certainly retains right to unilaterally defend against all comers the infallibility of their champion. The defense of “don’t believe” any fallibility in your champion, though, is no response. It’s been said “ignorance is bliss” – but it is still ignorance. And willful ignorance is still willful.

If you support Trump and don’t care whether the above is true or not, then vote for him with my blessing. But, forget not that none escape consequences of the eternal law ‘you will reap what you sow’.

Accept it, deny it, ignore it, in this opinion, and solely in this opinion, the reader has been warned.

*******************************************************************************************

NOTES:

BOOKS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED

TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald by Timothy O'Brien, October 2005, Grand Central Publishing. (updated 2016)

Once upon a time — long before The Apprentice and the golf courses and the TRUMP-branded-underwear-vodka-mattresses-steaks-wine-and-who-knows-what-else and the questionable online education venture and the choreographed wrestling farces and the phallic skyscrapers and the sprawling casinos and the boxing matches and the magazine covers and the beauty pageants and the fisticuffs with City Hall and the serial bankruptcies and the bungled real estate deals and the yacht and the airline and the shady, thuggish business partners and the three marriages and the football team and the 2016 presidential race and the size of his Trump junk and the litany of DOPES! and LOSERS! and the guerrilla takeover of GOP debates and the flagrant race-baiting and the Great Wall of Mexico and the proposals for deporting eleven million people and the 6.6 million Facebook friends and and the seven million Twitter followers and the brawls at political rallies and the flip-flopping on abortion and the punishments for abortions and the nuclear weapons for Japan and South Korea and the white supremacists and Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle and John McCain’s war record and Hillary Clinton getting schlonged and Barack Obama’s birth certificate and Mitt Romney’s kneeling — Donald set his sights on Hollywood. –Timothy O’Brien, introduction to “TrumpNation”

IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America by David Cay Johnston, January 2018, Simon & Schuster Publishers.

David Cay Johnston is an investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting. He has followed and reported on the business career of Trump since his arrival in Manhattan. Leaked to Johnston was the only publicly available Trump tax return (video reference below). In 2016 Johnston wrote an unauthorized biography, “The Making of Donald Trump”. Johnston states in his book: “...reminded us of what every con artist knows: people see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe, and let their hopes and wishes vanquish their skepticism. Unless and until some fact they cannot reconcile slaps them hard in the face, the con’s marks will keep seeing the world through the credulous and distorted lens they fashioned for themselves.” Johnston has publicly stated Trump has roots in the American Mafia and had used his private airplane to transport illegal drugs for them; and that he has profited from Russian connections. Johnston has followed these allegations with challenge for Trump to sue.

Dark Towers; Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, by David Enrich, February 2020, Harper-Collins Publishing.

From National Public Radio review: “Trump's murky relationship with Deutsche Bank is still under congressional investigation, so Enrich's story is necessarily incomplete. Still, the book has enough detail to make its case that Deutsche Bank was more than just one more rogue bank; it is a cautionary tale of what happens when a bank pursues profits at any cost, without being weighed down by pesky moral scruples.”

True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump by Jeffrey Toobin, August 2020, Penguin-Random House Publishers.

Toobin is a lawyer, blogger, best-selling author and legal analyst for CNN and The New Yorker. During the Iran–Contra affair, he served as an associate counsel in the Department of Justice, and moved from government into writing during the 1990s. This book is “a real-life legal thriller about the prosecutors and congressional investigators pursuing the truth about Donald Trump's complicity in several crimes--and why they failed.”

VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES

Donald Trump's Business Links to the Mob March 2016, British Broadcasting Corporation Newsnight documentary is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3B-tw2sB0&list=WL&index=54&t=0s Whatever is believed about this documentary, BBC has ‘no dog in the fight’ and there were reasons the questions needed asking.

How Donald Trump Got Involved in a Global Fraud August 2017, The New Yorker Magazine available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIKhxohwYTc Business reporter Adam Davidson followed the money trail with one of President Donald “Trump's past deals – the construction of a new Trump Tower in the Republic of Georgia. Through a series of shell companies and shady deals, connecting the dots leads all the way to Vladimir Putin.”

The Family Business: Trump and Taxes November 2018, Showtime documentary available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQwsPcToCQQ&t=930s Directed by Emmy nominee Jenny Carchman and produced by Oscar nominees Liz Garbus and Justin Wilkes, short-film on unraveling of Trump family tax frauds.

Why I Write What I Write About This Election

 

Why I Write What I Write About This Election

The question is not ‘Who do you favor?’ Nor is the question ‘Who will win?’

The question of the hour is this, ‘Why are these our choices?’

David L. Lewis

Once again, for the record, as I have been saying for five years, Joe Biden would not be a my first choice for, well, anything. But, I seriously doubt Uncle Joe may be a danger to the Republic alluded to in pro-Trump campaign advertising. 

Trump, on the other hand is the clear and present danger seen by this  observer – who has nothing else worthwhile to do but observe stuff.

Everything I write about this election is motivated by frail hope of getting some one lone soul who supports Trump know the whole story – and not just the story they’ve been taught to believe. There is always more to the story, usually the more not seen on Fox or other “right-wing” news outlets...

• There are abundant witnesses as far back as 1980’s that Trump has been seen in New York business as a grifter, a con man. Growing up with Fred, Sr., a grifter father whose business partner who was a known ‘made man’ in the American Mafia, can influence a kid to follow in his old-man’s modeling.

• There is also overwhelming evidence Trump was a serial business failure. The only thing he has been good at is being ‘front man’ for the success of others.

• There are multiple professional psychiatrists and psychologists who’ve made in-depth study of readily available information and determined Trump is a danger to himself and the Republic.

• There is available information back to his childhood that Trump is privately known as an habitual, if not pathological, prevaricator. This knowledge so commonly accepted among those who knew him before White House that two investor “friends” profited from assuming Trump would lie about the Virus.

• As it is with men of a certain generation and education, he knows how and when to be ‘correct’ in public settings. As his sister, Mary Trump, was recorded saying, “Donald always knows where the cameras are”. However, former associates, ex-employees, even friends describe him in private in terms as vulgar, overbearing, ignorant, egotistic, and generally ‘uncouth’.

• The weight of all recorded history of man on earth leads to the inevitable prediction that re-election would give Trump the power needed to destroy our Republic and the Rule of Constitutional Law. And, history demands he will. “He who is ignorant of history is condemned forever to repeat it.’

I have been watching both the Trump myth and history of men unfold for a very long time, and this is my case against Trump and Trumpism. If you have more to the story to add, with credible contradicting facts, present your case.

The reader certainly retains First Amendment right to unilaterally defend against all comers the infallibility of their champion. The defense of “don’t believe” any fallibility in your champion, though, is no response. It’s been said “ignorance is bliss” – but it is still ignorance. And willful ignorance is still willful.

If you support Trump and don’t care whether the above is true or not, then vote for him with my blessing. But, forget not that none escape consequences of the eternal law ‘you will reap what you sow’.

This is why I write what I write about this election. Accept it, ignore it, reject it; but, any reading this far have been warned.

Ezekiel 33.1-7

 INDECISION 2020.201

THE DUTY TO WARN

when is a President “crazy as a loon”?

If you have observed these behaviors in another President, I have not…

...aimless, paranoid-like ramblings in non-answer ‘answers’ to ‘softball’ questions using “adolescent vocabulary”…

...even supporters who profit from him reported ‘off the record’ as calling him “crazy” and “out of control”…

...some, admitted to not being professionally qualified to make any diagnosis, have questioned if he’s showing early signs of Altimeters, as did Reagan...

...many who have known him for years have said he is a habitual, perhaps pathological, liar; two of these people made significant profits by assuming we’d be lied to about corona virus…

...publicly deny he "ever" said a thing which I and everyone in that room heard him say 15 minutes prior; followed by an attack on the reporter for asking the question...

...is he simply showing – as am I – signs of aging? And, yes, the same might be asked of Joe Biden...

...or, is it that after a lifetime of a saying what he thought would work in that moment, does he simply not comprehend the concept of videotape?

My personal, definitely not professional, observations lead to asking reasonable questions of those who are actually equipped to give answer.

Over the past four years many psychiatric professionals have had to balance their Duty to Warn with the Goldwater Rule [see notes at end]. Dr. Daniel Gilbert (quoted below) pointed out that because of vast amounts of video and printed information, more is known about Trump’s physic than patients seen only in clinic. 

Below are some of those who’ve risked reputation and position because of dangers found in publicly available information about Trump. It has even been suggested by one expert there is sufficient accumulated evidence to justify involuntary psychiatric exam.

This writer is not a psychiatrist nor psychologist, don’t even “play one on TV”. I am just one who, too, feels a duty to warn. Whether or not the reader considers, ignores, or denies what follows, you have been warned.

Practicing professionals who have given public interviews or written to warn America:

Dr. Lance Dodes, a Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus with the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He has stated "Trump is a psychopath who will destroy democracy" and "[he] cares nothing about anyone else's life."

Dr. Daniel Gilbert, renowned Harvard psychologist. After Trump claimed he had ‘great and unmatched wisdom’ Dr. Gilbert called out not just Trump for what was said, but the entire country for ignoring Trump’s very obvious mental decline: “[His] brain is coming apart at the seams, and something must be done about this.”

Dr. John Gartner, psychologist, psychotherapist, author, and former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School stated: “[Trump] is just sane enough, as it were, to pass as sane; but is actually detached from reality. So that what is ‘real’ is fluid; totally ‘malleable’ according to his personality.”

World Mental Health Coalition demanded resignation or removal of Donald Trump over his "severe mental troubles" as evidenced by his mis-handling of the corona virus pandemic.

For one of the most definitive, objective, and judicial videos on the subject by a qualified professional of both Trump and Biden see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifUErTNJDOQ&t=612s 

Best-Selling Books published in interest of a ‘duty to warn’ America:

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Asstes President Donald Trump's Behavior (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) [Reprinted 2018 with 10 additional contributors]

Created, compiled, and edited by Bandy Lee, M.D., M.Div., Yale psychiatrist, expert on violence, and forensic psychiatrist. Contains essays from twenty-seven psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals describing the "clear and present danger"Donald Trump's mental health poses to the "nation and individual well being".

Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of a President (Avery Publishing, 2018).

By Justin A. Frank, M.D., author of “Bush on the Couch” and “Obama on the Couch”. A former clinical professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center and a physician with more than forty years of experience in psychoanalysis.

“No president in the history of the United States has inspired more alarm and confusion than Donald Trump. As questions and concerns about his decisions, behavior, and qualifications for office have multiplied, they point to one primary question: Does he pose a genuine threat to our country?” 

Too Much & Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

By Mary Trump, PhD, licensed Clinical Psychologist and President Trump's niece.

She states that "it would be the end of American Democracy" if her uncle were to be re-elected in November 2020. (AP) Also, see my blog of July 12, 2020 @ https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7931195089641925137/483749019056136810

Notes:

“Duty to Warn” refers to the responsibility of a counselor or therapist to inform third parties or authorities if a client poses a threat to themselves or another identifiable individual. It is one of just a few instances where a therapist can breach client confidentiality. Normally, ethical guidelines require that therapists keep information revealed during therapy strictly private.

“The Goldwater Rule” is in the American Psychiatric Association's Principles of Medical Ethics, which states that it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures whom they have not examined in person, and from whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health in public statements.

The Politics v. The Person

 INDECISION 2020.101

THE POLITICS vs. THE PERSON

Few years back a woman I admire asked what I thought of then President Barrack Obama. Being a conservative evangelical church member one might assume answer to this query must, at least to some degree, be in the negative. Everybody knows we ‘conservatives’ don’t like you radical Democrats.

My answer, as it often is with me, was not along anyone’s doctrinal protocol. “I think he is a good man” (I still think so). She being obviously somewhat taken aback, I added: “That doesn’t make him a good President, but that’s not what you asked.”

It has often been said historians cannot know historical significance of a sitting President. There is simply too much unknown about what he will do or say, no way to foresee long-term consequences. I’ve even heard some historians contend you cannot judge a past President during his lifetime. That said, I think these addle-minded observations are worthy of presentation.

There is, in this opinion, a difference between the Political and the Person who holds the office of President of the United States.

The Political

As to politicians, I am compelled to note that I voted at age 21 for Barry Goldwater. As I once told his son, I am proud I did so and have never regretted it. I voted Republican ever after, with the sole exceptions being to vote in three Democratic Primaries for specific individuals and for specific reasons. I think this qualifies me as a conservative evangelical church member.

The current administration is quietly putting in place a great many of the political philosophy “causes” for which conservatives have dreamed for some time. Beware, though, of receiving that for which you pray. The consequences of what is happening in this Presidential term will change a lot of things not lend affirmatively to the sustenance of the Republic.

The Person

In the opinion, the person, as President, should present at least three attributes: Intelligent, smart (yes, that is a different thing), and moral. Getting any two out of three is a victory for the Republic. In my memory (which effectively goes to Eisenhower) Barrack Obama is one of the few who at face value present all sought for attributes. All I have personally seen in Trump is ‘street-smart’.

I have known men like Donald Trump all my life. Such men are street smart without being overwhelmingly intelligent; with morality always negotiable and dependent on the best interest of that man. Contained in their individual small-minded fiefdom their successes are redeemable, the harm they do can be limited, the good accepted knowing there will be a cost.

Ask me not what I think of Donald Trump – I like being a conservative evangelical.