Former President Barack Obama Shows Leadership

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..." pic.twitter.com/InZ58zkoAm

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017

"...For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." - Nelson Mandela

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017

"People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love..."

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017

With three simple tweets, former President Barack Obama gave Americans across the spectrum, and people around the world, what they longed for in the face of the Charlottesville tragedy: wisdom, sanity, compassion, leadership.

It's been distressing to watch how the current administration has laid siege to everything that the best of America stands for and all the progress made by Barack and Michelle Obama and Obama's administration. When this couple were in the White House it was a place of knowledge, experience, respect, dignity, wisdom, inclusion, joy, exuberance, celebration of life and of people from every walk of life.

The shock of the election result wore off quickly, leaving grief, outrage and determination to preserve values without which no society can exist for long without imploding. The resistance, from Democratic politicians, citizens, academia and the liberal media, has been valiant and successful. But the constant deluge of scandals, back-biting, lies—scum of the earth stuff—has been exhausting to witness. It's hard to resist the idea that social progress in the US is being swamped and that everything the Obamas worked towards, every battle fought and won over the years for Civil Rights, equality and justice has been lost.

But the truth is that in the battle between Good and evil, so well illustrated by Charlottesville, and Donald Trump equating white supremacists and Nazi supporters to counter-protesters, Good has triumphed as Republicans, Democrats and world leaders condemned the president's support of what has been recognized as evil for a long time now.  Nobody but Mr. Trump believes these people have a place at the table. Nobody but Mike Pence has stood with Trump.

Good can seem fragile in this battle, when overshadowed by monstrous forces, but in truth it has roots sinking deep into the human psyche, into societies. And that gives it, ultimately, much greater power.

America's social progress hasn't ever been a smooth journey. But it's been a real one with real successes. They, and the achievements of Barack Obama and his administration have been assailed, but not dismantled in a way that can't be fixed, even though the government is entirely GOP-controlled. Republicans are at war with each other and their constituents, and the 2018 mid-terms loom. The Trump administration has bully power but nothing else and it is disintegrating at the speed of light, as is the president, by all accounts. Out of control, still obsessed with his campaign, he's been firing people at random when they get more attention than him or displease him, creating such havoc that nobody wants to work for him.

Now he's fired Steve Bannon, who has gone back to Breitbart News, thrilled at the prospect of war with the administration. Or so he says, as reported by The New York Post.  

The president's support base is reportedly shrinking, but former president Barack Obama's tweets about Charlottesville broke the record for the most Twitter likes. That's a pretty direct poll. And he's not getting any press coverage these days. There's power in the man, the kind that lasts because it has love and integrity as a foundation; it's the kind that rewards and builds.

In this existential battle in America—one that all of us can relate to in some way or another in our lives—Good has trodden and is still treading a steady path towards victory. It will come and then we'll see that social progress is not destructible by evil. 

Carrying the Torch for Integrity Against the Intolerance of Donald Trump

Has it only been two weeks since sanity, coherence, joy, optimism, good leadership and dignity vanished from the White House? It feels like years.

The four months since the New York Times took an unequivocal stand for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump feel like decades. Remember the Democratic National Convention, when Hillary Clinton broke a glass ceiling, when the world felt like a safe place because hope and optimism for the future of America as a tolerant nation where everybody was equal, were at an all-time high? It was only six months ago, but it feels like a lifetime. 

And who could forget former First Lady Michelle Obama's impassioned denouncement of sexual abuse and plea to New Hampshire voters? We'll never forget, but it feels like another era.

It's impossible to read about, let alone to process everything that Trump and his Administration are doing to create carnage nationally and internationally, elevate intolerance, exploit fear and distort truth. Shock and horror prevail and ripple out from the epicenter into the world every day. 

But if anybody thought that the majority of Americans were as easily brainwashed as the average Russian has been by Vladimir Putin, or that the free world would let itself be led into a dark age of intolerance, they'll have to think again. If anybody was ever afraid that the majority of Americans would let Donald Trump's bigotry, racism, flagrant ignorance, sexism become the new normal, or that the Trump brand would make a fortune out of the presidency before Trump bankrupted the country and walked away scott-free, they can set that fear aside. 

In two mind-numbing weeks Trump has united people across America and round the world. Adults, women and men, kids, schools, universities, communities, organizations, politicians, judges, former presidents, the media are speaking out, shouting out, protesting peacefully, organizing, taking action. Not on our watch.

We will not let hate win. And, another reason to carry hand sanitizer. pic.twitter.com/bgrAJf7SCv

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) February 5, 2017

#HistoryMade? Will Electoral College Electors Tell Trump "You're Fired"?

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“Everyone during the election perceived accurately—that in fact what the Russian hack had done was create more problems for the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign. There’s no doubt that it contributed to an atmosphere in which the only focus for weeks at a time, months at a time were Hillary's emails, the Clinton Foundation, political gossip surrounding the DNC...  

I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections … we need to take action, and we will—at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.” - President Barack Obama

The Electoral College votes on America's next president on Monday. Anti-Trump voters have been at work since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the election in circumstances that are highly suspect. Apart from the country-wide protests, a petition was started by Daniel Brezenoff, asking the electors to elect Hillary Clinton. It now has close to 5 million signatures. People in every state have signed it.

There has also been a storm of protest from President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and other Democrat and Republican senators and representatives, and some electors, triggered by 17 intelligence agencies unanimously reporting that Russians intervened in the election through hacking and that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities”  

Vladimir Putin, of course, laughed the Intelligence report off. But he did that when the scandal first broke of Russian State sponsored Olympic doping. And now it's undeniable fact. Trump also laughed it off, as did his vacuous mouthpiece Rep Chris Collins. Speaking to CNN's Wolf Blitzer he said it was time to "put this nonsense aside." Blitzer shot him down, as he did when Collins said that President Obama had never acknowledged Trump's win.

A bipartisan group of electors, calling themselves the Hamilton Electors, published an open letter to the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, requesting that he release all the facts on Russian interference before they vote.

“...We intend to discharge our duties as Electors by ensuring that we select a candidate for president who, as our Founding Fathers envisioned, would be “endowed with the requisite qualifications.” As Electors, we also believe that deliberation is at the heart of democracy itself, not an empty or formalistic task…

The Constitution envisions the Electoral College as a deliberative body that plays a critical role in our system of government — ensuring that the American people elect a president who is constitutionally qualified and fit to serve. Accordingly, to fulfill our role as Electors, we seek an informed and unrestrained opportunity to fulfill our constitutional role leading up to December 19th — that is, the ability to investigate, discuss, and deliberate with our colleagues about whom to vote for in the Electoral College.

We further emphasize Alexander Hamilton’s assertion in Federalist Paper #68 that a core purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent a “desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”

To date eighty Presidential electors have signed the letter. Those wishing to add their names can contact ElectoralCollege16@gmail.com

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told Buzzfeed News that he supports that call for an Intelligence briefing on the Russian interference before they vote. Reid said he believed this was as "big a deal as Watergate, as 9/11 and he believes, along with US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Ben Cardin, that a 9/11 type commission should be set up to investigate.

Reid also blamed FBI Director James Comey for his role in Hillary Clinton's surprise loss. A view shared by many, including Hillary Clinton and her supporters. The FBI agents received Weiner's computer from the NYPD and held onto it for two weeks before sending it up the chain of command to Comey. Their later excuse was that they needed time to better assess the emails. But they were prohibited by law from reading any of them without a warrant, for which they needed Comey's OK. 

If they had sent it immediately, Comey's 2nd letter acknowledging that there was nothing to investigate, would have been released before early voting began, instead of 48 hours before the election, and probably wouldn't have changed the outcome of the election.

On Thursday, Hillary Clinton spoke to donors about how Comey's letter to Congress swung the election in Trump's favor, and added that Putin had a longstanding grudge against her for her 2011 accusation that Russian parliamentary elections had been rigged.

But, she said, “Make no mistake as the press is finally catching up to the facts, which we desperately tried to present to them during the last months of the campaign. This is not just an attack on me and my campaign, although that may have added fuel to it. This is an attack against our country. We are well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity of our democracy and the security of our nation.”

California attorney Michael Hawley said to The Hollywood Reporter that electors have received thousands of emails, and some have received death threats. Hawley, Mark Lemley and Larry Lessig co-founded the Electors Trust, an organization that provides free and confidential legal counsel and defence to electors who "wish to vote their conscience." 

An Elector, speaking to Salon on condition of anonymity, said “We have gotten reports from multiple people that the Donald Trump campaign is putting [career] pressure on Republican electors to vote for him based on…future political outcomes based on whether they vote for Donald Trump or not.”

Legally and constitutionally Trump isn't president yet. The number of electors who have voted their conscience is rare throughout American history, but as everybody has been pointing out for a year, this is no ordinary American election. Never has there been a candidate who has:

And that's the short list.

This degree of protest from electors, politicians and the general public is unprecedented, and the highest number of electors to ever break from a presidential candidate was in 1808, when six Democratic-Republican electors voted against James Madison. But, as everybody keeps reiterating, it's been an unusual American presidential election, so one final unusual event will fit right in.

History has already been made, for better or for worse. Why not go for broke and eliminate the worse? All it needs is for 37 electors to vote their conscience and Donald Trump is history. I'm going to let myself hope for two more days that Hillary Clinton can still be America's next president.

She won the popular vote by 2.8 million, which means a clear majority of Americans want her. The world wants her. #ImStillWithHer.

The Worst of Times: America's Dark Days, From a Superlative President to an Abhorrence

As a whole lot of TV news anchors and hosts with their panels crawl like flies over a pile of horseshit, backtracking from positions they almost took about Trump or even actually did, I stare in horror. What happened? Was there suddenly a discount on lobotomies? Have one and get one free for a colleague?  

As David Remnick said on Fareed Zakaria's GPS, "I think I'm hallucinating".

You'd never know from any of it that Trump is a conspiracy theory nut, the man who in 2011, when he was mulling over running for president, launched his birther conspiracy theory persecution against Obama and didn't drop it even when Obama produced his certificate. Who then did, glibly drop the story and accuse Hillary Clinton of starting it all. [She didn't.]

A clod who can't finish sentences, who talks about penises in the presidential primaries, whose own campaign people had to take his Twitter account away from him to stop him being an abusive idiot at 3 in the morning.

A businessman who vastly overestimates his wealth, avoids taxes, who has gone bankrupt with properties countless times and with some casinos made a profit through the bankruptcy whilst the small businesses who built the buildings went broke. An employer who cheats and stiffs his workers. A fraud who is facing a big lawsuit over his fraudulent 'university, a demagogue who has shady dealings with and something of a crush on Putin. Whose own business life started with a small million dollar loan from his father—and that would be the guy who made a fortune in Stalin's Russia—which he squandered and went on to several bankruptcies. A fool who wants to dismantle NATO and bomb the hell out of the Middle East. Yeah!

A man who mocked the disabled at a rally, insulted the parents of a Gold Star Muslim soldier who died in action, who lies anything from a score to 70 times a day, calls women pigs, calls Mexicans rapists and murderers and promotes hate against Muslims and Jews.

Who is celebrated by the KKK and white supremacists. Who talked in sexual terms about his baby daughter and later, when she was all grown up, said that she was so hot he would date her if she wasn't his daughter. Who was caught on tape acknowledging that he gropes women and loves the entitlement he has to do it. Who has threatened to destroy the women he abused and who had the courage to finally tell the truth. A serial abuser who is facing a lawsuit for child rape and who wants to close Planned Parenthood and punish women for having abortions.

A greedy, corrupt wanna-be mogul who paid off Scottish local politicians and the police so he could destroy a community and vast tracts of pristine and ecologically precious land in Scotland for his golf course. Who said of the poorer people who lived in houses that his guests would be able to see from his golf course hotel that they were disgusting. "Who lives like that?" Trump said, his face twisted grotesquely. He wanted to get rid of them.

That's the guy who will be sworn in as America's next president. I keep trying to hit replay and edit; it's beyond belief. I experience shock and grief a thousand times a day.

Hillary Clinton, introduced in a moving attribute to her and her campaign by her running mate Tim Kaine, gave a graceful and dignified concession speech, in which she said, "Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power." Yes indeed, and the rest of her speech was a rousing call to action, to not let bigotry prevail. Understandably, her Twitter account has gone silent for a while, as has her daughter's and husband's.

But I miss them and Tim Kaine. I miss their optimism, their grace and intelligence, their decency, their message of preserving everything that's good, of unity and the importance of equality and tolerance.

I miss the hope I had, the faith that good prevails and it's all going to be okay. I miss knowing that Obama's legacy will be honored. I miss the ads!

Barack Obama met with Trump in the White House. It was an assault to see the man of such tremendous stature sitting with the stinking bigot, although I got a savage satisfaction from seeing how Mr. White guy the racist had to sit between an African American president and the bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Obama said they had an excellent meeting, and that "My number one priority in the next two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful." He did it because he's a responsible guy and it comes with the job.

It doesn't mean that he suddenly thinks Trump has changed or that he wants everybody to forgive and forget although he's been quoted by the slavering media as if he did. Representative John Lewis tweeted what the President can't, yet. Not until he's out of the Oval Office, anyway.

What a terrible blow. It's bad enough to see the end of an era that was too short, to say goodbye to a President and First Lady who have led America out of the gates of hell, who have not a single tiny teeny blemish on them, who truly madly deeply care, who have worked diligently to improve equality and lay the foundation for a healthy society. Who have gained the respect of everybody around the world, and even that impossible to please American public, who have moved us, inspired us, led us, even entertained us. Certainly touched our hearts and souls in ways that we'll never forget.

Yes, it's hard enough to see them go; my world feels empty at the thought of it. But to have them followed by this. It's a travesty. Of epic proportions.

Brexit, Conservative Supreme Court, Xenophobia, Racism, Sexism…

I woke up this morning to the news that the majority in Britain voted to leave the EU, the British pound is plummeting, UK and US futures taking a dive.

This after the US Supreme Court blocked Barack Obama's Immigration reforms and after months and months and five more to go of rancid attacks on Hillary Clinton; years and years of vile trash thrown at Barack Obama, one of the best presidents America has ever had; the world's stupidest and nasty-ugliest man elevated to a position of power; the eruption to the surface of xenophobia, racism, homophobia, bigotry of every sort.

A mountain of misinformation fed into cyberspace, driven by rage and soaked up greedily until it has solidified in too many minds as truth.

A world of angry people justifying their vitriol with very flimsy excuses, but really just looking for something, somebody, to hurt. Basking in the paradise that social media is for them. That world, which we've lauded as being the platform for profound connection and shared information has turned into the world of bullshit and persecution.

Even on the home front I was excluded from my father's genealogy chart and family tree, dared to speak my mind and stand my ground and was iced out and ganged up against in a way that's reminiscent of mean children in the schoolyard but that didn't make it any less painful. 

The NYT featured something I wrote and I got 493 comments, 90% from Bernie Sanders supporters, many raging at me. For voicing my opinion. Some even friended me on FB—solely to attack me or my ideas.  

That reaction didn't actually bother me. But overall it's a bloody depressing picture. I sat down to have coffee and thought at times like this you have to remember that, personally and societally, the part of us that has the balls to carry on in the face of obstacles, determined to triumph, is more powerful than the part that gets discouraged when we falter, or the world around us does.

The immediate effects of Britain choosing to leave the EU are scary. Will they last, will Europe and Britain fall apart, will this decision trigger off a world recession? I don't think so, any more than I think Europe will suddenly stop trading with Britain. The trade is as important to Europe as it is to the UK. The EU has said if Britain chooses to leave it won't get another chance but I don't really believe that either. There were a lot of scare tactics used on both sides and the press is going to have perpetual orgasm on worst case scenarios for a while but they aren't necessarily a reflection of what's to come.

As I drank my coffee, thinking about my own life and the world around me, I felt grateful for my capacity to speak out even if it draws fire and not be demolished by it; grateful for the part of me that believes good triumphs over evil.

Very grateful for my coffee, that I have work, a roof over my head. I opened up the NYT. When headlines are raging about everything under the sun that is disgusting about humanity, there's one that shines. Led by a man of great stature, Representative John Lewis, US Democrats staged a passionate sit-in in the Senate to protest against Republican refusal to pass sane gun measures. I call that heroism. And it's enough to restore my belief in humanity.