The military gear, helmets and facemasks of the American Schutzstaffel are not there to protect these thugs from harm, but to prevent identification. There are many reasons for this:

1. They can’t be doxxed.
2. They can’t be prosecuted. These first two points protect them.
3. It’s not clear who they’re working for. This protects their bosses.
4. They present themselves as a terrifying, faceless, inhuman monolithic force. This inspires terror. They are a terrorist organization.
5. Their individual identity — and even their humanity — has been stolen, even from them. This allows them to act as monsters.

Republicans have been working hard, for forty years, to demolish the federal government. In Trump, they found a wrecking ball to accomplish their dreams. The lack of any effective federal response to the pandemic is one inevitable and entirely foreseeable result.

See, feudal lords don’t care what happens to peasants.

Trump is an acute symptom of the disease of Reaganite Fascism. America became infected with this plague the day Ronald Reagan declared, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

Since that day, the GOP has existed for one…

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
- Juvenal

Loosely translated, it means, “Who watches the watchmen?”

For three years, the media has failed to keep up with the unprecedented avalanche of malfeasance and criminality that is the Trump Administration.

In our system of government, the Three Branches are supposed to police each other. But for the first two years, Congress was completely controlled by toadies, and even today the Senate Majority Leader sees his role only as that which corrupts the Judiciary. Farewell, Checks & Balances, it’s been good to know ye.

That left only the Free Press, which has been overwhelmed…

We will never get back to what we think of as “normal.”

Consider this. We made no attempt to contain the coronavirus. It is now wild in the world. We will be unable to clean every surface or identify every carrier. It will now be there forever.

What does that mean?

We don’t know yet if treatments or a vaccine are even possible. They may be. Maybe not.

We now have effective treatments for HIV/AIDS, but they took decades to develop. We might get a vaccine, but not before summer or fall of 2021 at the earliest.

Until we get…

What is the single most important factor in determining how the TrumpVirus is growing in your state? Let’s compare two states and see.

We’re told the denser population in more urban states matters, because the closer people are packed together, the easier it is to spread communicable diseases.

Minnesota and South Dakota are adjacent. Both are primarily rural with a couple of denser urban areas. Minnesota’s population is far greater, an estimated 5.6 million, with S. Dakota’s at less than one million. Which is faring better in this pandemic?

(I wrote this story about twenty years ago. I’m convinced it’s unpublishable, but it’s one of my favorite stories. I hope someone reads it. I hope you like it.)

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I’m supposed to tell why I’m applying for this grant. I need to write down the real reason, but I don’t know if this is the one I’ll tell them.

Reality isn’t what they say it is. We live midway between bigger worlds and smaller ones. I learned the truth from my best friend when…

There’s a lot of confusion about how impeachment works.

Here’s a primer.

There are four parts to an impeachment:
1) investigations
2) House Judiciary hearings
3) House vote
4) Senate trial

We’re in Phase 1, and we’ve been there since Feb or March, when the House began to investigate Trump. With Nixon, this phase lasted 17 months, from Feb of 1973 to June of 1974. For Bill Clinton, this phase ran from Jan 1994 to October of 1998, some 58 months.

This is where most of the data and evidence, testimony and documents are collected that will determine whether Congress…

There’s a very good reason the House has not yet started impeachment hearings. Very simply, if impeachment starts now, Congress becomes powerless.

It’s true, though it’s counter-intuitive. Let me explain.

Put aside that the Senate won’t convict, which means any impeachment of Trump is futile, and impeachment becomes forever after no more than a cruel joke. After all, if impeachment can’t remove a criminal puppet of an enemy power, then the threatened punishment of impeachment is clearly no deterrent at all. That’s bad enough, but that’s not my point.

The House has issued subpoenas for documents and testimony, which the…