Destroying the American Democracy

The worship of Donald Trump has resulted in loyal Americans willing to destroy the American democracy. Many of those supporters of Trump are still in government service. Thus the destruction of phone records and email messages before the June 6 insurrection, during the insurrection, and days following that insurrection is no surprise.

The advocacy group American Oversight sought the texts through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, to learn more about the attack. The group requested emails, texts and calendar invitations for former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, his former acting chief of staff Kash Patel and former Defense Department general counsel Paul Ney.

“It now appears as if multiple federal agencies may have failed to preserve records surrounding the January 6th attack on the Capitol,” Heather Sawyer, executive director at American Oversight, said in a statement. “There are still too many open questions about the role of the Pentagon, Secret Service, and others before and during the attack.”

American Oversight says on its website that it is “a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog that uses public records requests backed by litigation to fight corruption, drive accountability, and defend democracy.”

It appears that there were and probably still are people in the Federal government that are intent on protecting Donald Trump and his lieutenants from prosecution related to the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

The Department of Justice will likely bring criminal charges against those who intentionally destroyed those records. The Guardian reports the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has been asked to investigate yet another deletion of text messages and other communications by senior officials on 6 January 2021, this time by the Pentagon.

Today in the Los Angeles Times Garry Trudeau hits the mark. He correctly says “Now is the time to announce that the election is rigged.”

For those of you who are not familiar with Jim Crow (not Jimmy Crow). Jim Crow Laws were statutes and ordinances established between 1874 and 1975 to separate the white and black races in the American South. Thus the term “separate but equal” supported the idea of races being separate, so long as they received “equal” facilities and treatment to that which the whites had or received. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that separate accommodations based on race was constitutional. 58 years later in Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka (1954) the court ruled that separate accommodations based on race were inherently unequal and so unconstitutional.

The Legendary Norman Lear Celebrates 100-Years of Life Today!

The Legendary Norman Lear Celebrates 100-Years of Life Today!

Norman Lear contributed to our society in a funny entertaining way that is part of American cultural. “All in the Family” is now in repeats on my television.

Born in 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut, Lear attended Emerson College before flying 52 combat missions over Europe during World War II. Upon his return, Norman began a successful career writing and producing programs like The Colgate Comedy Hour, and The Martha Raye Show — ultimately leading to Lear captivating 120 million viewers per week with his iconic shows of the 1970s and ‘80s —

All in the Family, Maude, Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, One Day at a Time, and The Nancy Walker Show.

As Lear began witnessing the rise of the radical religious right, he put his television career on hold in 1980 to found People For The American Way. Today, the organization is over one million members and activists strong and continues to fight right-wing extremism while defending constitutional values like free expression, religious liberty, equal justice under the law, and the right to meaningfully participate in our democracy.

In 2000, the Norman Lear Center was dedicated at the USC Annenberg School for Communication for the study of entertainment, media and society.

One of the few surviving original copies of the Declaration of Independence was purchased by Lyn and Norman Lear in 2001, and during the decade that followed, they shared it with the American people by touring it to all 50 states through their Declaration of Independence Road Trip. Lear launched Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan youth voter initiative that registered over four million new, young voters in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections.

Lear is a 2017 Kennedy Center Honoree; a recipient of the National Medal of Arts in 1999, the Peabody Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016; and a proud member of the inaugural group of inductees to the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984. He has won six Primetime Emmys and a Golden Globe. In 2021 the Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded him the Carol Burnett Award for Achievement in Television. When President Clinton bestowed the National Medal of Arts on Lear in 1999, he noted that “Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it.”

Norman Lear is married to Lyn Davis Lear, and is the father to six and the grandfather to four.

Sources:

normanlear.com

Variety

IMDb

Trump’s Crimes Against the United States

The Los Angeles Times July 24, 2022 editorial defined some of Donald Trump’s crimes but not all. A Donald Trump trial could result in a civil war.

There is no doubt that Donald Trump is “guilty of conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding” but also plotting an insurrection, dereliction of duty and dishonoring his sworn oath when he took the office of president. He ought to be tried and convicted. Sadly millions of Americans still believe Trump won the 2020 election as evidenced on January 6, 2021 and are willing to take up arms. If found guilty, the country would experience a second civil war. His followers have demonstrated their willingness to do his bidding. There are an estimated 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the US and 20 million of them are AR-15 style rifles. Are those trying to uphold the Constitution prepared to go to war to retain this democracy?

An abridged version of this posting appears on the letters page of the July 26, 2022 Los Angeles Times.

Israel Laws are NOT Apartheid

Israeli laws are designed to assure Israel will remain a Jewish state. Non-Jews are free to go anywhere they wish and live where ever they want. Intermarriage between Jews and others is permitted. Intermarriage has always been considered unacceptable as best displayed in the play “Fiddler on the Roof”. European Jews viewed anyone marrying a non-Jews the equivalent to a death.

During most of the 20th century, South Africa was ruled by a system called Apartheid, an Afrikaans word meaning ‘apartness,’ which was based on a system of racial segregation.

An Israeli human rights group has put up billboards in the occupied West Bank with a stark message for President Joe Biden, saying “this is apartheid.”

Israel was created as a Jewish State. The country was created as a homeland for Jews. Jews have experienced discrimination and in some instances faced death in almost every country in the world.

The Holocaust (6 million Jews were killed) was the seed for creating Israel. Jewish Israelis have arranged their nations laws to protect their rule over their country.

There is no other way to write this or say this reality. Israel will always be a Jewish state. If that fact changes, Israel’s purpose to exist will end.

Does Freedom of Religion Exist in the United States?

There is only one religious holiday a national holiday in the United States. Christmas Day. If that isn’t sponsoring a religion then what is it?

Up to the age of nine I attended Philadelphia public schools. Every morning all the children attended an assembly. After reciting the Pledge of Allegiance someone at the front of the auditorium read from the Christian bible. There was a Christian song that all the children sang. The problem was that I was not a Christian. I kept my mouth shut unless someone came by my seat prompting me to sing. My solution to that was to move my lips but not sing a single word.

Happily none of that happened in Los Angeles in the 4^th grade.

I remember this like it was yesterday.

Now the Supreme Court sees nothing wrong with conducting prayers on school grounds. The Supreme Court ruled on June 27 that a high school football coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games, the latest step by the court in expanding the place of religion in public life. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent.

Is it any wonder that some Americans have chosen to migrate to countries that respect the religious rights of all citizens?

Sofia Ali-Khan wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times relating how she, a child of immigrant parents, could no longer live with the hate of minorities perpetrated by President Donald Trump. She believes that to live in the States she would have to hide her Muslim identity.

The number of Americans seeking residency in Canada has grown exponentially. No wonder. Canada is a country that welcomes people of all faiths and races.

I can’t fight the system. Perhaps it is time to follow Sofia Ali-Khan to Canada.