1923, not 1933, a better Hitler reference for Trump’s return to power

 

1923, not 1933, a better Hitler reference for Trump’s return to power

 

Trump is no Hitler. Not even close.

 

But many are viewing his second presidency with alarm, saying it hearkens back to the rule of Adolph Hitler.

 

They say he’s consolidating his reelection power to usher in unprecedented authoritarian, anti-democratic rule beginning January 20. Selecting cabinet members without confirmation using recess appointments, threatening to rescind non-profit status of unfavorable groups, hinting at using military to fling 11 million undocumented souls back over the southern border, are but a few they mention.

 

They claim Trump is mimicking Hitler’s ascension as German Chancellor in 1933, after which he systematically purged Germany its Democratic institutions to consolidate total power.

Believe it’s more helpful in understanding Trump’s appeal to go back 10 years earlier to Hitler’s first foray into taking over government: his 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.

 

Hitler and Trump both sought power and failed thru an attempted coup. Big difference was Hitler, an outsider, used his attempted coup to gain power in Bavaria, while Trump instigated his to overthrow his election defeat to remain in power.

 

Both riled up their respective mobs, promising to lead them to victory. But only Hitler marched into the melee with his while Trump retreated to White House safety. 14 of Hitler’s thugs were shot to death including a huge bodyguard protecting Hitler. 4 cops also died.

 

Trumps coup killed 4 rioters that day, 3 from health issues, 1 from lead poisoning, trying to get at congresspersons conducting their most sacred governmental duty. But over 100 cops were injured with one dying the next day from injuries. 4 more committed suicide in the weeks and months following.

 

Hitler fled the failed coup hiding out for 2 days before being arrested for treason. Trump, remained safely ensconced in the White House for 2 weeks then for two and a half years at Mar-a Lago before being indicted on 4 counts of seeking to overturn his election defeat.

 

But the courts intervened for both to keep them alive politically to rule again. In January 1924 Germany issued the Emminger Reform, an emergency decree that abolished the jury, replacing it with a judge and lay judges. The lay judges, all Hitler supporters, called for his immediate release but were overruled by the presiding judge. ,

 

Found guilty, Hitler could have received a life sentence, possibly even execution. But pro Hitler sentiment garnered him just five years of which he served a measly 8 months in a country club prison with no work and countless Nazi visitors.

 

Trump got off even easier. Backed by a favorable Supreme Court he packed in his first term, Trump became essentially immune from prosecution, likely never to spend a day in the clink for committing the worst crime any citizen, much less leader can commit.

 

Both exploited their attempted jailing to rev up their idolatrous base to achieve power. Hitler used his opportunity to defend himself at trial charging “The Weimar Republic has given the German people nothing but misery and despair. It is time for new order to save the nation from utter ruin.” Trump echoed Hitler’s “misery and despair” as brilliantly as Hitler 101 years earlier to win reelection.

 

History may not repeat itself but sometimes rhymes. Case in point: Hitler 1923, Trump 2021.

Is Biden approaching his Cody Jarrett moment?

 

Is Biden approaching his Cody Jarrett moment?

President Joe Biden, with 63 days to go till retirement, just made a decision possibly worse than any made by his 45 predecessors. He greenlighted Ukraine to use long range US missiles to strike deep into Russia. The Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles, are fired by US-made multiple rocket launch systems, including the HIMARS.

But Ukraine military cannot fire the ATACMS without the US providing target coordinates. That would represent direct US attacks on Russia using Ukraine proxies to fire them. President Putin make clear this risks nuclear war. He went further and revised Russian nuclear strategy to declare that any nuclear power supplying and supporting attacks on Russian soil by a non-nuclear state as putting that nuclear state at war with Russia.

Knowing his proxy war against Russia is a lost cause, Biden has apparently become delusionally reckless with Mother Earth. A month ago Biden blinked when UK PM Starmer came calling to greenlight direct Ukraine strikes on Russia with long range UK missiles. He heeded Putin’s warnings, likely avoiding nuclear war then.

What’s changed? Has he become so mentally degraded he cannot comprehend the enormity of his destructive decision? Is he terrified about losing another war in his last year after Afghanistan in his first year?

Biden has spent his entire 52 year public career promoting America’s self-proclaimed role as the world’s only indispensable nation. Biden’s lifelong credo is: America…top of the world.

 

That calls to mind Jimmy Cagney playing psychotic killer Cody Jarret in the 1950 crime classic ‘White Heat.’ Jarrett, who was always seeking to get ‘top of the world, ended up screaming “Top of the world, Ma” as he fired a bullet into the gas tank he was standing on, blowing up himself and everyone around.

If the nukes do go off from Biden’s descent into madness, I can imagine his last words being ‘Top of the world, America.’

This is one time we should all hope life does not imitate art.

Why is Mayor Johnson defunding the police?

Why is Mayor Johnson defunding the police?

A couple of stats jumped out when perusing Mayor Johnson’s bloated Chicago budget included a $300 million property tax increase swiftly voted down by the City Council.

Johnson’s budget calls for reduction of 94 officers on top of 400 axed from his first budget. But the department’s current force of just 11,683 is nearly 2,000 lower than it should be. No wonder Chicagoans of all income levels are increasingly worried about safety.

Meanwhile, 275 of Chicago’s 474 schools are under under enrolled, many by 50% or more. Nearly a third of all school seats citywide are vacant.

But Johnson’s not proposing further school closings with sensible reduction in overall school staffing.

Before he ran for mayor, Johnson jumped on the ‘Defund the Police’ bandwagon. He hoped off that bandwagon when he ran for mayor. Now as mayor, Johnson quietly picked up his Defund the Police pen while proposing increased taxes to Refund Empty Schools.

Trump 2.0 promises US enabled Israeli genocide on steroids

 

Trump 2.0 promises US enabled Israeli genocide on steroids

 

President Biden set a high bar for enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza. Like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden didn’t’ lift a finger to bring the remaining 97 Israeli hostages back safely from Gaza. But he’s used over 50,000 tons of weapons, costing over $18 billion for Israel to complete the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

 

He did nothing to force Israel to provide food, water and medicine to the 2,300,000 sick and starving Palestinians (less the 100,000 or so already dead) as a condition for supplying genocide weapons. On October 12th he issued a demand giving Israel 30 days to start allowing in life saving supplies. When Israel did nothing to comply, Biden essentially said ‘Just kidding about the consequences….keep up the genocide.’

 

But at least Biden said a ceasefire along with food and medicine were needed to stop the Palestinians’ suffering.

 

Unlike Biden, Trump will continue US genocide enabling without the veneer of sympathy for its victims. He repeatedly demands that Israel “Finish the job” in Gaza.

 

His picks on foreign policy promise even more genocide in Gaza compared to Biden’s tough act to follow.

 

Trump tabbed uberhawk Mike Waltz to be his National Security Advisor. Waltz is totally against ceasefire, charging it only lead to larger Middle East war when it’s only the ongoing genocide in Gaza fueling it. He’s a huge fan of Netanyahu’s conduct of the genocide, claiming Biden has been too reactive compared to Netanyahu’s proactive aggression.

 

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to run Defense, is all in for Israeli expanding the genocide in Gaza and bombing of Lebanon to take out Iranian nuclear sites. He’s enamored of Israeli bombing and assassinations in Iran because he charges Biden is too weak to do it. He carries visible symbols of his beliefs—a large Crusader’s Jerusalem Cross tattoo on his chest and the biblical verse Matthew 10:34, which reads, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.” When in charge of Defense, Hegseth should change its name to Department of Endless War and Genocide.

 

Trump's selection of Marco Rubio to head the State Department equally dreadful. Rubio defends the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza saying “Israel’s enemies are also our enemies. The Iranian regime and its proxies - Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and a multitude of groups in Syria and Iraq seek Israel’s destruction as part of a multi-stage plan to dominate the Middle East and destabilize the West. The Jewish state is on the front lines of this conflict, fighting with many shared American-Israeli lives.” Rubio would be more accurate in saying ‘Israel is on the front lines of genocide.’

 

But Trump’s pick of Mike Huckabee to be Ambassador to Israel trumps even Waltz, Hegseph and Rubio for genocidal support. Huckabee, a Christian Evangelist claims “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There's no such thing as occupation….there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.”

 

As grotesque as Biden’s enabling of Israeli genocide in Gaza is…Trump 2.0 figures to be much worse.

Trump didn’t grow his 2020 base…Harris lost her 2020 base

 

Trump didn’t grow his 2020 base…Harris lost her 2020 base

 

Democratic insiders and progressive pundits are spinning around at warp speed assessing the calamitous election results.

 

Agonizing on how Trump peeled off so many of the Democratic base doesn’t compute with these startling vote totals.

 

Trump won 75,589,234 votes, but only 1,364,916 more than his 74,224,318 in 2020. That’s an increase of merely 1.8% which does not suggest he captured a large number or percentage of Biden’s 2020 voters.

 

However, Harris garnered just 72,445,160 votes, an astonishing 8,839,906 (11.8%) less than Biden’s 81,284,666 votes in ’20.

 

Clearly, most of those nearly 9 million Biden’s ’20 voters stayed home or voted 3rdParty/Write in rather then vote for Trump. Democratic agonists must ponder why to make sense of Harris’ overwhelming loss. If they were truly honest and decent, they would put her support of Israeli genocide in Gaza at the top of their list. Had Trump campaigned to end US weaponizing the Gaza genocide, his vote total may have approached Biden’s massive 2020 vote.

 

I know because for this leader in the peace community, that was the sole reason I could not vote for her. And I know many in the peace community who could not vote for her for the same reason. Polling showed over 75% of Democratic voters wanted the Biden/Harris administration to stop all genocide weapons used by Israel to obliterate Gaza and its 2,300,000 beleaguered inhabitants.

 

Harris totally ignored the genocide in Gaza during the campaign. But when asked, she regurgitated the Biden policy that Israel will get everything they need for their ‘defense’ and that she’d continue Biden’s Gaza policy if elected. She essentially told millions of her base to go straight to hell.

 

But in the thousands of hours and millions of words on progressive news and at DNC headquarters regarding her loss, nary a word about Harris’ genocide support will likely be heard. Unless Democrats pivot to peace, most of those 9 million Biden voters may be lost forever.

Lame duck Biden needs to heed Leahy Law to end Israeli genocide in Gaza

 

Lame duck Biden needs to heed Leahy Law to end Israeli genocide in Gaza

 

With just 68 days left in his blood-soaked presidency, Joe Biden is running out of time to pivot to peace in Gaza. For the last 14 months he’s funneled over $18 billion in weapons for Israel to inflict genocidal ethnic cleansing on 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

 

In so doing he's  violating US laws 22 U.S.C. 2378d and 10 U.S.C. 362, collectively known as the Leahy Law. They prohibit the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights (GVHR). The entire world outside of the US and Israel acknowledge that ‘credible information’ of gross violation of human rights in Gaza.

 

Till now, Biden has not cared a whit about following the Leahy Law in his total support of Israel committing the worst genocide this century. Indeed, without Biden’s 50,000 tons of weaponry, Israel couldn’t have started, much less continued the genocide for 14 months. Even a high ranking Israeli official advised if Biden shuts down the weapons pipeline, Israel’s genocide would collapse within a few weeks.

 

President Biden not only flouts world public opinion in his weaponizing Israeli genocide, he ignores the majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents at home telling him to stop.

 

Biden can flout the Leahy Law because nobody in the Justice Department or Congress, other than Sen. Bernie Sanders, is raising the issue of his grisly Leahy Law violations.

 

With no public opinion or governmental resource to force Biden to comply with the Leahy Law, we’re left with a Hail Mary...Joe Biden’s conscience telling him he must end the grotesque US enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza before his dwindling time to do so expires January 20.

President Biden should not pass off failed US proxy war against Russia to Trump presidency

President Biden should not pass off failed US proxy war against Russia to Trump presidency   A wise aphorism advises ‘Finish what you start.’   That should certainly apply President Biden finishing up the colossal military blunder he began early in his presidency. A half century cold warrior in Congress, the Vice Presidency, culminating in the presidency, Biden tried to weaken Russia by using his Ukraine proxies to keep Russia out of the Western European political economy.   He spent his entire term seeking that goal, only to have it backfire spectacularly. He’s accomplished nothing except largely destroying Ukraine as a functioning, democratic nation. With Russia he’s accomplished the opposite. Russia has gained prestige, power, a vibrant economy and near total control over a fifth of Ukraine that will never return to Kyiv’s rule.   How Biden could be so shortsighted, so wrong, so stupid will forever remain a mystery. But he does have an opportunity in his last 70 days to finish his failed project with a win-win negotiated settlement before Donald Trump takes office.   He needs to inform Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that US weapons, keeping the proxy war bleeding, will be cutoff, requiring Zelensky to sue for peace. The only thing those weapons accomplish is continued slaughter of the Ukraine military and further degradation of the Ukraine nation.   The settlement will be a huge embarrassment for Biden and the US national security state. But it will end the dying and begin the process of rebuilding the roughly 80% of Ukraine that Russia neither wants nor can conquer like the 20% on their border never to return to Ukraine sovereignty.   Ending the war, or at least starting the peace process, will take one major crisis from Trump’s overcrowded foreign policy plate. Since Trump often speaks on opposite sides of every foreign entanglement, we have no idea how he will handle the Ukraine war once in power.   During the campaign he bragged he’d end it in one day starting by ending the US weapons train to Ukraine. But he just announced Rep. Mike Waltz to be his National Security Advisor. Uber hawk Waltz never encountered a US military misadventure he didn’t relish. Waltz’ favors ramping up sanctions enforcement on Russia which has not hurt Russia one iota in 33 months of war. Much worse, he supports allowing Ukraine to use using long range US, NATO-weapons to strike deep inside Russia. That’s not a plan to end the war in 24 hours. It’s an unhinged recipe for igniting nuclear winter in 24 hours.   Achieving peace in Ukraine in his remaining weeks would allow Biden to partially salvage his disastrous foreign policy record. Largely destroying Ukraine, enabling the worst genocide in this century in Gaza, endlessly escalating tensions with China that could explode into war, represents one of the worst foreign policy records in US history.   There would be neat historical symmetry between Biden and Trump if Biden does initiate a Ukraine peace agreement. In Trump’s last year he inked a deal with the Taliban to end America’s 20 yearlong Afghan war. Biden wisely and courageously followed thru to complete it in his first year. It would be cool if Biden could reciprocate and leave office with a peace deal for Trump to simply sign off on.   If Biden ended one war, he’s capable of ending a second. Come on Joe…say it’s so.

Duckworth pockets cool $782,000 from Israel Lobby to erase ‘genocidal ethnic cleansing’ from her Senate vocabulary

 

Duckworth pockets cool $782,000 from Israel Lobby to erase ‘genocidal ethnic cleansing’ from her Senate vocabulary

Peruse IL Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s website and you will find nary a word about Israel's genocidal ethnic cleansing of 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza. She does state she “will do everything in my power to encourage de-escalation that ultimately brings bout a two state future that strengthens the safety of Israel, eliminates the threat posed by Hamas and ends the prolonged and continuing suffering of innocent Palestinians.”

The truth is slightly different. Duckworth is doing everything in her power to ensure the genocidal ethnic cleansing continues till all the Palestinians in Gaza are dead and gone. She’s supported every dollar of the 18 billion dollars in weaponry the US has sent to Israel to conduct the genocide there now in its 14th month.

She knows the genocide could not have commenced, much less continued, without America’s 50,000 tons of ordinance obliterating tens of thousands of Palestinian moms and kids, while destroying nearly every home, hospital, school, water treatment facility among infrastructure necessary for sustainable life. She approves all US vetoes of UN resolutions calling for an end to the genocide.

Duckworth knows her unquestioned genocide support ensures that the 97 Israeli hostages in Gaza will never come home alive. Had Duckworth truly worked to end US genocide support when it commenced, those hostages might be already safely home.

Duckworth cannot be unaware that US support of genocide in Gaza may be destroying Israel as well. Outside of the US, Israel has become reviled worldwide for continuing the most horrific genocide this century. Tourism is nearly gone. Foreign investment drying up like the desert. Thousands of Israeli businesses shuttered. The IDF suffering significant casualties and demoralization from having to participate in atrocities, with no chance of attaining Israel’s imagined end game. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen are disrupting life in northern Israel, forcing tens of thousands to flee their rocket attacks in support of ending the genocide. Duckworth knows these attacks can never be stopped.

Why Duckworth does not do the right thing and demand, like her more humane colleague Bernie Sanders, that the US cut off all weapons to Israel, is no mystery. There are 782,000 reasons she does not to the right thing. They are the $782,000 in campaign cash the Israel Lobby has gifted her since becoming a senator in 2016.

My Senator Tammy Duckworth learned the first lesson of political survival in the Israel Lobby dominated US Congress. Money talks….and Palestinians die.

Walt Zlotow

West Suburban Peace Coalition

Glen Ellyn IL

Turn Veterans Day into Peace Day

 

Turn Veterans Day into Peace Day

 

Started 105 years ago November 11, Armistice Day was established in the UK to commemorate the armistice that ended WWI a year earlier. In 1926 Congress added it to the US to “perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations…a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.” The US war party, working through Congress, changed it to Veterans Day in 1954, the same year they put ‘under god’ in the Pledge. ’1954 was a bad year indeed.

Since then, it has largely become a commercial for promoting American militarism and perpetual war round the world which today sees over 160,000 soldiers deployed in 150 countries. To a country bent on perpetual war worldwide, ‘Armistice’ is a word that dares not speak its name in America.

America provoked, enabled and prolonged the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine killing hundreds of thousands, turning Ukraine into a failed state with no chance of victory. Not satisfied with that bloodbath, the US is funneling tens of billions in weapons to complete Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which has killed many thousands, leaving 2.3 million Palestinians with little food, water, medicine, electricity or hope.

We regularly bomb innocents in a number of countries. While every decent function of government loses funding, the annual increase in our $850 billion plus military budget alone is larger than most countries spend on their entire military. Intelligence and ancillary items swell our national security budget to $1.2 trillion. Whew.  

All vets but the dwindling, near centenarians of WWII, fought in undeclared wars which slaughtered millions while doing nothing to promote peace…and they know it. After 70 years it’s time for another name change. How about Peace Day, to honor the peacemakers like Dr. Martin Luther King and a true American war hero , Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who spent seven years in prison for outing American war crimes in Iraq? 

As John Lennon famously sang, ‘Give peace a chance.’

How will Trump respond to major crises in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran?

 

How will Trump respond to major crises in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran?

When Donald Trump is inaugurated January 20, he'll inherit 2 bloody, intractable foreign crises. The US proxy war in Ukraine will be approaching its third year with no peaceful settlement in sight.

The genocide in Gaza, the worst in this century, will be in its 16th month. That genocide has drawn in Palestinian support from Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and their chief backer Iran. This makes a major regional war involving other Middle East countries as well as the US and Russia a real possibility.

Unlike Joe Biden, who always promotes belligerent US foreign policy in every conflict, Donald Trump is a mixed bag when it comes to US adventurism abroad. He’s never been in sync with the US national security establishment when it comes to expanding NATO and prosecuting Biden’s proxy war against Russia currently destroying Ukraine.

Indeed, he’s signaled he’ll push to end it without committing to prevent Russian acquisition of Donbas, adjacent oblasts and Crimea. It would be politically difficult for Trump to reverse course and continue Biden’s delusional squandering endless billions in weapons for a lost cause. Of course nothing is certain due to his mercurial policy style and temperament. But at least Trump offers a glimmer of hope that the US will force a settlement ending the greatest threat to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis 62 years ago.

Trump’s slant on the Middle East is another matter entirely. He’s been more outspoken than Biden on supporting Israeli genocide in Gaza, demanding that Israel “finish the job.” He nearly blundered into war with Iran during his presidency and shows no sign of pivoting from aggressive confrontation with Iran in his second turn at Commander in Chief.

His first foreign policy pick reinforces that concern. He’s tabbed fervent Iran hawk Brian Hook to begin staffing the Trump State Department. Hook served as U.S. Special Representative for Iran and advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the last two years of Trump’s presidency. This saw the US assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and expansion of crushing sanctions intended to spur regime change in Iran. That led to fear of a US provoked war with Iran, but did nothing to change out the Iranian regime.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump “plans to drastically increase sanctions on Iran and throttle its oil sales as part of an aggressive strategy” in his second term.

Trump’s 2018 withdrawal of the US from Obama’s 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement, backfired spectacularly, spurring Iran to greater nuclear enrichment in case they decide to become a nuclear power to counter US and Israeli aggression. As president Trump repeatedly proved himself incompetent when confronting imaginary enemies. He’s apparently learned nothing about diplomacy and conflict resolution during his 4 year banishment from power.

We barely avoided war with Iran during Trump’s administration. His Iran policy 2.0 will almost certainly bring more conflict with a power that is no pushover if a US Iran war breaks out. It’s even possible Trump’s plan to quickly withdraw from the Ukraine war is designed to keep US military resources available and focused on his primary bête noir Iran.

2025, like 2024, is not shaping up to be a peaceful year based on early Trump presidential transition signals.

Hold on folks. Once again it’s going to be a bumpy foreign policy ride in 2025.

Trib election editorial ‘Donald Trump’s win was a stunning repudiation of the chattering classes’ disconnected from election reality

 

Trib election editorial ‘Donald Trump’s win was a stunning repudiation of the chattering classes’ disconnected from election reality

 

 

The Trib’s analysis is problematical on several levels.

 

 

The title term ‘chattering class’ is a Republican meme designed to smear deeply passionate progressive advocates for a more supportive, inclusive and democratic society. It feeds into the Republican agenda to portray supporters of lower and middle class advancement as out of touch elites. Calling assistant deans, network anchors, public health officials and newspaper journalists ‘liberal elites’ is an ad homonym insult not worthy of seeing print. 

 

 

The Trib’s characterization of Harris’ agenda to uplift society is false. I heard dozens of her speeches which laid out in concrete terms to her economic plan to grow middle and loser class wealth with tax incentives to purchase their first home and restrict tax increases to the wealthy. Trump’s plan which most economists blasted due to billionaire tax cuts goosing the deficit and massive tariffs costing working families thousands, would balloon the deficit possibly more than the $7 billion increase Trump achieved in his first term.

 

 

Democratic leaders, faced with a difficult choice once Biden dropped out just 107 days from election, made a sterling choice. Harris, an insider to the presidency for three and a half years at Biden’s side, was eminently more qualified than any other choice. She rewarded her selection with a passionate, spirited and common sense campaign that shamed Republicans for choosing a convicted felon, who tried to overturn his 2020 defeat using mob action that injured over 150 police protecting American democracy. Yet, the Trib mentions none of that in its rush to degrade Harris’s principled campaign.

 

 

Harris did not “abandon the working class, especially men, by deeming so much of what they felt was unacceptable.” Speaking honestly and intelligently, did not get herself “on the wrong side of the numbers game.” It was Trump, who got on the right side of the numbers game with abusive, profane and disgraceful rhetoric never before heard in a presidential campaign. It was so offensive one not enamored of it needed a shower afterwards.

 

 

The Trib Editorial Board might benefit from reviewing an hour comparing Harris’s eloquent speeches to the incoherent ramblings of Trump impersonating an overserved blowhard in a bar.

Then offer a revision on the election connected to reality.