IMPORTANT READS

VIEW FROM HERE--For historians, the current president of the United States is terra incognita. Donald John Trump is the first of the 44 individuals who have held the office to never have been a government functionary. Even men like U.S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower served in high-ranking military positions, overseeing the huge bureaucracy of war. As far as I am aware, Trump has never even been a local commissioner, let alone an elected official. 

SHOOT FIRST, ASK LATER BEING QUESTIONED-On the heels of police officers shooting a young, unarmed black man to death in Sacramento, California, last month, state lawmakers announced a first-of-its-kind bill on Monday that raises the standard for when officers may open fire. 

VIEW FROM HERE--The online Oxford dictionary defines the word siege as a “military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling those inside to surrender.”

FIRST PERSON-In her book Democracy inChains, Professor Nancy MacLean of Duke University in North Carolinalays out how the over 40-year master plan funded by the Koch brothers and other mega-rich oligarchs has dumbed down the American electorate to the point that it is now incapable of understanding what she is talking about because they no longer have the requisite critical thinking skills needed to do so. In 2018, we see that these skills have been systematically removed from our public education system, much like in the Orwellian “newspeak world” presciently described in George Orwell's novel,1984. 

SPOILING THE MESSAGE-Liberty means freedom. Freedom is not about borders, passports, drivers’ licenses, tax stubs and censuses. Freedom is not about race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or one's economic worth. What is freedom if not the feeling of being free? What is freedom if not the pursuit of life and happiness? 

MY TURN-It’s time for the DNC to wake up and realize that the so-called “progressives” of the Bernie Sanders group are neither progressive nor interested in really supporting any platform that doesn’t pass their “Bernie Purity test.”

GUEST WORDS--A record? Come on! Don’t minimize what’s happening. It’s far too unique, too unprecedented even to be classified as “historic.” Call it mega-historic, if you wish. Never from Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar to Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, from the Sun King Louis the XIV to President Ronald Reagan, from George Washington to Barack Obama, has anyone -- star, icon, personality, president, autocrat, emperor -- been covered in anything like this fashion.

SIBBLING SENDUP-She is the balanced, stable, sane Trump sibling and she’s not happy about the behavior of her little brother, the President of the United States.Maryann Trump Barry, Donald Trump’s older sister and a United States Circuit Judge, told reporters over the weekend, “Donnie’s not acting right -- I’m afraid he left his marbles back in Queens.” 

AMERICAN OLIGARCHS-I often look at Jeff Bezos when trying to understand how American oligarchy functions.First of all, by currently occupying the number one slot on Forbes’ billionaires list, he is the top dog. He figured out how to play the plutocracy game quickly, and how to play it better than anyone else. 

GUEST WORDS--John Bolton, President Trump’s new (and improved) National Security Advisor argues a nuclear first strike against N. Korea is “legal.”

CORRUPTION WATCH-During the last election, Russia’s job was to screw with America. Cambridge Analytica’s business model was to data mine the www for memes in order to package and sell them to political campaigns. The job of Americans was to be educated. Two of these entities did their job while the last one failed miserably. 

POLITICAL DIVIDE--While the country is in the middle of realizing that we have had an illegitimate Presidential election, we are also continually battling the daily onslaught of misinformation that is being spewed by both Trump and his followers. This is a time when Democrats need to rally together to pursue fact checking and attempt to maintain some form of sanity.

GELFAND’S WORLD--The difference between Richard Nixon and Donald Trump is that Nixon at least had pretensions about being an intellectual and had one or two serious ideas about foreign policy. 

D.C. DISPATCH-Vladimir Putin must be a very happy man. He has a lot to be thankful for: a new term as Russian President is secure; his image as a swashbuckling, anti-Western superhero is cemented; his success in confusing the American electorate to the point that it no longer has a baseline definition of truth; and his former spooks and enemies are tending to “retire” early. 

ALT-RIGHT POLITICS-The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued a full retraction and apology for a bizarre screed it published last week lumping anti-war leftists in with fascists and Nazis. As of this writing, two other articles by the same author, Alexander Reid Ross, have also been pulled by the Southern Poverty Law Center “pending further review.” 

MY TURN--While dating has always been an “iffy” condition, in today’s world of “hooking up”, interest in an individual’s political affiliation has become a priority.

BCK FILE--Before Donald Trump ran for president, he was best known by many Americans as a reality star on The Apprentice. Since taking office, he’s issued his catch phrase or received resignations from over 40 administration officials as of Friday when he fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. 

GUEST WORDS--Cash-strapped social studies teachers across America have discovered an exciting new resource that provides lesson plans, study materials and even seminars geared toward elementary, middle and high school students. 

CORRUPTION WATCH-The idea of “Truth, Justice and the American Way” is dead, dead, dead.The phrase is from the 1930's when Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegal created Superman.

D.C. DISPATCH-When bombshell bribery and corruption allegations surfaced last December against OSI Systems, a 5,000-employee port-and-aviation scanning company based in Hawthorne, they arrived with all the earmarks of modern investigative reporting: anonymous sources identified as former employees with detailed knowledge, links to public documents supporting the allegations, even a well-made 13-minute documentary illustrating why one expert felt the company was "rotten to the core." 

TRUMP WATCH-The Republicans on the House so-called Intelligence Committee this week precipitously announced a "bi-partisan" report and decision to shutdown their investigation of Russian meddling and interference in the2016 election.