April 28, 2024

This is quite a long article, but I hope you all will read it.

Robert Kagan writes eloquently and accurately about the historical roots that we face in this year's election. The link will give you the whole article as a gift. There is no paywall. I'm including a couple of paragraphs to show what he's talking about.

https://wapo.st/3QonhLY

For some time, it was possible to believe that many voters could not see the threat Donald Trump poses to America’s liberal democracy, and many still profess not to see it. But now, a little more than six months from Election Day, it’s hard to believe they don’t. The warning signs are clear enough. Trump himself offers a new reason for concern almost every day. People may choose to ignore the warnings or persuade themselves not to worry, but they can see what we all see, and that should be enough.

How to explain their willingness to support Trump despite the risk he poses to our system of government? The answer is not rapidly changing technology, widening inequality, unsuccessful foreign policies or unrest on university campuses but something much deeper and more fundamental. It is what the Founders worried about and Abraham Lincoln warned about: a decline in what they called public virtue. They feared it would be hard to sustain popular support for the revolutionary liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence, and they worried that the virtuous love of liberty and equality would in time give way to narrow, selfish interest. Although James Madison and his colleagues hoped to establish a government on the solid foundation of self-interest, even Madison acknowledged that no government by the people could be sustained if the people themselves did not have sufficient dedication to the liberal ideals of the Declaration. The people had to love liberty, not just for themselves but as an abstract ideal for all humans.

Much more at link.

April 28, 2024

Where's the Announcement of the Winners of the April Photo Contest?

The poll expired hours ago.

April 27, 2024

Trump is a master of corruption--in today's LA Times, by Francis Wilkinson.

https://www.aol.com/news/opinion-supreme-court-just-showed-184314409.html

I have badly underestimated Donald Trump. Thursday was the day that his justices — it turns out that they are indeed his justices on the Supreme Court, just as he claimed — got it through my thick head: Trump is not just competent but masterful. He is not just capable, he is supreme.

~snip~

Crime is a largely private endeavor. Corruption is public. It seeps into the muscle and sinew of democratic society and institutions; it devours from within. The Supreme Court, drunk on arrogated power, cut loose from rudimentary ethics, has been eaten alive by it. But the court is just one plot of a vast terrain that Trump has conquered — not with crime, but corruption.

~snip~

Trump has already succeeded at corrupting much of what’s corruptible. Government. Elections. Foreign policy. Democracy. Religion. Above all, people, and mostly men. Truckloads, boatloads, tiki-torch-parade-loads, courtloads of weak men all standing in the shadow that Trump casts.

~snip~

But it was the Republican Supreme Court — mostly men again — that put the shiv a little deeper in democracy’s back this week. Originalists or textualists, all sounded more or less Trumpist as they seriously entertained Trump’s argument that his assaults on the constitutional order are protected by the Constitution itself. There is no way to make honest sense of such a liar’s mash. But Larry, Moe and Curly aren’t just chairing committees in Congress. They wear robes and furrowed brows now, too. And they seem eager to pretend that crimes are just constitutional exercises of power, and that one ex-president is a king.

April 26, 2024

A few photos from El Segundo's Farmer's Market today . . .

April 25, 2024

Flowers in my neighborhood . . .

April 25, 2024

What's to eat? Here you go!

April 24, 2024

A friend of mine, a senior like me, sent me this. I thought it was a hoot and I hope you do too!

April 23, 2024

Finally, the sun is out and I went to the Manhattan Beach Farmer's Market today! Enjoy, dear friends . . .

This is called the Pincushion Flower:

April 21, 2024

Tonight's moon . . .

April 19, 2024

From the Palmer Report, today: Alvin Bragg may have just found his "in" for locking up Donald Trump.

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/alvin-bragg-may-have-just-found-his-in-for-locking-up-donald-trump/55574/

~snip

Bragg and his team have made a new filing detailing Trump’s additional gag order violations. They’re now pointing out that based on the timeframe, some of Trump’s offending posts may have been posted from “within this courthouse.” There are a couple reasons why this is a big deal.

~snip

... by all accounts Trump doesn’t type. Instead he reportedly dictates his posts to a guy named Dan Scavino. Trump even recently admitted that Scavino is the only person with full access to Trump’s Truth Social account. So if Trump’s gag order-violating posts are being made while Trump is at the courthouse, how is that even happening? Are he and Scavino scheduling them the night before?

If so, it sets the stage for the courts to potentially drag Scavino in as a material witness in Trump’s gag order violations. Scavino would have to be truthful about how he and Trump have crafted these offending posts, or else Scavino would go down for obstruction.

~snip

So it’s worth watching where Alvin Bragg and his team are going with this. If they can drag in Scavino on this and firmly establish that Trump’s offending posts were a strategic decision to try to intimidate the targets, and not merely spontaneous outbursts in frustration, it would go a long way to convincing the judge to indeed lock Trump up during next week’s gag order violation hearing.

Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report
www.palmerreport.com