September 18, 2026: 1965, a poem

 

            1965 

I came across an ancient text

From when I was fifteen

Buried in a paper box

Forgotten and unseen.

I marvelled at the language there

And in my simple faith

In the rightness of my land

On its expanding path.

It must have been the things they taught

That shaped my point of view.

My pride was pure but incomplete

With things I never knew.

America, I still love you whole

For all that you could be.

At fifteen there was so, so much

That I was not allowed to see,

But I see it now, warts and all

With utter clarity.

September 17, 2026: Fighting Against the Down

 

I don’t write my blog as often as I used to, mainly because it has become hard to see the point. That is my failing. I am an optimistic fellow, who believes that people generally want to be good, and that kindness will bring that good out in them. But watching the news every day is depressing and infuriating. Seeing my country abandon its principles, its allies, and its own people is disheartening. Knowing that my blog will be read by a small handful of people who agree with me feels meaningless.

I apologize. I should do better, but most days my energy is spent on more benign pursuits.

That being said, I still pay attention. And I recognize my duty to continue to speak out. Today, my outrage over the strange attitude of our President has grown exponentially. It comes on many fronts. As interest rates climb to combat growing inflation, and gas prices soar because Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz and now the Houthis are tying up the entrance to the Red Sea, Trump promises that prices are going to drop far and fast when peace is made, ignoring that peace is nowhere close to being made. Again, Trump chose this war and therefore is the one responsible for kicking the hornet’s nest. He also promised that Venezuelan crude oil reserves would lower oil prices, ignoring that Venezuela crude is much harder and costlier to refine, and no one seems to want to try.

It always fascinated and annoyed me that Trump blames our allies for not helping out against Iran, when he chose to follow Netanyahu’s lead and create chaos in the Middle East without first consulting those allies or his own people. It’s his mess. It’s our mess. Trump was stupid enough to think that the Iranian government would collapse on Day One, and we all are paying for that arrogant mistake.

Trump also has engaged in a trade war—again, of choice—against Canada. This has forced Canada to seek better relations with other trading partners, which should be no surprise. When the European Union invited Canada to become its first associate member, Trump’s response was more tariffs against the EU. He refuses to back down on his fixation on tariffs, despite his own Supreme Court putting the brakes on him, and despite most economists warning that high tariffs cause inflation and ultimately are paid for by the consumer.

I am proud to be an American. I am ashamed of our current government. The list of grievances against the Trump Administration continues to grow, but our government is not listening. They don’t care. They are making money on a level exponential to my outrage. In the bargain, they have jeopardized America’s position in the world for decades to come. Who can trust us? Who can trust us not to elect Don Junior twenty years from now?

To the world I say, Forgive us our stupidity, as we forgive those who are stupid among us. And to ,my fellow citizens, no matter what you think or how you feel, I say, VOTE! Tell the world who we really are, and then learn to live with the consequences.

August 25, 2026: Pluto Is More Than Just A Planet

Twenty years ago today, our solar system lost a planet when Pluto was demoted to the status of dwarf planet. In 1906, amateur astronomer Percival Lowell began searching for a possible ninth planet in our solar system, which he called Planet X. Pluto was discovered in 1930, fourteen years after Lowell’s death by then 23 year old astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. But Pluto’s size was much less than scientists expected for a ninth planet, and continually downsized over the years until, on August 24, 2006, its status as a planet shifted. Many of us were and remain saddened by this reclassification. I don’t think Pluto itself cares. It just does its thing out there, deep in space.

The name “Pluto” comes from the Roman name for the God of the underworld. The Greeks called him Hades. For me, however, “pluto” has a different meaning as well, as short for “plutocracy.”

The definition of “plutocracy” is simple. It means a system of government or society controlled directly or indirectly by its wealthiest individuals. Government by the rich, of the rich, and for the rich. The word comes from the Greek “ploutos,” wealth, and “kratos.” power or rule. Why is this important to me now? I have been thinking for a long time that the United States is being run by the very, very rich people, families and corporations who control the economy. I have mentioned before C, Wright Mills’ 1956 book, The Power Elite, that expresses the same theory. If you just follow the money, the conclusion seems inescapable. If there is profit to be made, the super-rich will do whatever it takes to get more.

What’s happening in Gaza? The West Bank? Ukraine? Syria? Venezuela? Our attention has been fully co-opted by Donald Trump’s war of choice. While we bluster and push against Iran and Israel pushes itself deeper into Lebanon, other key issues disappear from our thoughts. But they still go on. Children face starvation. Refugees seek shelter. People are being killed.

Trump loves it. In his tiny but expanding bubble, he loves to bully and threaten. He loves us to be confused and terrified of what he will do next. Meanwhile, he is lining his pockets and pushing his ultimate one-word agenda, oil. Forget Jeffrey Epstein. Forget the 2026 midterms. Look at me—Donald Trump, King of the World, owner of Venezuela and the Strait of Hormuz and a percentage of every gas pump in America and the world.

And yet, for all his increased wealth while President over the last year and a half, Trump still ranks only 201 on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans. There are 200 entities who have more than him. For them, Trump is the distraction, the clown show the rest of us are watching while they steal us blind. Between oil and Artificial Intelligence and the Crypto Ponzi scam, they all are getting richer at the same exponential rate he is. If democracy collapses in the bargain, they stand to profit from the collapse. And, like the dwarf planet Pluto, these plutocrats don’t care. 

August 20, 2026: Wrong Thinking

 

War has changed. Massive, expensive, what former Defense official Dr. Jerry McGinn called ‘exquisite’ military hardware can be taken out by relatively cheap drones. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is demonstrating this new reality, because despite Russia’s military might Ukraine is not buckling under, and instead is taking the war to the Russians with their superior knowledge and use of drone technology. All the hardware the United States has been throwing against Iran has not crushed Iran’s will to survive. Instead, the Iranians have learned that the Strait of Hormuz is a weapon of blackmail, and they have learned how to use it. Now they are using their allies to expand the threat to other key commercial bottlenecks.

It makes me wonder, looking at the world situation, just how much Trump is actually enjoying the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. If you follow the money, Trump and Iran could be thought of as intentionally manipulating the oil market by controlling the Strait. If the price of oil per barrel goes up worldwide but American oil refiners don’t actually face increased costs, then they make more profit themselves. And so does Donald Trump. Just saying.

In fact, American oil companies reported their greatest profits ever during the second quarter of 2026, just after Trump’s war of choice began. According to The Guardian, the biggest companies in the world made about $700,000 profit per minute. But oil is a dirty and finite commodity. Human beings are moving away from fossil fuel dependence. Trump knows the inevitable. So do the oil tycoons. Trump has pushed back against alternative sources of energy against all logic. Why? Because there is a great opportunity to cash in big before the industry collapses. There’s money to be made, and Trump and those who control him don’t care about the consequences as long as they get theirs first. And if one of those consequences is bankrupting America by fighting a war nobody asked for with a dwindling supply of obsolete weapons, it will encourage the military-industrial complex to go into high gear. As is his wont, Trump is doubling down on wrong thinking.

It comes down to this. Trump wants a military budget of one and a half trillion dollars for the next fiscal year. He wants more high-end missiles and the delivery system to deploy them. He needs to replace all the ones his military has shot off over the past few months and will have to keep on shooting off for the foreseeable future. In today’s changing world, it’s a colossal waste of money. On 9-11, 2001, nineteen zealots and about $500,000 crippled the world for a time. The new reality is filled with people who know how to fly under the radar and strike hard, and no stockpile of Tomahawk or Patriot missiles can stop them. It’s wrong thinking to believe that money and munitions can solve our problems. We need intelligence, which today seems to be seriously lacking anywhere in our government.

Here Be Pirates!

 

July 13, 2026: Here Be Pirates!

No, I am not talking about the Pittsburgh Pirate baseball team. Once upon a time I was a huge fan, when I spent a great deal of time with John and Robert Pira, who were rabid Pirate fanatics. It was easy to like the Pirates because of Willie Stargell, arguably the nicest guy in baseball at the time, and the immortal Roberto Clemente, whom I thought was the most exciting player in the game, beyond even Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays.

No, I am not talking about the Pirates of the Caribbean, who were my all-time favorite real-life characters when I was growing up. I collected every one of the 66 cards in the Fleer Pirate Bold set and read their tiny biographies, the size of an old tweet, every day. I am still fascinated. My favorite trio is Calico Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. The original Skull and Crossbones motif on a pirate flag is said to have emerged from Calico Jack’s even better design, a skull, representing him, and crossed swords, representing his two female companions and soldiers-in-arms.

I am talking about real pirates on the High Seas today. Specifically, I am talking about the Strait of Hormuz and the United States Navy. More specifically, I am talking about the Navy’s Commander-in-Chief, Donald John Trump. Today Trump announced that our navy will be keeping the Strait open and that he expects passing ships to pay America a 20% surcharge to offset the cost of doing so. This means Trump plans to charge our allies to control, not fix, a problem he created when he declared war on Iran. It sounds like piracy to me. It sounds like extortion.

Maybe I am being unfair. To pirates. What Trump wants to do sounds like a protection racket. Old school: let me smash up your business, and if you don’t want it to happen again, pay me 20% of everything you make so I can protect you against myself. He’s not a pirate, he’s a gangster. He’s not Blackbeard, he’s Al Capone.

July 3, 2026: The Rule Golden

 

I have spent a great deal of time lately thinking about how humans should behave, and about how most human beings, I want to believe, strive to do good or at the very least, do no harm. We acknowledge that we are flawed. After all, perfection would be boring! Throughout history good souls have tried to lay down moral principles by which the rest of us should live. Our own country at its founding endeavored to codify, that is, human rights with a clear understanding that as We The People progressed, we would make the necessary modifications to expand those rights.

Yet it all can be boiled down to this: the Golden Rule distills what human beings ought to be, ought to strive for, in 11 words. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It seems brilliantly simple and probably naive. Georgia Senator and Baptist minister Raphael Warnock says there are versions of this rule in every faith, and that it is key to the small c christian moral code. It means, help others as you would want them to help you in similar circumstances. Do not enslave unless you want to be enslaved. Do not kill unless you want to be killed. Do not impoverish unless you want to be poor. Be kind. It should be self evident. But if it were, we wouldn’t need reminding.

And yet, I know atheists with a better moral code than Mike Johnson and other so-called christians.

Decades ago, Science Fiction writer Damon Knight wrote a novella called The Rule Golden. In it, if you kicked someone, you felt the pain. If you shot someone you died. I don’t know how to remind christians of their own moral code, but reading this book might be a good start, if you can find a copy.

MEDICARE FOR ALL: A HILL TO DIE ON

 A HILL TO DIE ON

Do not be surprised if the Republican leadership throws Donald Trump under the bus and enacts the 25^th Amendment, then blames Trump alone for the failure of the Iran War, subsequent rise in inflation, and the collapse of health care—all in the hope of salvaging their control of power. Trump is an easy target because he is guilty as charged. But We The People know the Republican leaders are complicit. This makes the midterm elections look very good for the Democrats. But Democrats are excellent at losing elections. They could use a positive campaign issue instead of always yelling about what the other side is doing wrong.

They need a hill to die on.

Health care is a major issue in this country. We have arguably the best health care in the world, if you can afford it. Even after the Affordable Care Act became law, insurance premiums with high co-pays and deductibles were the norm. If you are wealthy, cost doesn’t matter. But most Americans struggle to make their premiums and to pay their medical bills. The solution of taking out a loan to cover medical costs is no solution at all. By all global measurements, factoring in per person cost and healthcare outcomes, the United States ranks at or near the bottom among industrialized nations. I have seen an overall rank as low as 69^th in the world. Most surveys I have seen place us nearer to 37, which is still shameful for the richest country in the history of the world.

What’s different about all the other countries? They have universal healthcare. Everyone has access to equal treatment. There are problems, certainly, country by country, but the point is that healthcare is much more readily available, and democratic, elsewhere. We need Medicare for All.

But how? It should be simple. Consider. The average annual income for a family of four in the US is $106,000. I personally don’t know anyone in that bracket, but it takes a huge number of people making a whole lot less just to bring the average down from the billionaires and trillionaires. The average cost of insurance premiums for a family of four is between $18 and $27 grand. Even at the lower number, that’s 16% of that average income. Remember, there are a great many people making less than $106K who still have to pay that much in insurance premiums. I am not a math genius, but even I can see that killing private insurance and increasing the Medicare payroll tax from 3%, where it is now, to 8 or 9, or even 10% across the board, would save everybody money in the long run while at the same time providing better care for anyone who needs it.

It’s not like there are no models out there. Yes, the health insurance companies will balk, but how good are they at helping Americans? Maybe it’s time for them to go.

Remember, to whom much is given, much is expected. It also might be worth remembering that it takes a mighty work/consumer force to keep the wealthy afloat. But getting Congress to do anything close to this will take a long, long time and a great many down ballot changes. Still, for anyone who believes in helping our fellow citizens realize a better life, this is a hill worth dying on.

Liberty Rusting, and a New Slogan

LIBERTY RUSTING AND A NEW SLOGAN

Okay, I know what I said about changing focus. I failed. I was watching a documentary about Franklin Delano Roosevelt who, despite his human frailties, or perhaps because of them, came to understand that the role of government was not to promote the rich industrialists of America but to protect the American people from the greedy practices of those same industrialists. It reminded me of something I heard a few weeks ago, and I am paraphrasing, that Donald Trump's presidency is as consequential as FDR’s, but for the opposite reasons. Both men used the power of the executive to establish policy, but FDR did it to help the working class and to provide moral leadership, while Trump has done it to line his own pockets and dismantle as much of the past 95 years of progress on all fronts of human rights possible.

Commentators and pundits have voiced their impression that Trump wants to turn the clock back to 1950 or 1930, or perhaps 1890 at the height of the Gilded Age when robber barons made buckets of money at the expense of an unprotected workforce. I personally think he would like to push even farther back, to 1830, the era of his favorite president, Andrew Jackson. Jackson expanded cronyism with the “Spoils System,” giving jobs to personal favorites and supporters over-qualified applicants. Jackson pushed the Indian Removal Act through Congress, codifying American policy to shove all Native Americans out of the way of white Euro-American progress. Jackson owned 200 slaves.

Trump would whitewash our past, deny it existed. He does not want to learn from history, he wants to rewrite it in his own image, the same image he keeps plastering across the country. Through understanding our history, we learn from our mistakes and grow to do better. Donald Trump wants us stagnant and uneducated. An ignorant people are easier to control, to lie to, to fool, to rob. But ignorance is curable. Stupidity, which our current president exhibits in abundance, is not. This is not the America I know and love. It is not the America that says, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” I was only two years old when my family sailed by those words on the way to Ellis Island. It is not the America for which Martin Luther King had a dream. It is not the country FDR envisioned when he said, “In our democracy officers of the government are the servants, and never the masters of the people.” But it could be.

We must not lose heart. We must push back against the threats facing our grand experiment. We cannot be complacent. We were always sputtering and trying and slipping, but we were always moving forward. That is the country I love, and it is up to all of us to reclaim her. So I wrote a poem, just four lines. I offer it, particularly the last line, as a new slogan for the American people. And pardon the language, please!

            Liberty Rusting

    We talk and talk and don’t do shit.

    Democrats, Republicans, I’m tired of it.

    You’re off the rails, you’re off the tracks.

    I love my country! I want her back! 

Trump's Real Game With Iran

 

All apologies. I had decided to steer away from bigger issues and focus on my own, more personal stuff, like poetry and the upcoming graduation of my first grandchild from high school. I even submitted three poems to a local writer’s club and won a prize! Validation feels good.

And yet, America remains under siege, deeply divided, and over-extended, and no one with any real power seems able or willing to do anything about it. Congress is ineffectual, the Supreme Court is questionable, and POTUS is downright shameful.

Since February 28, We The People have watched virtually helplessly as the United States of Trump launched a “pre-emptive strike” against Iran, in cooperation with Israel. The one immediate and ongoing consequence was and is the crippling of one-fifth the world economy because Iran discovered it could close the Strait of Hormuz and hold all ships transiting through the Strait hostage. I labored under the false impression that Trump did not realize this would happen. I have changed my mind.

In considering military actions, we employ scenario builders. Their job is to consider outcome. They look for probable responses, including those off the battlefield. Every President who considered military action against Iran was warned that Iran could close the Strait. Trump was no different. The closure was not a surprise. I now believe it was exactly what Trump wanted.

Reverse engineering, or following the money, I think Trump fully understood that attacking Iran would close the Strait, and that closure would drive up the price of crude around the world, this means American crude would sell at the same inflated price as the rest of the world. Oil companies and investors would see massive profits, even on a short timeline. Coupled with Trump’s concerted efforts to control Venezuela oil, and his attempts to cripple green energy alternatives, it seems like the President is doubling down on a dwindling energy source for short-term gain. If so, did he collude to create this war and crisis? Is he guilty of insider trading? Has he put American soldiers in harm’s way for profit? Is he guilty of murder? Of treason?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Trump's Legacy

I am sad and oh so tired.  I am embarrassed by my government, and by the people who still blindly support Donald Trump, the budget balancing, peace loving, God fearing, family values Republicans.  I am outraged by the obvious and blunt attempt by Trump to co-opt the world oil industry.  Money is being made by a few, hand over fist.  They have the power and Trump served them, not We The People.  It all wears me out.  

Trump is holding the world hostage.  Meanwhile, U.S. oil companies get to charge the world price, inflated by the closure of Hormuz.  Follow the money.  The super rich are only getting richer, at our expense.  Worldwide, particularly among our strongest allies, Trump is seen as a greater threat to world stability than Vladimir Putin.  

Others on bigger stages say much the same thing to much larger audiences.  All of us have the general problem of speaking to the choir, though that choir does seem to be growing slowly.  It doesn't change the power structure in America, nor does it change the minds of those in power who might be able to do anything to check Donald J. Trump.  So, I have been pretty quiet of late.  In fact, my voice in my golden years might just take up a more joyous banner.  So let this be both a transition and a parting shot.

Trump’s Legacy 

Great man,

Great and terrible,

Dreaming and believing

All your dreams,

History will spit

On your grave

And your dreams

Of gold and glory

And admiration

Will rot beside you,

Bones to dust

To hated bones.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real.  Trump supporters would have us believe that his opponents suffer from it. But, as seems to be the case these days, Trump's side is accusing the rest of us of doing exactly what they have done themselves, or are doing, or plan to do. The Syndrome actually is the stubborn belief, despite all the evidence to the contrary,  that Donald Trump is a good man and a good leader who is not lining his own pockets at the expense of national security,  fiscal responsibility,  and human rights.

It would be deranged to suggest Trump is an agent of the Devil,  or of America's ruin, or Putin or Netanyahu or China. But if we follow the money, would it be deranged to wonder how the oil tycoons across the world think of him?

The war of choice against Iran is the latest on a long list of broken promises and assurances and outright lies. Meanwhile,  fuel prices soar, even for Americans who, according to the President, don't need anybody else's oil because we have plenty.

Using recent estimates, the US spends 40 times what Iran does on defense.  Yet we can't get the job done (whatever that is). We should have learned from Ukraine that relatively cheap armaments can take out very expensive ones. Having the most,  best weapons does not guarantee superiority. 

Trump wants to increase our defense budget by 50% to a level over 6 times larger than China and 60 times the level of our chosen enemy Iran,  at the expense of our elderly,  poor, and average tax payer. He claims it's for defense. But it's what kings do to finance their wars of choice. And if you can't see that, shame on you. 

Olympic Bold

    They are very careful and polite about it, but several USA Olympic athletes have expressed how difficult it feels right now to represent their country at the Games.  Skier Hunter Hess was the first, but others have joined him.  these fine young people are not shouting out against their country.  They are expressing concern that has become discomfort.  The most common comment has been, and I am paraphrasing. "Of course I don't like some of the things that are going on back home."

    They are getting criticized for not loving America.  I would point out that if they didn't love their country they would not bother to comment at all.  I feel it incumbent upon me to once again quote James Baldwin."I love America more than any other country in the world, and, for exactly that reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

    And this, from Albert Einstein: "If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity."

    I know this blog is unlikely to reach the people who need to read it, who need reminding that true patriotism is speaking truth to power.  It doesn't have to be vicious or cruel.  The response from power almost always is both.

    After President Trump called him a loser, Hess himself posted, "I love my country.  There is so much that is great about America, but there are always things that could be better.  One of the many things that makes this country so amazing is that we have the right and the freedom to point that out.  The best part of the Olympics is that it brings people together, and when so many of us are divided we need that more than ever.  I cannot wait to represent Team USA next week when I compete."

    Hunter, you're already a winner and I salute you.

You are not alone

     It's been a while.  What have I missed?

    I have been thinking about my first return blog for some time.  Each day it changes with the events of that day.  I have been feeling so much outrage that I find it hard to pick just one thing to write about, and then I start to think that there isn't much point anyway.  Others are far better versed in the subtlties of world politics than I.  I should let them speak.  And, besides, what can one person do?

    One person can feel the outrage and express it.  He or she can scream out, "ICE is a government sponsored terrorist organization!"  We can ask how a five year old, or a two year old, or an 18 month old child can be hardened criminals targeted by an armed, masked body of quasi-Gestapo goons who have no respect for either the spirit or the letter of the law and will kill fellow Americans who get in their way.  

     One person can cry out to our neighbors to the north and our allies in Europe that the bullying and posturing of our President does not reflect our true sentiments.  "He too shall pass," we can say, hoping that somehow the world after Trump will somehow right itself and broken trust can be repaired.

    One person can hope and pray that Trump does not actually find a way to halt the mid-term elections later this year in order to hold onto control of the government.  That Trump's mania about naming everything in sight after himself finds this answer: "Mr. Trump, we will gladly put your name anywhere you want it to commemorate your life after you die.  We have the plaques ready to go, Sir.  After you."

    I have spent the last few months disheartened, anxious, afraid.  I have seen the writing on the wall, not because I can see the future but because I know the past, a past Donald Trump is trying to white-wash.  Worse than anything, I have felt alone.  But I'm not.  We number in the millions, perhaps billions.  Lorna Lovegood told Harry Potter that He Who Must Not Be Named wanted Harry to feel alone because it would be easier to control him.  Right now, we are watching Trump spiral out of control.  It does not feel good, but it feels right.

    When I was 2 years old, my parents immigrated to the United States.  One of the main motivating factors was their fear that there would be another land war in Europe.  After all, The Great War devastated the continent when my parents were children.  World War Two did it again, louder and bigger, when they were trying to raise a family of their own.  When they arrived at Ellis Island in 1952, my mother took a deep breath and said, "Now we are safe."  We have lost that sense of security.  We need it back.