I guess what made me think of this is when I read a comment by Hutch. He punctured the balloon of the anti-abortionists who decry the taking of human lives without justification but do nothing about it other than lament, or perhaps write books.

Hutch wrote:  “If there is all this murder going on why don’t [you] stop it with force?  Isn’t it your duty to prevent this slaughter?”

This gets to the nub of the matter. If those who consider abortion murder or the killing of innocent lives then why don’t they take up arms against those who perform them to save lives? Doesn’t the law permit one to act to save the life of another from an aggressor?

I suppose if some folk opened a home where they lured in young children and planned on a special day, like  the Ides of June, to execute those kids you’d be in there in a flash. Or suppose they just executed them everyday if a mother brought in her kid who she no longer wanted. Would there not be an overwhelming urge to save these kids by going into this home to prevent the folks in there from taking innocent lives?

I guess you have little understanding for the Trump folk until you read something like this. It is hard to believe that a person who considers himself and American would say this. When you think of Trump and how much he has done to tear at America’s fabric also think of what one of his most loyaly and fervent supporters said. Here it is:

“In my humble opinion, Biden is hovering closer to Stalin now than Putin has in his twenty or thirty years in rule in Russia.”

Yes, apparently this person would prefer to live under Putin rather than Biden. You don’t suppose he heard of Alexei Navalny who was poisoned by Putin and now incarcerated because he went to Germany to be treated for his poison. Who were those people Biden poisoned and then imprisoned? I suppose if I read the latest information from QAnon folks I could find out the answer to that.

It wasn’t before a crowd of thousands that Trump ranted. It wasn’t even before a crowd of hundreds. It was a small gathering of people at his Mar-A-Largo club in Florida who were there for dinner or to have their photos taken with Trump. The photo here shows some of them. Who are those folks Trump is now hanging around with?  Ah, how the pretender has fallen from the days when he could bring around him Motor Cyclers for Trump.

Trump had this to say: “Watch Arizona, some very interesting things are happening in Arizona, and we just had a great ruling, or actually the Senate, the State Senate of Arizona. Let’s see what they find, I wouldn’t be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes. So we’re going to watch that very close to the end after that we’ll watch Pennsylvania and you watch Georgia and you’re going to watch Michigan and Wisconsin and you’re watching New Hampshire, they found a lot of votes up in New Hampshire, a lot of votes up in New Hampshire just now, you saw that? Because this was a rigged election, everybody knows it and we’re going to be watching it very closely but start off by you just take a look, it’s on closed circuit I guess it’s on all over the place and everyone’s talking about yesterday, front page of the New York Times, they didn’t want to write it but that’s because they thought they were going to have a negative decision and the judge gave us a positive decision.”

“Make America Great Again”. That was the slogan of the former president who after one term managed, to the delight of Vladimir Putin and other dictators, to turn American against American. Did anyone figure out when it was in the past of America that we want to emulate? The slogan incorporates with the word “again” the idea that at some point America was great and we should try to make it today like it was then.

When was that? What was America like in those years past that it is not like today? Is not that slogan meaningless unless you can point to that time. If you cannot you are living in an imaginary world if you are a Trump supporter. I ask those supporters when was America great for all Americans of all races, creeds, life styles, and ethnicities. The truth is there is no time in the past when that was the case. We have been constantly trying to better ourselves in America in order to “form a more perfect union” which means to examine what we have done, ask how can we do it better, and then proceed to do it. We do not want to go backwards.

It is Easter in my wife’s religion. She is a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. On this day the greeting among those believers is: “Christ is Risen” which in Ukrainian is Христос Воскресis and pronounced as: “Christos voskres.” The response to such is: “Indeed he has risen” which in Ukrainian is Воїстено Воскрес and pronounces as “Voyisteno Voskres! The difference between the day I celebrated Easter and her day of doing so is the date is determined by different calendars. Her church follows the Julian calendar while mine the Gregorian calendar. The latter is a more recent calendar put into use after Pope Gregory tried to make the present time more reflective of earlier times. Obviously, the Orthodox Church would never follow something a pope introduced so it stuck with the one Emperor Julian established.  Prior to getting married we discussed our religious differences. She had no intention of changing her religion nor did I. We did not let that become a stumbling block. We agreed each one could practice his or her religion and we would respect each other’s beliefs. We decided if we had children, they would be brought up in both religions and leave it to them to decide where they would end up. That worked out fairly well. We enrolled my daughter in the CCD, Christian Doctrine class at the local Catholic Church. During one class the teacher was telling the students how wonderful it was they all had one and the same religion. My daughter wanted to show how lucky she was perhaps thinking she had one up on everyone. She raised her hand and told the teacher: “I have two religions.”  I m not quite sure what happened after that but she did  finish the year with her belief unchanged.

There was a push in the United States to have May 1 become our Labor Day. It did not happen but instead was pushed over to September. In 1885 at a convention of the American Federation of Labor a resolution passed calling for adoption of the eight-hour day effective May 1, 1886.  The slogan that told what the workingmen throughout the country sought at the time was “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what you will.”

That May 1 in Chicago a group including anarchists led a huge parade demanding the eight hour day. Workers walked out. After May 1, there was still great agitation among the workers that continued over onto the 2nd and the 3rd. On the latter date there was a conflict at a factory that remained opened with the working folk demanding the eight hour day breaking the windows of the factory and the police were called out resulting in a little todo.

Roger Stone and General Mike Flynn who both received and accepted pardons which demonstrate their acknowledgement that they committed criminal acts have declared the Republican Party no longer exists. In its ashes they say  there is the Trump Party. Stone was convicted by a jury; Flynn pleaded guilty. Without the pardons they would both end up in prison. So it is no wonder they consider themselves the members of the Trump Party – which in a sense can be called the party of pardoned criminals.

Pardons prevent the further prosecution of the criminal act but it does not eliminate the act or knowledge of it. A pardoned person is not innocent; in fact, it is just the opposite. A pardoned person has committed a crime – “Pardon is an ‘executive forgiveness of crime.'” The Supreme Court has noted: “A pardon is a deed, to the validity of which delivery is essential, and delivery is not complete without acceptance. It may then be rejected by the person to whom it is tendered, and if it be rejected, we have discovered no power in a court to force it on him.” 

Yesterday and this morning reviewing the comments it appears that  two people have taken them over. One mainly tells us how bad the FBI and the American police forces are. I think of him as Mr. Anti-FBI; the other who throws out the Trump line continuously on every conceivable subject who I think of as Mr. Prototypical Trump.

In reading the comments I noted the Prototypical Trump posted about the president: “Biden the Baby Butcher, Biden the turncoat like Benedict Arnold. . . . Biden’s a hypocrite, a mud slinger, a reverse racist, a historical revisionist (Biden said Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb). An unprincipled man is dangerous. A man who stands for nothing who wavers, who switch sides whichever way the wind is blowing, is a man who’ll fall for anything.”  Then talking about the election said: “None of those claims about corrupt voting have been “disproven”. I am not satisfied these contested election results in three states with razor thin differences have not been adequately and fully investigated.”