The Great Opening: Following The Wisdom of Trump

19 thoughts on “The Great Opening: Following The Wisdom of Trump”

1. Some light reading for Matt

   http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=42030

   PART TWO: ED “SKULL” MURPHY AND THE FBI

   The FBI’s protection of Ed Murphy began many years before their protection of James “Whitey” Bulger and Jeffrey Epstein, but it is essentially the same story. Murphy was also a pedophile who preyed upon vulnerable youths whom were teenagers. His victims were young boys.

   First, he sexually assaulted these boys, plying them with illegal drugs. Once under his sexual and financial control, Murphy then pimped these boys out to rich and prominent closeted gay men, many of whom he then extorted from significant amounts of cash and commodities as blackmail.

   Like Whitey Bulger, Murphy was sent to prison for several years as a young man and when he got out he vowed to never go back, even though he was committed to his profession; that of a career criminal. Like Bulger after him, Murphy found that he could be protected from Prosecution by serving the FBI as their Informant. Also, like Bulger, Murphy would perpetuate the false narrative that he was some sort of “folk hero” within his own community.

   In Bulger’s case, it was the Boston Globe that would expose him as an FBI Informant in their landmark 1988 Feature story. Murphy’s double-dealing was outed by the Village Voice in their landmark 1978 Cover Story: “Skull” Murphy: The Gay Double Agent.” (1) Subsequently, numerous books and Media accounts would reveal Murphy’s one claim to fame; his work as a Bouncer at Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn, on the night of the riot that marked the birth of America’s gay rights movement. And, the substantial evidence of Murphy’s recruitment and work as an FBI Informant. (2)

   The investigations of Ed Murphy by the Media and law enforcement escalated regarding a notorious American Mafia crime committed in broad daylight in Manhattan in 1971. The man who committed this crime had organized crime connections that led investigators to Ed Murphy and his associates, who were also involved with the American Mafia. And, there were 2 men there that day that witnessed this crime whom are now known to have been FBI Informants. One of them was Greg Scarpa, a hitman for the Colombo Mafia Family whom had secretly worked for the FBI since 1960. (3) The man targeted that day for assassination was Scarpa’s “other Boss,” the Godfather of the Mafia Family to this very day known by his name; Colombo; Joe Colombo.

   The date was June 28, 1971; the location, Columbus Circle in Manhattan. It was Colombo’s Second “Italian Unity Day” celebration for his “Italian-American Civil Rights League,” an organization he had created the year previous that perpetuated the false narrative that there was no such thing as the American Mafia. As preposterous as that narrative was, it had actually for many years been championed by the Founding Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was forced to drop this false narrative when Bobby Kennedy became his “Boss” as Attorney General of the United States.

   Godfather Colombo’s movement caught on quickly; 50,000 people would jam into Columbus Circle on June 29, 1970, at the League’s first public Rally. In November of that year, Frank Sinatra was among many celebrities who appeared in a benefit for the League held at Madison Square Garden. Law enforcement agencies have consistently revealed in the past decades that far less than one percent of Italian-Americans are involved in organized crime. The same can be said for Irish-Americans.

   That being said, many of the members of these two ethnic groups have perceived that they have been stereotyped by the Media and the Hollywood entertainment industry. Colombo, like Whitey Bulger after him, seized upon the frustration held by many law-abiding American citizens among these respective ethnic communities. Colombo’s and Bulger’s Message had validity; they were just the wrong Messengers, who exploited it to their own advantage.

   At Colombo’s second Rally in 1971, in attendance were numerous members of the Media, some armed with cameras, members of the New York City Police Department, Agents of the FBI, members of several New York Mafia Families, and other criminals. One such was Jerome A. Johnson, a young African-American from New Jersey, accompanied by a young African-American female. Adorned with fake Press credentials, nothing seemed out of the ordinary as Johnson followed Godfather Colombo around with his film camera, along with his assistant. Then, the young woman, as if on cue, called out a greeting to the Godfather. Colombo turned to face her. Johnson now held in his hands both a camera and a gun, which may have been secreted to him by his female accomplice. He then opened fire on Colombo at close range. Several Mafia members then jumped upon Johnson, one of them pumping three bullets into the assassin’s back. Despite the presence of dozens of cops, both Johnson’s accomplice and the man who killed Johnson managed to get away. (4) Somehow, in the presence of dozens of reporters, not a single photograph emerged publicly of the young female accomplice of Johnson as she fled the scene, nor the Mafia Associate who killed her accomplice.

   The shooting of a Mafia Godfather in the heart of Manhattan would become an obsession with the Media – and law enforcement – for many years. History would repeat itself 14 years later when Gambino Family Godfather Paul Castellano was gunned down outside Manhattan’s Spark’s Steak House. During the investigation of both of these shootings, the New York City Police Department was under enormous public pressure to solve these crimes. From the outset, the NYPD branded the shooting of Colombo a “hit” orchestrated by the Mafia. Carlo Gambino, Joe Gallo, and Carmine Persico, a rising star in the Colombo Family, were all taken in for questioning by the cops, as was a Mob-connected pornographer, Michael Umbers. (5)

   FBI Informant Greg Scarpa, a hitman and drug dealer for the Colombo Family, who witnessed the shooting of his crime Boss from just a few feet away, also contributed his information to the FBI, as revealed by FBI “302” Documents later obtained by Forensic Intelligence Analyst Angela Clemente through her Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. One such FBI document reveals that on June 6, 1971, 2 weeks before Colombo was shot, Scarpa told the FBI that he had met with Godfather Colombo, who informed him that his personal security team had detected a car inhabited by several African-Americans surveilling his house recently in the early morning hours. Colombo assumed that these men were associates of “Crazy Joe” Gallo, whom had befriended a number of African-American inmates while imprisoned and was now free, and by his own statements and actions hostile towards Godfather Colombo.

   During the investigation into Colombo’s shooting, then Chief of Detectives of the NYPD Albert Seedman uncovered evidence that Jerome Johnson was not only involved with members of the American Mafia, but also with members of a domestic terrorist organization that went by the name of the Black Liberation Army. This group, an offshoot of the Black Panthers organization, had, before the shooting of Godfather Colombo, embarked upon a campaign of assassinating Police Officers nationwide that would continue into 1981.

   Thus, there were 3 likely scenarios as to whom the inhabitants of that car monitoring Colombo were; 1. former prison associates of Joe Gallo; 2. members of the BLA; or, 3. associates of both Joe Gallo AND the BLA.

   What first intrigued the Detectives investigating Colombo’s shooting was Johnson’s connections to the shadowy world of gay pornography in New York as it existed at that time. It was an era in which even the hint of gay behavior could destroy a public person’s career. A retail establishment which gays could patronize openly existed in very few places across America during that time. In New York City, however, the large numbers of gays presented a profit potential that the American Mafia simply could not afford to ignore.

   Virtually all of the bars, restaurants, bookstores, and sex clubs that catered to a gay clientele during that time were Mob controlled. That created another problem for gay men; the potential for blackmail. Certain men, in certain professions, possessed the ability to perform certain services which the Mafia could exploit. Compromised doctors, for example, could provide medical services to a mob figure who had a bullet in his body but for obvious reasons did not want to check into a local hospital for it’s removal. Compromised Undertakers could help mobsters when faced with the untidy problem of how to dispose of a dead body. Closeted traders on Wall Street could proffer invaluable assistance in “insider trading” and stolen securities scams. Compromised members of law enforcement could provide invaluable “insider information” about law enforcement scrutiny of the Mob.

   Thus, those gay establishments run by the American Mafia were populated with Informants who could profile, identify, and compromise such men to be used as tools of organized crime. This was the world from which Jerome A. Johnson emerged to shoot a Mafia Godfather, and this world is best described by the life story of one man; Ed “Skull” Murphy.

   Murphy had been born in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village to Italian and Irish parents. Much of Murphy’s youth was spent in the robbing of Dentist’s offices for the bounty to be found in the gold that was used to make gold teeth. When Murphy was finally caught, he spent 10 years in prison. Once free, Murphy accelerated the body building habit he had acquired in prison by using anabolic steroids to bulk up. This allowed Murphy, still a young man, to enter the world of “professional wrestling.” Such a “sport” existed on the fringes of the American Mafia. Although steroids were not illegal at that time, the drugs were an integral part of operations run by three syndicates in New York that today are known as the Colombo, Gambino, and Genovese Families. These Families would provide steroids to young body builders, and such men could then be exploited into a number of sidelines; work as bodyguards for mobsters, bouncers at bars, the world of professional wrestling, professional prostitution, and the production of X-rated films. The Colombo Family were masters of these rackets, and would eventually change the adult entertainment business forever with their production of the movie “Deep Throat,” which would rake in millions of dollars for the Family. The fight over the profits of that movie within the Family led to a shoot-out that killed 2 people, including an innocent bystander, a retired Nun. (6)

   The October 8, 1967 edition of the New York Times noted that suburban Long Island was the area inhabited by many such mobsters, among them the Colombo’s Sonny Franzese, who was reported to be among many such organized crime figures who ran gay bars throughout the New York area and that such operations included a lucrative side-line involving the blackmail of wealthy or prominent patrons.

   By the time of the publication of that story, Ed Murphy had already been arrested as the ringleader of a Mafia-run gay blackmail ring broken up by State prosecutors in Manhattan. Over a dozen such men had been Indicted who were part of a nationwide blackmail syndicate that netted over a million dollars a year. This is how the scam worked; a man would travel to a large city, such as New York, where he would procure the services of a male prostitute. Many of the prostitutes were teen-agers. The prostitute could be solicited at a gay bar, a convention center, or in the bar of an airport. Another venue was through the corrupt auspices of a Concierge at certain hotels. Once the blackmail victim and the teen-aged-boy were alone in the hotel room, one of either two scenarios would be enacted; either the boy would steal the John’s wallet and run out of the hotel, or the “Hotel Detective” would burst in and demand cash in exchange for not arresting the visiting man. In the plan where the wallet would be stolen, the wallet would then be turned over to the Mob ring, who, with their corrupt co-horts in law enforcement, would compile information on their new victim. If the “John” was rich or famous or from a prominent family, two “members of law enforcement” would then travel to that person’s home and threaten that person with public exposure – even arrest – unless money was forked over to make the case “go away.”

   After the existence of the blackmail ring became public in a February 18, 1966 New York Times story, the FBI moved in on the investigations, the predication being that many of those involved crossed State lines in order to commit their crimes. Almost all of the high-ranking members of the blackmail ring were thus convicted, such as John J. Pyne, a retired Chicago police officer, and John Fellenbaum, a bodybuilder from Pennsylvania. Ed Murphy was identified in that Times article as one of the ringleaders. His name, however, did not appear in any subsequent stories. At that time, Murphy faced decades in prison on both Federal and State charges. Yet, Murphy only received 5 years Probation for his Federal Extortion charge. Murphy would be protected by the FBI for the rest of his life, in exchange for providing them information they coveted.

   Among the names Murphy gave up as victims of the extortion ring were that of a Congressman from New Jersey who paid them $25,000 in hush money, and Admiral William Church, the head of the New York Naval Yards in Brooklyn. As a result of the Grand Jury convened to investigate the evidence Ed Murphy had turned over, Admiral Church was then Subpoenaed to testify. At that point the Admiral drove to a motel in Maryland and shot a bullet into his head. (7)

   Thus, Hoover’s recruitment of men such as Ed Murphy was not designed to put an end to his blackmail of gay men, but rather to provide information that Hoover might need to utilize for his own purposes. Such was the man J. Edgar Hoover, his successors as Director – and his Bureau, – that would protect pedophiles such as Ed Murphy, and later, Whitey Bulger, and Jeffrey Epstein, among others.

   Beginning in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Ed Murphy and Mike Umbers ran a prostitution ring that pimped underage boys to wealthy pedophiles. Murphy and Umbers both were associated with the Genovese and Gambino Mafia Families. A December 23, 1971 story by the Village Voice revealed that Umbers and two accomplices had previously been arrested on child pornography charges.

   Also that year, NYPD Chief of Detectives Albert Seedman told the Media that Umbers was the link between Jerome Johnson and the Mafia. Johnson had last been residing in an apartment above Christopher’s End, the bar managed by Umbers, and owned by Paul DiBella, a member of the Gambino Family. Umbers had used Johnson’s skills as a camera man in their production of child pornography. (5) Umbers would eventually receive notoriety for his role in the botched New York bank robbery that was depicted in the Hollywood motion picture “Dog Day Afternoon.”

   Ed Murphy was the Bouncer at the Mafia-run gay bar the Stonewall Inn, adjacent to Umber’s Christopher’s End next door on Christopher Street. On the evening of June 28, 1969, when the NYPD, as it had often done in the past, raided the Stonewall Inn, the patrons of the bar fought back, culminating in riots that lasted for several days. Chanting “Get the Cops and the Mafia Out of Gay Bars,” the unrest forever changed America.

   Ed Murphy died in 1989 due to AIDS. In addition to the NYPD’s investigation of Jerome Johnson’s involvement in the gay porn industry, of which Murphy was involved, the NYPD also pursued evidence that Johnson was also associated with the BLA. Two months prior to the shooting of Godfather Colombo, on April 6, 1971, a member of the BLA, JoAnne Chesimard, knocked upon the door of a room at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Manhattan, intending to rob the occupant. The intended victim, however fought back, and Chesimard received a bullet wound from her own gun to her abdomen. (8)

   6 weeks later, members of the BLA opened fire with a machine gun on two Police Officers guarding the home of the Manhattan District Attorney, Frank Hogan. Both officers, Thomas Curry and Nicholas Binetti, were wounded for the rest of their lives. 2 days later, the gang executed NYPD Officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini outside a public housing building in Harlem. One month later, Jerome Johnson and his female accomplice carried out the shooting of Godfather Colombo.

   Two months later, 3 members of the BLA burst into a police station in San Francisco and gunned down Sgt. John Victor Young as he sat at his desk. On November 3rd, 1971, 3 associates of the BLA executed Atlanta Police Officer James R. Greene as he serviced his patrol vehicle at a gas station. (9) On December 20th of that year, the gang attempted to murder 2 NYPD cops by throwing a hand grenade under their patrol car. Their car was demolished, but the cops survived. (10)

   On January 27, 1972, the BLA executed 2 more NYPD cops, Rocco Laurie and Gregory Foster. These two Police Officers were shot in their backs with a machine gun. The BLA was a racist organization that did not believe that Blacks should associate with Whites. Officers Laurie and Foster were targeted because one was Black and the other White. Both had bonded as young men while serving in the United States Marine Corps in VietNam. Once home, they both applied for acceptance as members of the NYPD. They were accepted, and later made Partners, as an intentional means by the NYPD to promote better relations between Officers of diverse backgrounds. (11)

   A few weeks later, several members of the BLA, including Joanne Chesimard and her then-lover Fred Hilton, got into a confrontation with the St. Louis Police, during which BLA member Ronald Carter was killed.

   Fred Hilton would later be arrested in 2001 on charges he raped a 12-year-old girl. (12) Hilton later changed his name to the Marxist moniker Kamau Sadiki; Joanne Chesimard later changed her name to Assata Shakur. In November, 2003, Kamau Sadiki was sentenced to Life imprisonment after his conviction for the murder of Atlanta Police Officer James Green. (13)

   On May 2, 1973, the BLA murdered New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. This event began when New Jersey State Trooper James Harper pulled a car over for a traffic violation, and was joined by Trooper Foerster in another patrol car. A gunfight ensued, and when it was over, Trooper Foerster and a BLA member were dead; JoAnne Chesimard and Trooper Harper were wounded. Chesimard was eventually convicted for the murder of Trooper Foerster, but escaped from prison in 1979 with the help of the BLA. BLA members and their associates in the Communist community then facilitated Chesimard’s travel to Cuba, where she has been granted asylum to this very day.

   Such was the carnage of violence by criminals of various motives during the 1960s and 1970s. The investigations by the NYPD of the BLA, the American Mafia, as well as Manhattan’s gay pornography industry thus intersected in one man; Jerome Johnson, who dared to shoot Godfather Colombo before thousands of people.

   Among those who witnessed this shooting was Mafia hitman and drug dealer Greg Scarpa, who led a double life as an FBI Informant.

   Part Two

   1. “Skull Murphy: The Gay Double Agent,” by Arthur Bell. The Village Voice, May, 1978.

   2. “Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution,” by David Carter. St. Martin’s Press, 2004.

   3. “Deal with the Devil,” by Peter Lance. Harper Collins, 2013.

   4. The New York Times, June 29, 1971.

   5. “Chief: Classic Cases from the Files of the Chief of Detectives,” by Albert Seedman and Peter Hellman, Avon, 1975.

   6. “The Wiseguy and the Nun,” by William Bastone. The Village Voice, February 9, 1999.

   7. “J. Edgar’s Slip was Showing,” by Murray Weiss. The New York Post, February 11, 1993.

   8. “Woman Shot in Struggle With Her Alleged Victim,” by the staff of the New York Times. April 7, 1971.

   9. “Officer Down Memorial Page.org.”

   10. “Political Violence and Terrorism in Modern America: A Chronology,” by Christopoher Hewitt. Praeger, 2005.

   11. “Foster and Laurie,” by Al Silverman. Little, Brown, 1974.

   12. “A Break in 1972 Killing of Cops – Former Black Militant Aids Double-Slay Probe,” by Larry Celona. The New York Post, July 23, 2001.

   13. “Hilton vx. State: The Supreme Court of Georgia, November 8, 2010. https://casetext.com/case/hilton-v-state-52

2. Sounds like the Ride of the Valkeries Chorus from Wagner

   For the uneducated and uneducable

   toast

   350 ppm of CO2 was the safety valve cut off point

   We are now at 416 ppm CO2

   Visit heat is online dot org

   1. You’ve really nailed it.

3. Response to Matt’s Sunday blog:

   1. June 14 is Flag Day. Happy Flag Day, remember all who served America!

   2. NC had admirably enumerated the great works, programs and progress the Trump-Pence Administration has effectuated for African-Americans, Latino-Americans and other minorities and women. Jobs for all. More funding for Historically Black Colleges. Prison reform, et cetera.

   3. Love sometimes means giving a person job, rectifying errant policies, standing up to bureaucratic bullies, and counterpunching character assassins, mudslingers and power-abusing federal prosecutors/federal officials.

   4. Matt says not all democrats support abortion. True. The Democratic Party’s official platform, however, endorses Roe v. Wade. Worse, Democratic Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, says that he wants Congress to legislatively mandate Roe v. Wade for all fifty states. Roe v. Wade and its companion case Doe v. Bolton (decided the same day) allow for abortions for physical health, mental health, and economic reasons throughout all nine months of pregnancy . . .de facto abortion on demand. That is why the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision was needed to stop late-term abortions throughout America . . .in one New Jersey clinic, 5,000 post-viability abortions were being performed annually prior to the Casey decision. See the movie Unplanned, which underscores that abortion is what makes Planned Parenthood financially viable; abortion is its primary business. See, also, the book, One Life: How the U.S. Supreme Court Deliberately Distorted the History, Science and Law of Abortion: Connolly (XLIBRIS, 2001).

   5. On the issue of why various polls show black Americans supporting President Trump in small percentages, I offer the following essay:

   On St. Patrick’s Day, 1964, I was a Freshman at Boston College. I remember seeing the NAACP marching in the South Boston Allied War Veterans’ annual St. Patrick’s Day/Evacuation Day Parade. A few Savin Hill/Dorchester friends and I stood in front of the Public Library on East Broadway. A half dozen of us had a scuffle with some contemporaries from South Boston towards the Parade’s end. But that was not the most memorable part of that day: most memorably, I saw marching in the forefront of the NAACP contingent my philosophy professor, Father Joseph Flannagan, who would eventually become the chair of the philosophy department at Boston College.
   Arthur Bradley and I, close friends from B.C. High and Dorchester, and both on the football team and boxing team at B.C. High, were in Father Flannagan’s class. Art and I had decided to major in biology/pre-med, and because we were in B.C.’s College of Arts & Sciences, we took a philosophy and theology course every semester for all four years. This was a requirement of every Arts & Science major (English, History, Political Science, Biology, Chemistry, Math, etc.). We learned a bit about ethics and logic, rational thought, and the higher power.

   As young men we were ardent admirers of President John F. Kennedy (Harvard alumnus), Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. (Boston University alumnus) and U.S. Senator and former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (Harvard alumnus). We were liberals and strong supporters of the Civil Rights Movement.

   Matt argues that some polls showing little support for President Trump among African-Americans somehow means Trump is a racist. If I follow his logic. Matt also argues that Trump never listens to scientist, despite the fact that Doctor Fauci, M.D., Birx, M.D., and Adams, M.D., national leaders from the C.D.C., N.I. H. and U.S. Public Health Service say otherwise. They say President Trump always listens carefully to their scientific advice and generally follows it to a T. They say they agree with the Trump-Pence plan to restart the economy. They in fact wrote the plan. The CDC website explains, also, why masks are now recommended: to prevent those with asymptomatic coronavirus infection from spreading it to others. The CDC recommends persons with symptoms (ex: fever, dry cough) simply stay at home.

   1. Why didn’t eight years of Reagan, four years of George HWBush, eight years of W and these three plus years overturn Roe v. wade?

4. On the issue of why most African-Americans don’t support President Trump, I have some recommended reading.

   From an online article: “In the general election (2016), 89 percent of black voters supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.” “But black voters aren’t the monolith exit polls make them out to be. Pew Research Center found that a quarter of black Democrats identify as conservative, and 43 percent identify as moderate.” These are the same percentages as all Americans, with only about 30 percent identifying as “liberal”.

   Now this article from the Princeton Review: “Why are Blacks Democrats?” By Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird February 25, 2020:

   “African Americans are Democrats. Since 1968 no Republican presidential candidate has received more than 13% of the African American vote and surveys of African Americans regularly show that upwards of 80% of African Americans self-identify as Democrats.” President Trump received 8% of the African American vote in 2016. Par for the course.

   Professors White and Laird examine the history of black voting in American, noting since Lincoln and up to Wilson, blacks predominantly voted Republican. The shift came when blacks migrated to northern cities and became attached to the Democrats. So, if 80 to 89 percent of black Americans reflexively vote Democratic, out of loyalty and group cohesion to the party it recently viewed as in the forefront of Civil Rights efforts.

   I recommend folks read their recent articles and recently published book. “Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior.”

   Moreover, just yesterday, I saw the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, Lieutenant General Darryl A. Williams, a native of Alexandria, Virginia, an African-American, preside brilliantly over the graduation ceremonies for the class of 2020, where President Trump gave the commencement address. Both President Trump and General Williams’ powerfully moving words, and the dignified receptiveness to their words by over 1,000 graduating plebes, now Second Lieutenants in the United States Army, made me proud to be an American and grateful. God bless America.

   I recall not only being immensely moved by the graduation ceremony, but looking back over the years and reflecting back on my own college days, I recalled how immensely inspired I was by the ideas and example of leaders such as JFK, MLK, and RFK, but also by the heroism of all who served during the Vietnam War years, in uniform or on the home front or even in the anti-War movements. Finally, I recall the inspirational artists who helped us to see more clearly, as we were blinded by the light of their inner visions, as they and we broke on through to the other side: painters like Warhol and Rothko and O’Keefe and Grandma Moses, musicians like (well, just think of Woodstock, eclectic electric and acoustic rock & rollers: Havens, Joplin, Hendrix, Santana, Baez, Cocker, the Who, Credence Clear Water, Sly & the Family Stone, Country Joe and the Fish) and the inspirational writers (Bill Buckley’s National Review, the view from the right, Thomas Sowell’s Ethnic America, the symbiotic view, Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, the view from Folsom Prison, and Richard Wright’s Native Son, which portrayed for all the soul searing plight and flight of an unjustly accused Chicago youth, which scorched our consciousness, to name a few, and the inspirational educators like Father Hesburgh at Notre Dame and Father Flannagan at Boston College, to name but two.

   All in all, we have made some progress, and we will continue to strive to do so. Says who? We say so; We the people of these United States say so in order to form a more perfect union.

   1. My humble opinion is that the Trump-Pence Administration has done much good for the American people, keeping us out of conflicts abroad and at home trying to level the playing field, trying to unite us. In contrast, since President Trump’s election, many leftists in Academia, the bulk of the Main-Stream Media, and a significant number of power-abusers in Federal offices have done much to disunite us, sowing discord, disinformation, and distrust.

5. No one is forced to go to a rally. It is their free choice to attend or not. Some seem confused about covid 19. It came from China. British and Italian doctors said 95% of the infections could have been prevented if China had been open about the disease. Trump didn’t invent the virus. Yet the partisans moan about Trump and never mention China. We know Hunter Biden is on China’s payroll and a shill for Red China. 2. What has Trump done for the Black folks? He fully funded Historic Black Colleges which Obama and Biden didn’t. He passed prison reform. Biden supported the mandatory, cruel sentences in the crack cocaine bill in 1995 which resulted in many Blacks serving long sentences. Trump enacted enterprise zones which led to the lowest Black, Latino and Asian unemployment in history. According to a Rasmussen report Trump has a 40% approval rating among non whites. 3. All deaths are tragic. The Pope said every life is sacred. All lives matter. When people resist arrest the Police are justified in using force. The question is did they use too much? The jury will decide that. I’m more concerned about the millions of minority children killed by Planned Parenthood and the hundreds of thousands killed by drug gangs than the 200 killed yearly by Police. Many of them justifiable homicides. Lou Holtz was right.

6. We brought Scott Camil to speak at Bates Cololege in the 1990’s

   https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/17/archives/florida-jury-gets-report-on-rifles-informer-asserts-veteran-told.html

   FLORIDA JURY GETS REPORT ON RIFLES.
   By John Kifner Special to The New York Times

7. Time for a Jail Break….

   https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/blog/after-the-lockdown-the-jailbreak

   After the Lockdown, the Jailbreak

   Submitted by editor on 10 June 2020 – 01:32pm
   What’s going on? We had lockdown; we’ve got jailbreak.
   But the prisoners aren’t running away; they’re marching, chanting, getting rearrested for the cause of justice. They’re risking infection. In fact, they’re embracing a new infection: people power. Their risk is not in trying to reopen an economy but to rebirth social justice, racial justice, a just economy. Any regime, even a corrupt one, can create a burgeoning economy; only a democracy can build social justice.
   What’s going on? America has  gagged on itself. Three more murders of innocent, unarmed Black people – Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd.  Too much to swallow. The right response?  A great paroxysm,  a struggling, heaving effort to expel the gnarled mass of our indigestible hobgoblin history. Not easy. Every organ of the body politic is complicit, bound into systems of wealth and labor exploitation, racial oppression, environmental desecration, militarism,  freedom of giant corporations to engineer a society for their own benefit.  Time to regurgitate,  turn ourselves inside out. 
   What’s going on? It’s not the coronavirus lockdown that’s being challenged now. It’s 400 years of lockdown in hypocrisy.  No matter who you are, what color you are, what ethnicity, winner or loser, perpetrator or victim, we all have been trapped in the same history – unable to fully admit it, unable to break free of it. The exalted claims of this history habitually insult its reality. For native people, black people, all people of color, all the marginalized – finally a reckoning.
   What’s going on?  The campaign for president is not assaulting us with billion dollar ads, dark money PACs, talking points, talking heads,  and spin doctors.  Not being run by manipulation and bullshit. The campaign is being waged by the people in the streets – exuberant, raw, messy. Not mail-in ballots, but march in. If there’s finally an effective antidote to cynicism, it’s people in the streets. Many politicians are in denial, trying to shut it down (How dare the people direct their own country!), or they are trotting along behind, hoping to catch up with the right message. Even the opportunists, the provocateurs of both the left and the right, are not able to derail the  people’s will of love and anger, grief and hope, resistance and redirection. 
   What’s going on? Extreme times produce extreme situations. We see a contemporary version of lions lying down with the lambs – the cops kneeling with the protesters. Looks like compassion and understanding. Yes, but it’s also power being reconfigured.  And have we ever seen anything more strange, more ludicrous or pathetic, than the Devil holding up the Bible to justify God-given authority for using violence against peaceful demonstrators? (Even stranger would be this same Devil laying his right hand on the Bible and swearing to tell the truth.)  But hasn’t that image – the Devil with his Bible – always haunted this country? Isn’t that the trope Trump was channeling?  White supremacy holding up the Bible to justify slavery, lynching and Jim Crow; men holding up the Bible to justify dominating women; corporations holding up the Bible to sanctify the destruction of nature; creationists holding up the Bible to disprove evolutionary science; militarists holding up the Bible proclaiming that God loves war; prigs holding up the Bible to command sexual conformity. We can be damn sure our current Devil has never read any further into the Bible  than the KKK’s Grand Dragon has read into the Declaration of Independence.
   I was a young activist in the 1960’s, marching, protesting, committing civil disobedience in the struggle for civil rights and ending the Vietnam War. But I’ve never seen the sudden vibrancy nor persistent urgency of this moment. A perfect storm: Trump, appalling racist murders, 110,000 COVID-19 deaths and  all the inequalities the pandemic exposes, failure to act on the climate crisis, Mitch McConnell, a handful of billionaires having more wealth than the rest of the country combined, the stock market rising while millions suffer and lose their jobs, a government refusing to solve problems so it can play off the divisions it causes.
   So what’s going on? Where there’s a vacuum of wisdom, compassion, decency, justice,  equality, care and honesty, the people flood in. 
   Robert Shetterly
   Brooksville, Maine

8. The great Lou Holtz speaks out on President Trump.

   https://townhall.com/columnists/louholtz/2020/06/14/president-trump-is-a-champion-of-the-catholic-faith-n2570567?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=06/14/2020&bcid=992fc06fbd04330d83e40d8f5697234f&recip=26905403

   1. JPC:

      How old is Lou Holtz? Must be getting up there. I never read an article where the person is so confused. He writes: “let’s bring this country together by loving and caring for one another.” Is there any president in our history who has shown less love and care for the American people? He constantly attacks any individual who disagrees with him. He fires inspector generals. He lies about other generals who resigned. Has the country ever been more separated than it is now under Trump. Do you love and care for others when you hold Rallies in the middle of a pandemic?

      He writes: “The Catholic education I received, including my years at Notre Dame, we were taught to love thy Lord our God with all our soul and might and to love your neighbor as you would yourself.” See above. How does Trumpo love his neighbors when he is walking them into a Covid-19 trap so that he can have a Rally. He knows it is a trap since they have to sign waivers to get to it. Is that what Jesus would do?

      Holtz goes on: “Perhaps the most brilliant person I have ever met was Fr. Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame for 35 years. He hired me. He marched with Martin Luther King Jr.” Has Trump done anything to show sympathy with the African-Americans. In your wildest imagination can you see him marching with MLK. Do your remember his tweets about black members of Congress? Do you know his standing among American blacks? I believe he has a 4% approval rating.,

      Holtz adds that Fr. Hesburgh “explained to me that you must follow your heart, even if it’s an unpopular thing to do.” Has there been one thing in the 3 1/2 years Trumpo has been in office that shows he has a heart.

   2. “The president also understands how religious freedom curtails terrorism and domestic violence, and strengthens democracy…..”

      Islam.

9. Who is blind to science? The science of embryology conclusively proves that a baby in the womb is a human being. There should be no late term abortions except to save the life of the mother. Yet all Democrats deny this science and fund abortion providers. 2. The biggest killers of Blacks in America is Planned Parenthood. A Black is a thousand times more likely to be killed by PP than the Police. A Black is thirty times more likely to be killed by another Black in a street gang than the Police. Yet the Fake News ignores the major killers and tries to hide the truth.

   1. NC:

      1. Democrats span the spectrum on abortions from opposition to them totally – to following the Supreme Court’s dictates – to extreme positions otherwise. Obviously if that is the case then you are wrong to say “all Democrats.”

      2. Planned Parenthood provides many other services to the black community. It only follows the laws of America. Even if it performed abortions and even if black on black killings exceed police killings of blacks does that justify the police killings of them. No one hides the truth. If it was hidden how would you have known about it? Unfortunately, you seem not to be bothered by the murder of George Floyd by the police because you can point to some other facts which we should be focused on rather than that.

   2. I’m with you.

10. I see that Trump is requiring fans attending his Tulsa rally to sign a Covid-19 liability waiver absolving him of any responsibility for those who might contract the virus while wildly cheering him on. This is not a good look for the president.

    1. Dan:

       The idea they would have to sign a waiver would suggest to me that Trump knows he will endanger people who attend his rally but he doesn’t really care about that because it interferes with his desire to listen to the cheers of the mob. As you said it is not good look but his acolytes have not problem with that. He’ll always have his 25%.

    2. At least we now know that Bonespurs admits that the pandemic is real. I don’t understand why his lawyer Mr. Nine-eleven, hasn’t convinced him to call the rally off.

Comments are closed.