Trump's Monday Night Massacre & Sally Yates' Stand For Justice

Ex-acting attorney general Sally Yates 

In a way it seems odd to be ending the month just as the week gets started, but as singer /guitarist Eddie Vedder sang on his song "Rise":

"Such is the passage of time, too fast to fold. Suddenly swallowed by signs, low and behold."

From a political, moral and ethical perspective, the signs coming from the White House these days are indeed something to behold.

Donald Trump's decision to fire the acting attorney general of the United States Sally Q. Yates last night was reminiscent of former President Richard M. Nixon's shocking decision to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox on the night of Saturday October 20, 1973 after he issued a subpoena to Nixon to release secret recordings of Oval Office conversations known as the "The Nixon Tapes."

An incident that would go down in history as the Saturday Night Massacre and would eventually lead to Nixon's resignation ten months later on August 9, 1974.

Now at this point it's hard to say if Trump's decision to fire Yates will rock the foundations of Democracy in the same way, but it clearly calls into question what his definition of Democracy will look like for the remainder of his tenure in office.

And it also further cements his growing reputation as a vindictive, reactionary despot who fancies the White House as as platform for authoritarian rule.

An anti-Trump protester in Rhode Island

Yates' decision to publicly defy his executive order to ban Muslims from seven nations from entering the country by ordering Justice Department attorneys not to defend the controversial order against court challenges has already earned her praise from advocates of immigrants rights.

As well as wide swaths of the American public and leading Democratic politicians, including Senator Richard Blumenthal who took to the Senate floor to praise her actions as heroic.

Yates echoed the same concerns of growing numbers of government employees and officials in the Departments of Justice, State and Homeland Security.

Career professionals who warn that Trump's ban will actually fuel terrorism, undue years of diplomacy, further divide the globe and put American lives at risk.

But it's important to remember that her courageous defiance of America's paranoid POTUS* isn't the only reason she was fired.

First, let's be honest, we all know Trump was secretly salivating waiting to fire someone simply to show the public another vulgar display of his new powers - like some spoiled kid waiting to go show off his shiny new bike to the other kids.

Secondly, if you recall, back in August Yates announced that the Department of Justice would begin to phase out the use of private prisons to hold federal prisoners after a DOJ report concluded that the web of for-profit prisons in the United States was more dangerous, more costly and far less efficient than correctional facilities run by the Bureau of Prisons.

So there's little question that Yates was already a target for rigidly conservative Republicans opposed to the idea of prison reform and addressing mass incarceration in America - even though such reforms have clear bipartisan support in Congress.

As to who actually came up with the idea for the Muslim ban entry, as Betsy Woodruff shrewdly observed in a Daily Beast article last Saturday, current Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller was also Sessions' long-time communications director on the Hill before joining the Trump campaign.

Muslim ban fans Stephen Miller & Jeff Sessions

As Woodruff notes, Sessions and Miller were almost legendary among Capitol Hill journalists for actively promoting "research and talking points designed to make Americans afraid of refugees."

According to her Daily Beast article, when she arrived in Washington to worked the Hill as a reporter covering Congress back in 2013, Miller sent out an almost constant stream of press releases via email that were fodder for anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hysteria.

Woodruff recalled that Miller's "emails went to my Gmail and kept coming for years - hundreds and hundreds of them... There were just so many of them, at all hours of the day, and they never stopped. Some were lengthy diatribes; some were detailed, homemade charts; some were one-liners."

So a senior White House advisors and his ex-boss, the nominee for attorney general, are in essence two of the major architects of Trump's Muslim ban - imagine what it's going to be like if and when Sessions is confirmed as attorney general.

Ironically, as Alan Pyke observed in an article for ThinkProgress.org this morning, two years ago when Sessions was questioning Sally Yates during her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee he actually encouraged her to use her authority to say no to the president if and when it was a case of upholding the law of the land.

Sessions is literally on tape encouraging Yates to do exactly what Trump just fired her for.

So I guess from Jeff Sessions' perspective, a deputy attorney general has a duty to stand up and say no to a president if an executive order violates the Constitution - depending on the skin color or political party of the president in question.

Situational ethics personified.

An Erratic Little Man & His Muslim Travel Ban

The Wizard's trickery is revelaed in The Wizard of Oz

To borrow a phrase from Maureen Dowd's blistering New York Times column on Saturday, "the 70-year-old 7-year-old" child who now occupies the Oval Office is off to a rocky start to say the least.

His chaotic first week in office was defined by lies, Orwellian denunciations of the press, efforts to censor government agencies and klutzy foreign policy steps that were amateurish as best.



It's been anything but a smooth transition of power - and that was just the first week.

Trump's first days inside the Oval Office were epitomized by that scene at the end of the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy's faithful dog Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal an erratic little man twisting dials and pushing buttons in a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion of authoritarian control.

The newest resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seems less the dignified presidential figure than some bedazzled kid frantically pulling at the levers of power in a determined effort to try out the machine before understanding how it actually works.

The images of him gleefully signing executive orders like some self-declared king issuing decrees for his subjects is downright creepy.

Especially with his stone-faced Chief-of-Staff Reince Priebus, the representative of the political party that demonstrated utter contempt for Trump before he dispatched their weak lineup of establishment candidates, and Stephen Bannon, the racist, alt-right Neo-Nazi sympathizer, looking over the shoulder of the man they attempt to control.

A controversial press release issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day by the ethically-conflicted POTUS* on Thursday drew widespread criticism for neglecting to mention the over six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis.




The White House statement (pictured above) didn't mention anti-Semitism either, prompting the Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to call it "Puzzling and troubling."

As the Times of Israel reported today, when asked by Chuck Todd on NBC's Meet the Press this morning whether it was a mistake for the White House not to have mentioned Jews in as press statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Priebus insisted there was "no regret".

He also reminded Todd that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is Jewish; as if that fact is some kind of Jedi Mind Trick that will make the press and everyone else forget that the controversial White House advisor Stephen Bannon is a known anti-Semite who ran the Breitbart News Website when it ran overtly anti-Semitic articles.

The alarming oversight lead many observers to suspect that the text of the statement was actually written by Bannon as a not-so-subtle nod to the extremist alt-right followers of Breitbart News, who devour fake news like Doritos and openly sympathize with loony Holocaust deniers - like the former Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz - another Trump foreign policy advisor.

Actions like the White House Holocaust Remembrance Day press release only confirm the suspicions of many around the world that this fledgling administration's ultimate goal is to normalize bigotry, anti-Semitism, racism and ethnic and religious hatred - and to make such reprehensible views U.S. government policy.

Case in point, the executive order Trump signed on Friday that temporarily bans people of Muslim faith from seven mid-east and African nations with majority-Muslim populations from entering the United States.

Protesters outside Terminal 4 of JFK [Photo - Getty Images]

As you've likely seen and heard, those bans have caused chaos in airports around the nation as well as in airports in those seven nations on the banned entry list for foreigners with valid U.S Visas and legitimate reasons to travel to America.

As Rolling Stone reported, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, whose film The Salesman is up for nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars, announced that he will not attend the ceremony to protest Trump's order.

Some individuals in airports across the nation, including JFK in New York, have been held in detention for days while security officials try to sort out their status and eligibility to enter the country based on Trump's vague executive order.

In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Trump's decision to intentionally target Muslims "goes against our Constitutional values" - in part because innocent people are being detained by authorities without being charged with anything, or without the due process guaranteed by the Constitution.

Mayor de Blasio echoed the concerns of local officials in other cities by also noting that the White House had issued no clear policy explanation, specific instructions or guidelines for airport security staff responsible for screening passengers entering the United States.

While it's unclear if the entry ban has kept any actual terrorists from entering the U.S., on Saturday at least 12 people were detained at JFK, including Hameed Khalid Darweesh.

Rep. Jerry Nadler with Hameed Khalid Darweesh

As the Huffington Post reported Darweesh worked as an Iraqi translator for the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division in both Baghdad and Mosul during the American invasion in 2003.

Darweesh was eventually released after being detained for 19 hours with the help of Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler - but the episode reflects the random and vague nature of the executive order.


In my view it is reprehensible to specifically target the members of any religion based simply on unjustified fear, paranoia and suspicion - it's bigotry in its purest form.

As the Iranian government noted in a statement, Trump's actions are likely to be used by terrorists as a recruiting tool and may in fact increase the likelihood of some kind of terrorist attack against innocent people here in the United States or abroad.

So the unpredictable POTUS* may well have put innocent human lives at risk by his decision.

It's like he's declaring his own war against Islam; his decisions have already cost the life of an American service member.

The same man who spent months ripping Republicans and Democrats alike for the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost thousands of lives and over $6 trillion of American taxpayer's money, approved a deadly weekend attack on a remote al Qaeda base in Yemen.

The attack in the al Bayda region of southern Yemen resulted in the death of a member of the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team Six, and three other injuries to U.S. service members - including two members of the flight crew of a V-22 Osprey that later crashed when it was sent in to extract the team after a protracted firefight.

Aftermath of a drone strike that killed an al Qaeda
leader in the same area of southern Yemen

Two weeks ago a drone strike killed an al Qaeda leader named Abd al-Ghani a Rasas in the same region where this weekend's attack, which the Pentagon said had been planned for months, took place.

According to an article in the Washington Post, Yemeni government officials claim that 15 women and children were also killed during the operation, which involved U.S. helicopter gunships and aircraft providing cover fire for the operation.



Did that remote al Qaeda base represent a direct threat to innocent lives American or otherwise?

Are the (alleged) deaths of 14 members of al Qaeda and innocent women and children thousands of miles away in Yemen worth the life a U.S. Navy SEAL or any other serviceman?

This decision also raises the legitimate question of whether this mission was a result of a legitimate security threat, or simply to placate the incessant needs of Trump's fragile ego and his almost obsessive childlike need for attention.

As biographer Michael D'Antonio was quoted as saying in Maureen Dowd's New York Times column:

"If he (Trump) could have commanded the attention of the world media every day of his life in the past he would have. The fact that the press corps is captive in the White House and can be dragged into these executive order signings is, for him, like mainlining Heroin."  

At some point Trump is going to have to get on with the complex business of governing with the consent of Congress, not just using his pen to sign executive orders like the ones that have left people detained indefinitely in airports and resulted in lives lost in a remote region of Yemen this weekend.

Granted the Special Operations strike had been planned for months, but the order barring people of Muslim faith from seven countries from entering the U.S. doesn't seem like the product of a carefully planned and well thought out strategic objective with a specific purpose.

It seems like the action of an impulsive, reactionary mindset - an erratic little man pulling at the levers of power that he does not yet fully understand.

Chickasaw Artist Kristen Dorsey Advocates for Native American Representation

Members of the Crow Nation arrive at Standing Rock

As most of you know, last November hundreds of Native American Water Protectors were gathered with members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe near the Cannonball River in North Dakota where they attracted global media attention for bravely facing off against authorities and contractors to oppose the construction of a section of the Dakota Access Pipeline that would encroach on sacred tribal lands and threaten the fresh water supply for thousands of people in the region.



It is recognized by many as the largest gathering of Native American protesters in U.S. history.

And in many ways it was an awakening of both conscience and spirit.

Not just for the 566 different tribes recognized by the federal government, but for thousands of indigenous peoples around the world and millions of non-indigenous people in America and in other nations around the globe.

Set against the backdrop of the collective shock of the election of Donald Trump, the Standing Rock protests were also a timely reminder of the immense power of peaceful protest, non-violent resistance and the freedom of expression - principles enshrined in the bedrock of American values.

For young and old alike it was a lesson in the importance of standing up for what's right, even in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds - especially in a nation where the power of financial institutions, corporations, conservative political interests and the 1% seems to have grown exponentially.

While there was extensive media coverage of the Standing Rock protests, particularly the unforgettable images of members of law enforcement and private security using dogs, rubber bullets, water from hoses and other means to try and subdue peaceful unarmed protesters, too often it seemed as if the actual voices of indigenous peoples were lost or even somehow secondary to those images.

Now obviously there was media coverage of what the protesters wanted in terms of stopping the pipeline construction, but from my perspective, in many instances the mainstream media rarely dug under the surface into what brought those protests into being.

Chickasaw Artist Kristen Dorsey

Or what it was that drew hundreds of people from other tribes in different parts of the U.S. (and from tribes in other countries too) to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to a remote stretch of North Dakota to stand side by side with the Standing Rock Sioux.

For those interested in understanding more about the broader protest movement taking place in indigenous communities across America, the critically-acclaimed Viceland recently premiered a new series airing Fridays at 9pm called Rise.

Just go to the Viceland Website to see clips or watch episodes for free online.

The first two episodes probe deeper into the Standing Rock Protests and offer insight mainstream media didn't take the time to cover.


That said, I thought it would be appropriate to follow up my previous blog about the environmental impact of new pipeline construction in America and switch gears by sharing the powerful words of the renowned Chickasaw metalsmith, jewelry designer, business owner, feminist, activist (and surfer!) Kristen Dorsey.

She's a really interesting and multifaceted artist and entrepreneur who designs and sells custom jewelry based on the themes, traditions, customs and imagery of traditional southeastern American indigenous culture where the Chickasaw once lived and thrived until being forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and moved hundreds of miles west by the U.S. government in the 1830's during what is commonly known as the "Trail of Tears."

Take a couple minutes to read an interesting interview Kristen did with author and blogger Kate Hart; it offers some insight into her work, life and advocacy for indigenous peoples and feminist empowerment.

And for you ladies out there, or guys looking for a gift for Valentine's Day, check out her Website to see some of the really cool jewelry she designs and sells.

She's got a few videos about her work on the Chickasaw Nation Video Network too if you want to learn more about what she does.

Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole 

Last week my friend James shared a letter Kristen wrote to the Republican Deputy Majority Whip, Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole, just over a week after Trump was elected president.

Cole is also a member of the Chickasaw Nation, one of only two Native Americans currently serving in Congress, and James felt strongly that Kristen's letter eloquently voiced the concerns and hopes of indigenous peoples across America.

People who understand that strong representation in this divided Congress is more critical than ever in the face of the threats posed to the environment, the welfare of indigenous peoples, Native American rights and tribal sovereignty by the Trump administration.

That said, here's the text of Kristen Dorsey's letter, I hope you'll take some time to read it as it offers insight into the goals and aspirations of the emerging indigenous protest movement in America and beyond.

-->

November 15, 2016

Congressman Tom Cole
4th District of Oklahoma
2467 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Cole,

I would like to congratulate you on your many years of dedicated public service. Today I write to call on you to advocate for Native America within Congress. I understand that you are obligated to the general population of Oklahoma citizens, and not just your Native American constituents; however, it is the unfair burden of the few to represent the many when they are members of an underserved and underrepresented population.

I know that you are proud of your Chickasaw heritage and citizenship, and I know that a strong Chickasaw woman raised you to be so. I applaud and celebrate your political achievements, which give me hope that one-day more Native American voices will cry out within the walls of government. I know that we are mutually related through the bloodlines of Te Ata, who herself was an ambassador for Native People.

I call on you to hear me now. We are fighting for this land and our struggles are woefully underreported in mainstream media. Many Americans see us as extinct, absent, and conquered. Throughout history Chickasaw people have fought for our right to exist. Today our tribal Nation is thriving but my deep fear is for our future generations. They will inherit an Earth that is sick. It is sick with climate change, which is already resulting in massive ecological destruction, and increasingly dangerous natural disasters. The fossil fuel industry has left so many irreparable scars on our earth. Take for example the effects of fracking in Oklahoma. Man-made earthquakes are displacing your citizens. Take for example the Exxon oil spill, our elders cried that day because they saw our ancestral homelands in the southeast devastated by impending environmental effects that we don't even fully comprehend.

I fear for my unborn children. As I write this, thousands of Native People around the country are led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in demonstrations against the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. In the past few months, despite peaceful demonstrations at the construction site near the Cannonball river, our Native American brothers and sisters have been under assault by militarized police as they do everything in their power to protect sacred burial sites and a sensitive watershed from destruction. I urge you to view the on the ground footage of the violence waged against our water protectors by the North Dakota police. I also urge you to contact the Standing Rock tribal leadership to hear their perspective and gain a deeper understanding about the lack of tribal consultation over this project.

Your website states that you support pipelines because they are a safer way to transport crude oil. I hear your arguments, however, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in 2015 alone there were 715 pipeline incidents. I do understand that much of our economy is built on oil. I also understand that my children and children's children cannot drink contaminated water, or breath polluted air, or live in an ecosystem eroded by massive species die-offs due to rising temperatures. I believe that there are solutions and clean energy technologies which need research, development, and implementation. I also know that our Chickasaw Nation believes the same or Governor Anoatubby wouldn't have sent monetary support along with an official statement of support to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

I urge you to re-evaluate your policies and set your political course to move away from the fossil fuel industry. Please actively consult the scientific and tribal communities and reach across the aisle to develop a sustainable energy plan with goals of reducing emissions and dependency on oil, both foreign AND domestic. I also urge you to advocate for the United States to honor our commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement. Every country must work together to save our planet for future generations. Our Chickasaw ancestors sacrificed so much for us. We must now make our own sacrifices for the sake of future generations. Leaders are the people who sacrifice the most and I understand that I am calling on you to make fundamental changes to your political platform, which has undoubtedly contributed to your political success thus far. I do not ask these sacrifices of you lightly. Our future generations need your voice now more than ever.

Chokma’shki,

Kristen Dorsey (Chickasaw Nation)

Polarization In the Pipeline

Opposition to DAPL in Oklahoma on Tuesday

Critics of America's divisive new POTUS have pointed to his unpredictability as one of the numerous flaws in his shaky leadership style.

But on the first Tuesday of this fledgling administration Trump was anything but unpredictable as he signed a slew of executive orders that read like the start of an all-out assault on the environmental protections that keep our air, water and soil safe.



It's probably safe to say that those executive orders were, in part, a reaction to the fact his fragile ego is likely still bruised from all the Women's Marches that took place across America (and the world) on Saturday.

Trump's latest political boasting includes pledges to kickstart the stalled Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, but if he had even a remote interest in reuniting a country left divided by his toxic presidential campaign, this was clearly not the move. But he did it anyway.

As a brief snapshot-reminder of just how divisive these pipeline projects are, my good friend and former high school classmate James sent me the above photo his wife took yesterday afternoon.

Now some of you may recall that James is a resident of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, a state where rampant natural gas fracking has already caused an exponential increase in earthquake activity - and yes, the state where Scott Pruitt, Trump's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency served as attorney general.

James and his wife were just outside of Ada, Oklahoma on Tuesday when they saw the car pictured above with hand-drawn letters covering the back windshield spelling out the widely-shared Twitter hashtag,  #NoDAPL and the words "Water Is Life."

Major Canadian & U.S. pipelines 

It was encouraging to see that kind of grass roots resistance popping up so quickly after Trump's announcement about moving forward on both controversial pipeline projects.

The White House announcements also sparked quick reactions from environmental groups and politicians in Washington as well.

Including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The feisty former Democratic candidate, who made opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline a plank of his presidential campaign, defiantly Tweeted that "I will do everything I can to stop Keystone XL and DAPL."

Native American activists who spent months protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline quickly announced plans to oppose it in court if necessary, but the larger trend is troubling for America's natural, political and ethical environments.

Remember, Trump stands to reap massive personal windfalls as a direct result of his using his executive powers to push to approve these pipelines.

Most reasonable-minded folks would call that conflict of interest...on steroids.

Not only has the unpopular POTUS disclosed large personal investments in some of the major oil companies that have partnered to invest in building the DAPL, as Greenpeace.org reported he's accepted large campaign contributions from the CEO of the largest fracking company in America Harold Hamm.

Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners

Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the DAPL, donated $100,300 in campaign contributions to Trump's presidential campaign.

Trump is already facing a potential lawsuit filed on Monday by a team of legal and Constitutional scholars and experts who argue that his tangled secretive web of foreign investments represents a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

We should all familiarize ourselves with the Emoluments Clause by the way, the way Trump's transition is going, odds are good that we'll be hearing about it again soon.

The massive grassroots opposition to the DAPL and Keystone XL isn't just about those two specific projects, it's also about the larger threat to America's environmental protections that are now in the hands of a Republican president who thinks climate change is a "hoax" cooked up by the Chinese, and a Republican Congress largely bought and paid for the nations largest oil and gas companies.

There are other large-scale pipeline projects in the works that have received far less national media attention which also pose grave potential threats to the natural environment.

Like the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana.

As New Orleans reporter Aviva Shen reported in an article posted on ThinkProgress.org back on January 14th, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline would form the final leg of the Dakota Access Route, forming a "bridge" pipeline that would link to an existing pipeline that stretches from Nederaland, Texas to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Section of swamp in the Atchafalaya Basin

As Shen notes:

"The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would carry 480,000 barrels of oil a day a final 162 miles across the state to refineries and ports, through eight watersheds and long stretches of fragile wetlands."

That includes parts of the Atchafalaya Basin, a fragile system of rivers, swamps, bayous and wetlands covering 1.4 million acres that stretches 140 miles across central Louisiana.

Not only is it a National Heritage site, it's the largest area of wetlands and swamp in the United States teeming with wildlife where the Atchafalaya River meets the Gulf of Mexico.

The idea of a pipeline that carries 480,000 barrels of crude oil a day rupturing in a remote section of the Atchafalaya Basin is like imagining an environmental crime of incalculable proportions.

And remember that's oil we (Americans) don't actually need - the bulk of the tar sands crude extracted from North Dakota will be transported south to refineries and ports along the Gulf of Mexico where it will be loaded on to tankers and exported to other countries.

In the long term that has little to do with America's "energy independence", it only makes sense to the profit margins of the web of companies that will extract the oil, build the pipelines, refine the oil and ship it overseas to make a profit.

Trans-Pecos Pipeline cuts through Texas 

Profit (for a relative few) that comes at a cost to the environment that will be passed on to human, wildlife and plant life in the form of increased toxins in the soil, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and contaminated fresh water from pipeline leaks.

There are real consequences to this fury of pipeline expansion, for example an Aljazeera.com article in 2015 reported an 87% increase in pipeline accidents between 2009 and 2014.

Not just oil pipelines either.

With America's untested Twitter-happy POTUS intentionally releasing outlandish headline-grabbing statements via his social media account on a daily basis to distract the media and public from all the real crazy shit Republicans are doing, it's pretty unlikely the words Trans-Pecos Pipeline will splash across the headlines of mainstream media anytime soon.

Since 2014 when it was first announced, local residents who live in the Big Bend region of Texas have been standing in opposition to this project that will transport fracked natural gas 143 miles from Texas to Mexico through a 42-inch diameter pipeline that will transport up to 1.4 million cubic-feet of natural gas per day under 1,400 pounds of pressure per square-inch.

Raise your hand if you'd want to live within a mile of that.

Who won the contract to build this $770 million project designed as a way to export some of the massive glut of natural gas in America (a result of rampant over-production) to a country with the 6th largest natural gas reserves in the world?

As MotherJones.com reported, two multi-billionaires, Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the 2nd richest man in the world and (drum roll please....) Kelcy Warren, CEO of the aforementioned Energy Transfer Partners.

Same company building the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Same guy who's in business with Trump as you read these words and gave $100,300 to his campaign.

With the profiteering POTUS announcing that his own administration officials will now censor the science presented on the Web pages of the EPA, it's a clear signal that his goal is to allow fossil fuel companies unlimited leeway to encroach on the environment to increase their profits.

It's also clear that this slew of new pipeline construction is going to contribute far more to global warming and political polarization than it will to the long-term prosperity and best interests of the American people.

We're not in Kansas anymore, and we're way beyond "drill baby drill."

Millions March & Spicer's "Alternative Facts"

500,000+ marchers gathered on the National Mall in D.C.

Throughout the course of the 2016 presidential campaign Donald Trump spent a lot of time boasting about having built a populist movement.

But yesterday was a rude awakening for The Grabber-in-Chief as he and other conservatives got a first-hand lesson in just what a genuine populist movement really looks like.

One that couldn't simply be dismissed with fake news.


Less than 24 hours after being sworn into office in front of a crowd estimated to be less than half of the 1.8 million who came out to see President Obama sworn in back in 2009, millions of people around the world took to the streets of cities and towns large and small to march in support of women and express opposition to Trump's election, conduct, statements, policies and Cabinet choices.

Aside from major American cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Washington D.C., cities like Atlanta, Austin, Seattle, Sacramento, Nashville all saw sizable turnout that some estimate could be as high as four to five million people nationally.

It could be higher, there were over 600 different marches in the U.S., including 51 in California alone - there were marches on every continent of the globe in places like Paris, London, Berlin, Melbourne, Australia as well as in New Zealand and Nigeria as well.

And contrary to commonly held assumptions about America being divided by conservatives in the mid-west and south, and pockets of "liberals" ensconced in large urban cities and on both coasts, as a Twitter user named Mel noted in a Tweet, "Don't ever tell me that Arkansas doesn't care. Don't write us all off as ignorant rednecks. We are out here. #Women'sMarch" reminding people that folks in "Red States" like Arkansas also came out to march on Saturday.

Another Twitter user named Diane Kaplan from Anchorage, Alaska observed, "Largest crowd I've ever seen in 33 years in Anchorage and it's 15 degrees out and white-out conditions."

Thousands gather in front of the State House in
Trenton, NJ on Saturday morning.

It wasn't nearly as cold as that on Saturday morning in Trenton, New Jersey but it was still a cool and damp January morning.

I was up at 7am and picked up my 82-year-old mother and two of her friends from Princeton, an elderly Jewish couple, as well as my mother's neighbor from across the hall - an elderly Jewish woman.

We found ample parking in the lots outside the state office complexes and it was about a five-minute walk to the Trenton War Memorial where the march began with a rally and some speeches.

The march was orderly, well-planned and peaceful; it was the epitome of textbook non-violent resistance.

On the sidewalk as we followed the crowds to the War Memorial, a representative from the ACLU was handing out small blue cards with instructions on what to do if in case of being stopped by the police; which proved unnecessary as everyone was peaceful.

Marchers, including me, actually went out of their way to wave at the Trenton police officers who were guarding various intersections, and greet them and thank them.

By the time we reached the steps in front of the Trenton War Memorial, over 1,900 people had already packed the theater inside where the speeches took place.

An overflow room inside was also filled to capacity with another 1,000 marchers, but large speakers had been set up outside the building where the stairs and plaza in front were packed with marchers.

Crowds listen to speeches at the Trenton War
Memorial before marching.

While my mother did manage to make it inside the theater, I ended up outside on the plaza in front of the building as I'd lingered outside to take some photos of the crowd.

You can see my vantage point from the photo I took at the left where I stood near the rear of the plaza balcony next to the flagpole.

To my right and left hundreds of other people stood packed together listening to the speeches, and behind and below the plaza were thousands of more people stretching back over five hundred yards.

It's not easy to describe the feeling that I had being shoulder to shoulder with people of different ages, races, religions, sexual orientations and socio-economic backgrounds.

Any such differences were instantly rendered meaningless in the face of our common mission, not just to march.

But to stand up for women's rights and express our collective opposition to Trump.

There was a common sense of purpose, a feeling of optimism and reassurance after weeks of anxiety about Trump's winning the election.

While it was a March for Women, that issue was like a solid platform that held a wide range of progressive issues including climate change, mass incarceration, immigration policy, voting rights and racial equality.

I was standing behind a blond-haired white guy in his 20's wearing a gray sweatshirt with "Black Lives Matter" hand-written in black marker on the back - I was actually surprised at how many white people I saw wearing messages or holding signs supporting Black Lives Matter.

(Remember the elderly Jewish couple I drove to the march? They told me they had a Black Lives Matter sign alongside a Hillary Clinton sign outside their Princeton home - both signs were defaced.)

Sign I got from New Jersey Working Families

But there was also a feeling of humor and wit at the march too as people used creativity to channel their frustrations and anger over Trump and the extremist Republicans who've coopted our government through misinformation, voter suppression, character slander, fake news and gerrymandering onto signs.

But perhaps the most important thing about the march was that it was real and it was happening less than 24 hours after the inauguration ceremony.

During the speeches, which included Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman and representatives from the National Organization for Women (NOW), Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, the Democratic Party and various local grass roots organizations, people in the crowd were sharing updates on other marches taking place around the world.

It was a living, breathing expression of Democracy in it's purest form.

It was an unmistakable message, and a clear warning, letting the Republicans who control the White House, Senate and House know that they do NOT have some kind of blank mandate to do anything they want - and a reminder that Trump lost the popular vote by millions.

It was also a visual reminder to Republicans that Congressional mid-term elections are only two years away, and while Trump won the presidential election, his reprehensible behavior, massive conflicts of interest, refusal to release his tax returns, open embrace of bigotry and vilification of the press have ignited the progressive independent and Democratic voter base and brought them closer together.

As Madonna noted during a fiery speech from Washington:

"It took this darkness to wake us the f*** up."

Sean Spicer's "Alternative Facts" - MAGA!

It's common knowledge that the Republican Party, in cooperation with the Russian government under the orders of Vladimir Putin used intentionally fake online news stories as part of a broader effort to manipulate the outcome of the presidential election.

So it was laughable that new White House press secretary Sean Spicer had the gall to come to the White House briefing room on Saturday and literally lie.

Not just about Trump's inauguration attendance numbers being far less than President Obama's, but as the New York Times noted, he also lied about total Metro ridership on Trump's inauguration day and tried to dismiss the turnout for the Marches for Women that took place all over the globe.

Faced with widespread criticism from the media in the face of overwhelming photographic evidence and facts that exposed Spicer's claims as lies, quasi-delusional White House spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway was quickly dispatched to appear on NBC's Meet the Press this morning where she doubled down on the Trump administration's policy of ignoring truth and facts and defending Spicer by saying that he didn't lie, he "gave alternative facts."

Trump and his top aides can try and justify their lying all they want, they can even introduce a new term for it into the lexicon as Conway did this morning - but the millions of people around the globe who marched on Saturday know the smell of a lie when they hear or read it.

As the Trump administration begins it's first Monday in office tomorrow, you can be sure they'll be slinging a lot of "alternative facts" in the coming days as they try to downplay that fact that a majority of Americans (and millions around the globe) soundly rejected Trump on Saturday.
 
As Trump likes to Tweet, "So sad".

The Asterisk President

Well I can't say that I grinned, but I did manage to bear the entirety of Donald Trump's inaugural speech earlier today.

It wasn't the longest inaugural speech in history, William Henry Harrison spoke for a grueling one hour and 45 minutes on March 4, 1841.

Nor was it the shortest, that honor goes to George Washington's two paragraph speech for his second inaugural address.

After all of Trump's divisive campaign rhetoric and alienation of large segments of the American populace, many were expecting to hear something that at least remotely resembled a call for national unity from today's inaugural address.

But his roughly 20-minute speech turned out to be little more than a pitch to his base (the 38% of Americans who approve of him), a pitch that we've heard before.

From my perspective, it was mostly an unremarkable repetition of the exact same lofty campaign promises that Trump has used over and over during his campaign rallies.

And just like his often rambling speaking style, today's speech was laced with simplistic kinds of pie-in-the-sky promises and devoid of any kinds of policy specifics - lot's of colorful frosting but very little cake. 

There was no shortage of the vague platitudes or blatant hypocrisy that have become his hallmarks.

Kellyanne Conway rocks retro-Republican chic

On the one hand he opened the speech with lofty, almost pious assurances about power being returned to the people.

He talked about bringing back jobs, reigniting hopes and dreams and repeated the same promises he's made to his support base in the rust belt and rural regions of the country.

Trump assured the crowd that, "We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, and never do anything about it."

But then just hours after making those comments, as Alan Pyke reported for ThinkProgress.org Trump sat down with congressional leaders and promptly revoked a cut in fee rates for mortgages that the Department of Housing and Urban Development passed eleven days ago.

The cut in fee rates would have saved mostly poor homeowners with loans insured through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) up to $500 a year and would have made it easier for homeowners with poor credit to obtain mortgages.

How many of the millions of Americans who have FHA-insured mortgages voted for Trump?

And remember folks, he did that just hours after taking office; try to imagine what next week is going to be like.

During the speech he also spoke of building roads, bridges and infrastructure, but how's he planning to do that with a do-nothing Republican congress that vilifies any type of government spending that isn't related to tax cuts for the 1%, military spending, or tax-payer funded subsidies for fossil fuel companies?

Is he aware that he's inheriting THE most unproductive congress in American history? The same one that totally rejected President Obama's proposals to pass a huge infrastructure spending bill (to do the same things Trump promised) and put Americans to work? 

Trump supporters cheer as Republican congressman
prepare to try and gut their Social Security

Instead of offering up an optimistic view of the country, he went back to his vision of a nation on the verge of sinking into the abyss.

The unemployment rate is the lowest in 40 years, the economy has been steadily growing and crime is the lowest it's been in decades, but as he did in his frightening speech at the RNC convention, he once again painted a dark and bleak picture of America.

As he spoke of crime, drugs and inner cities on the verge of the Apocalypse, Trump channeled his inner Dirty Harry and boasted, "This American carnage stops right here."

Remember that's from the same guy who pledged to revoke the federal ban on guns in school zones.

Oh and speaking of "American carnage", according to statistics and data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, in 2016 there were 385 mass shootings in the U.S. and 15,039 deaths related to firearms.

Over the course of the campaign, as Trump sought to push the buttons that energize the Republican voter base, he's been little more than a spineless lackey to the NRA - so I'm curious what his plan to stop the "carnage" is going to be.

As for the 3,780 American children between 0 - 17 years of age who were injured or killed by firearms in 2016, perhaps he's depending on a divine intervention; after all during the speech today he did say, "Most importantly we will be protected by God."

Let's hope so. We certainly won't be protected by this Republican congress who are essentially bought and paid for by the NRA; same congress who've killed over 100 pieces of gun control legislation introduced despite over 400,000 Americans losing their lives to firearms since 911

Nazi salutes were a common sign at Trump rallies

In the wake of Trump unleashing his inner Roy Cohn on Georgia Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis over the Martin Luther King holiday recently, one would have thought today's inauguration speech would've been an ideal opportunity for him to express some kind of desire for racial reconciliation or unity.

Instead he offered up a single vague sentence.

"When you open your heart to patriotism there's no room for prejudice." 

Maybe the white nationalists and Neo-Nazis who gave Nazi salutes at an alt-right conference in Washington back in November to celebrate Trump's election (or the Klan members who marched in celebration) will take that into consideration.

Trump neglected to mention the more than 800 incidents of hate and hate crimes that took place across the U.S. after he was elected; but perhaps the patriotism he repeatedly mentioned during the speech today will take care of that.

Speaking of patriotism there were some pretty strange authoritarian tones in the speech too, he exhorted the crowd to "Buy American and hire American." - despite the fact that the clothes that both he and his daughter Ivanka sell are made in other countries.

How all this is going to play out in a global economy remains to be seen.

Protesters in Washington, D.C. [Photo - Getty Images]

But it's clear that on the domestic front we're going to see varying degrees of chaos in the coming days - 95 people were arrested in D.C. during anti-Trump protests that rocked pockets of the city.

Trump's one day honeymoon is pretty much over, tomorrow hundreds of thousands of people in cities across America and the globe will be taking part in various extensions of the Women's March on Washington - including your's truly.

The mobilization of a sustained, nationwide progressive opposition to Trump and the Republican Party really starts tomorrow morning.

It's been a long week at work and I really wanted to sleep in on Saturday, instead I'm getting up at 7am to meet up with my mother, sister, niece and friends of the family to head into Trenton to march.

As President Obama reminded us, Democracy isn't easy, it's hard; and it's going to take hard work to unravel what's taken root in Washington and in state legislatures across the country.

For thousands of Americans, Saturday is a work day - I'll let you know how it goes in Trenton.

But regardless, the tone of the Republican campaign, the flood of fake news, the interference in our electoral process by Vladimir Putin and Comey's release of an FBI letter days before the election alleging evidence about Hillary Clinton's emails that turned out to have been nothing leave a dark cloud of illegitimacy over the man who was sworn into office today.

And as former White House ethics lawyers Richard Painter and Norm Eisen discussed on an episode of NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross the other night, Trump's conflicts of interests related to his businesses are so extensive and unknown that he could very well find his time in office marred by investigations or charges related to violations of the Constitution.

He is, in the minds of many, a president with a large asterisk.