50 Days

So, let me summarize the first 50 days of Trump 2.0

• His irrational economic policies have tanked the stock market.

• His promised mass deportations for the first full month are lower than Biden’s numbers.

• He has turned his back on European allies and thrown our support behind Russia in the biggest shift in American foreign policy since World War I.

• He has initiated an insane tariff war with our hemispheric allies.

• He has destroyed our image in the world and made us the object of derision and shame.

• He has turned US Government personnel policy over to an unelected, unhinged, uninformed oligarch who has fired thousands of employees of VA, SSA, NPS, FAA and USAID without regard to performance or mission.

• He has ended US foreign aid at a time when starvation and disease ravage the third world.

• He has failed on his guarantee of immediate peace deals in the Middle East and Ukraine. (Note that today's announcement of a ceasefire agreement is only the victim nation agreeing to a ceasefire, not the agressor.)

• He has tried to shake down Ukraine for payback while they continue to fight for their lives.

• He had conducted the most shameful oval office meeting in history attacking an embattled world leader.

• He has bragged about his support for law enforcement while pardoning the January 6 thugs who we all watched bludgeon the Capitol and DC police on national television.

• He has featured a beautiful little cancer survivor in his prime-time speech while stopping pediatric cancer research at NIH.

• He has bullied a spineless Republican Congress into a death spiral that will have to cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security to guarantee tax cuts for billionaires.

• He has created a Cabinet that would be funny if it weren’t so tragic:

o Secretary of Ag recommended we raise chickens to lower our egg prices

o Sec of Health has said that we can fight measles with diet

o Sec of Defense has purged the DOD website of such offensive terms as Enola Gay.

o Sec of Commerce announced there will be no recession simultaneously with Trump affirming the possibility to reporters on Air Force One.

o Attorney General has weaponized her position and fired prosecutors and officials

who had upheld the law.

o She has also delayed the release of the Epstein files which are “on her desk” leading some of us to the conclusion that Trump’s name is in those files.

• He continues the crazy talk about Greenland, Panama, and our 51st state Canada in a riff that would have guaranteed a psychiatric intervention with any previous president.

• He has kicked major networks out of office space in the Pentagon, limited their access in the White House, and put AP in timeout over the correct name of a body of water.

But for all of that, he has taken care of some of the most pressing issues of our time.

• He has made English the official language of the United States

• He has declared that there are only two genders, Male and Female

• He has ruled that there can no longer be co-ed sports. (I guess soccer, tennis, pickle ball, and break dancing are included.)

All my friends are asking, what can we do? How should we fight back? Why won’t the Congress act?

Jim Carville is a real character, but like a lot of other people I have met in my life, his downhome aw-shucks demeanor camouflages a high IQ and a brilliant strategic mind. While others are panicking over the Democratic response, Jim is taking the Orville Redenbacher approach. He says buy some popcorn, get a good seat and just watch.

Carville says that Trump has so misread his mandate, so overplayed his hand, so overstuffed his nest with clueless loyalists that he is poised to drive the economy into recession, drive his approval ratings to even more historic lows, and drive the Republicans out of power in at least one side of the Congress.

For what it’s worth, here’s what I am doing.

• Continuing to call and write my congresswoman and Senators

• Continuing to follow a variety of news outlets no matter how hard it is to watch

• Trying not to listen or watch the President himself. I have found that this lowers my blood pressure.

• Prepare to go all in for Democrats in the special and mid-term elections. That will be the next opportunity we all have to make a difference.

• Occasionally show up to march, sit-in, and protest, just for my mental health.

By the way, I will work my way back to no political content for this blog, but our national political health is clearly on your minds. My latest blog was read by over 600 of you in the US, Canada, Europe, Russia, Indonesia, and China.