violence – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Trump: the worst president in the history of the United States

David Posnett — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 23:42:13 +0000

Author Karl Grossman

By Karl Grossman

About the Author Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury who has specialized in investigative reporting for 45 years. He is the host of the TV program “Enviro Close-Up,” the writer and presenter of numerous TV documentaries and the author of six books.

The impeachment of Donald Trump — the first president of the United States to be impeached twice — is fitting for the worst president in the history of the U.S.

The attack by his supporters on the Capitol in Washington, D.C. — lawless, an attack on democracy, a U.S. counterpart of the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s.

It was a horror representative of his tenure.

As stated in the resolution titled “Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” he “incited violence” against the government of the United States.” It noted that at a rally of Trump supporters before the insurrection, “he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it in a landslide,’” and “encouraged …lawless action at the Capitol.” And this “followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call…during which…Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffenberger, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffenberger if he failed to do so.”

“In all this,” the resolution continued, Trump “threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power…”

Trump, “by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.”

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, among the most respected publications in the U.S., wrote immediately after the election of 2016 in a piece entitled “An American Tragedy” — “The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism.”

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times wrote a front-page piece last month about how the “final days of the Trump presidency has taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common in history or literature than a modern White House. ….At times, Mr. Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury.” And he quoted a Shakespearian scholar at Harvard University, Jeffrey R. Wilson, author of the book Shakespeare and Trump, saying: “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”

It came on January 6 in the assault on the Capitol.

“If inciting an insurrection is not enough to get a president impeached, what is?” asked Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas before the House vote for impeachment.

Trump had tweeted is followers on December 20^th— “Big protest in DC on January 6^th. Be there, will be wild!”

It was wild, and deadly.

In a speech in front of the White House on January 6^th, addressing his backers who had arrived, he declared: “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…and we’re going to the Capitol.” He added: “You have to be strong.”

Trump’s call was preceded by his lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani proclaiming “let’s have trial by combat.”

Giuliani took an oath to be an attorney to adhere to rule of law and represented Trump in many court challenges to Trump’s election defeat with claims that judges found totally untrue. But Giuliani opted instead, in violation of that oath, for “trial by combat.” The New York State Bar Association this week announced it was launching an inquiry into whether to remove Giuliani from its ranks for his comments at the Trump rally.

Trump tapped into a vein of racism and other poisons in the United States.

As a Jew with all members of the families of both my paternal and maternal grandparents who did not get out of Hungary and Poland in time murdered in the Holocaust, my heart stopped seeing one of the Trump supporters rioting at the Capitol sporting a shirt saying “Camp Auschwitz” and below that arbeit macht frei.

I’ve been amazed that some Jews in the United States and Israel have been big supporters of Trump. His throwing the Kurds under the proverbial bus — his conferring with Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Israel-hating president, which was followed promptly by the attack on the Kurds by the Turkish military —demonstrated for Israel that Trump cannot be trusted.

Trump will turn on a dime.

I grew up in Queens in New York City, not far from Jamaica where Trump was raised. There are lots of Jews in Queens, of course. And Trump learned to “play” with them.

But should any Jew — indeed could anybody — trust him? Ask that of his former longtime personal attorney whom he abandoned, Michael Cohen, the son of a Holocaust survivor, who has been full of disclosures since. Trump, he has emphasized, is a bigot. And says Cohen of the “Trump I know in a nutshell…he projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well.”

Good for the Jews, good for anybody for any length of time? No.

Carl Bernstein, the U.S. journalist of Watergate fame, says Trump “will be in our history books as a dark, dark stain unlike any president of the United States.” And Bernstein investigated U.S. President Richard Nixon, forced to resign because of the Watergate scandal.

My rabbi, Dan Geffen, wrote to congregants after the Trump-incited attack on the Capitol about the Rabbinic sage Aytalyon saying: “Sages, be careful with your words! So as not to warrant the punishment of exile and be exiled to a land of ‘evil waters’ and the disciples who follow you drink and die, and thus the name of heaven becomes profaned.”

Said Rabbi Geffen: “There are numerous times in our tradition when the rabbis instruct us to guard our words carefully. Just as Creation begins with words, so too can destruction. Just as words of Torah are like mayim chayim (life-giving waters); words of hatred, selfishness and division are like a poisoned well. What we witnessed yesterday in Washington was a sad and painful reminder of the prescience of Avtalyon’s warning and the danger that is posed to all when words are perverted and weaponized. So let us not waste our breath on equivocations and calming platitudes. What happened yesterday was a disgrace — a stain on this country and its most fundamental principles, values and ethics. Every single one of us must feel the pain and shame of this moment, because it is now a part of our shared history.”

“The future of our country and our community will be defined by how we choose to respond to the stoked barbarism on display in the Capitol yesterday. And in this simple fact, I am filled not with despair, but with hope….These are indeed fraught times. Times filled with anger, pain, grief and a loss of hope. And it would be irresponsible to suggest that the problems and challenges we face as a country are easily addressed. Nevertheless, just as words of division can be used to poison the proverbial well; words of unity, hope and purpose can help clear and purify the miasma. There is much to be done to repair the fabric of our society, and we all have an important role to play in its repair. So let each of us do everything in our power to use the ignoble events of January 6, 2021 as motivation to inspire us to work together to return our beloved country to a land truly flowing with the life-giving waters of liberty, justice and equity for all!”

Trump has been a nightmare for the United States of America.

Thank heaven and a lot of hard political work that he will soon be gone, his final days concluding with a despicable, awful, violent attack on democracy.

Is it Fascism yet?

David Posnett — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 20:50:27 +0000

LETTER in the Boston Globe
How fascist is it?
Updated September 24, 2020, 1 hour ago

The cult demands allegiance
“Is it fascism yet?” by Renée Graham (Opinion, Sept. 23) reinforced my fears about how dangerous Donald J. Trump is. The American carnage he vowed to remove from our country was actually his goal. The pandemic mismanagement confirms that chaos is his modus operandi. The cult of Trump enjoys the binary approach that Trump advocates. Threats, intimidation, and violence make them feel good. Trump struts on stage with the smug arrogance displayed by Benito Mussolini. The divisive rhetoric has echoes of Adolf Hitler. Trump may not be a dictator, but that is his goal. The walk across the street from the White House with a show of force to highlight the Charlton Heston moment with a Bible in hand sent an unmistakable message. The cult of Trump requires blind allegiance. Trump lies and people die, and the refusal to wear masks shows us how bald-faced the strategy is. It gives true meaning to “in your face.” I am reminded of the warning at the entrance to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum where an American liberator of a concentration camp says these things just don’t happen. Unfortunately, they did.

Steven A. Ludsin

Trickle Down Hate Crimes

David Posnett — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 17:19:22 +0000

Devastatingly awful. The rise of hate crimes & Trump’s vitriol are not independent or coincidental. It’s not the media, it starts in the oval office and trickles down.

Trump

(and his minions)

↓

VITRIOL
HATE

direct INSTRUCTIONS for violence

↓

And the NRA / Trump / Zeldin, they are promoting more guns. Guns for the nutcases, guns in schools and guns in the churches and synagogues.

Barbara —

The news coming out of Pittsburgh this morning is unspeakably tragic. A Synagogue — a place of worship, peace, and safety — invaded. 8 dead. Dozens wounded. All at the hands of a hate-fueled anti-Semite with a powerful military-style weapon.

The President is talking about how we need more weapons of war in our streets and places of worship. The NRA is silent. GOP politicians are “deeply troubled” yet again. But they don’t act. They won’t act. Even though it’s right-wing bigots committing the mass-violence, they’re fully bought-and-paid-for by the NRA and the giant corporations it represents. That’s the truth.

As veterans, we stand in solidarity with all who face these acts of violence — violence that Donald Trump has encouraged and fueled through his extremist rhetoric since day 1. And we’re devoting every resource available to make sure Congress does the right thing this time and puts an end to this terrorism in our communities.

I need you to make a pledge: can you promise to either vote for, donate to, or volunteer with a candidate who OPPOSES the NRA’s agenda of using bigotry and division to fuel corporate profits?

Oppose the NRA »

For years, the NRA has fed violent, paranoid rhetoric to their massive audience. And since his campaign begun, Donald Trump has done the same. They share apocalyptic, terrorizing propaganda videos, openly threatening peaceful protesters with menacing violence. They spew hateful rhetoric about Muslims and people of color in our neighborhoods. And Congress is fine with this as long as the campaign contributions keep flowing.

We have to break that cycle, and call out the NRA for what they really are: propagandists who will use racism and bigotry to stir up fear and hate, and watch mass-shootings from the sidelines as long as it means they can sell more guns and maintain control over Congress.

Join us today in pledging to support as many candidates as possible who will fight for peaceful and secure communities.

Our hearts ache for the people of Pittsburgh, the Jewish community, and for all who’ve been subjected to such terrorism. I know we can’t undo what happened today, but we can fight tooth and nail and hopefully reduce the chances of it ever happening again.

In solidarity,

Alexander McCoy
U.S. Marine Corps veteran
Common Defense

Stop the madness and

VOTE PERRY GERSHON

on Nov 6th

Stricter Gun Laws Can Reduce Deaths

David Posnett — Tue, 29 May 2018 20:36:51 +0000

Proud to be a Cornell Alumnus! These are my medical students!

As published in the latest issue of Weill Cornell Medicine: and found under the title “Weill Cornell Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Medical College Renaming”, scroll down to “Stricter Gun Laws Could Reduce Deaths”:

More stringent state regulation of firearms could help reduce rates of suicide and homicide, finds a study led by Elinore Kaufman, MD, a surgical resident at NYP/Weill Cornell and Weill Cornell Medicine. The investigators analyzed county-level data to determine whether state firearm laws have interstate spillover effects on firearm-related homicides and suicides. They found that counties located in states with restrictive laws had lower rates of homicide and suicide by firearm, regardless of neighboring states’ laws. Counties located in states with lenient policies had higher firearm death rates, with rates declining if those counties were located in close proximity to states with tougher laws. “We know that most firearm policies in the United States are made at the state level,” Kaufman says, “but states do not exist in a vacuum.” The paper was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Question Are state firearm laws associated with increases in interstate firearm deaths from homicide and suicide?

Findings In this cross-sectional study, strong firearm laws in a state were associated with lower firearm suicide rates and lower overall suicide rates in the state regardless of the strength of the laws in other states. Strong firearm laws in a state were associated with lower rates of firearm homicide. Counties in states with weak laws had lower rates of firearm homicide only when surrounding states had strong laws.

Meaning Strengthening firearm policies at the state level could help to reduce the incidence of both firearm suicide and homicide, with benefits that extend across state lines.

ABSTRACT:
Importance Firearm laws in one state may be associated with increased firearm death rates from homicide and suicide in neighboring states.

Objective To determine whether counties located closer to states with lenient firearm policies have higher firearm death rates.

Design, Setting, and Participants This cross-sectional study of firearm death rates by county for January 2010 to December 2014 examined data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for firearm suicide and homicide decedents for 3108 counties in the 48 contiguous states of the United States.

Exposures Each county was assigned 2 scores, a state policy score (range, 0-12) based on the strength of its state firearm laws, and an interstate policy score (range, −1.33 to 8.31) based on the sum of population-weighted and distance-decayed policy scores for all other states. Counties were divided into those with low, medium, and high home state and interstate policy scores.

Main Outcomes and Measures County-level rates of firearm, nonfirearm, and total homicide and suicide. With multilevel Bayesian spatial Poisson models, we generated incidence rate ratios (IRR) comparing incidence rates between each group of counties and the reference group, counties with high home state and high interstate policy scores.

Results Stronger firearm laws in a state were associated with lower firearm suicide rates and lower overall suicide rates regardless of the strength of the other states’ laws. Counties with low state scores had the highest rates of firearm suicide. Rates were similar across levels of interstate policy score (low: IRR, 1.34; 95% credible interval [CI], 1.11-1.65; medium: IRR, 1.36, (95% CI, 1.15-1.65; and high: IRR, 1.43; 95% CI, 1.20-1.73). Counties with low state and low or medium interstate policy scores had the highest rates of firearm homicide. Counties with low home state and interstate scores had higher firearm homicide rates (IRR, 1.38; 95% CI, 1.02-1.88) and overall homicide rates (IRR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.03-1.67). Counties in states with low firearm policy scores had lower rates of firearm homicide only if the interstate firearm policy score was high.

Conclusions and Relevance Strong state firearm policies were associated with lower suicide rates regardless of other states’ laws. Strong policies were associated with lower homicide rates, and strong interstate policies were also associated with lower homicide rates, where home state policies were permissive. Strengthening state firearm policies may prevent firearm suicide and homicide, with benefits that may extend beyond state lines.

The Pulse of the Resistance is Just Fine

David Posnett — Thu, 25 May 2017 13:27:48 +0000

Yesterday I attended an event featuring former Rep. Tim Bishop. During the Q&A session, I asked him what advice he might have for resistance groups on Long Island. He responded, “don’t let the intensity wane”.

We all know that raw emotions rapidly dissipate. When you are angry it is often a good idea to ”sleep over it” before you mouth off! So perhaps you would expect, or fear, that the outrage at our current government might dissipate too?

But here are the facts:

the numbers of new resistance groups across our county (and nationwide) continue to grow
within our own group R&R, the number of participants continues to grow. Nearly every day someone asks to join
the followers of Facebook groups, like Let’s Visit Lee Zeldin, have grown steadily
the participation of citizens at rallies and demonstrations remains strong and the number of such events is difficult to keep up with!
while most of us are fatigued by the daily bombardment with news, I don’t know of anyone who has “given up”, or signed off from email lists, etc.
the number of views of our blog continues to rise since January 1st, 2017 when it was started:

I conclude that the intensity of the resistance is not waning. On the contrary, it seems to be gaining steam.

Why? I guess the answer is obvious. The daily news is hard to ignore. We go to bed angry after watching the latest news about Trump or Zeldin. We wake up and there is even more recent awful news. Our anger is rekindled. It is impossible for the emotions to dissipate!

Yesterday in Montana, the Republican candidate (Gianforte) for Congress assaulted a journalist in front of witnesses and he was charged today with a misdemeanor. That is illegal behavior. Our President has encouraged violence against journalists and demonstrators on numerous occasions. Republicans generally acquiesce and remain silent, rather than condemning such behavior. Hooligans and hoodlums were a feature of NAZI brown shirts in the early 1930’s and this type of violence, including killings, is characteristic of regimes like those of Putin (in Russia), Dutarte (in the Philipines) and Erdogan (in Turkey), all of which are apparent role models for Mr. Trump. Trump and his enablers, including Zeldin, pose an existential threat to our democracy and our freedom. That is why the resistance will not abate.

If you need encouragement watch this great video: TED talk.