Perspective & Opinion
JOE BIDEN’S DECISION
In one short, unsettling 10-day span, the two major parties in America became more extreme, and the great middle political perspective was lost in the shuffle.
A thankfully failed assassination attempt, the Republican presidential nomination of the Donald Trump and J.D. Vance ticket, Joe Biden’s dramatic decision to drop his re-election bid, and Kamala Harris's rapid ascendancy to the top of the Democratic camp flustered our news cycles.
President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election, despite securing an overwhelming number of primary votes, is a testament to his recognition of his physical challenges. This decision will undoubtedly shape the future political landscape.
Given recent publicly visible circumstances, the President made the right decision. Sadly, many other political leaders never would have made a similar call for the sake of their country. Partisanship over country too often prevails in other cases, as appears more and more regularly to be the case on the Republican side of the presidential nominee aisle, too.
When you watch, read, or listen to the news, what is missing from the equation is the thought represented by independents, moderate-to-right-leaning Republicans, and moderate-to-left-leaning Democrats who do not want either major party candidate to be president or their United States senator.
Independents comprise one-third of American voters. A more significant percentage if you consider those currently dissatisfied Democrats and Republicans who believe their parties have left them behind. Why are we not talking more about the impact these voters will have on the ultimate decision of who will be the 47th president of the United States?
Main Street perspectives such as:
How do we prevent Donald Trump from dismantling democracy as we know it or stop Kamala Harris from giving our country away
What do we do if we cannot mass deport 11 million illegal immigrants as Donald Trump advocates but not give them blanket amnesty either, as Kamala Harris promotes?
How do we stop either side from cutting our seniors’ Social Security and Medicare benefits because they cannot better fund and repair this crucial program?
How do we better control the ravages of inflation on our families when both sides promise to impose substantial tariffs on foreign products that will only stoke the fires of inflation themselves rather than improve American competitiveness?
How do we get either party to throttle back their trillion-dollar annual deficit spending that has saddled our younger generation with more than $12 trillion in new debt these past eight years?
The list is long. The choice is here. The stakes are massively high.
This November, we must say no to both political tickets and demand they do better for all Floridians and all Americans, not just the extreme party elites.
The Assassination Attempt
Political violence has no place in American politics.
No person serving in or running for political office in America should ever be the target or victim of political violence.
For any reason. Ever.
We at Thomas are happy to see that former President Trump appears to be safe and has survived. His murder would have represented a severe blow to democracy. Our hearts goes out to the family of the rally participant who may have lost their life and those others who the horrendous shots may have injured. We also wish former President Trump a speedy recovery and a quick return to the campaign trail.
If you are going to stop Donald Trump, you do it with your vote, not violence. If you're going to stop Joe Biden, you do it with your vote, not violence. If you are going to embrace one or any of our presidential candidates in 2024, it should not come at the cost of your life.
American democracy is at issue in the November 5th election. We are at a crossroads regarding what type of America we want in the days ahead. That debate should and must continue, but without the harsh vitriol and violent actions we witness all too often.
Let’s all advocate for what we believe in and want with the outcome of this election season, but let’s not do it at any fellow American’s expense.
We are better than this, America. Let’s debate the issues confronting our democracy with grace, intelligence, and mutual respect for 248 years of enduring deliberation and independence.
BLOCKING THE PUBLIC SQUARE?
Team Thomas Thursday, March 14, 2024
The United States House of Representatives has voted 352-65 to force the social media giant TikTok to divest itself in the U.S. from its Chinese ownership by September or face an American ban. The legislation was introduced eight days ago and sunamied its way through to full-House passage without benefit of committee hearings.
The Thomas Take is that the House may be over-reacting to the potential threat that TikTok currently poses to U.S. national security. The overreacting worry is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has access to Americans’ private data and will use it to interfere with our elections, for example.
If China wanted access to Americans’ private data, it could more easily do so by gathering that data from data aggregators, as other parties often do. Public polling would tell them what they need to know politically as well. Troll Facebook, X, or Instagram, and the same can be found.
In our opinion, all social media platforms should practice increased transparency, accountability, and commitment to protecting user data. The Thomas perspective is that this objective is of greater importance than forcing a sale of TikTok to some other large corporation. Blocking 170 million Americans from their modern-day de facto public square smacks of denying our citizens access to another means of speech in America.
Should TikTok do the worst that is predicted, the American president would have the option of ending TikTok’s undue influence by nationalizing the company in the name of national security when national security is deemed to be threatened. Of course, nationalizing any company risks taking us down the slippery slope to practicing socialism or communism.
The United States Senate is wise to want to slow down this potential ban of TikTok in favor of greater analysis, deliberation, and public scrutiny—the role our founding fathers designed the Senate to perform for our democracy.
supremely overdue
Only in Washington could a jurist on the nation’s highest court not think that accepting free luxury vacations and travel from a billionaire who will have business before the court is unethical behavior.
Only in Washington could a jurist on the nation’s highest court not think that his spouse’s unapologetic encouragement of the January 6th insurrection not be an ethics-vacant decision to fail to recuse himself from deliberations on that same event seeking to overturn the duly held election of the president of the United States involving that same spouse.
Only in Washington could a jurist on the nation’s highest court not think that having an unrelated billionaire benefactor funding a member of that same jurist’s family member’s tuition would not be considered unethical behavior.
Such are the well-reported cases of Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who argue that their behavior – their judgments – are acceptable because personally profiting from their positions of power and judgment were not explicitly excluded from or written in any documents on file with the Court.
Never mind what common sense and decades of ethics and government in the sunshine laws have shown each of us.
This week, we learned that the Supreme Court of the United States has finally adopted a Code of Ethics for its members, considering the substantial public blowback the Court has garnered since news of the ethics lapses came into the light, and their explanations for existing have begged credulity.
While the written Code of Ethics is at least one small step in the right direction toward discouraging such behavior by jurists who hold a most treasured public trust in our nation, the Code introduced to the American public and the Associate Justices is woefully inadequate in so many regards.
Window-dressing without enforcement teeth, one might logically argue.
The Court noted in its public announcement of the new Code that “The absence of a Code has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.”
In our opinion, it is not the American public who misunderstands what the absence of a Code has led to in recent years; it is the Court itself that misunderstands. The Supreme Court’s reputation has been shredded for good reason.
The Associate Justices should know from the codes of ethics that govern all U.S. courts, Congress, the White House, the non-profit community, the media, and many private businesses that Justice Alito’s and Justice Thomas’ behavior in these cases was devoid of accepted or expected ethics.
While we must all agree to protect the Court’s independence under our Constitution and recognize how valuable the Supreme Court is to the American rule of law, our Constitution does provide for necessary oversight when rules and regulations are violated for personal benefit, such as in these previously undisclosed cases.
This oversight should be exercised immediately.
The Code of Ethics announced by the Court this week does not provide for any rational enforcement mechanism because the foxes still want to be left to guard the hen house. After all, the foxes do not want to be told by anyone else that the hens are not their next meal.
Simplistic? You bet. Acceptable? Not at all.
The Court needs an enforcement mechanism with teeth in place today so such “misunderstandings” do not repeat themselves in future Associate Justices’ behavior. The Court can ill-afford the continued mistrust from the American public that it has so rightly earned.
In our opinion, the United States Senate and U.S. House of Representatives should examine whether these wealthy-derived benefits in the Alito and Thomas cases amounted to corruption. Such an investigation by Congress will, again, ensure that the Supreme Court maintains its independence and trust rather than loses it.
In our opinion, the Supreme Court should have an Inspector General overseeing such lapses in judgment from our Associate Justices, and a three-person panel consisting of retired judges should be the internal arbiters of what the Court should do when future poor ethics come to the public’s attention—which they inevitably will.
In our opinion, the Supreme Court should be expanded to eleven members (hopefully better representing the percentage of independents in the American electorate today) so that political and philosophical balance can be restored, along with trust in the judgment and ultimate ethics of our Supreme Court justices.
fear the herd
The newest White House Coronavirus Task Force member, Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, argued at a Governor Ron DeSantis press conference in Tallahassee today that Florida should not fear the deadly COVID-19.
Dr. Atlas, who is not an infectious disease expert, also advocated that the state does not need to test asymptomatic citizens and enthusiastically embraced DeSantis and Trump’s insistence that K-12 schools and colleges in the Sunshine State reopen entirely and quickly.
Atlas has also made it known over the past few days that he favors allowing the virus to spread in the United States unchecked so that healthy citizens can build up what is called a “herd immunity” to the virus.
That herd immunity theory was a failure in Sweden, where Swedish officials tried it, and U.S. health officials predict that as many as 2.1 million Americans will die from the virus if it is left unchallenged.
Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have been under withering criticism for their slow to no approach to coronavirus safety. Both Republicans will not mandate masks for protection against virus spread despite recommendations to the contrary from various health experts and agencies. Trump and DeSantis have also taken a hold-no-prisoners approach to forcing Florida schools to reopen before the virus spread has been appropriately contained.
The virus has infected more than 6 million Americans to date, and more than 182,000 have died in 2020 as a result. Ten percent of the infections have occurred in Florida, and more than 11,000 Floridians have succumbed to the virus.
Floridians and Americans alike do indeed need to fear the virus if it is left to spread at will, and we should all fear Trump, DeSantis, and Atlas if their herd immunity mentality is permitted to prevail.
A shaken union
As the eight months of America’s “annus horribilis” dawn today, the state of our Union is deeply shaken under Donald J. Trump’s watch.
There is much in the United States that we must be worried about with slightly more than three months to go before the November 3rd election:
President Trump has suggested that our general election be postponed because he believes mail-in balloting will be a disaster, and he is predicting another rigged election like that which got him elected four years ago.
Russia and other global actors continue to interfere in U.S. elections, and invasive, damaging hacking of U.S. communications and commerce continues weekly on a White House unanswered basis.
Rather than reinforcing election stability, the President actively seeks to undermine and weaken the United States Postal Service in what appears to be an intention to shake election accountability to its core.
The U.S. economy contracted a record-breaking 30%+ in the second quarter of 2020, confirming that we are in a depression, not a recession, due to the virus and lack of national strategy from the President and White House.
More than 150,000 Americans have died from the novel coronavirus that President Trump assured us in February would miraculously disappear.
Hospitalizations and new case reports related to the virus continue to break daily records more than half a year after the virus first appeared in the United States last January.
Elementary, middle, and high schools, joined by a rapidly growing number of universities and colleges, are reversing themselves on the “back-to-school” order from President Trump and many state Governors and retreating to online classes in the fall because the virus has not been contained.
The emergency virus relief program, The Cares Act, was allowed by Senate Republicans and the White House to expire yesterday even though the U.S. House approved its version of a vital extension more than ten weeks earlier.
Our streets have been the scene of violent, daily protests over “Black Lives Matter” issues, and President Trump dumps fuel on those literal fires through what can only be fairly described as racist taunts.
Our national debt now exceeds $26 trillion, 136% of our GDP.
Some 37 million Americans – 11 million children – go hungry daily.
Nearly 50 million Americans have filed unemployment claims this year, while current estimates project that only five million jobs are available today.
Our jails now host 2.2 million American adults.
China, whom we are struggling politically with on an hourly basis, is growing dramatically more threatening as a military power in the Pacific while our Navy is combating massive fraud and dereliction of duty scandals, not to mention shipboard fires and collisions.
In other words, the legislative branch of our government appears to be broken, the executive branch seems corrupt and anti-constitutional, and the American public appears to be highly stressed.
We have a long way to go toward having an “annus mirabilis.”
we need to know now
Integrity in American elections is critical to having a sound and functioning democracy.
Few tenants are more vital to national security than trust among our citizens that our elections are sound, our government is secure, and the United States’ interests and Constitution are protected. Adversaries would like nothing more than to disrupt this centuries-old process that has seen us endure a Civil War, two World Wars, a Cold War, and more.
The political bombshell today is that former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton, in a forthcoming expose that the White House and Department of Justice are trying desperately to block from publication next week, disclosed that the President personally asked China’s President Xi Jinping to help him win re-election in 2020 by giving farm states more trade.
This is on the heels of being impeached earlier this year for asking Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate his 2020 general election opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in exchange for releasing some $400 million in U.S. military aid to battle the Russians, which Congress had duly authorized.
The Ukraine scandal was on top of credible allegations that Russia’s Vladimir Putin had intentionally interfered in the 2016 presidential election, to Mr. Trump’s benefit, after the President asked for Russia’s assistance in hacking his general election opponent’s “lost emails.”
See the trend here?
On Memorial Day, and again in mid-June at a military academy graduation, Mr. Trump exhibited several alarming physical frailties that have political observers, like the anti-Trump super PAC The Lincoln Project, asking if the President is well.
Mind you, the President was rushed in November to Walter Reed Hospital in an unplanned visit for an ailment or issue that has yet to be disclosed. Had the White House not had a long and painful track record of misleading or lying to the American public more than 19,000 times, these questions about the President’s health would not be so troubling.
The President has refused to release his taxes, contrary to what other presidents have done over the years in the name of transparency and political trust. Unconfirmed reports indicate that both Chinese and Russian banks gave Donald J. Trump significant loans to prop up his company, The Trump Organization.
Is the President beholden to the Chinese and the Russians for the loans they gave him? Is Trump giving Xi and Putin favors in return for their direct support of his election and re-election campaigns? Is President Trump ill?
America needs to know now. Something is wrong on both counts. Release the President’s medical records and his tax records now.
Enough of the White House and Department of Justice deception, misdirection, and evasion.
If the continued obstruction and Communist collusion does not stop immediately, Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, may very well have the historic privilege of being the first American Commander-in-Chief twice Impeached in a single term.
The Bitter Seed
Need Not Take Root
Considering current events, it is straightforward to ask the question: Is Donald Trump a Russian mole in the Oval Office?
Moreover, has Vladimir Putin finally found a way to undermine the United States from the inside?
Was this strategy to undermine our nation planned from the beginning of the Trump presidency, as some have alleged, and does the presidential track record appear to be foreshadowed?
The 45th president of the United States does appear to be systematically undermining key elements of:
· Our Constitution (Articles I, II & III, Emoluments, First Amendment).
· Allied relationships abroad (NATO, UN, WHO, England, France, Germany)
· Intelligence community (FBI, CIA, NSA); and,
· Oversight mechanisms (multiple fired Inspectors General).
Should we have to ask if Mr. Trump has been complicit in an as-yet-unofficially declared civil- or foreign-inspired war on America?
These troubling questions, after all, are fair ones to ponder when you witness the mayhem our televisions and PDAs have brought to our newscasts over the past few days, and more broadly over the past three-and-one-half years, courtesy of the needlessly controversial White House, and at times, presidential candidate:
The U.S. military command marched through the streets near the White House in an overwhelming and disproportionate show of force leveraged by the president of the United States.
Federal law enforcement shooting rubber bullets and lobbing smoke cans and tear gas at peaceful demonstrators in a public park.
Authorities from the local, state, and federal levels viciously and purposefully attack members of the adequately credentialed media.
Brutal assaults on backpedaling protestors that have led to hospitalizations and serious injuries, caught on camera on many occasions.
And looting and fires by out-of-control protagonists alleged to be either left-wing or right-wing extremist groups or both.
Don’t get us wrong; we strongly believe in and support the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. We are traditionally pro-military and pro-law enforcement. We embrace democracy and our three branches of the federal government. We endorse states’ rights and the supremacy of We The People, as envisioned by our founding fathers.
We are Thomas, for crying out loud.
But these scenes on our nightly news and in our leading newspapers look eerily like those we have seen in Putin’s Russia rather than the United States of America. These scenes are heartbreaking and maddening. The United States military and law enforcement have both been misused by our duly elected and insecure President.
We have seen the destruction of democratic ambition before, as with Tiananmen Square a host of Junes ago. However, the loss of life in that horrific government crackdown on freedom-focused demonstrators is nowhere near today’s tally.
Yet.
Suppose President Trump does not want to be viewed as a Russian mole in the Oval Office. In that case, he might have easily elected to de-escalate the passion of the George Floyd protesters but chose to fuel the flames of discontent and dissatisfaction instead. People are hungry and looking for food now that more than 40 million Americans are suddenly unemployed.
45 might have opted to invite discussion and brainstorm solutions to chronic police brutality by a select few rather than the masses instead of inviting yet more unjustified force in response. People are scared of the 103,000-plus deaths brought down on us by COVID-19 and the promise of more pandemics to come in the Autumn.
POTUS might have encouraged state governors to collaborate rather than demean them as weak and without force when force was undeniably not the best option to employ. People are frustrated that the government is not responding to their dire times of need, blaming them for all the social pestilence befalling them in 2020.
It’s not too late to do any of these corrective actions if a President only wants to calm down an electorate.
Instead, Donald J. Trump opted to behave like a third-world dictator, or worse, Vladimir Putin’s trusted lieutenant. He has threatened what is essentially martial law in the District of Columbia and sent in uniforms to punish those who disagree.
Rather than focus on what is wrong or whether we can trust President Trump or not, it is time for Americans to focus on what can be right and not be further distracted by intentional bad actor moves:
We, The People, can bring an end to systematic discrimination and forceful brutality from any quarter if we so choose. The police as a whole in this nation want the same.
We, The People, can re-achieve gainful employment and security for our citizens at home and abroad, regardless of their current station in life, if we so choose.
We, The People, can collaborate and not be divided by class, gender, race, preference, or political party.
This is the time for intelligent and ethical choices in America.
Anarchy, monarchs, and dictators are not welcome in the United States.
Do not let the bitter seeds of protest, nor that of political oppression, take root.
This is our time to stand firm for democracy, the pursuit of happiness, and equal freedom for every citizen of this great land.
From sea to shining sea!
trump’s tweets
Vile is not even a strong enough word to accurately describe President Trump’s Memorial Week tweets accusing, without evidence or fact, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough of murdering his congressional aide, Lori Klausutis. At the same time, he was a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Adding vindictive to the description of the 45th president’s irresponsible allegations does not help better explain the moral bankruptcy that permits such messages to be posted. Mr. Scarborough is a vocal critic of POTUS, but Mr. Trump’s response is unarguably disproportionate – something that should worry national security officials worldwide.
The White House press office and Chief of Staff malpractice by letting such despicable communications from the boss loose on the web. Every Republican member of the Senate and House should cry out in shame that their chosen standard bearer has resorted to his revolting level of behavior inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
As they say, the GOP Senate’s and House’s collective silence is deafening. It’s worth observing, however, that this silence is probably not falling on deaf ears among the 2020 electorate. Voters notice, as do we, that knowing tongues appear to be tied for some strange reason.
It is equally troubling to learn that Twitter and its CEO, Jack Dorsey, are unwilling to remove these horrid Trump Tweets, even though Donald J. Trump’s posts violate Twitter’s community standards. Last we checked, Mr. Trump’s Twitter account appears to be from an individual, who admittedly is the incumbent Commander-in-Chief, not from the official Oval Office Twitter itself.
We surmise that having 80 million followers on the Twitter platform makes an excellent excuse to callously look the other way by not righting a wrong. A wrong, by the way, that Ms. Klausutis’ family has asked Twitter to address, rather than block, a more straightforward ask of the mighty communications giant.
Many people we talk to who passionately support this president often share with us that they wish Donald J. Trump and his family would just keep quiet and quit Tweeting about these sorts of highly ill-advised political shenanigans. The President, they contend, should stick to doing his actual job.
It is fitting that our first Opinion & Perspective post since formally launching Thomas comments on a political communication and ethics issue. The decision to lob revolting campaign salvos while occupying the highest office in the land goes to the heart of who we are, who we should be, and who we might better be as the American democracy—the “American experiment.”
As a political Independent publication, neither Republican nor Democrat, we do not have “a dog in the hunt” come November 3rd. But we do have perspective and see the President of the United States engaging in vile, vindictive, and despicable behavior in the name he would make it appear of We the People.
It should stop now, Mr. President. Stop Tweeting if you cannot be civil or truthful.
If nothing else, please remember what Memorial Day represents in America.
This was not it, President Trump!