Donald Trump - America's Newest Medal of Honor Winner

In a move sure to please his fan base, Donald Trump has awarded himself the nation’s highest and most esteemed military decoration, the Medal of Honor.
          What is his justification?

"I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon," Trump had said at his White House meeting with 39 governors about what he would have done at the Florida school that was the scene of the most recent mass shooting. Trump was so proud of himself for his claim and, imagining he would have saved all the students and teachers killed on Valentine’s Day at Stoneman Douglas High School, he immediately signed an Executive Order giving himself the Medal of Honor.

With Pence and Mattis' approval, Trump awards himself the medal

“I actually earned this quite a while ago,” Trump exclaimed as he fumbled with the ribbon to put the medal around his neck. “I always felt like I was a great and brave soldier back in the '80s when I was having so much unprotected sex. This is just the culmination of so many amazing things I’ve done.”

Seeing few people in the room were moved by his reasoning, Trump said “Hey, ISIS is history. I defeated them. Not even Obama could do that…and he created them!” When no one immediately applauded, Trump up the ante. “And another thing, if I hadn’t had those bone spurs in my foot, or feet…you’ll look it up in the records, it’s in the records…I’d have been the greatest soldier in the entire history of that war back in the 60s when they were drafting kids. Not one gook would have escaped my sights,” he said. “The war would have ended within a week of my arriving at wherever it was we were fighting back then. So I deserve this.”

          Generals McMaster, Mattis, Dunford, and Kelly all stood by expressionless as Trump placed the ribbon and medal around his neck. Waving his hand dismissively at them Trump boasted “After talking with all the generals, they agreed that if anyone should get this medal, it’s me. I mean, no one is better at the military than me...believe me!”

          Trump added while pointing to the medal around his neck,“And this deserves a military parade in my honor this July 4^th…or on that November 11^th day, for whatever reason we celebrate then!” 

          This follows on the heels of Trump’s request, via a third party, that he be given the Nobel Peace Prize, too. An unidentified American who nominated the U.S. president reportedly cited Trump's "ideology of peace by force" (such as threatening nuclear war with North Korea) for the submission for the prize. A similar reason accompanied a nomination for Trump to win last year’s 2017 prize. Just one minor problem; Trump's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize was forged, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute said Wednesday February 27^th. “We have good reason to believe that the nomination we received concerning Trump has been falsified,” Institute Director Olav Njolstad told reporters.

          Henrik Urdal, manager of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, told the Associated Press that even though Trump was nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, the nomination “lacks any strong academic justification”.

The Late Billy Graham - Seller of a Slicker Brand of Snake Oil

I waited to post this out of a sense of holding any invective until he was boxed up before leveling a broadside at the late Billy Graham.

Last Wednesday the gush gate was thrown wide open…gushing tears over the death of 99 year old purveyor of religious snake oil Billy Graham…and gushing sparkling accolades and tributes to his being what idolizers call the 20^th century’s greatest evangelist. I prefer huckster, but what the heck, evangelist, huckster...same thing.

Fox News immediately crowed “It’s a great day in Heaven.” Yes, a great day in Heaven….They actually spend part of their broadcast claiming it was A.GREAT.DAY.IN.HEAVEN!!!

How do they know? By what method can they know this? They do not have any faculties that the rest of us do not have, so please Fox, share with us how you know that it’s a great day in heaven. Flipping through a bible cannot and could not tell you that. You have indicated no apparatus that extends into the supernatural world so you could tap into the “great day festivities.” How are they even sure of Graham’s arrival there? Many Pentecostal preachers and church members will assure you in NO uncertain terms that Graham did not reach the Pearly Gates on Wednesday February 21st, or will he at any time in the future. The same sentiment would also be expressed by the Westboro Baptist Church.

Billy Graham was not a man any of us should revere or embrace. He built his career on being a bamboozler, or what in the old west was called a snake-oil salesman. He made countless open-ended promises that he never had to deliver on, promises built on heresies…scriptural heresies as interpreted from the Roman Catholic and Jewish points of view. Can you imagine what Torquemada of the Inquisition would have done with someone who preached scripture as Graham did?

But more to the point; who gets to determine which bible interpretation is correct? Is it the Presbyterian version? Methodist? Freewill Baptist? Shakers? Holy Rollers? Disciples of Christ? Mormon? Roman Catholic? Eastern Orthodox? Coptic Christian?

Billy Graham grew up in a Presbyterian home but eventually joined the more unruly evangelical Southern Baptist denomination, a group of regressives who objected to and refused to ordain women as ministers, although Graham eventually revised his thinking and said he could accept women’s ordination even though that appears to be in direct contradiction to 1 Timothy 2:11-12. He even initially opposed his own daughter Anne Graham Lotz from teaching a bible class…but later said she was the family’s best preacher. If his god existed, how would he view that statement given it is quite clear in the bible women are not to teach, assume authority over men, and to “learn in quietness”. If preaching is not teaching, what is it?

Fawning revisionist history blathers on about what a good man Billy Graham was when he actually was on the wrong side of history repeatedly. From his theological outlook that included racism, xenophobia, and homophobia, his passing will not wipe away the hate he helped foment that damaged so many lives. In 1993, he suggested that AIDS was punishment from God. “Is AIDS a judgment of God” he said while preaching in Columbus, Ohio. “l cannot be sure, but I think so.”

Graham was notorious for his anti-Semitic opinions. When the Nixon tapes were released, Graham is heard to reiterate an old conspiracy theory that claimed Jewish-Americans had a “stranglehold” on the media that “has got to be broken.” He also condemned gay marriage and targeted transgender people on his website.

.         Graham missed the boat on racial injustice, too, refusing to walk in 1963 with Martin Luther King Jr. in the March on Washington. Why? Because Graham did not subscribe to racial equality, stating on several occasions that little white boys and girls would only walk hand in hand with little black boys and girls “when Christ returned.” There was no sense in working for it until Jesus’ second coming… so equality be damned. It underlines the fact that Graham was a Civil Rights coward.

Graham became known for his revivals but those revivals basically amounted to Christian buzzwords, mild threats of hellfire and damnation, promises of a better world after this one, condemnation of communism…and a request for money. Love of God and country went hand in hand for him as he preached against the Soviets and Chinese, advocated an American way of life that never existed, and reminded people god expected them to give 10% of their income. In short, the perfect Republican. No wonder Richard Nixon and George W. Bush liked him.

Would those same people at Fox who find Graham’s death a cause for celebrating in heaven have accepted it as truth if, say, Al-Jazeera claimed it was a great day in paradise when 19 new martyrs arrived there on the morning of September 11, 2001 after killing hundreds aboard four aircraft and thousands in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon? What’s the difference other than the religion?

I just consulted my Magic 8 Ball and asked if there really was a celebration going on in heaven due to Graham’s arrival. Its answer was “Outlook Not So Good.” And you can believe my Magic 8 Ball because it is as reliable as that information about it being a great day in heaven. The difference is my Magic 8 Ball actually exists.

Watch for the Florida School Shooting to be Blamed on the Russian Probe

Get ready for the GOP and the limited-information Trump supporters to condemn the Robert Mueller investigation and the FBI for ignoring their duty to protect Americans. They will claim the FBI and its agents were too blindsided trying to pin a “collusion” badge on Trump - and in doing so they missed a chance to stop a real crime.

A report has been released that shows the FBI was warned about Nikolaus Cruz in January, but they did nothing about it. 

On January 5^th, over a month before Wednesday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, the bureau received a warning from someone close to the teenager that they were concerned about Cruz and that he might carry out an attack on the school. The tipster, identified only as an adult who knew the gunman, contacted the FBI public tip line and told “about Cruz’s gun ownership, his desire to kill people, his erratic behavior, and even disturbing social media posts.”

Red flags should have gone up and a warning klaxon begun blaring but the call center never passed on any information, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The bureau knew the identity of the tipster and the tip involved a threat to life, meaning it should have been passed on. The tipster did not describe an attack plan by Cruz with a time and place, but it did provide specific information on him and warning signs that any law enforcement official would have acted on.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, hoping to win back Trump’s trust and loyalty, said he is ordering deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to review the bureau’s handling of the matter. “It is now clear that the warning signs were there and tips to the FBI were missed,” Sessions said in a statement. “We see the tragic consequences of those failures.”

There’s the set up for - “if the FBI hadn’t been distracted by the probe into Russian collusion, they would have easily connected the dots.” This will play right in to Trump’s hands that if the FBI had not thrown all their agents and staff at the Russian investigation, which everyone knows is just fake news, made up, a witch hunt, a scheme by Democrats to cover up their loss in the 2016 election, and a waste of taxpayers’ money, they would have been able to nab Cruz before he gunned down 17 students and wounded 14 others on Valentine’s Day.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement “We are still investigating the facts. I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public.

But again, the lapse will be blamed on so much of the FBI’s attention diverted to a useless probe into Russian hacking, Russian collusion, those innocent meetings with Russian agents- the Russian ambassador-Russian Bank CEOs-and Russian lawyers by members of Trump’s campaign. When it comes to all the obvious Russian collusion links, Trump and his supporters just say "Move along. Nothing to see here."

It will not be surprising if Trump, his GOP sycophants, or the far-right fringe call for Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray (maybe even Jeff Sessions) to step down in light of this FBI failure. Then there will most likely be a demand to end the Russian investigation because Americans are being slaughtered due to FBI negligence from looking into all those false leads about Russians meddling in our 2016 election. It will be much easier in the future to also point to FBI neglect the next time ANY tragedy happens that might have been stopped if only those law enforcement agents had been available to spot the warning signs.

This is how democracy’s head is held under water until it drowns.