Monthly Archives: October 2016

October 11, 2016 · 16:30

The “Unshackled” Trump Turns Against the GOP

Ayn Rand, Russian-born American novelist, is shown in Manhattan with the Grand Central Terminal building in background in 1962. (AP Photo)

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

With his poll numbers in freefall and dozens of GOP leaders fleeing his toxic fascism, Donald Trump has gone on the attack. Trump bragged that he is now “unshackled” from the GOP and yes while he is attacking Hillary Clinton and threatening in a typical banana republic fascist dictator sort of way that he is going to jail her if he is elected, even more importantly he is now gone nuclear on the GOP and the firestorm has just begun. His attacks against any and all GOP leaders who oppose him or are critical of him are creating a scorched earth situation which will scar the GOP and it is largely the fault of GOP leaders for creating the moral and ideological toxic waste dump from which he emerged. Today, after a firestorm of tweets directed at Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, in which he tweeted: Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty. Trump tweeted:

Disloyal R’s are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all sides. They don’t know how to win – I will teach them!

It is the beginning of the end for the GOP and I have been predicting this for almost a year, often using the comparison of the meltdown that happened to the Democratic Party between 1858 and 1860. The bitterness and divisiveness of that collapse kept the Democrats out of the White House for 25 years and the trend would not be fully reversed until Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932.

But even so there was something very different about that collapse than what is happening today in the GOP. In 1858-1860 the meltdown was centered on the expansion of slavery into the new territories, and Northern Democrats who were in favor of allowing the Southern States to keep their slaves were opposed to slavery’s expansion. That divide blew up in 1858 and 1859 with the attempt of Southerners to get Kansas admitted into the Union as a Slave State when the vast majority of Kansans opposed slavery. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, a man who most people expected to win the Presidency in 1860, led the opposition and fought his fellow Democrat, President James Buchanan to the bitter end to stop the attempt and in the process infuriated Southern Democrats so much that they would not support him and ran a Southern Democratic ticket against him in 1860. The result was that Abraham Lincoln won the election with a plurality of the vote. When the South seceded Douglas rallied Northern Democrats around the Union as Southern Democrats led their States into the Confederacy.

If you are interested you can see the first article that I wrote about it here:

When Political Parties Implode: The Battle over the Lecompton Constitution and its Relevance Today

I later revised and expanded that article into a five part series in March of this year.

But as I said, today’s situation in the GOP is different. It is not about policy. It is about a cult of personality centered on a Presidential nominee who demands absolute loyalty to himself and tolerates no dissent. It is about a man and a cult that sees no problem in trashing the Constitution, of banning reporters and news organizations that it disagrees with from their rallies, a leader and a cult that has no problem using physical violence against opponents, a leader and a cult that revels in xenophobia, which has hijacked the Christian faith, which supports the actions of a Russian leader who has relentlessly worked to subvert the United States and its allies, a man who brags about his ability to avoid paying taxes, who mocks the disabled, calls POWs and wounded warriors “losers”, demeans the military and its leadership at every opportunity, and views women as objects who should be sexually assaulted. I’m sorry, the man and his cult are deplorable. Conservative columnist George Will described the vapid world of Trump’s supporters in a column that was published yesterday. He noted:

“Trump is a marvelously efficient acid bath, stripping away his supporters’ surfaces, exposing their skeletal essences. Consider Mike Pence, a favorite of what Republicans devoutly praise as America’s “faith community.” Some of its representatives, their crucifixes glittering in the television lights, are still earnestly explaining the urgency of giving to Trump, who agreed that his daughter is “a piece of ass,” the task of improving America’s coarsened culture.” 

To watch Pence, Pat Robertson, Robert Jefferess and other right wing religious hacks masquerading as ministers praise and defend Trump after his comments about assaulting women was to watch the old guard of the Religious Right throw themselves into the abyss. No wonder people are fleeing the church.

It is about a man who based on his actions as a businessman which crushed investors as well small business owners, who sues anyone that attempts to expose him, as well as his threats as a politician against his opponents, including those in his own party would be quickly establish himself as a dictator if elected. Sadly, it seems that many of his supporters want just that.

So now the Civil War in the GOP that I predicted months ago is erupting in full view of all. It is going to be a disaster for the party, a party that I belonged to for 32 years. I left the GOP in 2008 after I returned from Iraq, but that does not mean that I don’t have a certain amount of grief in watching the unfolding disaster. While it is too early to say what the final result will be, it is not too early to say that this will have a major impact in American politics and quite possibly hand the Democrats the reins of government for decades, but this is the fault of the GOP. For decades its leaders have basked in the support of unprincipled ideologues, talk radio hosts, and unscrupulous Christian religious leaders who have done nothing but sown the wind of hatred and division and now are reaping the whirlwind. As I said at the top, they created the moral and ideological toxic waste dump from which Trump emerged and they will have to own the result.

There are some who are now speculating that Trump is no longer trying to win the election and has ulterior motives. I have seen a number of commentators who think that he is going to use this to attempt to build a new media empire with the help of Breitbart’s Steve Bannon and former Fox News chief Roger Ailes. But I think that there is another good possibility, the possibility that Trump will take his supporters, especially frustrated Tea Party and Religious Right types and form a new party built around him. If that happens I believe that the rump of what is left of the GOP will struggle to survive after the election.

The GOP Civil War has broken out and while Trump’s supporters in Breitbart say that he has already won it, the fact is there is only one thing that is for certain, for the GOP there will be no winners.

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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October 10, 2016 · 17:38

Scorched Earth: The Trump Answer for Everything

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I watched the second Presidential debate last night and It was an unbridled and frightening look at how GOP nominee Donald Trump would govern the country. Playing to anger and hatred of his base he did something never done before in American politics, he said he would appoint a special prosecutor to prosecute his opponent and then made the comment “she would be in jail.” He called her “the devil” and said she had “hatred in her heart.” I was amazed, I have never seen anything like this on a public stage in American political history. 

As he did this he stalked about the stage, following behind Clinton as she spoke, his face often twisted as he tried to contain his rage at having been caught on video red handed using the language of sexual assault and rape and saying it was okay to call his daughter a “piece of ass.” His rage had been building as GOP office holders who had previously endorsed him dropped him in the 48 hours following the revelations and as he directed his surrogates and supporters to attack his own party leaders. In order to deflect attention from himself he brought Bill Clinton’s accusers from the 1990s to the debate even trying to sit them in the VIP box. 

He failed to answer direct questions and instead when nuclear with long disproved conspiracy theories about Mrs. Clinton. One GOP leader tweeted that it was like watching a Saturday Night Live debate. 

He made comments supporting Russia and President Putin, even throwing his running mate, Governor Mike Pence under the bus regarding Syria policy. The fact that he did this was not surprising because Pence offered direct criticism of Trump’s sexual assault language. After the debate Pence predictably fell into line and kept rolling under the tires of the bus Trump had thrown him under. 

Likewise he openly lied about things that he has said in public, on television, or on the radio, comments which are so unnerving that had anyone other than him said them their lives and careers would be destroyed. But he is different, the bar has been set so low for him ever since he entered the campaign, waged a scorched earth campaign against his GOP opponents in the primaries with almost no one in the media confronting him, a situation that remained until last Friday’s revelations when he talked about grabbing women by the “pussy.” 

Trump may have held his base in line with his performance because it played to the hatred of his base for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. He played to their xenophobia with his failure to answer his Muslim ban policy, something that Mike Pence said was no longer in place but is still on his website, and which he called “extreme vetting” last night. He still talked about putting up a wall on the southern border, he still refused to apologize to the multitudes of individuals and groups that he has disparaged and attacked in so many ways during the campaign and that will play well with the people that Hillary Clinton called “deplorable.” 

The Trump campaign is not about policy, it is not about principle, and it certainly in not about the Constitution or for that matter the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, or Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. It is about about sowing anger and hatred and the promise of retribution against the people he and his followers despise, especially those in the GOP. This is the campaign of an unprincipled, vicious, power hungry, narcissistic sociopath who has no self-control and no boundaries. 

Today, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said that he would no longer defend Trump and instructed GOP House members to do what they needed to save their campaigns in order to hold a majority. When  House GOP extremists scortched him he made sure that they knew that he was still “supporting” Trump. Wayne Gruden, a leading Evangelical Christian theologian who just two moths ago had penned a “Christian” treatise to vote for Trump, dropped his support and told Trump to leave the race. Today George Will wrote that this will be an “acid wash” for the GOP exposing the people who stood beside Trump for what they really are, including Mike Pence who Will noted only looks Presidential because he is next to Trump. Things will get worse, there will be more revelations and Trump will respond with fire. He will destroy the GOP and the country in order to advance himself. 

Get ready for a rough ride, this is going to be a brutal final month as Trump’s campaign collapses and he and his most devoted followers torch the GOP as he rides his campaign into its Wagnerian end. In the closing days of the Third Reich with all collapsing around him Adolf Hitler turned on followers who realized the end was near and were trying to end the war, even Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, and he told Albert Speer that the German people were not worth saving. Just wait and see what Trump does to the GOP in the coming month, it will be a scorched earth campaign the likes of which we have never seen. His wrath against it will be even greater than his wrath against Hillary and it will spell the doom of the GOP. Sadly, it will hurt the country as well. American politics will never be the same after this. 

Have a good day,

Peace,

Padre Steve+ 

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October 9, 2016 · 20:52

After the Storm: Hurricane Matthew and Hampton Roads

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

Hurricane Matthew made his way past the Hampton Roads area last night and our neighborhood received over 15 inches of rain between about 3PM Saturday and this morning. Flooding has been severe throughout the area. We fought waters coming over the threshold of our back door and the sandbags we had put out for 10 hours. Thankfully we didn’t lose power or we would have lost our living room. I have to thank all that I learned from the Damage Control Technicians on the USS Hue City from whom I learned a lot about fighting water. We got through the storm with no damage, unlike the last storm where one of our cars was totaled and the other damages by the flooding. 

Our neighbors were not as fortunate, one neighbor had several inches of water in her home and one of her cars partially under water. I saw quite a few cars that were flooded in the neighborhood. A number of friends in other parts of the area are without power and will remain so.  Right now the water on the roads is too high to take a chance on driving and I expect they will remain that way through Monday. 

The intensity of the storm took people by surprise including most meteorologists as it took a more northern tack and didn’t head out to sea as was anticipated. Even so the eye of Matthew was over 75 miles from us at its closest. The storm rivaled Hurricane Isabel in the damage that it caused in the area. I am told that such occurrences are 50 to 100 hundred year events. But between Isabel, Matthew, and the remnants of Tropical Storm Julia which dumped 16 inches of rain here just over two weeks ago. 

The Navy is beginning a study to determine how climatic changes in the local communities are going to effect operations of the bases here. One thing noted in regard to this is that the area has experienced a sea rise of over 15 inches since the 1930s, the highest on the east coast and this trend is only going to get worse and the effect of these storms is only going to get worse. This is a matter of national security and denial will not make the problem go away. 

As for us we are looking for ways to mitigate the effects of future storms and already are working on ways to make that happen. But tonight I am going to watch the second Presidential debate. I am not going to talk about the latest remarks or actions of Donald Trump until I watch the debate. I have strong feelings about them and analysis of I what this portends for the race as well as the future of the GOP, but those will wait. 

So have a great night and if you are in the areas effected by Matthew please be safe, take care and you are in my thoughts and prayers. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

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October 9, 2016 · 07:00

Make American Great Again? A Lesson from History

The past two days I have been writing about Hurricane Matthew and the appalling lack of empathy of some people, especially self-proclaimed conservative Christians who support Donald Trump for President in order to supposedly Make America Great Again.

I began to think about what makes people accept the hateful rhetoric of such people, including that of Trump, and even support it. Then I began to think of the classic film, Judgment at Nuremberg. The question of how many Germans, who should have known better abandoned all sense and supported Hitler is quite similar to what is going on with many Trump supporters. They are afraid of the futures, they are frustrated, and their fear of the past, present, and future is such that they are willing to cast aside logic and blindly support a man who can only be called a madman.

In the movie, Burt Lancaster plays a prominent German legal scholar and jurist named Ernst Janning. As the trial dragged on he was content to allow his defense attorney to use whatever means necessary, even re-victimizing the people who were in fact the victims of his own judgments in support of his government’s policy. When he went to the witness stand his conscience finally got the best of him and he explained his guilt and how he and so many people like him abandoned all sense and morality in supporting Hitler.

“There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that – can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: ‘Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.’ It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded… sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows. We will go forward. Forward is the great password. And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said ‘go ahead, take it, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland – remilitarize it – take all of Austria, take it! And then one day we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual began in this courtroom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a passing phase had become the way of life. Your honor, I was content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name, until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise the specter again. You have seen him do it – he has done it here in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked for the benefit of people. He has suggested that we sterilized men for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the old Jew did sleep with the sixteen year old girl, after all. Once more it is being done for love of country. It is not easy to tell the truth; but if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it… whatever the pain and humiliation.”

I’ll just leave you with that for now. I think that is enough for the day.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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October 8, 2016 · 07:00

Judgmental Christians, Hurricane Matthew, and the Absence of Empathy

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GDmhVD5GMs

Yesterday I wrote about the reactions of some supposedly Christian preachers and pundits who claimed that Hurricane Matthew was a “God’s judgment” on the nation for extending basic rights to Gays rather than killing them and against Hillary Clinton supporters.

Personally I cannot fathom such hate coming from supposed Christians who are claiming to speak for God. It makes no sense to me. It’s like the preachers including the late Jerry Falwell who said that the attacks of September 11th 2001 where “God’s judgment” on the United States. I just don’t get it. How people can have such hate for their neighbors that they can rejoice in disasters that affect so many people makes no sense to me, it is perverse.

But then I realize that such people have no empathy for their fellow human beings, even those who share their faith. I am reminded of the words of the Army Psychologist at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Gustave Gilbert when he said:

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

I have to agree with that. A basic lack of empathy, it is the one thing that connects anyone who can rejoice when disasters strike and claim that it is God doing the work. Such people are sociopaths. Sadly, if by some chance Donald Trump takes power we will have a certifiable sociopath for a President.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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October 6, 2016 · 22:34

Hurricane Matthew and the “Judgment of God” 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Tonight a short update about our situation and some comments about what some supposedly “Christian” people and pundits are saying about Hurricane Matthew which when all is said and done may be one of the most destructive weather events of past century. 

First, our situation. We have a new car and the vehicle that was totaled yesterday was towed off today. We had our Mustang looked at and thankfully it was not totaled and we should have it back sometime next week. Likewise I was able to do some more work to seal up our living room and hopefully keep any groundwater out in future storms. I have more work to do on this but I think we are now in a better place than we were a few weeks ago. 

Now as for Hurricane Matthew. This is really an ugly storm. As he goes up the east coast of Florida he will be a category four or maybe even a category five storm. Matthew will hit areas of Florida that have not been hit in decades. The damage potential and the potential loss of life from Matthew is something that we have not seen in a long time. I am praying for my friends and relatives in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. This is not good. Thankfully President Obama has already declared a disaster which will speed federal assistance to the areas, and all of the governors are doing the right thing, bit even so there will be people who either cannot get out or in some cases decide to stay for the thrill of it all. 

But even worse are the supposedly “Christian” pundits and preachers who are calling Matthew “God’s judgement.” Of course for them the reason that this storm is God’s judgment is because of the Gays, President Obama, and Hillary Clinton. Of course if Matthew is God’s judgment, which I sincerely doubt, then why the hell isn’t God targeting areas with majorities of gays and liberal Democrats? The fact is that Matthew is targeting counties in the southeast that are majority Republican and if you look at religious democratics heavily conservative and evangelical Christian. So if you are a Christian rooting for Matthew to be an instrument of God’s judgment on the Gays and the Democrats than you better make sure that God can hit his target and not your friends, allies, and dare I say your Christian brothers and sisters who are in the path of this storm. But then the sociopathic fundamentalist ideologues who promote this tripe in the name of the Christian faith have no honor, no empathy, and I would dare say are apostles of evil. 

Of course let’s talk about the college dropout but expert in everything, Rush Limbaugh. Rush said today that hurricanes are something made up by liberals and in the process went into full attack mode against real scientists. But then Rush reflects the anti-intellectual and unscientific base of his listeners, many of whom are in the path of Matthew. I’m sorry, but in no other first world country would such bullshit be rewarded with multi-million dollar contracts. My European friends are aghast at the anti-intellectual and anti-scientific attitudes of so many Americans. 

But at the end of the day we have to face reality. Millions of people are evacuating in the face of a massive storm that has the potential to kill many people and destroy billions of dollars worth of property; the property of decent, hard working people, to include homes and businesses. 

I don’t know about you, but honestly I have major problems saying that God is creating Matthew just to punish Gays and people who support Hillary is abhorrent. Such thinking shows an ignorance of the Bible and the Christian faith in which disasters, natural or human, were directed against God’s disobedient people, especially self-indulgent clergy living high on the hog that ignore the plight of the poor, not against unbelievers or pagans. On only has to read Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon to get an idea what I am talking about. But then, fidelity to the actual teachings of scripture is less important to such people than cherry picking verses to support their hatred of other people. 

Anyway. It has been a long day. I’m tired and I wish all of you well, especially anyone in the target zone of Hurricane Matthew. Please be safe. 

Peace,

Padre Steve+ 

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October 5, 2016 · 21:24

Trials and Tribulations 

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Our Neighborhood during the last Storm 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It has been an exhausting day. When we came back from Germany we found that our Ford Escape was so sodden from the last storm that while we were gone that the inside of the vehicle was still soaked and the seat and carpets were growing mold. Evidently we are not alone both our insurance company and the dealership where we bought the vehicle said that since the last storm which dumped 16 inches of rain in under three days has done the same to a lot of people’s vehicles. Our insurance company sent out an adjuster who totaled the vehicle. So the rest of the day was spent taking care of insurance, picking out a new vehicle and getting the financing all through my USAA app. The miracles of modern technology still astound me. I remember the first car I bought right after we got married in 1983 and how painful the process was, first the dealer, then the bank, oh my God, dealing with the scowling loan officer at the bank. I think that she enjoyed making us sweat, but I digress….

We also went out to look at the vehicle that we are purchasing, picked up our rental car, and I picked up a bunch of tools so I can start working on leveling ground and keep water out of the house during the next big storm which right now looks like it will stay away from us but unfortunately will impact a lot of friends in Florida. Georgia, and the Carolinas. Oh the perils of home ownership… but again I digress, it really sucks to be them right now and I do pray that Hurricane Michael weakens, turns away and just leaves them alone. I have been through enough hurricanes just to want it to go away.

Anyway. I think there was a Vice Presidential debate last night but I was too busy watching my Orioles die in the bottom of the 11th against Toronto in the American League Wild Card game, but there is always next year. I just hope that the Giants beat the Mets tonight but I am already too exhausted to watch.

So anyway, have a great night and stay safe. If you are in the Southeast and in the path of Michael my thoughts and prayers are with you as many of you will probably be dealing with what I have today and worse and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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October 4, 2016 · 16:00

Vigilance is the Price of Voting Rights and Freedom

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Last night I published an article about receiving a notice that my absentee ballot as a military voter would not be counted on election night because there was a question about my eligibility to vote in this election.

Now imagine that you are a military voter who has had to vote absentee since 1996 and during that time you changed your party affiliation to the party that is not the majority party in that state, though at one time it was. Now imagine that you had trouble even getting a ballot during the 2012 election cycle because the legislature changed the rules to require a voter to request a ballot for each election, something that was not publicized. Now imagine that you have been reading all kinds of reports of Republican operatives in Red States attempting to disqualify Democratic Party voters or those who might reasonably be suspected of voting Democrat.

Then imagine receiving this notice with your ballot and imagine your reaction.

provisional-ballot-notice

My reaction was to go to Red Alert and Battle Stations. I wrote about it here as well as at the Daily Kos, and then I went into action calling the County Clerk office, the Federal Voter’s Assistance Program, and the West Virginia Secretary of State Office. The Federal Voter’s Assistance program employee who helped me just happened to be a West Virginia native from the county that my paternal grandmother is from contacted the West Virginia Secretary of State Voting Rights section and the matter was cleared up. Both the man at the Federal Voter’s Assistance Program and the lady from the Secretary of State office were very helpful.

The answer from the County Clerk’s Office was that I got the form by mistake and that a computer problem put them behind and in the rush to get the ballots out the provisional ballot form notice was mistakenly put in the packets. While I understand that I am not sure how much I believe it as it seems incomprehensible to me that that form would be put in every packet by hand without someone noticing and asking the simple question “should we be sending this form out?”

I hate to sound a bit paranoid but recent history shows that there are some public employees who will defy the law for their political and social beliefs, as in the case of Kim Davis in Kentucky. Either it this was a case of incredibly gross incompetence which is pretty rare, or it was it was an intentional act of an employee who is now covering their tracks.

I have to ask. What if an employee of the Clerk’s office decided to send them just to Democrats, or Republicans for that matter and then lie and say that everyone got one with no way of proving it as the forms are not serialized. The question should be asked and the situation investigated and if there is wrongdoing then it should be prosecuted. This is an absentee ballot nightmare scenario. While it won’t matter for the Presidential ballot as West Virginia is solidly behind Trump, it does matter in the state and local races.

Now my vote will be counted on election night, at least that is what I am told. So the next step is to make sure that everyone else who got one of these forms knows what happened and that their votes will count. I have contacted the Secretary of State’s Office and asked that they and the Cabell County Clerk Office issue a press release and also individually notify people that their vote will count.  I can imagine that if I was in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, or on a ship at sea with little way to reach back and find out what is going on that I might just not vote. I can imagine that if I was a student living out of state or an elderly shut in I might just give up on this election. Not everyone is the asshole that I am when it comes to real or potential civil rights and voting rights issues. Many people are simply too nice to rock the boat or the vote.

And then ask the logical follow-up question: “If I didn’t contact Federal and State officials to advise them of this would the situation have been noticed or corrected?” That has to be asked, because accidental or not it would have led to de-facto voter suppression. The Secretary of State office agrees with me and even called me back and they are working on how to work with the county to make sure that people know that this was a mistake.

I do not care what party you are affiliate with, or for that matter who you vote for, but I do ask all of my readers regardless of party affiliation to hold their legislatures, county clerks, and state level secretary of state offices charged with ensuring that elections are free and fair to make sure that no one is disenfranchised. I also contacted the news office of one the local NBC affiliate in Huntington because I am not sure that this will get out to the people that need to know and that if there is a cover-up going on that it will surface without outside scrutiny. I am also going to contact other news outlets.

If a “mistake” like this happened to me it can happen to anybody. The price of maintaining our civil rights and voting rights is unrelenting vigilance.

Until tomorrow, stay alert, and keep democracy alive.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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October 3, 2016 · 18:31

When Your Vote Will Not Count

provisional-ballot-notice

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I wasn’t planning on publishing another article today but this worked me up.

I returned from Germany on Saturday and got my mail today. Among the things I got was my absentee ballot from West Virginia. I opened it and marked it and then found this note. Evidently someone there knowing that I am military and a registered Democrat has challenged my right to vote. Chances are that the person who did this does not know me but rather is a GOP hack who is trying to suppress my vote.

In the last six years West Virginia has made it progressively harder for active duty military personnel to vote. In 2012 i almost was not allowed to vote because I didn’t know that the legislature had changed the law and now require those requesting absentee ballots to request one in every election, if you forget to request one, you don’t vote.

Today I will contact the County Clerk’s office, the Secretary of State office, my State Representative, the Governor, the Democratic Party of West Virginia as well as a number of military and veteran voters organizations. I may even have to get a lawyer. This is voter suppression. An unknown person or entity can challenge your vote and you cannot know who it is or even if your vote counted until after the election.

It’s a foretaste of our totalitarian future of the present bunch of Republicans led by Trump gets power.

I thought that you should know just what power hungry Republicans are willing to do to suppress the vote, even the vote of career active military people who are combat vets simply because they are Democrats. If you are an active duty military person who is a Democrat you had better make sure that your state count’s your vote.

This is war and I won’t go down and let my vote be tossed aside without being heard.

Padre Steve+

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October 3, 2016 · 16:30

At the Dock of Justice: Nuremberg at 70

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On October 1st 1946, twenty-one Nazi leaders waited in the dock in Saal 6oo (Courtroom 600) at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg to hear the pronouncement of the verdict and their sentences on the charges of war crimes.

Just a week ago during our most recent trip to Germany I stood next to that same defendant’s dock where Hermann Goering and twenty other men sat, and then rose to hear the verdicts of the Tribunal. Goering and ten compatriots, Governor General of Poland, Dr. Hans Frank, Minister of the Interior and Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia Dr.Wilhelm Frick, General Alfred Jodl, SS General and head Reichs Main Sucurity Office Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Regional Leader of Thuringia, and head of Slave Labor programs, Fritz Sauckel,  Dr. Arthur Seyess-Inquart, Reichskommissar of occupied Netherlands, and Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Franconia and publisher of the Nazi propaganda paper, Der Sturmer. Party Secretary Martin Bormann was sentenced to death in abstentia as the Allies believed that he may had escaped Berlin after Hitler’s death. It has since been discovered that he died in the attempt.

Others were sentenced to varying prison terms. Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, 10 years, Minister of Economics, Dr. Walter Funk, life in prison, Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, life in prison, Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, 15 years, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, life in prison, Head of the Hitler Youth, and Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, 20 years, Armaments Minister, Albert Speer, 20 years in prison.

Three men were acquitted: Hans Fritzsche of the Propaganda Ministry, Dr. Hjalmar Schlacht pre-war head of the Reichsbank, and Economics Minister, Franz von Papen, and Vice Chancellor, Ambassador to Austria and later Turkey.

Robert Ley, head of the Reich Labor Front was not tried as he committed suicide in his cell the day following his indictment. Neither was Gustave Krupp, C.E.O. of the Krupp industrial firm and armaments manufacturer who was too sick to go to trial.

Following the trials of the major war criminals, eleven more trials were held, including the Doctor’s Trial, a General’s Trial, also known as the Hostage Trial, and the Einsatzgruppen Trial.

To stand in that room where such evidence was presented and powerful testimony given was humbling. To see where learned men, powerful, and even respected men, who had so willingly sacrificed any trace of personal honor and morality, men who aided and abetted a regime which committed the most heinous crimes committed by a civilized “Christian” nation in history left me silent. I have studied these trials since I was in college over 35 years ago. My primary professor, Dr. Helmut Haeussler was an interpreter at the trials.

Since that time I have continued to study them and today as I see the rise of Right Wing movements in Europe, as well as the United States, movements which have at their core many of the same beliefs and principles held by Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the men who stood trial at Nuremberg I find myself frightened.

This is especially so in the United States where Donald Trump has made repeated policy statements limiting civil rights and freedom of speech, limiting the role of the courts, curtailing freedom of the press, favoring one religion above others, curtailing the legal and civil rights of whole groups of people, expelling millions of people, banning whole groups of other people entry into the country, promising to rid the government of his opponents, to fire military leaders who disagree with him in mass, to commit the military to use methods that are condemned as war crimes, war crimes such as were prosecuted by the United States and her Allies at Nuremberg.

To make matters more frightening, many of Trump’s supporters see no problem with this and are often shown on video threatening opponents, advocating even more extreme and violent measures than Trump himself. They justify their proposed polices by saying that these measures are to “protect the country,” and to Make America Great Again.”

But at what price?

In Judgement at Nuremberg, the film version of the Judges’ Trial, Spencer Tracy played Judge Dan Heywood. In the scene at which the verdicts were read, he gave this speech, some of which echoed the words of Justice Robert Jackson’s final statement at the major war crimes trial:

“Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe.

But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary – even able and extraordinary – men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat through the trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen. There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” – of ‘survival’. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient – to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is ‘survival as what’? A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

A nation is what it stands for. The ideals that have marked the American experiment have never been perfectly practiced by the United States, but they are still the hallmark of the last and greatest hope of civilization. They are the ideals which lead people around the world to want to become Americans, they are the ideals which sustain us. But what Trump and his followers say is that they are not important, and in fact should be limited or abrogated entirely. But this is the way of expediency, and the end of the American experiment.

Standing beside the dock at Nuremberg I was humbled by the fact that I was where such history had been made, and at the same time I was frightened for my country and the world.

I will be spending some time this week to write about the trials, as well as the visit to Dachau that I made on this trip.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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