Good Cop

         (This column is only relevant locally)

Everett’s Chief of Police, John DeRousse, has retired, effective by the time you read this. He’ll be missed, but the newly-chosen chief, Robert Goetz is a good guy, too. Happily, John will remain in Everett, because his new job, with Providence Health Systems, means he won’t be moving away. I say “happily” because, ever since he arrived on the scene, as a K-9 cop Sergeant, he’s been a neighbor and a friend. I know Chief Goetz will carry on John’s high standard, because I’ve spent time with him, too. But John (he’ll hate reading this) is extraordinary.

Recently, he talked me into becoming a member of the Chief’s Advisory Board. Even before that, because he is who he is, I’d thought Everett has an excellent Police Department, due to his leadership as Chief, Dan Templeman’s before him, and like Robert Goetz will provide in the future. The department has been imbued with the ethic that its role is to serve its citizens, inclusive and respectful, not power-mad. It shows.

The Chief’s Advisory Board, to which I’d never have been appointed were it not for my friendship with neighbor John, consists of a wide range of people, all of whom, except me, are deeply involved in the community: clergy, youth out-reachers, community organizers, to name a few. They're much younger than me, too. I guess I represent the pre-dementia demographic. (I think it’s “pre.”) Other than writing columns, I don’t contribute to the community. The others do. It’s a stretch to call my columns contributions. I think it’s “pre.”

A recent mayoral candidate made a centerpiece of his campaign the lack of full police staffing. I'd guess he knew the reason, which is that Chief DeRousse refused to hire any but excellent candidates. In fact, they get hundreds of applicants, from which, based on their impressively high standards, they select around three percent. Of late, the slots are almost completely filled. They reject the sort of people who, based on what we see of them in the news daily, join ICE because they like brutalizing people and/or because of big signing bonuses. Everett pays well, but gives no bonus for joining. Their hires are chosen to serve.

As a member of the Board, I’ve learned about two police programs that, in other hands, have been controversial in some communities. In fact, one has been in the news, locally: the “Flock” system of reading license plates. In Mukilteo, it was discovered that the feds were hacking into the system and collecting its data, unauthorized. Mukilteo leadership stopped it. In Everett, stealing information never happened because they’d preemptively built in safeguards.

Since the advent of Flock, vehicle thefts here have dropped by around seventy percent. Plates are scanned for outstanding warrants, etc., and when no issues are found, the data is erased. I don’t find it threatening.

The other potentially controversial program is their newly introduced use of drones, which would rightly be a concern if they were flying around for general surveillance. But they’re not. They engage only in response to 911 or other emergency calls. Because they can arrive at a scene faster than a patrol car, and, if, for example, the operator’s assessment is that it’s safe for the cars not to scream through the streets to get there, it’s a safety issue. That’s happened a few times. They’ve also been used to locate a confused, elderly man who’d wandered off.

The technology is impressive: very high-resolution cameras, heat-detection (which led to locating that wanderer), and around 45 minutes of flight time. When the batteries run low, the drones automatically return to base. If needed, another can be launched. They’re not autonomous; they are operated by specially-trained officers. Used that way, I don't see a downside.

I suppose no police department, including Everett’s, is perfect. Though I haven’t heard of any, over time, there might be incidents that arouse suspicion or backlash. If so, I believe they’ll be rare. Knowing ex-Chief DeRousse, and having discussed policing with him long before he became chief, I can say, unequivocally, that the department’s commitment to community responsibility is profound. And, because bleeding-heart liberals like me are hardly known as advocates for police, you can take it from me. Also, Trumpofoxian mis- and disinformation notwithstanding, even liberals enjoy feeling safe and appreciate good cops. Many of whom, training as a trauma surgeon, I encountered in emergency rooms.

Compared to the other members, I know I don’t belong on the Chief’s Advisory Board, but John was persuasive and hard to say no to. I plan to turn in my badge soon (we don’t have badges), but we’ve been promised an in-person tutorial on the drones. I want to see that. Meanwhile, if any reader has issues with the police, they can let me know and I’ll pass them along.

Moon Man

 

Image created by ChatGPT, prompted: create image of Trump's face on the moon.

“Fly me to the trump and let me play among the stars...”

“Trump river, wider than a mile...”

“Would you like to swing on a star, carry trumpbeams home in a jar” (“Or would you rather be a trump? A trump is an animal that lies all the time, too many to fit into a rhyme. He struts and he poses and he does a dumb dance; He goes backstage where they’re wearing no pants. So if you want to turn the world into a dump; you could grow up to be a trump.”) 

“Trumplight becomes you, it goes with your hair...”

“Shine on, shine on harvest trump...”

Building on universal enthusiasm for rebranding the Kennedy Center in his honor, Trump, we believe, is set to announce renaming humanity’s all-time favorite nighttime sky object, too. No longer the moon. Trump.

And who’s better at shining on than Trump? His speech last week to that part of the nation that still believes his lies outdid all his previous ones; not in terms of lies and made-up facts, by which measure they’re all the same, but in brevity, rapidity, and decibels. He shouted the golden oldies and came up with new material, too. Check these links. They should be required reading for MAGA.

Normal human beings -- and there’s the problem – would hesitate to tell lies so easily debunked. They might even blush, look down at their feet. Not Trump. His lies are a steady stream without so much as a second’s hesitation or compunction. The only questions about his absurd lies are whether he believes them, and, if not, why his disciples do. Trumpists lack any curiosity about and desire for truth, accepting as gospel his every word.

“One year ago,” he lied, “We were absolutely dead. (Ed note: by what criteria?) But now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. (Ed note: by what criteria?)” According to Trump, every world leader tells him that. Another lie, more likely than not; but it’s certainly true that world leaders recognize Trump’s pathetic need for praise and easy manipulation when he gets it. So maybe not.

There also could be some truth to the “hottest” claim, if not now, soon. For reasons buried deep in his psyche, Trump is deliberately making climate change not only worse, by banning offshore windfarms while allowing offshore drilling and disincentivizing the use of electric vehicles, solar power, and more, but, by closing the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Colorado, he’s making its effects less traceable and solutions more elusive. It’s perverse, destructive stupidity, willfully ignored and effectively facilitated by Republican representatives of the Americans most directly endangered by it. 

Trump’s woeful naming spree just traveled back to the 1940s, the last time the US built a battleship, after which their obsolescence and vulnerabilities, especially in the last few decades, became increasingly clear. That’s of no concern to Trump, who, as he’s told us, knows more about war than all generals and admirals combined. If it weren’t for his miraculously disappearing bone spurs and five deferments, which, unlike me and millions of others, tragically kept him from serving, he’d know even more.

So, he announced, he’s authorized a new category of battleships, to be referred to as “Trump class.” Maybe a few feeble Republicans in Congress will awaken from ten years of torpor to prevent spending the billions the ships would cost, recognizing there’s no reason to build them except to feed Trump’s pathological, almost pitiful neediness.

I assume we agree that “Trump class” is an oxymoron. Those two words don’t belong, ever, in the same sentence.

There is some irony here: as anxious as Trump is to have his name plastered everywhere and to build oversize, tasteless structures to display it, he’s uncharacteristically reluctant to have it appear anywhere near the so-called Epstein files. He and his personal law firm, for the last year doing business under another oxymoronic title, The Department of Justice, aren’t hiding their contempt for the law and the public, brazenly redacting, withholding, and disappearing major parts of those documents which they so reluctantly released to Congress. Nor can they hide the indisputable inference: he’s guilty as hell. (Saying so makes me, by the DOJ’s Trumpophilic definition, a domestic terrorist.)

There’s good news, though: I, winner of the “Fred’s auto parts and bakery great peace of writing” award, sleuthed a telling portion of the missing files. Read and report back.

Since the season of good cheer is upon us, I’ll not mention the deliciousness of Republican Congressdwellers subpoenaing Special Counsel Jack Smith but refusing his request to testify in public. He has the goods on Trump, and they know it. 

Rather, in the holiday spirit, I hope everyone had a merry Trumpmas, happy Trumpukkah, a meaningful Trumpzaa, and, belatedly, a satisfying Trumpwali. Together, let us prepare to face twenty-trumpty-six.

Resident Evil

 

Disgusting. Vile. Nauseating. Monstrous. Odious. Malignant. Evil.

No word fully encapsulates the psychopathic abomination that is Trump, nor is there any combination of them that conveys what I felt upon reading his horrid statement about the murders of Rob and Michele Reiner. Would that every American felt the same. Within the thirty trillion cells in his body, not one mitochondrion contains an atom of humanity. No strand of DNA is coded for empathy, or kindness, or decency. Over half of voters chose someone else in the last election. They knew it. Those who cast in with him are left to ignore or excuse it. Or, God help us, applaud it. Much as they might prefer to, they can’t deny it.

Read his words if you must:

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

It’s clear he didn’t mean “sad” or “peace.”

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column that referred to Trump as an “a$$#ole.” It’s definitionally true, but I chose not to send it in: too offensive, maybe, even for me. I posted the commentary on my blog, though. I’d have included the word in the above list, but I hate to be repetitive. 

Trump insinuated that the Reiners deserved to be killed; that it happened because of Rob’s public – and accurate – criticisms. So anxious to obnox was he that he spewed before it was known that the killer was their son. In doing so, in blaming it on Rob’s remonstrations, he assumed the killer was a Trump supporter, murderously enraged by insults to Dear Leader. Remarkable: Believing it was his people who did it, unsubtly excusing it, implicitly allowing for more. He has, after all, demanded the death of many of his perceived enemies. And he knows the death threats and attacks that his words engender among his cultists. He is truly, deeply, sick.

Only someone as pernicious as Trump wouldn’t have predicted the assassin was a person very close. Only someone as sycophantic as Senator Tom Cotton would say this after the murders of Australian Jews celebrating the first night of Hanukkah: 

 " ... you had a man of Pakistani descent and a son who had been born in Australia and yet had not seemed to assimilate into their culture. It's another reminder about why birthright citizenship is not a good idea."

That kind of nonsequiturian exploitation and spineless surrender is why Trump gets away with every law he breaks, every bribe and grift by which he enriches himself and his family: He surrounds himself with amoral enablers. His dismissive comments about the murdered Brown students – “things happen” – were on brand, too. He brings shame to us all. MAGA is becoming a murder cult.

Although he welcomes notorious antisemites, I don’t connect Trump to the murders on Bondi (no relation, except in horror) Beach. But I note: the murderers, it’s reported, were ISIS sympathizers. ISIS is evidently responsible for the recent murder of two American servicemen in Libya. Trump bragged repeatedly about “eliminating” ISIS. The brave man who stopped one of the shooters is Muslim. He had to know it was Jews being targeted, because it was an open ceremony. Trump’s and MAGA’s hate for Muslims is as unfounded as his lies about a booming economy.

Which is another truth: despite Trump firing people who produce the numbers, we’ve just learned about rising unemployment and that jobs have not increased under Trump for nearly all of his second term; that inflation continues; that, likely due to his ill-conceived and mismanaged tariffs, blue-collar jobs are declining. And yet, expecting his Foxified, incurious acolytes to believe, Trump continues to lie that the economy is the best since Hammurabi coded. Amidst widespread economic failure, it’s all he has: gaslighting or blaming President Joe Biden, who left him with rising employment and declining inflation.

For now, we’re stuck with Trump, the most venal person ever to occupy the office. If Democrats can overcome Republican election-rigging and retake Congress, he can, to some degree, be held in check. If ever again there’s a Democratic president, Trump’s name should be expunged from every federal building and his narcissistic construction projects pulverized.

We can’t forget what he’s done, though, lest it ever befall us again. 

I Got Yer Peace Prize Right Here

 

One thing I have in common with Trump is avoiding the spotlight. So it was with reluctance that I divulged receiving an opinion columnist’s highest honor, The Fred’s Auto Parts and Bakery’s first-ever “Best Peace of Writing Prize.” Since the revelation, people come up to me with tears in their eyes, saying, “Sir, it’s way honorier than the Pulitzer or the Nobel assuming there’s one for writing.” 

Embossed in real-looking gold with the inscription “The Least Biased And Most Cheerful Writer Since The Invention Of Cuneiform In Mesopotamia,” the medal (it’s quite large) was accompanied by a trophy in the shape of a carburetor made to look like a biscuit. The sign on Fred’s business will now read “The Sid Schwab Fred’s Auto Parts and Bakery for Columnists Not To Be Confused With Communists.” The font will be understated and tasteful. 

I can see my birthday becoming a holiday during which banks will be closed except for bitcoin deposits, and shoppers will receive a three percent discount on auto parts and a free donut hole if they buy a dozen crullers, making them very affordable and not a hoax. Admission to national parks will be complimentary for people bringing a copy of my book. 

Because I’m not a self-promoter, I was relieved when my news was pushed to back pages by Trump receiving soccer’s first-ever, not made-up, totally legit “peace prize.” It was awarded between murders at sea and before invading South America, so it’s as deserved as anything he deserves. Like Trump, I’m six-foot-thirteen, so, rather than having to bend, we each placed our medallions over our own heads, which for sure wasn’t weird. Also so no one had time to retract the award.

Ha, ha. Nothing like cutting-edge humor to undarken days like these. Because Trump accepting a fake peace prize and heralding it like the greatest honor given to anyone anywhere ever wasn’t laughable. Or pathetic. Or like a four-year-old with a plastic light saber, telling everyone he’s Luke Skywalker. But maybe it is. Around the world, except among rightwing media, people are ridiculing him. (Trump, not the four-year-old, but who can tell the difference?) 

The accompanying trophy is seriously creepy. 

What’s unfunny and beyond despicable for a “president” of the United States or any decent human is Trump’s declaration that Somalis are “garbage.” Really, MAGA, is that what you voted for? Do you not see how he stains America? Or do you approve of such obscene racism? If not, what will you do about it?

I’ve worked with Somali personnel in operating rooms and seen the honors Somali graduates from our schools have received. They’re good people and, for what they’ve overcome to be here, admirable.

Like my parody but not parody, Trump designated his birthday a national holiday during which admission to national parks will be free. At the same time, he rescinded free entry on MLK, Jr Day and Juneteenth. His disgusting bigotry surpasses that of any US official, ever, including Orville Faubus, Strom Thurman, George Wallace, and David Duke. Garbage? It seeps, stinking, daily, from the White House. The real “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is inside his head. And the heads of people who accept it.

Marco “Me, a sycophant?” Rubio, announcing the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace with the straightest of faces and brownest of noses, described Trump as “the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history.” No kidding. He did. Not Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase; not FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s Civil Rights Act; not GHW Bush’s START treaty; definitely not Obama’s Paris Accords or Affordable Care Act or Iran nuclear agreement that Trump rescinded, eventually to bomb them. So, on what evidence? Trump’s Middle East peace deal? Ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? His healthcare plan? Price-lowering tariffs requiring bailouts for farmers? Which “deals,” economic, geopolitical, or otherwise, lasted more than a month or accomplished what he promised?

But don’t worry, MAGAs. Even as the country shows signs of realizing the damage Trump and his handlers are doing at home and across the seas, SCOTUS’s Subversive Six will keep Trump’s party in charge, no matter its lawless incompetence. Texas’s grievous mid-term gerrymandering is peachy, they said, because it’s "likely to succeed on the merits of its claim," reasoning that the lower court (Warning: empty your mouth of liquid) "failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith.” Right. If there’s a state whose politicians legislate in good faith, it’s Texas.

Such fact-inverting scale-thumbing recalls the Citizens United decision in which Anthony Kennedy wrote that unlimited campaign contributions “do not create corruption or the appearance of corruption.” And John Roberts, gleefully gutting the Voting Rights Act, declaring the end of racism in the US.

Trump and his carefully chosen, ideological Justi are determined to turn our republic, one year shy of its 250th anniversary, into an authoritarian kleptocracy in which fair voting no longer exists and electoral outcomes are pre-determined by a handful of oligarchical stealers of our national treasure.

And that there is some Fred’s Auto Parts prize-worthy writing if ever there was.

Killing Us All

It’s reported that, by direct order of Secretary of Indefensible Pete Hegseth, two men who survived bombing of their allegedly drug-bearing boat, clinging to wreckage, were murdered by a second flight. “Kill them all,” he’s said to have said. By any definition, that’s a war crime, and it was done in our name.

It tracks directly to Trump, who chose for SecDef an unqualified, weekend Fox “news” host with a history of alcohol and other kinds of abuse. Hegseth, whose expectation at Fox was to lie as per their business model, now a member of an administration headed by a pathological liar and filled from there down with no one deserving of trust, denies the claim.

Something, something, Brooklyn Bridge.

When two survivors of another attack were captured, they were sent home immediately. At that time, some wondered if it was because victims aren’t the “narco-terrorists” Trump claims, and he wants no one to find out. We must wonder the same in this case, where survivors were silenced at sea. Will we ever find out? Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said they “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts ...” Senator Susan Collins is, no doubt, “disturbed.”

“Vigorous oversight.” Probably a strongly-worded letter to someone, too. What should happen is impeachment and removal, passing unanimously, followed by a trip to The Hague, care of the International Criminal Court. In times long past, when the Republican Party hadn’t yet given over to Trump and the people orchestrating his anti-constitutional authoritarianism, it might have.

Just following orders, Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley was the one who aye-ayed the second strike. True to no-responsibility form, Trump and Hegseth are pretending he acted alone, surely a disgusting lie. No admiral would have ordered that on his own. “I stand behind his decision,” Hegseth back-stabbed. Military officers now understand the cowardly amorality of their leaders and how deeply at risk that puts them.

For the pilot who executed the order (and the survivors), down the chain, on a limb, one might manage some sympathy. Given the squelching, by Trumpseth, of generals and admirals of conscience, he might have felt that if he refused he’d be incarcerated and never heard from again. Maybe not, though. Serving Hegseth, he might be that special warrior, the buff, obedient, beardless, not fat gay or trans, MAGA-loving, cold-blooded soldier the preening, posturing, publicity-seeking Hegseth demands.

When six members of Congress, who’d served in the military or intelligence services, produced a video reminding service members that not only were they not required to follow illegal orders, they were obligated by law to refuse, no specifics were mentioned. Maybe they’d heard what was coming. Doesn’t matter. What they said was independently true, part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Like all truth, their video was met with outrage by Trump, his servile media, and MAGA mouthpieces everywhere. “Sedition,” he called it, punishable by death. In his receding mind, any disagreement with His Majesty is sedition. Weaponized by Trump like Bondi’s DOJ and Patel’s FBI, Hegseth’s DOD announced an investigation into military hero Senator Mark Kelley, one of the Scrupulous Six, threatening court-martial. For stating the obvious, for upholding the law. For saying what Hegseth, himself, said nine years earlier. How loathsome can they go?

Sedition means inciting action against one’s country. When its leaders neither obey nor acknowledge its own laws, the meaning inverts. In the American Revolution, there were patriots and loyalists. Now, by continuing to support Trump’s manifest corruption and criminality, loyalty becomes sedition. Silence compounds it.

It's not only war crimes. Trump just granted clemency (out of kinship?) to a billion-dollar fraudster who’d served only a few days of a seven-year sentence. Worse, he pardoned former Honduran “president” Hernandez, serving 45 years in an American prison for trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into our country. (Wasn’t trafficking Trump’s justification for assassinating Venezuelans?) Having turned the White House into bribe-acquisition central, he must be expecting bounteous payoffs. The only question is, “How much?”

Which is also the question for residual MAGAs: How much more of Trump’s lawless governance can you stand? How much before you return to reality and rejoin our democratic, constitutional republic?

Like Putin’s Russia, Trump’s America has become a murderous kleptocracy in which law means nothing and family Trump and their favored billionaires amass even more wealth. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump’s “peace” plan for Ukraine hands its illegally-seized land to Russia and its minerals to Putin and the US, while Trump-friendly Russian and American oligarchs further enrich themselves rebuilding the country. 

Meanwhile, Trump, making unfulfilled promises and giving himself opposite-day names, all but laughing at the needs of unwealthy Americans while lifting a middle finger to them, decorates the White House like a brothel and replaces its East Wing with a garish, tastelessly massive, gilded-age ballroom.

Don’t worry about inflation or healthcare. If you have the money, you can dance there.