With absolutely no strategic experience in modern warfare, T-obsessed Pete has been purging our nation’s highest ranking military experts left and right – clearing out anyone who swears to defend our Constitution, rather than himself and the bone-spurred sovereign he serves.

He’s also trying to illegally silence any retired military leaders critical of his leadership, and illegally restricting access by the independent press, including Star and Stripes, which serves Armed Forces members, veterans and their families.

Reflecting the vindictive cruelty of his boss, Hegseth unleashed a vendetta against Senator Mark Kelly and other respected Congressional veterans for accurately reminding U.S. troops they are obligated to refuse to obey unlawful orders.

After backing off a court-martial, Petty Pete tried to retroactively demote and dock Navy Captain Kelly’s retirement pay. The bully picked the wrong guy to pull off such a bone-headed stunt, when the highly-decorated veteran publicly called his bluff.

Meanwhile, Warlord Pete has been degrading our national security through his utter military incompetence. Principled military commanders are taking early retirements, rather than follow his irrational, unethical and illegal demands. For the first time in history, our U.S. Army is no longer led by civilian and uniformed senior leaders confirmed by the Senate. (Not that any of those Congressional sycophants would ever challenge his nibs’ royal commands).

My own Air Force has been subjected to all the same whims that are degrading U.S. military preparedness and effectiveness. Pete’s Purge of senior officers, began with the former AF Chief of Staff and Joint Chiefs Chairman – not based on merit, but rather, to politicize our military and shift their core mission away from combat readiness and toward Trump’s vendetta against his imagined domestic enemies.

Intent on molding our proudly non-political Armed Forces into his and Trump’s personal army, Hegseth is consumed by the optics, rather than any mission planning and performance goals. His braggadocio posturing has resulted in serious breaches of classified intelligence information, and arbitrary racial and gender discrimination in what was once a merit-based promotion system.

Hapless Hegseth continues to ignore the advice of Generals and Admirals sporting chests filled with campaign ribbons and decades of experience managing complex combat operations. As a result, America is suffering a humiliating defeat in Iran, and barely one quarter of our Navy Fleet is currently deployable.

Warlord Pete has single handedly damaged our country’s military readiness, morale and resources to defend against potential threats from opportunistic powers like China and Russia. He-man Hegseth has overturned our military’s merit-based promotion system with his racist, sexist and body-shaming fetishes that have become a national embarrassment.

Worse yet, Trump’s Republican Congress is letting him get away with it. A strong national defense has been a cornerstone plank in every Republican platform for decades. Why would anyone who supports a strong, effective military, vote for any candidate with an “R” next to their name?

That splinters our votes and enables the worst possible scenario for the governance of our country – aka Trump Republicans, who are far more interested in themselves than in America. With Trump institutionalizing their corruption, a few hundred billionaires have amassed a combined personal wealth of about one quarter of the total U.S. GDP.

Enabled by an unethical Supreme Court and Congress, they use their staggering riches to dictate public policy, which further increases their wealth. It certainly does not benefit any of us average Americans. The ruling Billionaire’s Club never has to walk into a grocery store, pay utility and medical bills, pump a gallon of gas, make the monthly rent or pay down credit cards with their stagnant income.

This election must be about ending the pervasive government corruption that tilts the scales in favor of billionaires over America’s working families and retirees. We need to elect leaders who care more about our interests, than they do about themselves and their cronies. Here’s how that can happen.

First and foremost, voters all along the political spectrum must set aside their philosophical differences and unite behind one simple, shared and focused message: Corrupt Trump Republicans are rigging the system against average Americans. Vote ‘em all out.

Those of us who care about what is happening to our country under Trump, cannot allow the manufactured diversions in his campaign playbook to splinter our unity behind that one shared message. The American flag does not belong to one political party, and certainly not to the party that does not walk their talk of what America is all about.

Nor can we succumb to destructive in-fighting. While there will always be gradations in our beliefs and strategies, we cannot allow Trump Republicans to exploit those differences. That’s how they won control of all branches of our government - twice.

We must first wrest back control of our government. Then and only then, can we restore the rule of law, and hold every one of those accountable for their illegal and unethical actions, regardless of their wealth and political connections.

Winning the midterms is the prerequisite to ending the cronyism that allows billionaires to operate above the law and receive special favors from the politicians they bought and paid for. That is the only way to expose and prosecute their pedophile buddies.

Moreover, an overwhelming rejection of Trump Republicans at the ballot box will lead to free and fair future elections by capping unbridled campaign contributions, eliminating political gerrymandering with independent redistricting commissions, and putting an end to unconstitutional voter suppression. For a democracy to work, our fundamental right to vote must be readily accessible to all, not politically restricted in any way.

Flipping Congress, and eventually the Presidency, will also lead to reinstating policies that fight political corruption, like strict limits on conflicts of interest for all public officials, elected and appointed. Plus anti-trust restrictions to prevent monopolies and encourage competition, and consumer protection laws that hold companies accountable.

Big corporations should not get huge tax breaks, bailouts and regulatory breaks – then turn around and lay off American workers. Insurance companies should not be able to arbitrarily deny treatments prescribed by doctors for their patients.

Our grandchildren should not be saddled with $40 trillion in debt to give billionaires even bigger tax breaks. Our tax dollars should be focused on programs that work for average Americans, instead of junk science, environmental degradation and overseas forever wars. This election must be about living wages, affordable healthcare, universal childcare and paid family leave.

Voting to reject Trump Republican corruption is a reaffirmation of the values that have defined and sustained the American Dream for 250 years.

Presidents and Congresses of both parties respected and added to that legacy over the years. Until Trump started dismantling our inheritance, and his lapdog Republicans fell in line.

He and Republican governors are now opening up our country’s priceless natural resources for unlimited exploitation – opening up lands that were acquired for and supposed to be managed “for the people.” Trump and his modern-day Robber Barons are hollowing out America in their singular focus to amass even more wealth and power.

And now Trump is shamelessly stripping the National Park Service of its funding to pay for gaudy monuments to his imagined glories. He has already redirected $400 million to balloon his $7 million budget for “upkeep and beatification” of the White House, which he illegally continues to desecrate with his cheap taste. The price tag for all his Washington D.C. vanity projects is approaching one billion dollars.

Meanwhile, Western America is burning, as the National Forest Service struggles to save our forests. With smoke blanketing entire regions of our country, they are fighting in extreme conditions that have been neglected and exacerbated by Republican anti-science climate change deniers for many years.

Last year, Trump gutted the Forest Service by nearly 6,000 employees, many of whom were the experts responsible for management of forest fires. Nearly 8 million acres have already burned this year, with 80 large fires still uncontained in 18 states.

Trump has never done anything “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” in his entire life, and our National Parks and Forests are not his to vandalize. Even worse, Republican Congressmen, including those from the states he is stripping, are letting him do so with impunity.

Please join me in voting for candidates who respect and honor the conservation priorities of visionaries like Teddy Roosevelt.

Trump promised to lower our cost of living, end forever wars, deport the worst of the worst, release the Epstein files, and drain the swamp. Here’s a tally of how he and his Republican Congress failed to keep those central promises:

Lower our cost of living. Trump’s numero uno pledge was to bring down prices on Day One. Instead, inflation continues to grow, with the prices of gasoline, electricity, groceries, healthcare and housing leading the way. Prices have not come down on anything, largely due to his loony tariffs and incompetent war in Iran.

A quarter of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck, while Trump continues to feather his own nest at our expense. All those promises about improving our daily lives were as illusory as his many grand announcements, like Infrastructure Week, and promise to Repeal and Replace Obamacare with “low premium, universal coverage.” All such plans always seemed to be two weeks away.

End forever wars. Trump also promised to end “forever wars.” Claiming he could deliver a better deal to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, the madman incompetently blundered us into another war, precipitated a global energy crisis and left us worse off than the one he threw out. That vanity war was launched with no strategic plan, has exacerbated the Gaza devastation and exhausted our country’s munitions.

Also promising to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Day One, that forever war is heading toward its fifth year, as he undermines international aid to Ukraine and throws gifts to Putin by forgiving his sanctions. To fight his forever wars, Trump purged our military of anyone lacking a “warrior ethos,” and demanded a 50% increase his trillion-dollar military budget.

Deport the worst of the worst. Trump torpedoed a bipartisan plan for immigration reform, promised Mexico would pay for That Wall, and pledged to deport the “worst of the worst” criminals to protect our cities. After randomly destroying our communities and undermining our labor markets, the “bad guys” only amounted to about 5% of the millions of lives he destroyed by violating the Constitutional rights of our neighbors.

Trump’s War on Immigrants was also supposed to deliver more American jobs and higher wages, but that never materialized either. Instead, America’s agriculture, construction, manufacturing and wholesale industries were heavily impacted, both in the near-term and long-run, further depressing our economy.

Release the Epstein files. Trump promised to immediately release the Epstein Files, and his Attorney General said they were “on her desk” awaiting his order. That didn’t happen, of course. To cover up his participation in those atrocities, he ordered his DOJ and FBI to shred, illegally withhold and black out any incriminating evidence against the abusers in those documents.

Trump continues to deny any justice for a thousand innocent victims by refusing to comply with Congressional law and judicial orders. Despite six million files full of investigative leads, there have been no criminal investigations, much less any convictions and punishments. In the ultimate show of bad faith, the architect of his massive coverup was just confirmed by the Republican Senate as his new AG.

Drain the Swamp. In a word or two: Noem, Bondi, Hegseth, Blanche, Patel, RFK Jr., Burgum, McMahon, et al. Unabashedly loyal to their lord and master, Trump’s cabinet is indisputably, the worst in history. Far from draining the swamp, Trump restocked it with robber barons committed to enabling his corruption and undermining our institutions.

Aided and abetted by a do-nothing Republican Congress, Trump is the most corrupt president in 250 years, and he still has a couple of years of plundering to go. With his get-out-of-jail free card, Trump is abusing his presidential authority, his tax schemes are exempt from audit and his perceived enemies are harassed with frivolous law suits.

In fairness, Trump and his Republican enablers did keep some of their promises – but only the bad ones. Like pardoning all those January 6 violent insurrectionists and awarding them bonuses, giving huge tax cuts to the wealthy, destroying environmental and health protections, and blocking lifesaving vaccinations.

Then there were all those promises no one wanted, like building tasteless monuments to himself with our tax dollars. The gilded ballroom, Arc de Trump, reflecting pool farce, paved-over Rose Garden, Trump Center for the Arts, ad nauseum.

Elections are a referendum on performance, and Trump Republicans’ track record is one of abject failure. Do any of these sad partners-in-crimes deserve to keep their elected positions?

This November, we need to vote for people who care more about us, than they do about themselves.

Throughout my professional career, I have never suffered fools well. Or as my favorite Uncle Jim used to say, “damn fools.” I proudly worked in the public sector for half my career, and had a reputation for pointing out, “This is what makes government look dumb.”

Responsible managers trust and empower their staff to fix things. They know better than to double down on a bad situation by substituting their personal, uninformed whims for the proven expertise of their employees.

Not so, Trump and his merry band of incompetent yes-men. They continue to create needless crises, and then promptly make things worse. They can’t even manage something as simple as fixing a reflecting pool, much less anything as complex as protecting our national security. Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with cruel deportations and forever wars of choice.

As a veteran, what President Bonespurs is doing to America’s respected miliary is particularly infuriating. With Peacock Hegseth in charge, they discarded any semblance of competency in promotions, opting instead for blind loyalty to the king, rather than battle-tested qualifications.

Substituting chest-thumping warrior mentality for professional diplomacy, Trump and Hegseth pick fights, lose ground, then bail out, leaving America worse off. They lost their Iran War of Choice by ignoring the Seven Ps (proper prior planning prevents p*ss poor performance). With no viable plan, they quickly exhausted their extraordinarily expensive ordnances against cheap and effective drones.

It has also been widely reported that Hegseth violated one of the most cardinal rules of warfare by failing to secure his supply lines - to insure the ships carrying our troops were adequately stocked with the basic necessities for their extended deployment. In Trump World, “supporting” the men and women ready to sacrifice their lives for our country is limited to a lot of empty flag-waving.

Meanwhile, our Commander in Chief of the most powerful military force in the world is demanding a fleet of bazillion dollar battleships that will be sitting ducks the day they leave the shipyard. He also wants a return to WWII era steam-powered catapults on our modern aircraft carriers. I doubt Top Gun “Maverick” Cruise would agree with that foolish whim.

Campaigning for another election is now underway, and all the candidates are making their pitch about trusting them to lead our country. That’s the great thing about our nation’s republic. We regularly get to evaluate our leaders’ job performance.

Those who have been in charge for the past two years are asking us to renew their employment contracts. And to replace their colleagues who decided to take early retirement with someone who will keep doing everything the same incompetent way.

This is our chance to stop suffering those damn fools.

And every Republican in Congress is letting them get away with it.

American families have not fared as well as Trump. Remember how he promised to bring down our cost of living and create an economic boom on Day One? Instead, prices have not come down at all, wages do not cover inflation, job growth has stalled, and at least one-third of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.

The prices of gasoline, electricity and groceries are leading the way. Thanks to Trump’s incompetent War in Iran, gas prices are now over $4 a gallon. Before he and Hegseth launched their new forever war, we were paying about $2.75.

After promising to cut our energy prices in half, Trump instead sabotaged investments in cheaper and cleaner energy sources. Beholden to petrochemical moguls, he’s actually spending $2.5 billion in our taxpayer dollars to kill more affordable renewable energy projects, many of which were already under development.

Trump’s loony tariffs and boneheaded economic policies have driven up prices on everything. Since he took office, ground beef is up 25%, coffee 40%, and groceries, healthcare, housing and power are at all-time highs.

With half of Americans “very worried” about their cost of living and job security, Trump is using our hard earned tax dollars to build a Gilded Ballroom. In a classic bait-and-switch move, he claimed the monstrosity would cost $200 million, and would be entirely funded by private donations. The price tag is now approaching one Billion dollars, and surprise, surprise, we will be stuck with the bill.

Trump also promised that his tariffs would wipe out the national deficit and return manufacturing jobs to America. Instead, his Trump Republicans have ballooned the debt we are leaving our children and grandchildren to $40 Trillion. The National Debt now exceeds our nation’s economic output (GDP), and is growing by $8 Billion daily. Despite their claims, Trump Republicans are NOT fiscally responsible.

And thanks to Trump’s cruel War on Immigrants, America’s job growth has stagnated, and actually fell last month. That means with all of us Boomers retiring, there will not be enough replacements, much less new labor supply to support economic growth and pay for everything from infrastructure to national security to healthcare for retirees.

Trumponomics is failing America – both domestically and internationally. Willfully ignorant of global economic realities, Trump’s irrational tariffs and anti-technology policies are weakening the U.S. competitive position and ceding our economic future.

Relying on the threat of crushing tariffs on our trade partners and military might to bully enemies into submission has been a humiliating failure. Abandoned by our allies, America’s position in the world has been irrevocably weakened by Trump’s disastrous Iran War and his welching on past deals. The U.S. is no longer considered a reliable partner in anything.

Compounding that fall from grace, Trump’s dismantling of our country’s renowned research leadership has opened the door for ambitious competitors like China, which is investing heavily in alternative energies, EV, AI, biotech and robotics.

Like everything he touches, Trump inherited a solid economy and made it much worse. Despite their reputation, Trump Republicans are NOT good for our economy.

With midterm election campaigning now underway, please consider supporting and voting for candidates who care more about Americans, than they do about themselves.

The first time science brought me chills was in my childhood, contemplating the idea of infinity while staring up at a few hundred stars in the night sky. Now seventy years later, the Webb Space Telescope is again prompting those goosebumps as it dramatically transforms our understanding of how stars and their planets are born and evolve.

Most humbling, Webb is showing us other solar systems as they existed billions of years ago, because it took that many light years for their images to reach us. How many other civilizations might have evolved and then faded back into the cosmic dust without us ever knowing of their existence during Earth’s blip in celestial time? Chills.

With 100 billion to 400 billion stars in our own Milky Way galaxy alone, and about two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, how many other inhabitable planets must be orbiting their own suns - out there where no one has gone before?

We have both science fiction and real science to thank for prompting such thoughts by us mere mortals. The intellectual lineage of Copernicus and Galileo runs to Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson. All of them presaged by the visionary dreams of HG Wells, Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert and Gene Roddenberry.

Their creative visions and scientific research helped us evolve beyond thinking our world is a flat plate supported on the back of a giant turtle. Of course, some luddites continue to reject the reality that our Earth orbits our Sun, which is part of a vast galaxy of stars. When challenged to explain what the turtle is standing on, they confidently respond, “It’s turtles all the way down!”

Although I will never lose my wonder of the cosmos, my non-Trekkie side does struggle with the rationale of spending billions to boldly go out into the universe, while not boldly supporting basic research into sustaining our existence right here on terra-firma.

It’s also true there has been a dearth of bold leadership, both intergalactically and earthbound, ever since JFK declared sixty some years ago, “We choose to go to the Moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

And plumbing new depths of willful scientific ignorance, Trump has been dismantling our nation’s research capacity. I doubt he’s ever given much thought to exploring anything to benefit humankind that did not involve yet another way to make himself a fast buck.

But I digress. As a boy who once laid on his back to watch Telstar traverse the night sky, I idolized the original seven astronauts, personally met Neil Armstrong, once studied astronautical engineering, and even experienced the thrill of zero-gravity.

And then went on to become a bold economist. Still dreaming of the stars.

Like McCarthy, Trump Republicans still wearing those silly red MAGA hats cannot cite any specific evidence of Communism, but rely on innuendo and bald-faced lies to smear their opponents. In the eyes of their gullible followers, once a Democrat is accused, any denial looks like proof of guilt. Did any Trumplican pay attention in high school history?

The political-economic spectrum broadly ranges along multiple axes, so here’s a few explanations about the various “isms,” to help figure out who’s who.

First of all, Democrats are absolutely not Communists, who believe in the state or collective ownership of the means of production, and the elimination of private property and free markets. That’s the USSR, Maoist China, North Korea and Castro’s Cuba. Even the most progressive Democratic wing, known as Democratic Socialists, are not classic Marxist socialists, who eliminate private property and collectivize all businesses.

Democrats of all stripes do support regulating capitalism to prevent abusive corruption, like that now running rampant under Trump Republicans. Democrats also advocate public involvement in the provision of social goods and services, which cannot be equitably provided through private markets - like healthcare. And BT(Before Trump), many Republicans used to agree.

Although largely enacted under Democrats like FDR and LBJ, progressive Republicans like Senator Everett Dirksen helped establish landmark social programs to serve all Americans, not only the rich. And those programs were significantly expanded by Republican leaders like Dwight D. Eisenhower for Social Security and George W. Bush for Medicare.

Staunch Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Richard Nixon also believed in the public ownership and stewardship of public parks and forests. Trump Republicans are now selling off that legacy, and opening our public lands to exploitation.

And that brings us to Fascism, an authoritarian ideology at the far-right end of the spectrum. That “ism” emphasizes ultranationalism in a quest to reclaim past greatness, both real and imagined. Power is concentrated in a single charismatic ruler, military strength is glorified, minorities are scapegoated, and dissent is suppressed. As with Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany.

Under Fascism, state and corporate power is merged, rather than nationalized as with Communism. In exchange for the support of businesses, the corrupt authoritarian rewards his favored oligarchs with no-bid government contracts, financial subsidies and regulatory protection from competition. That’s called “crony capitalism.”

Trump Republicans are destroying America’s competitive free markets through unprecedented corruption, incompetent tariffs, dark money driven elections, tax breaks for the wealthy, and corporate mergers that strengthen monopolistic control.

In short, Democracy is government of, for and by the people. Fascism is government by the few, for the few. That’s who’s who.

Now enter Trump, King of the anti-science Luddites. The guy who wanted to inject us with bleach to cure Covid, claims wind turbines cause cancer, predicts hurricanes with sharpie markers, and questions whether magnets work underwater.

Eschewing any knowledge that would undermine his pea-brained view of the natural world, Trump has normalized the rejection of established scientific consensus. He has populated our government with unwavering ideologues, who deny vaccines are safe, climate change is human-caused, and evolution has occurred.

Dismissing the scientific method of systematic investigation, testing and revision, these anti-science zealots are dismantling America’s world-renowned research system with funding cuts and political grantsmanship, halting decades of progress and precipitating the loss of our top scientists to more welcoming countries.

Long a denier of climate change, Trump infamously withdrew America from the Paris Agreement, and has been rolling back long established environmental protections. America is now faced with the reality of the extreme weather, heatwaves, storms, flooding and wildfires that scientific experts accurately predicted, and Trump Republicans continue to dismiss as a “hoax.”

Trump continues to fiddle away as our nation’s monitoring, early warning, disaster preparedness and response systems are compromised, and relief doled out only to states he deems sufficiently loyal. In Minnesota, Trump Republican Congressmen Brad Finstad and Pete Stauber are ridiculously blaming the acrid smoke in our state on Canada - for not raking their two million square miles of boreal forests.

Trump has been dramatically cutting funding for basic research, censoring scientific studies, and dismantling technical advisory panels, restocking them with anti-science charlatans and anti-technology luddites.

Leading the parade of quacks, anti-vax messiah RFK Jr. gutted research into mRNA vaccines, which were used to rapidly develop the life-saving Covid vaccine, preventing 20 million deaths in the first year alone. The whack-job then cancelled two dozen contracts to develop mRNA vaccines for brain cancer in children, incurable pancreatic cancer, and melanoma skin cancer.

But when Junior tried to block a new mRNA vaccine for the flu, the public outcry was so loud, his FDA approved it. Nevertheless, he persisted. After dismantling our nation’s public health system, Junior is also ignoring the worst measles outbreak in 35 years – nearly all of whom are unvaccinated children and teens.

Trump also terminated the entire National Science Board, which advises the National Science Foundation (NSF), and has supported basic research into such diverse and groundbreaking fields as quantum computing, MRIs, LASIK eye surgery and WiFi. The Board planned to release a report on how U.S. scientific research is losing ground to China, so Trump shot the messenger, rather than trying to close that widening gap.

Last year, Trump cancelled nearly 8,000 scientific grants, and is shifting hundreds of billions of dollars in grantmaking decisions away from peer-reviewed, independent experts, and into the hands of his political lackeys. What’s next? Claptrap research into conversion therapy, crystal healing and phrenology?

The King of the anti-science Luddites is abandoning legitimate scientific research into medical, public health and environmental issues that directly benefit the people who elected him. How does that maintain America’s historic worldwide leadership in scientific advancement - or in anything at all?

When FDR enacted Social Security in the 1930s, he did not include health insurance in his New Deal. Similarly, Truman faced strong resistance to “socialized medicine” in the 1940s, so he also reluctantly backed off.

LBJ finally enacted “single-payer” health insurance Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. With dire warnings from Republicans about of how “socialized medicine” would destroy our “freedom,” Clinton’s subsequent efforts to expand healthcare and rein in costs with managed care ran into a brick wall.

In 2010, President Obama and House Speaker Pelosi greatly increased coverage of the uninsured by supplementing our country’s private, employer-based insurance system. Employer plans currently insure about one-half of all Americans, with Medicare and Medicaid another one-third. Obamacare addressed private sector market failures by mandating coverage for preexisting conditions and subsidizing state-provided Medicaid.

That Medicaid provision resulted in widely divergent coverage throughout America, when the Supreme Court ruled that states could opt out of federal support. With Texas and Florida Governors chanting “free-dumb,” about a dozen mostly southern states elected to shortchange their residents and local economies.

Despite Obamacare’s popularity, Trump vowed to “repeal and replace” the popular reforms with “something more terrific.” After failing to deliver on that promise, he claimed his “concepts of a plan” were just two weeks away. Instead, Republican’s ”Big Bogus Bill” dramatically increased premiums and cut Medicaid funding, which is throwing 15 million Americans off their health insurance.

Now Celebrity Medicare boss Dr. Oz is increasing the premiums seniors pay for drug coverage, thereby pushing more people onto private Medicare Advantage plans. Those plans already cover one-half of American seniors, and limit access to their healthcare by requiring more and more “prior authorizations” for the high-cost treatment of chronic illnesses. Are Trump Republicans serving patients or private insurance companies?

Every family in America has a personal story involving the randomness of “prior authorization.” The process starts with an immediate denial, followed by a cursory review and second denial, then rinse and repeat. If you hang in there long enough, you might eventually get approval before reaching your allotted time on God’s Green Earth.

So what can be done when our doddering president finally fades into oblivion, and his loyalists are no longer focused on their own self-enrichment? Will they finally be more interested in helping those they were elected to serve?

I am one of many Americans who believe that affordable healthcare should be a right, not a privilege – in the richest nation on earth. Here’s a few thoughts on how to achieve that goal. [Caveat: I once Chaired Minnesota’s Health Care Commission, but that experience barely scratched the epidermis of any extensive knowledge of these complex issues.]

There are three basic national healthcare models in the world today: (1) socialized medicine, like the UK’s NHS and America’s VA, (2) single-payer insurance, like Health Canada and U.S. Medicare, and (3) regulated and subsidized private insurers, like the Netherlands and Obamacare exchanges. The U.S. is currently a hodgepodge of these three models, and offers the worst of all worlds – lowest outcomes at highest costs.

Many healthcare economists a lot smarter than I am believe a “single-payer” system is the best ultimate structure to achieve universal healthcare at an affordable cost. But simply shouting “Medicare for All” on a soapbox is more aspirational than implementable in the near future.

Consequently, many experienced politicians a lot wiser than I am believe that first offering a “public option” is the most realistic path forward. With that phased approach, a competitive private health insurance market would continue to exist, but Americans would have the right to buy into government healthcare insurance.

A strong public option in a more strictly regulated marketplace would help transition our country toward universal coverage by offering lower administrative costs. That would reduce cost pressures to deny service and pad bills - like is happening with the Medicare Advantage carveouts.

America’s healthcare insurance system is clearly broken, and is not serving either patients or equally frustrated medical providers. Is it too much to ask all those Executive and Congressional poltroons who already have their Lifetime Platinum Health Insurance Plans for a little courageous leadership?

The shameful coverup of the Epstein atrocities continues to plumb the depths of Trump’s misogynistic administration. One brave survivor of that horrific sex abuse network recently pointed out that despite more than 1,000 victims of the rich and powerful over decades, and six million files full of investigative leads, there have been zero criminal investigations, much less any convictions and punishments.

Now Trump, aided and abetted by his “see, hear and speak no evil” Trumpian Senators are trying to make his Commander of the Epstein Coverup, America’s Attorney General and chief law enforcement officer.

Todd “The Fixer” Blanche was responsible for overseeing the entire Congressionally ordered release of the Epstein Files, with the only allowed redactions limited to protecting the victims, not the violators. But with the ethics of an alley cat, Blanche shamefully released the names, images and personal information of survivors, while illegally withholding information on the politically-connected coconspirators.

To whitewash any connection with his client (aka, Trump) The Fixer abused his position in DOJ to personally meet with imprisoned Epstein pimp Ghislaine Maxwell for nine hours. She was then magically transferred to a lower-security federal prison camp, and Trump is reportedly considering a pardon.

After declaring all the documents have been released (aka, about half), The Fixer continues to stonewall any accountability by anyone involved in the scandal. He recently had to be ordered to release unredacted records for judicial review in connection with lawsuits brought by survivors still seeking any accountability by their abusers, who remain above Trump’s Law.

Meanwhile, Todd “Carte Blanche” continues to provide Trump and his BFF pedophiles free rein to do whatever they please, and escape any culpability for their despicable actions.

How can these dregs of society love and respect their own daughters after abusing the daughters of other fathers so shamelessly? How can anyone with the whiff of a moral conscience continue to support such creatures?

Trump Republicans should forever live in shame for how they treated her family.

I’ve been thinking about them, because of another young family from Missouri, who Trump’s ICE had recently deported to Guatemala. They were found bound and shot to death in a sugarcane field, and their 14-month-old daughter was found crying beside her mother’s body.

Thanks to Trump’s corrupt Supreme Court, many refugees lost their legal protection to remain in America after fleeing the horrific conditions in their countries. They are being summarily deported back to the countries they fled, or even worse, cruelly dumped in violent countries they have never been to, or even speak the language.

Most recently, 350,000 Haitian refugees lost their legal protection to remain in America. Many have lived and worked here for 16 years, but they and their 50,000 children, who are U.S. citizens, are now vulnerable to Trump’s cruel whims.

These are the same vulnerable refugees that Veep Vance outrageously claimed, “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” of their Ohio neighbors. Trump repeated these inflammatory lies, and his gullible cult believed them.

Last year, the Minnesota StarTribune wrote about Sabina and her husband Hector, who live in Worthington and work at the local meatpacking plant, along with many other immigrant workers. At least they did last year. After Trump’s shameful “Operation Metro Surge,” there is no way of knowing whether they are still in Minnesota.

The document in their photo would surrender legal guardianship of their children to Sabina’s sister, in the event their civil rights were violated and they were disappeared by Trump’s lawless ICE Thugs.

The thousands of Minnesotans who Trump detained and deported were absolutely NOT the “worst of the worst.” Like generations of Americans, they came to this land of opportunity to build a better life.

But thanks to our byzantine immigration system, which many Presidents and Congresses of both parties failed to reform, they remained undocumented immigrants. According to our current reprehensible president (small “p” intended) and his Republican enablers, that makes them “criminals.”

Trump even tried to illegally invalidate the Constitutional right to citizenship for Sabina’s and Hector’s children, who were born in America. Fortunately, a slim majority of his corrupt Supreme Court found enough of a spine to retain that right – for now.

As for the sanctimonious argument that they should go through the process like everyone else, that is next to impossible to do so. When President George W. Bush tried to propose a fair and reasonable path to citizenship for people like Sabina and Hector, he was widely chastised by his fellow Republicans for “offering amnesty to criminals.”

Trump actually blocked Congress’ bipartisan effort for immigration reform, simply so he could exploit the issue for political purposes and get reelected. Of course, he doesn’t have any actual plans for immigration reform. He’s just detaining and deporting hard-working, tax-paying, loving families like Sabina’s and Hector’s.

I share this story of one family to put a face on the thousands of American children who are bearing the uncertainty of family separation - all because of the Trump Republicans who pledged to “end the torrential flood of criminals pouring across our open borders.” Stopping all those refugees purportedly “bringing in diseases, taking away jobs and costing us money.”

That’s all hogwash, of course. How is that making America great again? Trump Republicans don’t want immigration reform. They just want to wall out the rest of the world. I got mine, now you can’t have yours.

The upcoming election offers an opportunity for those who elected Trump and his enabling Republicans responsible for this human tragedy to atone for that lapse of compassion and judgement. Please join me in voting for candidates willing to honor the promise of America.

As a veteran who has long admired the storied histories of our nation’s military, it has been painful to watch this juvenile peacock compromise America’s proud services. With absolutely no command experience, Hegseth substitutes performative bravado to cover his utter incompetence and dangerous lack of judgement.

Hegseth’s 18 month tenure has been characterized by a mishmash of inane command decisions and cringeworthy pronouncements that presage his bid to be the worst U.S. Secretary of Defense in history. Here’s a brief rundown of what the lightweight buffoon is doing to our nation’s Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force and Coast Guard.

Shortly after gaining access to America’s top secret military information, Braggart Pete TWICE used his private phone to share confidential strike details in a public group chat that included his friends, family and a journalist, thereby exposing our pilots to risk. Then he hypocritically launched an investigation into media leaks - by everyone else.

In a massive display of pointless swagger, Puffed-up Pete assembled 800 generals and admirals in an auditorium to lecture them on the evils of DEI and their new mission of “maximum lethality.” The former Fox celebrity and National Guard “weekend warrior” yelled at stone-faced flag officers with 30 years of combat experience about “warrior ethos,” raging about “beard-os” and “fat generals.”

An now, Macho Man Pete’s “High T Department of War” is absurdly screening testosterone levels and administering T-shots to military personnel. It’s like watching a B-movie that has become a weekly serial.

Ignoring the critical value of institutional expertise, Pontificating Pete has discarded merit-based promotions for the sole criteria of blind loyalty – to Trump, not America. Extremely inappropriately, he demanded resignations from more than a dozen high-ranking officers, and then arbitrarily blocked women and Black officers from being elevated to General ranks, regardless of their qualifications.

Driven by a paranoid insecurity about appearing to be weak, Vainglorious Pete is all about projecting a he-man appearance. He even had a makeup studio built into the Pentagon for touchups before going on camera, and blocked photographers from his briefings to avoid any unflattering pictures.

Of course, the Iran Forever War has been his unmitigated Clusterf**k from day one of “Operation Epic Fury.” After ignoring military experts and firing his ranking General in the midst of war, he essentially surrendered to Iran. That quickly went south, leaving him with two undesirable options: a deadly ground invasion or humiliating withdrawal.

Instead, the Warrior Wannabe just kept doing what didn’t work the first time around (bombing and blockade), with no defined goals in sight. He’s following in the footsteps of Robert McNamara in Vietnam and Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Prevaricating Pete continues to lie about the ineffectiveness of his strikes, extent of civilian deaths and destruction, underreporting of American casualties, and loss of military assets. Aided and abetted by spineless Congressional Republicans, America’s enemies now know they can withstand the full might of U.S. air and naval superiority. So America is worse off than before Pete & Donny’s clueless misadventure.

After ineptly mismanaging his One Hundred Billion Dollar “little skirmish” in Iran and his Pentagon’s One Trillion Dollar Budget, Profligate Pete headed back to Congress to beg for a $67 Billion bailout to meet payroll for our military and replenish their munitions. The Navy and Air Force will reportedly run out of money by the end of July.

Don’t get me wrong. I have always supported the principle that U.S. armed forces must be ultimately controlled by elected and appointed civilians, rather than by military officers. That principle prevents military overreach into politics, and has been respected by our nation’s leaders for centuries, beginning with George Washington when he resigned his military commission and deferred to civilian authority.

Unfortunately, we now have a mentally unstable Commander-in-Chief, an utterly incompetent Secretary of Skirmishes and a do-nothing Congress unwilling to say no to their petulant children. That combo inevitably leads to FUBAR wars, and that’s on us for voting them in.

The dedicated men and woman who serve in America’s military deserve civilian leaders who understand and respect their boundaries and responsibilities in our Constitutional Republic. Let’s make that happen in the next election.

On the way home, I found my myself wishing I had been a better big brother to her over the years. Wishing I had teased her less when we were children, had listened more sympathetically to her teenage angst, had consistently been there for her as adults.

Now that we can both round up our ages to 80, I don’t really want to look back. Just do better from here on out. Maybe start by telling her how proud I have always been of the life she continues to lead, and how grateful I am that she is my Sister.

Things didn’t work out as promised. Such a surprise.

And yet, the economic moron in the Oval Office keeps doubling down on his tariff insanity. To pacify his latest temper tantrum over drifting forest fire smoke (and being booed at the World Cup) he imposed 50% tariffs on Canadian goods. That’s not a typo.

Tariffs are at the top of the lengthy list of Trump’s failures. Far from “free money,” 90% of the billions and billions of dollars he bragged about collecting from foreigners was actually paid by American consumers and businesses – as everyone who had ever taken Macroeconomics 101 had warned him.

Then even his handpicked Supreme Court finally got around to ruling the tariffs were unConstitutional – as everyone with a legitimate license to practice law had warned him. Trump quickly imposed “temporary tariffs,” which were just as quickly declared “invalid and unauthorized by law.” We all learned in high school Civics class that only Congress has the power to tax.

Consequently, Trump now has to refund at least $166 billion in illegal tax revenue, a process that Treasury Flunky Bessent says could take years, since he’s now so busy minting commemorative gold-plated Trump coins. Of course, those refunds are all going to corporations, which also previously benefited from the tax cuts we peons never got.

Consumers will never see a penny of those tariff costs companies used as an excuse to pass on in higher prices. Ford expects a $1.5 billion refund, Walmart $10.2 billion, Target $2.2 billion, Nike $1 billion, Kohl’s $550 million. Consumers, don’t hold your breath for any rebates on your inflated purchases over the past year.

Here’s an example of corporate profiteering: In another lifetime, I crafted a plan to help pay for a new Minneapolis’ Convention Center with a 3% sales tax on downtown hotels and restaurants. When the price of my daily protein shake went from $1 to $1.25, the vendor blamed it on the “city’s new tax.” The truth was, the new tax only increased prices by 3 cents, not a quarter.

As for all those other promises, Trump’s Tariffs did not spark a manufacturing boom in America - factory jobs continued to drift downward over the past year. The National Debt has doubled since Trump took office. And as any person-on-the-street can attest, the price of our daily living continues to increase. Even registered Republicans overwhelmingly believe Trump’s Tariffs increased prices.

Trump’s Tariffs particularly impacted the economies of Republican-voting agricultural states, since their Congressional delegations did not care a whit about stopping him. Trump’s solution for the negative impacts on their soy exports was to use our tax money to bail out the growers – again.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to make a shambles of the global economy with his disastrous Forever War in Iran. Gasoline prices in America spiked $1.50 a gallon higher under Trump’s tutelage, and will not be coming down any time soon, despite his ludicrous claims that he now controls the Strait of Hormuz.

In response to that increase in costs, Trump proposed dropping the federal gas tax, which amounts to 18 cents a gallon. He insanely wanted to stop maintenance on our already crumbling highway infrastructure to make an insignificant impact on the price of gasoline, which he singlehandedly and unnecessarily sent soaring.

I’ve lost track of the times I’ve referred to Trump as an economic moron . . .

With his popularity plummeting by the day, Trump continues to arrogantly ignore the mess he has made of our economy, environment, financial stability, public health, international security, etc., etc., etc. But instead doing something about all that, he hosted a prime time TV slot to air a fact-free litany of grievances about losing his reelection six years ago.

Like a whiny toddler, and without a shred of evidence, Trump claimed that China, the “deep state” and our free press rigged the election for Biden - who got 7 million more votes than he did. As incompetent as ever, Trump also mistakenly forked over evidence that showed his Best Bro Putin tried to undermine Biden in that election.

The world’s poorest loser is still rehashing his long discredited right-wing antifa conspiracy theories, to demand adoption of his wish list of unConstitutional voter suppression schemes. Fortunately, responsible members of Congress, most states, the courts and major media (even Fox), roundly ignored Trump’s pathetic speech, which was right out of the anti-Commie McCarthyism hysteria of the 1950s.

The single most fundamental right in any democracy is the right to vote. If that right is compromised, America cannot legitimately claim to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Accordingly, the core responsibility of every federal, state and local official in all three branches of government is to ensure our right to vote safely, securely and conveniently. And that includes preventing self-appointed citizen vigilantes from depriving others or interfering in any way with their right to vote.

Anyone who restricts our voting rights violates the most central tenet of our democracy. Such people are not fit to govern, or to even participate in, the egalitarian process that has been the very foundation of our nation for two and a half centuries.

Sadly, Trump Republicans are desperately doing all they can to restrict that right with everything from mid-decade gerrymandering to closing polls in Democratic districts to threatening interventions on election day. While the latter clearly violates federal law, they hope such threats intimidate voters, and discourage their turnout.

The clearest way to void all these unAmerican actions is to vote – despite all the obstacles they throw at us. Here’s a reminder of what America is all about:

Our daughter took this photo from the end of her street when she rushed outside on that surreal morning nearly 25 years ago on September 11, 2001. I was one of the fortunate few who reached my loved one as that terrible event began to unfold. It would be another four long days before we could connect again.

As it so happened, we had an election that day in the city I managed. Not unexpectedly, no one showed up at the polls throughout the morning as we all sat transfixed around our TVs. Then in the afternoon, something special happened. Voters began turning out in droves.

I like to think they saw voting as something they could actively do in such a horrific situation. Rather than sit by helplessly, they could choose to exercise their ultimate right in a democracy. Would that we might remember that lesson at a time where our right to vote is being threatened by those who once swore an oath to defend it.

Vote for America. Educate yourself on the candidates and vote, because it really does matter. Now more than ever.