Its formal name is Independence Day, and with apologies to all the Christians out there, it should be the most revered of American holidays; more revered than Christmas and Easter. Take it from an agnostic.
Traditions keep us grounded and I followed one every Independence Day. Before dawn, I would, with a genuine sense of reverence, hang the American flag over the garage door. It may have been a meaningless gesture the other 364 days, but on Independence Day it really meant something.
Year after year it was the same morning drill; get up, hang the flag, go for a run with the dog, make sure the pool was clean for the kids and grandkids, wonder how many hot dogs Joey Chestnut would consume in that nonsense at Coney Island, get the barbecue fire going (properly done ribs require a good six hours), make the mop sauce, put on the ribs – enjoy the day.
Every
damn
year.
How could life be worse? Family, dogs (hot and four legged), splashing in the pool, good music and unhealthy food on the patio. The American fucking way.
That all started to change in 2016, when a pretender took up occupancy in the White House. During that first term I somehow managed to put Donald Trump and the cult of MAGA out of my head and convince myself that it was all a fluke. It was just a four-year phase that the country would outgrow. The nation was having its red Corvette, young blonde in the passenger seat, midlife crisis.
COVID notwithstanding, Independence Day 2021 was a brighter one. We’d (sort of) survived January 6th, and Trump was (hopefully) in self-exile. But still something was off. Four years of Donald Trump had thrown the American universe out of kilter.
Two apostles of Trump, blood brothers, a pair of the most annoying people in the history of the planet, Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson, in a shouting match. These two are almost always in concert when it comes to – anything.
I didn’t know whether to laugh, sing hallelujah, or look for some pearls to clutch.
So I did all three.
It was hilarious schadenfreude to watch Ted Cruz, the guy who hates elites while sporting the professorial beard, and old Tuck with his perpetual expression of confusion, go nose to nose in an argument that looked nostalgically like baseball manager Earl Weaver and any umpire you could (or couldn’t) name having an old fashioned shouting match. All that was missing was some infield dirt for them to kick on each other.
“Holy shit,” I shouted.
Loud enough for Cora, who was working in the garden, to poke her head in the door and ask, “What happened?”
“Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz are going at it over leveling Iran.” (Ted is a “yay”, and Tuck is a “nay”)
“Good!”
An internecine MAGA-land feud is usually welcome news but the fact that this one is over whether or not to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran (sung to the tune of The Beach Boys, Barbara Ann) is cause to give pause.
War is never a good thing and the fact that the decision of whether or not to wage one is being bounced around between two imbeciles; Pete Hegseth (a former Fox News host with a drinking problem and an overly energized sense of machismo), and Donald Trump (nuff said), makes the whole notion troublesome (normally the Director of National Security, Tulsi Gabbard, would be in on the decision but she pissed Trump off and who knows, maybe she’s on the outs – more below).
What adds a fire hose of gasoline to the flames of anxiety is the realization that Donald Trump is playing this like an eight year old reality show host thirsting for an audience. And the eight year old has an army play set.
Pop quiz. What does Donald Trump love more than Donald Trump?
Answer: The eyes of the entire world on Donald Trump.
And that’s what he’s got, and he’s playing it to the hilt.
Trump is playing a childish game of, tease the war, and the knowledge that the world is hanging on the Donald’s every word and move must be positively orgasmic for him.
“We are not pawns for [President] Donald Trump,” said the young woman dressed in cammies. Her uniform bore two patches, one, U.S. Army, the other, a last name, Colado. She was appearing at an anti-ICE rally in Dallas.
The woman continued, “Why now? It’s because the military was called on against the protesters. In our oath to serve, we serve the people of the United States, the Constitution. These constitutional rights are being stripped, and just denied. And the military will not be pawns to that. So I’m calling on the conscience of military members who served previously and now. We have a conscience, we have a mind. We have a duty and a moral obligation to say no and resist evil orders.”
The announcement that an active duty soldier was speaking out against Trump lit up social media, but the truth of her status as active duty, retired military or just a random person who went to the Army/Navy store and bought an ACU wasn’t clear.
The video was forwarded to me by a friend and my initial response was
Oh hell yes!
But when a story emerges from a little known outlet on either side of the political spectrum, some due diligence is in order to be certain of the facts. So when I saw that the feature originated from a site called Breakthrough News, my bullshit radar lit up.
Turns out it was only a partially newsworthy story as the woman is not active duty, but a veteran who served in the U.S. Army from November 2010 to August 2014 and was an Army reservist from August 2014 to June 2020. Still any new voice is welcome to the anti-Trump choir.
Pimping the Army Meanwhile Donald Trump was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, delivering a speech that was supposed to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States Army. You know, those blue clad musket packing men who overthrew a king and helped deliver what was once the world’s most successful democracy.
Trump’s speech should have been a commemoration of the Army’s history, a paean to sacrifice, and a tribute to duty. It should have been a celebration of the Army as a defender of freedom and of American ideals as penned in the great documents that formed the foundation of the great experiment.
But Donald Trump can’t help himself, and so the speech careened from the righteous road of what it should have been into the muddy ditch of one of his rally style rants.
The apologists shrug it all off as ‘just Trump being Trump.’
And so, ‘just being Trump’, violated yet another presidential norm by delivering, to an inappropriate audience, one of his bellicose, belly aching, falsehood filled, rants that have characterized ten exhausting MAGA years. Sure the speech could have been shrugged off, with a roll of the eyes and a ‘whatever’ had it been delivered in front of the usual amalgamation of red capped rubes and Confederate flag waving, snake oil swilling groupies. But the violation was in the fact that the MAGA tirade was delivered to an audience of active duty soldiers. Partisan harangues to the troops is a no-no.
For two-hundred and fifty years, since our first commanding general, who would become the first commander in chief, the American military has been an apolitical fighting organization. The Army has always, by tradition and by the demands of a democracy, remained loyal to the Constitution and democratic ideals rather than one man. In fact, before deciding on a national army the founders stopped to think long and hard about establishing an armed force that might one day be loyal to a king who would use that force against the citizenry.
But with Flag Day just a few days away, the orange counterfeit patriot who wraps himself in the banner he never lifted a finger to defend spoke to American soldiers and dubbed the people of Los Angeles, the people those soldiers took an oath to protect, “animals” and “a foreign enemy.”
“We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy. That’s what they are,” said the dictator in waiting.
During his rant, the dear leader went after his usual punching bag, his predecessor, Joe Biden. He continued with one of his wildest lies of ten years of exceptional bullshittery; “In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor of Los Angeles, they’re incompetent and they paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists. They’re engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law, and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”
Trump encouraged active duty soldiers to boo his political opponents and the press. Yes, that press. You know, the one whose freedom is named specifically in the First Amendment. The First Amendment is probably the one he hates the most, but there’s always the fourteenth, which has been a particularly thorny one for him. Hell, just clip out the Second Amendment post it on the White House fridge and burn the rest of that troublesome document.
Crickets in command If there was anything more alarming than Trump’s partisan diatribe it was a senior officer corps that remained as silent as the grave of American democracy. Gone are Mark Esper, Mark Miley, John Kelly, and James Mattis, the men who, time and again, told Trump, ‘no you can’t do that. “
This time around Trump has advisors, the despicable authors of that manual of evil, Project 2025, who have instructed Trump to do what every dictator in history has done; and that is to populate the high command with fawning boot lickers.
Trump’s Fort Bragg event was so political and partisan, that the Army went through the trouble of hand picking a friendly audience that would not only smile through Trump’s entire jeremiad, but titter at his lounge act monologue.
An internal 82nd Airborne memo revealed that soldiers in attendance were selected based on political leanings and physical appearance. “No fat soldiers,” (in front of the fat president) read one memo. The italicized part is my own.
The partisanship was so egregious that MAGA paraphernalia was allowed to be sold on base property and some troops were seen snapping up various items of Trumpy gear including something called a White Privilege Card that reads, “Trumps Everything.”
By and large commanders and Pentagon officials seemed foursquare behind this festival of political bias. But not everyone. In an interview with Military.com, one commander, still moored in the harbor of democracy said, “This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution. This was shameful. I don’t expect anything to come out of it, but I hope maybe we can learn from it long term.”
And the cherry on top of this odious sundae is, yes, the name of the base – Fort Bragg. Once again, military bases will be re-named after Confederates, America’s 19th century cadre of traitors. “Fort Bragg is in,” said Trump. “That’s the name. And Fort Bragg it shall always remain. That’s never going to be happening again.”
Just for the record, Braxton Bragg was a slaver and a commander who was known mostly for his incompetence. But Trump wouldn’t know that because he and historical knowledge do not share an intimate relationship.
“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming We’re finally on our own This summer I hear the drumming Four dead in Ohio”
“Four dead in Ohio” were the first words that came to mind when I heard that Donald Trump, on the evening of June 7th, had federalized 2,000 California National Guard soldiers in response to protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles.
The match was struck on June 6th at a Home Depot in Los Angeles where Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers were conducting arrests of day laborers (As stated in a previous post, the Trump regime has veered away from the promise of going after murderers, drug dealers and rapists of white women, and is going after the low hanging fruit in order to satisfy the quotas set by Stephen Miller, America’s ferret faced head of U.S. Gestapo tactics). In response to the DHS action, up to one thousand protesters gathered at the scene.
Tempers flared during the day. A man was seen physically trying to block a federal law enforcement van which did not stop. The man fell down and by some chance intervention of the fates, was not run over. By nightfall, chunks of concrete were being thrown at federal law enforcement. By that point, LAPD and the California Highway Patrol were trying to keep the peace (to the credit of the CHP, it put out a statement saying that their mission was only peacekeeping and it was not assisting ICE in the arresting of immigrants).
By 8:30, the LAPD had issued a tactical alert.
On the 7th, arrests of undocumented immigrants continued as did the protests, with more violence erupting.
The 47-America’s Nightmare series of posts is winding down. There will be one more post to follow this one that will be focused on my own personal thoughts (Okay, possibly two). Parting Thoughts and Parting Shots is the title I have in mind. I’m bringing these posts to a close for a number of reasons, the two most important being: Writing about Donald Trump has taken the joy out of writing. I’ve become more involved with the resistance movement and I feel my time is better spent doing that work, rather than preaching to the dwindling choir that reads these posts.
One million. It’s the number that must be keeping Donald J. Trump awake at night. One million is the number of undocumented immigrants that Trump promised he would deport per year.
Why one million?
It’s round, easy to remember, sounds very big and is a figure that a rash, unconsidered narcissist would pull out of thin air. One has to doubt that there was any real thought or analysis given to the number one million. Thought, analysis, and Donald J. Trump rarely cross paths.
One could reasonably assume that the only thought that went into Trump’s deportation goal is that it has to be greater than 438421.
Why?
Because in 2013 it was President Obama who set the deportation record, having shown the exit door to 438421 undocumented immigrants. Not only does Trump always want to be the biggest and the best and the greatest, but he most definitely does not want to be in second place behind another president – and a Black one to boot.
Trump most certainly pulled the quixotic seemingly unachievable one million from his ass and now he owns it.
Twenty is the number of years that Carol Hui has lived in the United States. And now Carol is soon going to be leaving for Hong Kong; but it isn’t for business or pleasure. Carol, who until a few days ago lived in Trumpy, Kennett, Missouri, has now taken up temporary residence in the Greene County Jail in Springfield, MO.
A church going, hard working (two jobs), soccer mom of two children, beloved by most of the town’s citizens, Carol is by no means the hardened criminal that Trump promised to deport. And yet there she is
in the Greene County Jail.
A large number of Kennett’s citizens, including those who voted for Trump, are upset about Hui’s pending deportation. That’s not what they voted for, they’ll tell you. They’ll say that it was all about getting rid of the bad seeds.
One resident said, “no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.” The fact is, the resident didn’t have the foggiest idea of what she was voting for. How could she when her candidate is a pathological liar?
Who would deport a soccer mom? The same people who would deport high school students.
Twenty is the age of Dylan, a student at Ellis Prep High School in New York. He entered the United States from Venezuela, seeking asylum and is in the United States legally under policies in effect under the Biden administration. He has no criminal record.
Dylan was playing the immigration game by the rules when he showed up for a court hearing regarding his asylum status. Unfortunately for Dylan, ICE now plays by a different set of rules, rules that are apparently made up as circumstances, and Trump’s one million deportation fever dream number dictate.
The old rules don’t matter and what was legal a year ago has been arbitrarily deemed immaterial. So when Dylan showed up at the courthouse, ICE agents, like vipers laying in wait for prey, were waiting to ambush the young man. Dylan is now slated for
“immediate removal.”
That’s the term they use. It’s like
taking out the trash.
I-751 is the form number that Danish citizen and U.S. green card holder, Kasper Eriksen failed to fill out ten years ago around the time that his American citizen wife suffered a stillbirth. Seems like a reasonable excuse.
Since then Eriksen, who is a welder by trade, has done everything right, even down to the point of showing up at his immigration hearing in April. Well, that was a mistake, because ICE was waiting for him and hauled him off to the LaSalle Detention Center, in Jena, Louisiana.
For ten years Eriksen did everything right in his relationship with immigration officials. The only glitch was that Eriksen and immigration apparently had overlooked the missing I-751. It was a clerical error that could easily have been corrected with a ‘you’ve been a bad boy’ admonishment and a completion of the form.
But no, Eriksen is now sitting in the calaboose with other “detainees” (a nice word for prisoners).
Eriksen’s case is somewhat unique in that he’s white and while he’s not an American citizen he’s a sympathetic citizen of MAGA world; a Trump supporting, anti-vaxxer.
I could be smug and say that he’s being fed his just deserts. Just like many of his fellow Trumpers, Eriksen probably thought that Trump was talking about deporting gangsters, murderers and rapists of white women. Probably never occurred to him, or the immigration officials he was dealing with, that he would be a target of ICE.
Of his fellow prisoners, Eriksen said, “ I would say that some of these people (are victims) of miscommunication.”
It will be interesting to see if Eriksen gets special dispensation due to his political leanings. However his case turns out, I hope that his perspective has gone through an adjustment.
Two and a half is the number of months in Trump’s term that he’s had fewer deportations than Biden did in a similar period. Well, being behind “Sleepy Joe,” must’ve been embarrassing.
Biden notwithstanding, the administration is well behind the pace to achieve Trump’s magic million, and the prez is not happy. And everyone knows what they say about shit.
It
rolls
down
hill.
Now it’s all hands on deck, and do whatever you can to speed up the pace because the Don is ramping up the pressure, and to not hit the one million mark would signify another defeat for Trump. And his defeats are
multiplying like rabbits.
Do whatever you can means, well, just what it implies. Damn the Constitution, damn the law, damn the courts, damn it all. Just
get it the fuck done.
After all, if someone goes beyond the law, who’s going to press charges?
Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi, who acts more as Trump’s personal lawyer than an independent AG?
And if by some mistake, someone does get arrested and jailed for all of this goonery, there’s always Trump and his
pardons.
ICE agents are getting crafty. They’re not pounding the pavement looking for gangsters, murderers and rapists of white women. You know, the dregs that Trump said would be the first to go. That takes too much time.
Agents are cruising more bountiful fishing grounds, like courthouses, where immigrants who are trying to abide by the law show up to their immigration status hearings. People like Dylan and Carol Hui, and Kasper Eriksen; high schoolers, soccer moms, welders, restaurant workers, mechanics and roofers. It’s kind of an immigration form of gill netting to snatch innocent people who thought they had an agreement with the government. Certainly there are no gangsters, murderers and rapists of white women voluntarily showing up at a courthouse. They’re all still out on the streets.
Trumpy America is shocked that soccer moms and high school kids are being shown the door for having committed minor infractions (and paid their debt), or failed to fill out a form. They all heard the part about gangsters, and murderers and rapists of white women. They must’ve stopped listening when Trump said he would deport one million immigrants in one year. And they certainly didn’t stop to think that deporting one million immigrants in a year would be a logistical
Mount Everest.
Trumpy Americans had the same racist wet dream as Trump. They envisioned dirty, American job stealing, brown scofflaws getting their just deserts. They never stopped to realize that the face of the deportee might be that of the kind waitress that served them biscuits and gravy every Saturday morning, pausing to ask how the kids were doing in school (and my, she asked it in that cute little accent); or the face (with just a little fuzz of a mustache starting to appear) of the star running back for the local high school; or the grease smudged face of the man at the local garage who changes the oil and rotates the tires every 6,000 miles. And most certainly they didn’t imagine that a white MAGA guy from Denmark and living in Louisiana would get arrested.
The administration isn’t hiding the fact that it’s all a numbers game. “I’m not satisfied with the numbers,” said Tom Homan, America’s version of a Stazi goon. “We need to increase.”
Stephen Miller, our very own ferret faced Heinrich Himmler, said, “We are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day.
Let’s put the notion of gangsters, murderers and rapists of white women to bed. There’s a number that the boss wants hit and everyone is (un)fair game.
Paging James Comer. Paging Jim Jordan. Paging Byron Donalds. Paging all of the Republicans who spent four exhausting years and boxcars full of taxpayer dollars trying to prove that Joe Biden was the infamous “capo di tutti capi” (“boss of all bosses”).
James Comer. The name should sound familiar. Comer is the Republican Congressman and chairman of the powerful Oversight Committee who took a blowtorch to taxpayer money trying, fruitlessly one might add, to prove that the president who they characterized as a drooling idiot who couldn’t remember his wife’s name, was at the same time, the scheming evil mastermind behind a mob style criminal conspiracy. In June 2024 Comer referred to Biden as “the Big Guy,” as if he was Al Capone.
Investigation after investigation after investigation ended at a dead end. It was a four years long loop of slapstick comedy as each inquiry fizzled and Comer ended up with an embarrassing metaphorical pie in his face. All that was missing after each allegation collapsed like a foundationless house was the comedic trumpet – “waa-waa-waa-waa.”
Where’s Jim Jordan? Over the course of four years you couldn’t turn on the news without seeing the obnoxious weasel faced Congressman from Ohio wearing his trademark blue shirt and urine yellow tie; red faced, indignant and blustering nonsense.
If James or Jim or Byron would care to resurface and perhaps get in the win column there’s some juicy stuff going on in the White House. The time is now, because a first year law student, and a bad one at that, could indubitably make a corruption case against the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Paging Marjorie Taylor Greene. Not here? Oh, that’s right, she’s busy Photoshopping fake gang tattoos on a photo of a guy we wrongfully sent to a gulag in El Salvador.
Paging Nancy Mace. Oh, wait, she’s too busy bullying trans people and having personal meltdowns.
Where are those Republicans? They don’t want to miss this opportunity.
Check that. They do want to miss it and they’re being brazen in their dereliction of duty.
Where’s Attorney General Pam Bondi? Oh, wait, she’s busy with her Sharpie drawing strikethroughs on entire clauses of the Constitution.
FBI Director Kash Patel? Don’t look in his office. You’ll have better luck finding him at a sports event in Vegas with the nutty Mel Gibson.
And where is the mainstream media (or any media)? Shouldn’t they be grilling all of these now co conspirators over their silence?
What are all of these Republicans purposefully ignoring? Where to start?
“Loomered.” A new adjective in the lexicon, loomered means that you got yourself fired on the word of a lunatic. Laura Loomer apparently has become Donald J. Trump’s new unofficial head of human resources (and when it comes to this administration, “human” is a word used quite loosely).
By most accounts Laura Loomer was the individual who got Mike Waltz, of Signalgate fame, removed from his position as National Security Adviser to the President. Walz’s deputy, Alex Wong was also fired, meaning, I guess, that Loomer can’t claim that she “did not shoot the deputy.”
Just as any terrorist worth his or her salt would claim responsibility for an act, Loomer posted a one word message to Politico, “Loomered,” even as Waltz’s head was not yet done rolling. Shortly after Wong was dispatched, Loomer texted,“SCALP.”
Other heads on Loomer’s wall include the director of the National Security Agency, General Timothy Haugh, and General Haugh’s deputy, Wendy Noble (shot another deputy).
Adam Schleifer, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, was given his walking papers in an email from the White House which was launched one hour after Loomer had gone on social media to complain that Scheifer, a Democrat, had made comments critical of Trump during a run for a New York congressional seat.
Loomer recently derailed the nomination of Janette Nesheiwat for Surgeon General. Trump removed the nomination after Loomer criticized Nesheiwat for being too pro-vaccine. Trump subsequently has nominated Dr. Casey Means for the position, on the recommendation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which, by that very endorsement, means Means is, well, problematic. Call it guilt by association.
Means, who specialized in otolaryngology — ear, nose and throat medicine, left her residency because she was disillusioned with the medical establishment – not a qualification one would want in the nation’s top physician. Unfortunately for Means, she’s found herself on Loomer’s radar.
In a post on X, Loomer wrote, “PRESIDENT TRUMP’S PICK FOR US SURGEON GENERAL CASEY MEANS SAID SHE PRAYS TO INANIMATE OBJECTS, COMMUNICATES WITH SPIRIT MEDIUMS, USES SHROOMS AS “PLANT MEDICINE” AND TALKS TO TREES! SHE ALSO DOESN’T EVEN HAVE AN ACTIVE MEDICAL LICENSE THE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM!” (caps, Loomer’s)
In the same tweet, Loomer wrote, “I guess there isn’t a single conservative doctor in America who doesn’t have a history being a Marxist tree hugger? We are so doomed. Aren’t we?”
May 5, 2025 It ‘s Cinco de Mayo and I suspect that, unlike St. Patrick’s Day, when many people, Irish or not, hoist a mug of green beer and proclaim that “today everyone’s Irish,” there are more than a few white American folk who, after downing a few tequila shots, stop well short of proclaiming “today everyone’s Mexican.”
When it comes to the celebration of Mexico’s victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla, it’s fun and it’s lively and a good excuse for tequila in excess, but in the end, let’s be real, it’s still, you know, Mexico; cartels, illegals, drug dealers and gangs. They really need to go back to where they came from because like the man said, “they’re not sending their best.”
I suspect that next year at this time if all things tariff haven’t changed, Patron, Mexican beer and guacamole will be painfully expensive. And Donald J. Trump will blame it all on Mexico (or Biden) and say something like, instead of five shots of Patron, maybe they’ll have to make do with just two. Or if you want three just get the well stuff.
Cinco de Mayo 2025, in America, was different this year than in years past. In cities and towns celebrations were muted. In South Philadelphia and Chicago the annual Cinco de Mayo parades were canceled outright. The reason? La Migra, which translated literally means immigration but in slang refers to ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol, has been on a rampage. It was feared that the large gatherings might provide too much of a target rich environment for La Migra.
So while white America celebrated victory at Puebla, brown America found itself threatened, uneasy, and in many cases, hunkered down.
Yesterday, there was a large Cinco de Mayo celebration in nearby Richmond, California which is home to a vibrant Latin community (along with Asian, and Asian-Pacific Islander). I considered going in order to support the community but by the time I was ready to go I figured that parking would be problematic and so I passed. It was gratifying to learn later that the celebration was a success and apparently, and thankfully, La Migra also passed.
poem where no one is deported
By José Olivarez now i like to imagine la migra running into the sock factory where my mom & her friends worked. it was all women
who worked there. women who braided each other’s hair during breaks. women who wore rosaries, & never
had a hair out of place. women who were ready for cameras or for God, who ended all their sentences with si dios quiere. as in: the day before
the immigration raid when the rumor of a raid was passed around like bread & the women made plans, si dios quiere.
so when the immigration officers arrived they found boxes of socks & all the women absent. safe at home. those officers thought
no one was working. they were wrong. the women would say it was god working. & it was god, but the god
my mom taught us to fear was vengeful. he might have wet his thumb & wiped la migra out of this world like a smudge
on a mirror. this god was the god that woke me up at 7am every day for school to let me know there was food in the fridge for me & my brothers.
i never asked my mom where the food came from, but she told me anyway: gracias a dios. gracias a dios del chisme, who heard all la migra’s plans
& whispered them into the right ears to keep our families safe.
“Mayday” is an internationally recognized distress call used by pilots and maritime crews over radio communications in cases of extreme emergency where life or the aircraft or vessel is in immediate danger. When repeated three times in succession it is a call for urgent assistance.
May Day (also known as International Workers Day), the annual holiday recognizing the international working class, is celebrated around the world on May 1. It commemorates the struggle for workers’ rights and honors the lives’ lost during the fight to ensure the 8-hour workday we are now accustomed to. Source: The American Postal Workers Union. Link: here.
America has reached the momentous, yet really meaningless milestone that occurs every four years; the completion of the president’s first 100 days in office. It’s an unofficial-official anniversary demanded by nothing more than tradition. Neither required by law or mandated by the Constitution, the hundredth day is when the pollsters poll, the press reports (in varying degrees) and the pundits analyze, harrumph or huzzah, and then issue their report cards.
An article (link here) published by the think tank Brookings, provides a thumbnail history and explanation of the first 100 days and its importance; as if there actually is any importance to it.
The marking of a president’s first 100 days began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term. There’s a sad irony when one compares the two men on each end of the timeline; the one who received the very first 100 day report card with the man who received the latest. The differences are stark and revealing and shows just how far the dignity of the office can tumble.
The Life in My Years 