Martin Luther King, Jr. Shines As a Convicted Felon is Sworn in as President

First: The Los Angeles area is still burning, but the two major fires are being contained. Thanks to all the firefighters and first responders that are working incredible hours in horrific conditions to slow down and stop all the fires.

We have firefighters from our friend south of the border here to end the fires — yeah, Mexico, our friend, as well as firefighters from our friend north of the border, Canada.

The weather has helped quite a bit. The winds haven’t been as bad as they were last week when the fires were getting wound up, but now the Santa Anas are getting whipped up again.

Even though many of the fire victims are wealthy beyond the imaginations of most folks, these fires have been devastating to everyone in the area, especially the under-paid domestic workers who clean and work on the homes in these wealthier neighborhoods as well as the lawncare workers we see with their lawn mowers, electric and gas-fired leaf blowers and shrub clippers. All those people are out of work and their disappearance from the workforce will be felt up and down the economic ladder.

Once the fires are out how will California — and this nation — take care of those people? They are predominantly brown and black people and the track record of treating those communities with compassion and equality is, at the very least, not very good.

Before we tackle that and other economic challenges caused by this calamity, let’s cheer on the firefighters who are gaining ground on the wildfires.

* As of Tuesday and Wednesday mornings wildfires have broken out in San Diego County as well.

Second: I’m offering an apology to Greenland, Panama, Canada and Mexico. We, the people of the U.S. of A., as a collective, voted to put the convicted felon back into the office of the president. No, I didn’t vote for him, nor did over 75 million of my fellow Americans, but over 77 million voters chose the convicted felon over former vice president Kamala Harris, an accomplished (former) prosecutor.

I offer this apology because we know, by his words and actions, Trump is serious about invading those nations  for one reason or another in one way or another. The convicted felon has named Elon Musk crony Ken Howery to be the ambassador to Denmark, the country that owns Greenland, which is itself an autonomous territory. Lowery is known for his negotiating skills, but Denmark isn’t willing to help Number 47 acquire Greenland, at any price — and …

… The citizens of Greenland have no desire to be a part of this nation and I don’t blame them. They have a much better healthcare system — with much better outcomes. Their public education system should make all Americans envious

Then there are Greenland’s mineral resources, the primary reason Trump’s masters in the Billionaire Bros Club want to grab the world’s largest island. There are most likely trillions of dollars in mineral wealth in and around Greenland and the locals have no desire to let that go to some unscrupulous billionaires who want to strip mine one of the planet’s favorite pristine locations.

It appears though, that the Greenland prime minister himself, Múte Egede has said Greenland continues to push for its separation from Denmark to become a wholly independent nation. In a Fox News interview Egede said, “The Greenlandic people don’t want to be Danes. The Greenlandic people don’t want to be Americans.”

He did say he wants to develop Greenland’s natural resources in partnership with foreign companies, but on his nation’s terms. Greenland is not for sale.

Neither is Canada which laughs at Trump’s ridiculous ideas. Our northern neighbor has that rich, abundant Arctic coastline and a long list of natural resources, like oil, gold, silver, copper, uranium, zinc, nickel, potash, asbestos, sulfur, cadmium, and titanium.

Panama isn’t going to let go of their canal and Mexico — well, invading our southern neighbors for any reason, like going after the cartels, would be an act of war.  The fact that Trump and his cabal of racist GOP/MAGA Cult members are scapegoating Black and Brown immigrants for all our nation’s woes is horrible enough. We cannot let him start wars with our allies — and others — in Latin America … or anywhere else.

The convicted felon has already been sworn in so he officially the 47^th.

• The A-hole uses a felt-tip marker to sign official documents, including one that pardoned all the convicted felons that took part in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The GOP/MAGA Cult is not for law and order and does not support all police.  Maybe he needs crayons too.

Third: I’ve just realized that by trying to ignore the second coming of the convicted felon, there has been a lot missed. The felon wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He can call it anything he wants —his followers can call the gulf anything they want — but it is international waters and no single nation has the right to rename it — Oh, and he is changing the name of Denali in Alaska back to Mount McKinley.

That mountain is over 20,000 feet high and has been called “Denali” for thousands of years. Sticking the 25^th president’s name on it is a slap in the face of the indigenous people of Alaska, the Koyukon Athabascans, who have populated that area long before the ravaging Europeans ever saw that great land. The name Denali means “the Great One.” We will never mistake number 47 for a great one.

After the felon’s inauguration speech the Detroit preacher Lorenzo Sewell riffed on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speech from the 1963 March on Washington, commonly referred to as the “Dream Speech.”

It was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day across America, a day when we should be honoring the civil rights leader, but some folks thought it was disrespectful to do it at the inauguration of the convicted felon. As if telling a joke, invoking some irony into the felon’s inauguration ceremony, Sewell lifted these parts in particular from King’s speech, “We pray that you use our president that we will live in a nation where we’ll not be judged by the color or our skin but by the content of our character,” adding, “We are grateful today that you would use our 47th president so we would sing with new meaning, ‘our country ’tis of thee.’ ”

Let’s see … How should we judge the content of 47’s character? He’s convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexually assaulting a woman, liable for ripping off students via his fake university; he and his sons are banned from doing business in the State of New York, declared bankruptcy six times … And that’s all I can remember without using the Google machine.

For those who think otherwise: this country isn’t for any supernatural deities, this nation has been handed to the oligarchs who are running the Oval Office and the two houses of Congress. All the tech bros were there, seated with the felon on the dais. After the felon’s speech Head Tech Bro Elon Musk spoke and delivered the Nazi/Hitler salute, not once but twice.

This is who and what the 49.97% of American voters chose as the direction for our nation: a fascist oligarchy where everything will be for sale.

Four: Thank you Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — and their administration — for delivering four great years, rescuing our nation, and possibly the world, from a terrible pandemic and the crashing economy that followed after the disastrous handling of the pandemic by the 45^th president.

It was a great act of courage for Biden to pardon all the police officers killed and hurt at the capitol on January 6, 2021 as well as Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and other GOP leaders that opposed the felon. He also pardoned his family and some Democrats that 47 promised to persecute using the Justice Department …

Five (and finally): Just the way J. Edgar Hoover persecuted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists back in the day. Well, actually, not entirely the same. Back in the day J. Edgar and his FBI minions secretly used warrantless wiretaps and undercover brothers to spy on King and his fellow activists and then report and leak LIES about King and the civil rights movement. For instance: King was secretly a Communist.

He wasn’t and former President Lyndon B. Johnson knew Hoover and his agency were telling lies, but neither he or his party could publicly call out Hoover because the first FBI director had blackmail files on many people in government.

Yes, the convicted felon was inaugurated on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that honors one of the greatest Americans in our history.

Of course, in Alabama and Mississippi honor Confederate general — and traitor — Robert E. Lee, who was also a brutal slave owner. We have always known where the Confederacy sensibilities lay, even to this moment, 57,611 days after the Civil War ended — almost 158 years later.

We already have convicted traitors in this nation, as well as traitorous sympathizers, but number 47 wants to make it illegal for Communists to enter the country! A violation of the First Amendment.

There is so much going on, since the felon took office, too much to print here all at once. Number 47’s minions ended the immigration program that allowed people to get in line to apply for asylum. The immigrants  who had appointments to do so had their appointments cancelled.

And the felon wants to end constitutionally guaranteed birthright citizenship which is in the 14^th Amendment. The first sentence of the amendment is called “The Citizenship Clause” and says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The felon cannot end it with the stroke of a pen. It takes another constitutional amendment to do away with it.

Anyway, in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ll end with these words from the man’s “Three Evils” speech of 1967:

“Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.”