While our attentions are focused on Harvey and Irma and Jose and… in the southeast, unnamed and impersonal fires are burning down the northwest and turning the moon red.

Naomi Klein, writing in In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks “Why Is Everything Going Wrong?” for The Intercept, explains:

At a playground in the haze, I meet a young mother who offers advice on how to reassure worried kids. She tells hers that forest fires are a positive part of the cycle of ecosystem renewal—the burning makes way for new growth, which feeds the bears and deer.

I nod, feeling like a failed mom. But I also know that she’s lying. It’s true that fire is a natural part of the life cycle, but the fires currently blotting out the sun in the Pacific Northwest are the opposite, they’re part of a planetary death spiral. Many are so hot and intransigent that they are leaving scorched earth behind. The rivers of bright red fire retardant being sprayed from planes are seeping into waterways, posing a threat to fish. And just as my son fears, animals are losing their forested homes.

The biggest danger, however, is the carbon being released as the forests burn. Three weeks after the smoke descended on the coast, we learn that the total annual greenhouse gas emissions for the province of British Columbia had tripled as a result of the fires, and it’s still going up.

This dramatic increase of emissions is part of what climate scientists mean when they warn about feedback loops: burning carbon leads to warmer temperatures and long periods without rain, which leads to more fires, which release more carbon into the atmosphere, which leads to even warmer and drier conditions, and even more fires.

I’ll be worm food long before the worst arrives and once the feedback loops feeding more and more carbon—long stored in trees and permafrost—fully take hold, we will have lost any opportunity at survival.

Frank Herbert’s 1965 magnum opus Dune was of a piece with Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring. Together they form the basis for much of what we think of as the environmental movement today. My own environmentalism has roots in those works. More than a half-century later (a nanosecond in Gaian time) we have made minor tweaks here and there, but we are staring over the edge of an ecological cliff and the bottom is shrouded in smoke and gloom.

I finished Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power Of Passion And Perseverance yesterday and for the first time in many years, perhaps decades, I truly came across a new, for me, way to look at planning and goal setting. For most of my life I have relied on the wisdom of Charles Hobbs as recorded in his book: Time Power.

Hobbs taught me to think of planning in terms of my immediate (daily) goals that are informed by my short-term goals which are informed by my intermediate goals which are informed by my long-term goals which, at the highest level, are informed by my universal principles. This pyramid structure, for me, resulted in a myriad of goals spreading out from no less than 11 UPs.

Duckworth has taught me that truly successful people, those, in her terms, with Grit, function with a Life Philosophy, a single idea (or possibly two ideas: professional and personal) that informs all that you do. What spoke to me was her reference to a Sport’s Illustrated interview with Hall-Of-Fame pitcher Tom Seaver. Duckworth writes:

When he retired in 1987, a the age of forty-two, he’d compiled 311 wins, 3,640 strikeouts, 61 shutouts, and a 2.86 earned run average. In 1992, when Seaver was elected to the Hall Of Fame, he received the highest-ever average of votes: 98.8 percent. During his twenty-year professional baseball career, Seaver aimed to pitch the best I possibly can day after day, year after year. Here is how that intention gave meaning and structure to all his lower-order goals:

[Pitching] determines what I eat, when I go to bed, what I do when I’m awake. It determines how I spend my life when I’m not pitching. If it means I have to come to Florida and can’t get tanned because I might get a burn that would keep me from throwing for a few days, then I never go shirtless in the sun. If it means when I get up in the morning I have to read the box scores to see who got two hits off Bill Singer last night instead of reading a novel, then I do it. If it means I have to remind myself to pet dogs with my left hand or throw logs on the fire with my left hand, then I do that, too. If it means in the winter I eat cottage cheese instead of chocolate chip cookies in order to keep my weight down, then I eat cottage cheese.

The life Seaver described sounds grim. But that now how Seaver saw things:

Pitching is what makes me happy. I’ve devoted my life to it…. I’ve made up my mind what I want to do. I’m happy when I pitch well so I only do those things that help me be happy.

What I mean by passion is not just that you something you care about. What I mean is that same ultimate goal in an abiding, loyal, steady way. You are not capricious. Each day, you wake up thinking of the questions you fell asleep thinking about. You are, in a sense, pointing in the same direction, ever eager to take even the smallest step forward than to take a step to the side, toward some other destination. At the extreme, one might call your focus obsessive. Most of your actions derive from their significance from their allegiance to your ultimate concern, your life philosophy.

Grit is about holding the same top-level goal for a very long time. Furthermore, this life philosophy is so interesting and important that it organizes a great deal of your waking activity. In very gritty people, most mid-level and and low-level goals are, in some way or another, related to that ultimate goal.

Previously, I’ve thought that such narrow focus, such obsessiveness, was the purview of people who are uber successful in one area, but total losers in every other aspect of their lives—Lance Armstrong is the example I most often raise—and I recognize that that still may be the case. Duckworth, however, tempers her position this way:Like Seaver I have one goal hierarchy for work: Use psychological science to help kids thrive. But I have a separate goal heirarchy that involves being the best mother I can be to my two daughters. As any working parent knows, having two ultimate concerns isn’t easy. There seems never to be enough time, energy or attention to go around. I’ve decided to live with that tension. As a young woman, I considered alternatives—not having my career or not raising a family—and decided that, morally, there was no right decision, only a decision that was right for me.

As a young man, I very consciously made the decision to not be a father because I know myself well enough to realize that my own goals would be more important than meeting the needs of any children. I love children, my nieces and nephews and students are wonderful people, but they are all the primary responsibility of other adults far better inclined and equipped to see them to adulthood than I would ever be.

Duckworth concludes her book with one final thought, an examination of a great writer, one of my personal heroes, Ta-Nehisi Coates. In 2015, Coates received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award. Duckworth extracted the following from Coates remarks in the video included on his MacArthur Foundation page, and framed them as a poem:

The Challenge of writing
Is to see your horribleness on the page
To see your terribleness
And then go to bed.

And wake up the next day,
And take that horribleness and that terribleness,
And refine it,
And make it not so terrible and not so horrible.
And then go to bed again.

And come back the next day,
And refine it a little bit more,
And make it not so bad.
And then go to bed until the next day.

And do it again,
And make it maybe average.
And then one more time,
If you’re lucky,
Maybe you get to good.

And if you’ve done that,
That’s a success.

Duckworth ends with this:

If you define genius as working toward excellence, ceaselessly, with every element of your being—then, in fact, my dad is a genius, and so am I, and so is Coates and, if you’re willing, so are you.

I always carry a number of special pencils with me that I give to my students. I also keep several at hand for my own use. The black pencils have the following printed in gold letters down their length: Genius is doing the work, NOW!

The rest is easy.

We chased the Kitty Hawk’s sister ship, the USS Constellation CV 64, for many a sea mile in 1976. Because this first “Super Carrier Class” was armed with MK 10 Terrier Missile Systems, I could have opted for duty on the Kitty, or either of her two sister ships (USS Constellation CV 64 or USS America CV 66—USS Enterprise CVN 65 was not equipped with Terriers.) but didn’t relish living among 5,000+ sailors. The Bainbridge’s crew of 525 was plenty big enough.

In preparing this post I came across a news item that, as a result of President Donald John Trump’s wish to deploy more aircraft carriers, suggests that the Kitty could be pulled from mothballs in much the same way the USS Iowa BB 61 (1951 and 1984), USS New Jersey BB 62 (1950, 1968 and 1982), USS Missouri BB 63 (1986) and USS Wisconsin BB 64 (1951 and 1988) were during their careers.

Central to Naomi Klein’s most recent book—No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics And Winning The World We Need—is the document included at the end of the book: The Leap Manifesto: A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another.

The document’s preamble sets up the challenge.

We start from the premise that Canada is facing the deepest crisis in recent memory.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has acknowledged shocking details about the violence of Canada’s near past. Deepening poverty and inequality are a scar on the country’s present. And Canada’s record on climate change is a crime against humanity’s future.

These facts are all the more jarring because they depart so dramatically from our stated values: respect for Indigenous rights, internationalism, human rights, diversity, and environmental stewardship.

Canada is not this place today— but it could be.

We could live in a country powered entirely by renewable energy, woven together by accessible public transit, in which the jobs and opportunities of this transition are designed to systematically eliminate racial and gender inequality. Caring for one another and caring for the planet could be the economy’s fastest growing sectors. Many more people could have higher wage jobs with fewer work hours, leaving us ample time to enjoy our loved ones and flourish in our communities.

Everyone, everywhere—not just Canadians in Canada—could live in such a country, on such a world.

The Leap Manifesto is not some pie-in-sky fantasy. We only need leap.

Now!

From the 2017 USS Bainbridge DLGN/CGN 25 reunion in Lancaster, Penn., 4-8 June.

More than a decade ago I began writing, often three times daily, about Myanmar and, as my blog-sister Shamash called her, Our Lady Aung San Suu Kyi.

I slacked off in 2011 because Myanmar seemed to be changing for the better and I turned my blog attentions elsewhere.

Over the last few days, however, Myanmar, and Aung San Suu Kyi, have once again come to our attention and the Noble laureate’s legacy is in great danger.

Writing in Desmond Tutu condemns Aung San Suu Kyi: ‘Silence is too high a price’ for The Guardian, Naaman Zhou explains:

Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu has called on Aung San Suu Kyi to end the violence against her country’s Rohingya Muslim minority in a heartfelt letter to the Myanmar leader.

The 85-year old archbishop said the “unfolding horror” and “ethnic cleansing” in the country’s Rahkine region had forced him to speak out against the woman he admired and considered “a dearly beloved sister”. Despite Aung San Suu Kyi defending her government’s handling of the growing crisis, Tutu urged his fellow Nobel peace price winner to intervene.

Tutu wrote:

My dear Aung San Suu Kyi

I am now elderly, decrepit and formally retired, but breaking my vow to remain silent on public affairs out of profound sadness about the plight of the Muslim minority in your country, the Rohingya.

In my heart you are a dearly beloved younger sister. For years I had a photograph of you on my desk to remind me of the injustice and sacrifice you endured out of your love and commitment for Myanmar’s people. You symbolised righteousness. In 2010 we rejoiced at your freedom from house arrest, and in 2012 we celebrated your election as leader of the opposition.

Your emergence into public life allayed our concerns about violence being perpetrated against members of the Rohingya. But what some have called ‘ethnic cleansing’ and others ‘a slow genocide’ has persisted – and recently accelerated. The images we are seeing of the suffering of the Rohingya fill us with pain and dread.

We know that you know that human beings may look and worship differently—and some may have greater firepower than others—but none are superior and none inferior; that when you scratch the surface we are all the same, members of one family, the human family; that there are no natural differences between Buddhists and Muslims; and that whether we are Jews or Hindus, Christians or atheists, we are born to love, without prejudice. Discrimination doesn’t come naturally; it is taught.

My dear sister: If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep. A country that is not at peace with itself, that fails to acknowledge and protect the dignity and worth of all its people, is not a free country.

It is incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country; it is adding to our pain.

As we witness the unfolding horror we pray for you to be courageous and resilient again. We pray for you to speak out for justice, human rights and the unity of your people. We pray for you to intervene in the escalating crisis and guide your people back towards the path of righteousness.

God bless you.

While there is no mechanism for such an action, some are calling for the Nobel committee to strip Suu Kyi of her status as a laureate. I can understand why partisans wanted the committee to take similar actions with laureates PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and President Barack Hussein Obama, the case of Suu Kyi feels different.

Zhou continues

Malala Yousafzai, the youngest ever peace prize winner, said on Monday “the world is waiting” for Aung San Suu Kyi to act.

“Every time I see the news, my heart breaks,” she wrote on Twitter. “Over the last several years, I have repeatedly condemned this tragic and shameful treatment. I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same”.

On Tuesday, the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said the government clearance operations in Rakhine “risked” ethnic cleansing. A Change.org petition to revoke Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel peace prize had reached 377,332 signatures by Friday.

On Thursday, Aung San Suu Kyi made her first spoken remarks on the crisis in Rakhine since government crackdowns began last month.

It is a little unreasonable to expect us to solve the issue in 18 months. The situation in Rakhine has been such since many decades. It goes back to pre-colonial times.

According to UN estimates, up to 300,000 Rohingya could be displaced into Bangladesh due to “clearance operations” by the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s armed forces.

Not unreasonable at all, Our Lady.

I could be wrong. I need to think much more about this.

*No, that’s not a typo… :)

Well, the Democrats kicked away the first victory over sports-owner monsters and may have thereby easily re-elected Mayor Frank Jackson.

That puts back for another four years a crew of has been city officials working the city for high salaries and little work.

Jackson cannot seem to dump long-ago city officials who at least under Mayor Michael White had to produce. White used the whip to keep city workers on their toes.

Jackson simply promotes those who fuck-up, as in Marty Flask and Frank McGrath did in the 138 bullet fiasco.

The 138-bullet debacle mess was followed by those elevations of the police establishment leadership. If the city had a real mayor the two would be out simply collecting their pensions instead of also taking home hefty pay checks.

It just revealed how lax Jackson performs his job.

It is what it is, right? That’s Jackson’s motto.

Well, it is what it shouldn’t be.

There’s no use repeating what I’ve been writing for the last several years about Jackson and his inability to say “no” to his employees and to the downtown establishment, which sees him as the best sucker they’ve ever had.

And it says a lot—too much—about the Democratic Party in Cuyahoga County.

It stinks. It sat back, or helped, revive the Quicken Arena deal that Continue Reading »

Ralph Nader, in Needed—An Educational Institute to Extend Dick Gregory’s Legacies writes:

On hearing about the loss of Dick Gregory, at age 84, political analyst and former White House counsellor Bill Curry said, “He was the first successful black comedian who insisted on having opinions.”

Until Dick Gregory—with his pioneering, satiric, audacious humor on stage and on national TV, which made white audiences laugh their way into reality—African-American comedians were expected “to do minstrel skits in baggy pants and outsize shoes and use slapstick humor,” in the words of Mel Watkins, author of On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy.

Breaking through the national media in the early 1960s—from Time Magazine to the famous Jack Paar’s TV show, Tonight—Dick Gregory showed America that he could connect comedy with a myriad of important social justice causes Continue Reading »

In high school I was fascinated by the works of Herman Hesse, so much so that I adopted, for a time, the adolescent nickname of Erich Von Hesse; hey I was 15. Steppenwolf was the first book of Hesse’s that I read, not because I knew of the author, but because his name was similar to mine and I was a fan of the rock group Steppenwolf

Hesse hooked me on page 37 of my Bantam paperback with Magic Theater, Entrance Not For Everyone and For Madmen Only! I clearly remember what I thought when I first read that line: sign me up.

The first reaction I had to reading Sam Allard’s piece The Q Deal is Officially Alive was Dang, I should move to Cleveland just so I could vote no on all the skininin’ and grinin’ toadies and sycophants seeking to further gorge themselves at the public trough. Then there are the people who lied to 20,000 real Clevelanders and then threw them under the bus.

Allard writes:

The Q Deal’s back on.

Here’s Mayor Frank Jackson:

Those who demonized this process were shortsighted, and I encourage them to ask themselves what they can do for the future of this city. Strong leadership requires doing the right thing, not just saying what you think people want to hear.

And here’s council prez Kevin Kelley:

I am very pleased that Cavaliers have agreed to continue with the Transformation Project. This deal is an economic boom for the City of Cleveland. It saves and creates thousands of jobs; generates tens of millions of tax dollars for the city’s general fund; and keeps the Q competitive in attracting events and concerts. The lease extension guarantees that the Q will be the home of the Cavaliers and continue as an economic engine until at least 2034

Expect more glowing statements from other elected officials soon.

Meanwhile, deep inside the Gilbert compound…

As I approach my 62nd birthday with my first grandniece in the family, I see myself more and more in these kinds of cartoons. Landlines and network television which were marvels to my grandparents are not the fodder of ghost stories. Mobile phones replaced telephones without call waiting, voice mail or portability replaced outhouses and online streaming replaced fighting over what to watch on the family black-and-white television replaced walking five miles to school in a blizzard.

What’s next?

There is, I think, a desire among all writers, regardless of their experience, to discover some secret. I have found this to be true in my conversations, my readings of a library of books on How To Write and, most recently, in The Guardian’s My writing day series. No such secret, of course, exists.

Kurt Vonnegut, writing in a letter to his daughter Jane, however, suggests a slightly nuanced approach to the question.

The thing to celebrate is your sweet and melodious voice. The piece about traveling with Nanny across country is a knockout. There isn’t a flaw in it anywhere. And it would be that well-written, even if you weren’t as well-educated as you are. The secret of good writing is caring. —to Jane Vonnegut on 30 October 1974, p. 221

All writers produce shit. We all write badly. Thankfully most of the bad stays in the early drafts and the pages we present to our editors is at least workmanlike. (I did not until this moment know that workmanlike was one word.) What Vonnegut suggest here is that the bridge between workmanlike and good is attitudinal: you’ll never write anything good unless you actually care about what you’re writer.

To pervert a phrase from Congressman Tip O’Neill: All good writing is personal.

We have to care.

Found in my electronic chapbook under KURT VONNEGUT: LETTERS…

Nearly a year ago, Bill Rauch wrote The National Park Service Is Reviving Reconstruction for The Atlantic. At the time I found Rauch’s piece fascinating and, in light of my current novel project set in Reconstructionist Charleston, helpful in the extreme. I dropped a note to Rauch this week asking how recent events in Charlottesville, Baltimore and elsewhere may have affected the Part Service’s program.

In the mean time I re-read the piece through a current lens and what leapt out at me was the tale of Robert Smalls. Rauch wrote:

In the heart of Beaufort’s spectacular 304-acre historic district is the “Henry McKee House.” This gracious two-story residence with the slave “cottage” still out back is where Robert Smalls (1839-1915) was born into slavery (under McKee, whom historians also believe was probably Smalls’s father) and where, after the Civil War, Smalls returned—to purchase McKee’s house and cottage at a tax sale. During the early stages of the war, Smalls had been among a group of abolitionists who met with Abraham Lincoln to persuade the president to allow African Americans to fight as full-fledged members of the U.S. Army and Navy.

Smalls himself became a Union war hero. [Beginning with the tale of the CSS Planter, JH] And after the war, Smalls continued to advocate for blacks in the military. Back in Beaufort, he also founded a school, a church, and a newspaper for the black community. Perhaps more significantly, Smalls represented Beaufort in the South Carolina State Legislature for five years, in the South Carolina State Senate for four years, and then in the U.S. House of Representatives for seven years. A modest National Historic Landmark plaque is affixed to the wall outside of Smalls’s house, but it says nothing about why the house is historic or who Smalls was—nothing about the slave who fought for emancipation, returned home to buy his former master’s house, and then became the region’s most extraordinary figure.

In 1993, U.S. Representative James Clyburn became South Carolina’s first African American member of the House since Reconstruction. The previous African American to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Congress was Smalls, who left the post in 1887. Clyburn, who has been virtually alone among South Carolina’s elected officials in carrying the Reconstruction torch, was the keynote speaker at the symposium in Columbia, where he recalled Smalls’s then-groundbreaking congressional proposals for free public education and government support for the disabled and elderly. Clyburn also referred to Smalls as “the most consequential figure in the Reconstruction era.” Smalls’s life would seem to justify the claim.

But another congressman, U.S. Representative Joe Wilson, famously swept the public memory of the Smalls House and the rest of the proposed Beaufort Reconstruction History Park (as it was called then) under the rug in 2004. Wilson is most widely known for being rebuked by the House of Representatives after shouting, “You lie!” during President Barack Obama’s 2009 address to a joint session of Congress. According to Allen, when Wilson was asked in 2004 for his blessing for the then-proposed Beaufort Reconstruction History Park, Wilson quietly told the National Park Service’s higher-ups, “Not this, not here, not now.”

When I first began to learn about Reconstruction, I turned to two books: Eric Foner’s Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 and W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction In America: 1860-1880. The former, according to Rauch, played a role in the park service’s project.

In 1988, Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, published one of the seminal books on the era, Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Twelve years after its release, during the final months of the Clinton administration, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt picked up Foner’s book. Inspired, Babbitt was the first person in his position in government to ask: Why is Reconstruction entirely unheralded by the National Park Service?

At the April symposium in Columbia, Foner, a principal presenter, recounted the story of what happened next: Babbitt called and asked him, “Professor, if there were to be a national park or site or trail commemorating Reconstruction, where should it be?” Without missing a beat, Foner told Babbitt, “Beaufort, South Carolina, the site of the Port Royal Experiment.”

In 1861, representatives of Lincoln’s government who were in control of the Beaufort area, decided to break up some 200 confiscated cotton plantations there and sell them in small parcels at favorable prices to the workers—previously enslaved cotton and domestic hands. From that day to this, those parcels have served the freed owners and their descendants well as small family farms and compounds. Collectively, these and the other good-government efforts to transition former slaves from bondage to freedom in the Beaufort area have come to be known as the Port Royal Experiment.

“Well, I want to go there,” Babbitt told Foner. Three weeks later, with only about six weeks remaining in the Clinton administration, Foner, Babbitt, National Park Service staffers, local historians, and various other luminaries spent three days touring the many notable Reconstruction-era sites in the Beaufort area.

Not much, however, happened. Rauch continues:

Foner and Babbitt’s group saw how much there is to Beaufort’s Reconstruction history. It wasn’t just Smalls’s hometown.

But all that was 16 years ago.

Since then, unlike Natchez, Beaufort and its partners have not so much as erected a plaque commemorating a Reconstruction site. (Although there have been recent efforts in Hilton Head to bring Mitchelville back to public memory.) Instead, Beaufort seems more inclined to erase Reconstruction sites. In 2014, Mayor Billy Keyserling and the Beaufort City Council passed a “Civic Master Plan” that called for “infill housing” and the gentrification of Beaufort’s only Reconstruction-era African American neighborhood.

Three years later we have Charlottesville and no clear sight of where we’re headed.

On board the USS Bainbridge, CGN 25, we had a saying: The captain speaks to god, but the chief is god.

There has been a spate of ignorant silliness of late as a result to the high-profile collisions of the USS Fitzgerald DDG 62 and the USS John S. McCain DDG 56 that make claims that somehow President Barack Hussein Obama is responsible because he failed to support the training of the fleet.

That is whale shit, pure and simple. No one who had ever actually served would stoop to make such a claim.

Presidents don’t train sailors, sailors train sailors and no one is more vital to that mission that the Chief Petty Officer; always has been and always will be.

I knew and worked under a number of excellent Chief Petty Officers including perhaps the best, Senior Chief Beal. I wish that I had known then what I learned much later, you should always listen to god.

Swiss Family Robinson, of course, built the most awesome tree house ever.

The tale of Colin Kaepernick, Rodney Axson and many, many other African American athletes who chose to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful assembly continues despite the opposition of fans and now local police. Angela Helm, writing in Cleveland Police Union Refuses to Hold Flag During Browns’ Opening Game, Calling Player’s Protest ‘Ignorant’ for The Root, explains:

More police union fuckery.

Cleveland’s police union says it will not hold the American flag during a ceremony before the Cleveland Browns’ first game because some players knelt during the National Anthem during the preseason.

Cleveland.com reports that Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Steve Loomis made the announcement on Friday as regards the Sept. 10 game.

As reported previously by The Root, on Aug. 21, a dozen Browns players knelt or stood in a circle of solidarity during a preseason game against the New York Giants, including, for the first time, a white player. They also locked arms during the playing of the National Anthem prior to the preseason game against the Bears on Aug. 31.

According to Loomis, doing so was “ignorant,” even though it was days after police stood by and let black people get nearly beat to death or shot during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Loomis’ statement is offensive and indefensible, and, not surprisingly, not the officials stance of the Cleveland Police Department. Police Chief Calvin Williams issued this statement:

Recent statements made by the President of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association would lead one to believe that members of the Cleveland Division of Police are against participating in events with our Cleveland Browns athletes. This is simply not the viewpoint of all of our officers. The Cleveland Browns Organization has been a longtime partner of the Cleveland Division of Police, donating and assisting (many times quietly) to our Police Athletic League and hosting events with kids in the city’s Muny League Football. We know that we can count on this partnership to continue.

As law enforcement officers, we took an oath to serve and to protect. We protect the rights of all citizens to express their views as protected by the First Amendment of our constitution, no matter the issue. Our American flag is an important symbol to our great country and we, as officers, will continue to salute it.

More importantly, we as Cleveland Police Officers strive to open the lines of communication with all of our citizens—athletes and enthusiastic Browns fans alike. Who are we kidding?! We are CLEVELAND!! And we stay strong together. We stand together.

Moving forward, I can tell you that we within the Cleveland Division of Police are in communication with the Cleveland Browns Organization as we have been in the past. We want to hear from our players, the fans and our citizens of this great city. We want to bridge the gap. We want to talk.

I look forward to a continued partnership with our CLEVELAND athletes, our community and a great BROWNS season!!!”

People like Loomis need to be constantly reminded that the American Flag and our National Anthem are symbols of freedom; Americans exercising their constitutional rights to assembly and free speech are actual freedoms.

Helm (and many of the commenters) miss the target, however, when they make the story about unions. (yes, I know, Loomis is the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association). Unions are not the problem. Police circling the wagons against those who threaten their ability to define what is legal and Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s determination to re-militarize our police forces are the problem

President Donald John Trump could throw away millions of dollars in tax investment in our nation’s future to dodge the risk of silencing his cheering minions. Maggie Haberman, reporting in Trump Seriously Considering Ending DACA, With 6-Month Delay for The New York Times, writes:

President Trump is strongly considering a plan that would end the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, but only after giving Congress six months to come up with a potential replacement for the popular initiative, according to three administration officials briefed on the discussions.

Officials working on the plan stressed that Mr. Trump could still change his mind, and some key details had not yet been resolved. Among them: whether beneficiaries of the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, would be allowed to renew their protected status during the six-month period.

The compromise, which could lead to legislation superseding President Barack Obama’s executive order, is intended to address a growing chorus of Republican lawmakers, led by the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, who have implored the White House to keep some form of the program.

So, Trump keeps his minions but what does he risk losing? How about the largest, and fastest growing minority population in our country? Henry Gomez, reporting in Republican Party Autopsy Author Goes Off On GOP As Trump’s DACA Decision Nears for BuzzFeed News, writes:

Just four years ago, building stronger relationships with Hispanic voters was among the key recommendations from the Republican National Committee’s Growth and Opportunity Project — better known as the “autopsy” following the party’s loss in the 2012 presidential election.

“If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence,” the autopsy concluded. “It doesn’t matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In essence, Hispanic voters tell us our Party’s position on immigration has become a litmus test, measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door.”

Trump basically rejected the autopsy in total, campaigning on a tough anti-immigration platform that included a pledge to complete a border wall between the US and Mexico and saying, in his announcement speech, that the country was sending “rapists” to the United States.

Maybe Trump doesn’t give a fuck because all he cares to see (all he is allowed to see?) and the great crowds.