Tuesday, April 29, 2025

THE CASH COMMENTARY FOR MAY 1ST, 2025

                                                                CASH MICHAELS

                                 OUR FIRST HUNDRED DAYS OF HELL

        by Cash Michaels


So I’m reading the op-ed section of The Carolinian, one of the great black newspapers I write for in North Carolina, when I see this interesting editorial cartoon on the op-ed page.

This couple has a big flat screen TV on with King Trump’s scowling face on it. The wife is admonishing her husband, who's standing there with an open carton of eggs in his hands, and just as he’s about to grab one, his wife says, “Don’t you think those eggs are just a bit too expensive to be throwing at anybody?”

        Wow. Talk about heavy!

In another edition of Raleigh’s premier black newspaper, the editorial cartoon shows a father wagging his finger in the air while his seated son is looking up at him with his civics lesson book open. Apparently, the boy has just asked his father a pointed question, but Dad sees need to correct his child.

“No, son,….” The caption balloon shows the father saying. “It’s not the same at all.” 

“In China, the government controls social media. But here in America, the guy who owns social media controls the government. See the difference?”

        Elon Musk and DOGE, are you reading this?!!!

Lord, what would we do without great political cartoons!!!

I’ve been in the news business since 1986, and I’m convinced that if a good picture is worth a thousand words, then the value of a great political cartoon is ten times as much.

Let’s see…a generous portion of merciless snark, a healthy dose of clever irony and  and a pinch of political truth, all wrapped up into a campy illustration. Those are the necessary ingredients for an excellent and relevant political cartoon. They say with one frame what several column inches of written, bloviated opinion can’t, and indeed, in most cases, much, much better.

But c'mon, let’s face it. You could stack all of the best editorial cartoons in the world on top of one another about the disaster that is the first one hundred days of the second Trump Administration, and you still can’t come anywhere near illustrating the sheer madness of it all.

The richest, freest, most technologically advanced and culturally enriched nation in the world, now tragically and pathetically reduced to social and legal rubble, all because of one criminal despot who truly believes not only that the world is his oyster, but the rest of us are nothing but his half-baked clams.

“…I run the country and the world,” the guy who disrespectfully wore a blue suit to the funeral of Pope Francis while other national leaders wore black, bellowed in one of his many recent published interviews marking his first 100 days.

Well, if even a word of that malarky is true, he’s not doing it very well, according to the latest surveys.

Most reputable polls have Trump underwater at least 45% public approval of the job he’s doing. The lowest I’ve seen is The Washington Post poll at 39%. According to CNN, which has Trump at 41%, “Trump’s approval at 100 days [is] lower than any president in at least seven decades.” 

That’s going all the way back to Dwight D. Eisenhower.

And get this. The CNN story continues thatDonald Trump won back the Oval Office and took charge of the government amid the strongest poll numbers of his political career…[but] …Americans’ views of what he’s done so far have turned deeply negative...” at the 100-day mark. 

Well, gee, it sure took the rest of you folks a long time to figure out that the old orange guy was screwin’ your goose.

On economic issues, protecting the border, managing the federal government, conducting foreign policy, brushing his hair…the man who would be king is underwater and sinking faster than a brick in a cheap aquarium. Even Fox News polling has Trump licking the bottom of the barrel.

Go ahead, punish yourself enough to read his Truth Social online diatribes, and he’ll insist that all that negative polling is “fake.” 

“We are doing GREAT, better than ever before,” he insists. 

And the thing that gets me is that it’s all self-inflicted. Because Trump sees himself as the end-all and be-all, he’s doing things that are hurting not just himself politically, but everyone else, including his loyal base of MAGA supporters, and even a rich guy or two, until they call him up and scream bloody murder about how he’s messing up the stock market.

Personally, while I abhor the fact that the innocent of this nation have to suffer while the demented king and his MAGA soldiers try to reshape the country in his own image, I’m glad that many of Trump's followers are being forced to get a taste of his fascist medicine.

        So emboldened is this maniac, he's even threatening to arrest judges - including U.S. Supreme Court justices - who get on his nerves. "If the Courts don't allow what we've been allowed to do for 250 years..." the Liar King wrote, "...America can no longer be the same."

        Talk about constitutional crisis. If judges are now intimidated, we might as well go back to being the Lost Colonies. The prospects are frightening!

When Time Magazine recently did an Oval Office sit-down with Trump, the publication asked him if he agreed with President John Adams that “…we’re a government ruled by laws, not by men.”

King Trump’s response to that, in part, was, “I wouldn’t agree with it 100 percent. We are a government where men are involved in the process of law, and ideally, you’re going to have honest men like me.”

Honest men like him? If my jaws weren’t already tightly attached to my mouth, they would be on the well-worn floor with that one.

The man’s tortured relationship with the truth is indeed remarkable, to say the least. He considers none of the outlandish, illegal, indisputably immoral things he’s done to be wrong.

And he’s got class clowns like Republican Sen.Tommy Tuberville of the intellectually towering state of Alabama to cheer him on.

“A+…,” Tuberville incredibly answered Larry Kudlow on Fox Business Channel, regarding rating Trump’s first 100 days in office. 

“What else can he do, Larry?” Tuby continued. “[Democrats] left [the country] in a total mess. I was up here for four years of Joe Biden. They did not do one thing for the American people or for this country. They actually tried to destroy it, and everything went down. Now, President Trump has got foreign wars, he’s got deportations, the border, tax cuts. He’s trying to save the economy. What a total disaster the Democrats created.”

I wonder if Sen. Tuberville’s seeing-eye dog shares his opinions? No, Tuby is not legally blind that I know of, but given how damn dumb he is, especially when it comes to all matters Trump, folks might as well turn the lights out in every room he every enters from now on, because Lord knows this fool can’t see the forest for the trees.

Tuby is just too dumb to realize that the rest of the civilized world beyond Alabama absolutely can see the pure disaster that King Trump is.

The crazy executive orders just keep on coming folks, over 140 of them in fact (the most of any president in history),  as do the abuses of executive power, and blunt disobedience of the rule of law and the judiciary. The obscene cruelty and calculated exercise of destroying all that is decent as demonstrated during the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency only spells more trouble for our collective future.

        Thankfully, we can always count on our righteous warriors to tell it like it is!

“After 100 days under President Trump, his term can only be defined by economic hardship, divisive, partisan politics, and letting millions suffer for bigger tax breaks for billionaires,” said Congresswoman Alma Adams (D-NC-12). “The last three months have been disastrous, and my constituents have made it clear to me that they are overwhelmingly worse off thanks to this administration. But my Republican colleagues have no issues supporting President Trump’s cruel, unconstitutional actions anyway.”

And, of course, Bishop William Barber, who jump-started his historic Moral Mondays movement this week at the U.S. Capitol to protest the cruel Trump budget cuts coming down the pike that will hurt the poor and further fatten the rich.

As he was praying for the soul of this nation in the Capitol rotunda Monday, Bishop Barber was arrested and taken to jail by Capitol police, no doubt at the direction of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump lackey.

"If a preacher knows that legislators are developing policy that will create injustice, it is our duty to “go down to the palace of the King,” Bishop Barber later wrote in an email to his many supporters.

May Almighty GOD continue to bless my brother-in-Christ, and his mighty efforts to do what is right for our nation!

America has been bum-rushed, ladies and gentlemen! It’s time to get our collective heads out of the sand and realize that by the grace of Almighty GOD, the only people who can save us from this hell in America …is us!

It’s now taken just over 100 days for us to realize that the bravest among us did not die in past wars and conflicts just so that we could one day be ruled by a mad monarch.

They died to preserve democracy, decency, our constitutional rights, and the rule of law.

Those are the vital ingredients of a truly free America. It may take more than a thousand days for us to get that back, and I hope and pray that we are a people fully capable of fighting every minute of those thousand days for what we know is right.

You and I have survived the first hundred days of hell under Donald Trump.

Have you had enough, or do you need to suffer some more?

-30-


 

Monday, April 28, 2025

THE CASH STUFF FOR MAY 1, 2025

                                          Flanked by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on
                                          the left, and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) on the right, Bishop
                                          William Barber on April 27th denounced the "great big ugly..."
                                          Trump bill he says will hurt the poor if passed by Congress.
                                           (video screen grab).

                                            
                                           On Monday, Bishop Barber was among those arrested 
                                            in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda by Capitol police while 
                                            he peacefully prayed for the nation [TV screen grab]

   BISHOP BARBER BEGINS

“MORAL MONDAYS AT THE 

CAPITOL” TO COMBAT

TRUMP, GOP BUDGET CUTS


On the twelfth anniversary of the historic Moral Monday protests that left a positive legacy for progressive activism in North Carolina, its founder, Bishop William Barber, kicked-off the new “Moral Mondays at the Capitol” this week in Washington, D.C. to ramp up public opposition to the proposed 2026 budget by Republican President Donald Trump.

        The Christian social activist was also arrested by Capitol police for peacefully praying for the nation in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. He was later released.

        "If a preacher knows that legislators are developing policy that will create injustice, it is our duty to “go down to the palace of the King,” Bishop Barber later wrote in an email to his supporters Tuesday.

Barber is promising a series of Moral Monday demonstrations in the nation’s Capitol in succeeding Mondays to protest actions by the Trump Administration and the Republican-led Congress.

Amidst a gathering of faith leaders and progressive activists from across the nation on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court Monday, Bishop Barber, on behalf of his nonprofit organization Repairers of the Breach, spoke out against the Trump - GOP budget, saying that government budgets are “moral documents,” and that the poor people who will be hurt by the severe  federal budgets coming “…must be united in our moral resistance against injustice, corruption, and oppression in any form.”

Bishop Barber wasn’t the only high profile progressive leader to recently speak out against the impending Trump-GOP budget cuts.

On Sunday, April 27th, Barber joined House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries  and New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker on their live-streamed appeal to concerned voters from the steps of the U.S. Capitol about proposed Republican budget cut to important programs such as Medicaid, Head Start and the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program.

The proposed budget cuts, if passed, would also slash federal social safety net programs for federal housing assistance, education and also food for poor children in order to provide relief for the nation’s billionaires and millionaires, Jeffries of New York, and Booker of ew jersey, charged.

The Republican-led Congress, after a two-week recess, began this week taking up what Bishop Barber called this “great big ugly bill.”

‘It’s destructive, and it’s deadly, because policies are not benign,” Barber continued during remarks at the Jeffries-Booker livestream Sunday. “Policies don’t kill you quick, but they kill you over time.Because constant neglect is form of political violence and abuse,” the social activist added, noting that statistics show that 800 people in poverty a day die.

Bishop Barber maintained that the Trump-GOP budget cuts will only make that situation worse for poor and low-wage people.

“We cannot allow this budget to go untalked about,” Barber continued.

“We have to have pulpits that are on fire, and people who will say, “The only way a wannabe king gets to be king, is if we bow.”

-30-

ADAMS, ECSU, SHAW AND ST. AUG:

THE LATEST NC HBCU NEWS

By Cash Michaels

Contributing writer

As the 2024-25 academic school year draws to a close, Congresswoman Alma Adams (D-12-NC) lauds President Trump’s executive order supporting Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), while three of North Carolina’s most prominent HBCUs are making top headlines.

On April 24th, Congresswoman Alma Adams of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, a frequent critic of Pres. Donald Trump, this time lauded his support of HBCUs, saying that doing so “…is not a partisan issue.” Rep. Adams reaffirmed the importance of HBCUs being “…centers of achievement, excellence, and success, and have always punched above their weight, even in the face of historic underfunding.”

“We still have more work to do though, especially in holistic infrastructure investments at HBCUs, and I look forward to working with this administration and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass more impactful, bipartisan legislation for our HBCUs.”

But Congresswoman Adams also issued a note of concern about the Trump Administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, stating that by doing so, “…the future for HBCUs will further be in question. Let’s work together to ensure these institutions of higher education always remain HBCU Strong, “ Rep. Adams concluded.

Congresswoman Alma Adams PhD. is Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, and Founder and Co-Chair of the Congressional Bipartisan, Bicameral Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Caucus.

ST. AUGUSTINE’S UNIVERSITY -  Amid dire financial and loss of accreditation headlines that call the small, private HBCU’s future into question, comes good news.

Eleven of 25 seniors whose graduations were called into question because of  unpaid tuition balances totaling $132,000 will now be able to walk the commencement stage on May 3rd with the rest of their graduating class of 2025, thanks to a generous $132,000 donation Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia.

The generous donation came after concerned seniors wrote letters soliciting assistance from St. Augustine’s alumni. Two of them, Gilbert and Carolyn Knowles of Alfred Street Baptist, saw the letters, and were moved o help.

“[The students]…have remained steadfast and stuck with SAU throughout all of the different issues we’ve experienced over the past year and a half,” the Knowles, who, along with the rest of their church, will attend SAU’s May 3rd commencement ceremony, said in a statement. 

"This act of grace by Alfred Street Baptist Church is nothing short of transformative for our students and our institution," SAU Interim President Dr. Marcus H. Burgess said. 

Meanwhile, Brian Bolware, SAU’s Board of Trustees Chairman, has asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into alleged mishandling of covid pandemic relief money at the school.

SHAW UNIVERSITY - Across town in Raleigh, Shaw University is now dealing with allegations of mental and physical abuse from a senior guard on the Lady Bears basketball team who posted a Tik Tok video earlier last week. As a result, other former players  commented that they, too, were victims of similar alleged abuse.

The small, private Baptist university has issued a statement saying it is aware of the recent allegations made online, and takes any allegations of misconduct seriously. The Shaw University statement added that it would not have any further comment on the allegation t this time.

ELIZABETH CITY STATE UNIVERSITY - Finally, at least one person is reported dead, while six other people were injured during an overnight shooting during the early Sunday morning hours that made national news last weekend during ECSU’s campus “Viking Fest” event.

A 24-year man who was not an ECSU student was killed in the shooting.

Three of the six reported injured people are ECSU students. None of the juries were considered life-threatening and all victims were taken to the hospital for treatment.

“The university is deeply saddened by this senseless act,” ECSU  said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and all members of the Viking community affected by this tragedy.”

-30-


Tuesday, April 22, 2025

THE CASH COMMENTARY FOR APRIL 24, 2025


                                                                     CASH MICHAELS

                                          IT COULD BE ANYONE

                                        by Cash Michaels

       

        So indeed, let’s imagine.

That some how, some way, the Trump Administration decides one day they are dirt sick of reading my weekly trashing of their poor excuse for government, come to my home, kick down my door, blindfold and handcuff me, and all under the phony pretense of my being some kind of crime lord or menace to society.

And take me away…to GOD knows where!

No, this isn’t me being flippant about what’s happening right this minute to hundreds, if not thousands of other people in our country as you read this. 

True, some have proven to be folks who are here illegally, for years in some cases. They’ve started families and established businesses. Became pillars of their communities. So their only crime is being here illegally. But we’re supposed to have a legal system in this country to deal with those situations. It’s called “due process,” where the facts of cases are presented before an appropriate court of law, and a legal determination is made before jackbooted ICE agents haul your behind off somewhere.

Like I said, we’re supposed to have a legal process, but what happens when your president of the United States - who, by the way, has committed and been convicted of far more crimes than any illegal immigrant - literally ignores the orders of the courts, even the U.S. Supreme Court, and the ice queens he has for secretary of Homeland Security and attorney general back him up with relish?

You have what we have now.

I've been watching with great interest the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man the Trump Administration at first lied about when it said an administrative error was responsible for him being grabbed by ICE agents and flown to a prison in El Salvador.

By now you know the story. When the Trump Administration got caught lying through its teeth about how Mr. Garcia was disgustingly snatched from his family (which includes a five-year-old child with autism) without warning, they changed their dumber-than-nails story to falsely allege that Garcia was some sort of violent criminal. Never convicted, mind you, but still a criminal.

These folks dug up everything they could about the man to muddy him up, including the false accusation that he was a member of the dangerous MS-13 gang. Amazingly issued a phonier-than-fraudulent doctored photograph of his hand with “MS-13” engraved on it. 

Even the ultra conservative Trump U.S. Supreme Court wasn’t buying it, and ordered the administration to “facilitate” Mr. Garcia’s return to the United States. But then Trump’s buzzards came up with some beeswax that Garcia can’t be brought back because he is now in the custody of El Salvador, so they have no jurisdiction.

        But make no mistake, the American taxpayer - you and I - are paying for Mr. Garcia to be held prisoner in a foreign land without the benefit of his proper day in court.

To his credit, Maryland Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen had heard enough, hopped on a plane, and eventually met with Mr. Garcia where he was being held in El Salvador. Sen. Van Holland went to get the truth, and advocate for his constituent’s release back to the United States. 

When Sen. Van Hollen came back without Garcia, he made the following perfectly clear during an interview with CNN, “If we deny the constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens the constitutional rights of everybody in America.”

Truer words never spoken by the fine gentleman from the great state of Maryland.

Meanwhile Trump’s buzzards are beating their collective chests, claiming that Garcia will never see the United States again.

Make no mistake, Trump’s administration has already made it known that if they can also get away with rounding up American citizens accused of crimes, and ship them off to foreign countries before any of them have so much as an Apple Watch moment in a court of law as the U.S. Constitution demands, they’ll do that too.

We also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office while the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, was visiting.

Bukele has been Trump’s willing accomplice in abrogating the rights of people accused of crimes being grabbed and shipped to his country without so much as a Miranda Christmas card.

Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying here, but those who are accused of committing crimes in this country, no matter how much we deplore their alleged actions, are still entitled to due process under the law. 

That goes for citizens and non-citizens.

You see, the Constitution of the United States is a funny thing. If covers everybody within its borders. So you don’t have to be an American citizen to be entitled to its protections.

Only after you’ve been dutifully and legally convicted of a crime and sentenced, do you lose some of those protections, but you have to be prosecuted and convicted first. That’s what the rule of law calls for around here.

So this business of even thinking about grabbing folks who may or may not be American citizens, or may or may not be accused of serious crimes, is a poor rhetorical fig leaf for the fact that King Trump is trying to jump-start his authoritarian regime on the backs of those he declares to be his society’s undesirables.

Now of course we want violent criminals in our country caught and off the streets so that decent citizens can live in peace and safety. I’m all for that.

But when the accused are just arbitrary grabbed off the street or from their homes, shoved onto planes, and shipped off to foreign lands where they no longer  have any rights, that’s a problem. In fact, how long are they supposed to stay there? Is there any kind of rehabilitation for them? Do they become slaves in that foreign country? Do they forever lose contact with their families and communities?

Do they die there?

These are the questions our Republican-led Congress should be asking, but won’t, because those clowns are so frightened of King Trump and the power they’ve given him, he can get away with anything.

Again, this sets up scenarios where Trump decides he can start rounding up “homegrown” American citizens he doesn’t like, and ship them off, never to be heard from again.

None of this should surprise anyone. Just this week, we saw King Trump issue more of his silly executive orders, basically rolling back civil rights protections and other freedoms we’ve always taken for granted.

But back to Mr. Garcia for a moment.

One of those Trump Administration buzzards I referred to earlier, White House Senior Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka, is reported as telling Newsmax that anyone advocating for due process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia could be viewed as “aiding and abetting a terrorist” and be federally charged.

So by exercising one’s First Amendment rights by calling for the rule of law and due process for Mr. Garcia, I and others might be charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist. 

        Did I get that outrageous nonsense right?

        And what does King Trump have to say about all of this?

        "We are going to have a very dangerous country if we are not allowed to do what we are entitled to do," he says, adding that it would take 200 years to remove undesirables if we went through the courts.

        Man has a point. It's taking at least that long to ultimately get rid of him!

Many of us remember how New York real estate tycoon Donald Trump took a full page ad out in The NY Times back in 1989, calling for the execution of the Central Park Five, five young men of color who were falsely accused and railroaded by the NY City Police Dept. for the brutal rape and beating of a young white woman in Central Park, long before any of them ever had a trial.

Now known as the Exonerated Five, because DNA evidence eventually proved that none of them had anything to do with the crime, the whole shameful episode proved then that Trump has no regard for the rule of law or due process, except when his maniacal behind is in trouble. So we already know what to expect from him as president when it comes to ignoring the rights of the accused.

Trump has never apologized for his racist actions in the Central Park Five case, and he will NEVER apologize for what he’s doing now, and about to do when he goes further in the near future.

That’s why I say, one day, it could be me. It could be you.

It could be anyone whose constitutional rights are violated next, all because this administration may decide it wants to get rid of you.

This is the America we live in, folks! Enjoy your freedom while you can.

                -30-