Tag: caravan

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Our Rakish President – Trump uses his to start forest fires

November 21st 2018

“Obama judges have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”

Those were the words uttered by the five-and-dime Mussolini in the Oval Office today, and it may be the scariest thing he’s uttered to date. By implication, Trump judges are good for the safety of the country, whereas non-Trump judges are…well, traitors, apparently. It isn’t enough that the judge he originally picked a fight with yesterday, US district judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco has nearly a decade on the bench (He issued a temporary restraining order against Trump’s proclamation that he could incarcerate asylum-seekers). Roberts himself was nominated by George W. Bush in 2005 and while I think he’s far too chummy with business interests, I don’t consider him a threat to the safety of the country.

A relatively straightforward lower court decision, observing the country’s mandate by treaty on how to treat asylum-seekers, seems to have triggered the biggest confrontation between the Court and an Administration since FDR’s famous effort to pack the court in 1936.

The constitutionality of “the court pack” never was resolved. The court began issuing rulings favorable to FDRs New Deal programs even before FDR’s too-smart-by-half idea, and interest in the court pack waned among Congressional Democrats. One judge had a change of heart regarding New Deal Acts that began before the court pack idea was brought up, a fellow named Roberts. Owen Roberts. He had been a swing vote between the four conservatives on the court and the four liberals, the New Deal’s version of Anthony Kennedy.

Our Roberts isn’t that Roberts, and Trump pretty clearly is no FDR. I don’t think we’ll see anything resembling a rapprochement there.

FDR and his allies were slier in their attack on the courts. FDR was the concern troll, fretting that the nine old men, many in their 70s, might find the burden of the many cases before the Court to be an undue burden, and should welcome the help of four or five young, strapping judges who can lift the Constitution over their heads and give it a good stout flapping. His allies are busy, including publishing a book, “Nine Old Men” that inferred that the court might have some problems with senility creeping in.

Trump, of course, is a bit more direct, simply saying that justices not appointed by him presented a threat to the safety of the county. He probably can’t display the same wit and brilliance with the name “Roberts” that he did with “Adam Schitt”. Our President, the third-grader.

Trump has authorized US troops guarding the border against migrant caravans to use deadly force if necessary. Citing “credible evidence and intelligence” (in other words, Trump pulled it out of his ass) Trump believes that thousands of approaching Central American migrants “may prompt incidents of violence and disorder” that could threaten border patrol agents and other government personnel. His order expands the authority of US troops to include “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention and cursory search” to protect the border agents.

Those poor border agents. How will the poor dears deal with a group of unarmed men, women, old folks and children who are still some 800 miles away and won’t even show up until at least March? Or longer, given their travel plans.

You see, those troops that Trump has boldly sent to protect the poor, quivering, border agents from possible contact with aliens? They went to Laredo, Texas. The caravan is going to San Diego, some 1,500 miles to the left of Laredo.

Oh, well, the troops can cover themselves in glory potshotting Mexican kids who look like they might be thinking of tossing a rock at the heavily-armed troops. After all, it worked for Netanyahu. A true hero in Trump’s eyes.

Posse Comitatus? Oh, you’re thinking of the OLD United States, and not the new and improved Trump version.

It’s raining in Northern California right now, and with a sigh of relief, Smokey the Bear can lay down his rake. While this storm won’t bring much to Southern California, the long-range (November 27-December 6th) looks pretty promising. Everybody is ready for a respite in the fires, and I just hope the Camp Fire area doesn’t get too much rain. Montecito is still fresh in our memories (and still at risk, nearly a year later). Likewise the millions of other acres burned in this ongoing nightmare. One clown on Facebook castigated ignorant liberals who probably didn’t know where Paradise was for doubting the acumen of Glorious Leader, showing a picture of a piling cat, saying that this was the ‘rake’ Trump was talking about. A piling cat is about 10-15 feet wide, with 6 or 8 big tines, and resembles the big tilling machines tractors tow around fields. Nobody calls it a ‘rake.’

I see Ivanka was busted for using an unsecured email server for government business. How about it, Pissmop? Gonna chant “Lock her up”? Oh, give it a go! We watched your grotesque turkey pardon thing yesterday: this is your chance to surprise us all with a flash of self-deprecating wit and humor. Or even, “I pardon peas, carrots, Ivanka and myself”.

Of course, if you ever venture out where you can hear crowds, you hear “Lock HIM up” a lot from now on. Unless you feel, as you do with American troops, that if you go out where they can see you, someone might shoot you.

Gosh, that would be a real shame. Stay hidden and stay safe. Keep your rake handy against all the forest fires you’re starting politically.

PS: If Trump is impeached, guess who oversees his Senate trial?

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The Cowardice – If you are a bigot, you are a coward

November 1st 2018

The main premises underlying bigotry are fear of those who are different in some way, any way, and a desire to twist society to give yourself an unfair advantage over the people you hate and fear.

It is cowardice.

That’s not a descriptive; it’s the absolute basis for bigotry. Without fear there cannot be bigotry.

It’s said that we all harbor racist impulses. If you are walking down a street and you find yourself surrounded by people who are different, it’s normal to feel a slight sense of anxiety. On bad days, we may all see someone who is different do something boneheaded or foolish, and think “typical.”

We all are anxious about the Others, and that transcends all races, all ethnicities, all religions.

It’s what we do about it that either makes us decent human beings, or cowards.

Decent people understand what the animal impulse is, and set it aside. Cowards use it to justify and feed their fear.

You can choose to be a coward. You can choose to be a bigot. You have then chosen to be a weak and vicious person. You have chosen to be contemptible.

I can’t help but wonder what the 15,000 troops Donald Trump is sending to the Mexican border are feeling. They’re under discipline; they can’t express their thoughts and opinions on the matter. But they have to know that in being sent, heavily armed, with orders to shoot “rock throwers” from a group of families with children and grandparents, some barefoot, who are walking the length of Mexico and have 1,300 miles to cover, and that they are being used by a low, loathsome man for a low, loathsome purpose.

The Pentagon knows. They leaked a risk assessment report, something they never do. Their conclusion: there is no threat. There have been previous caravans from the desperate lands colonized by American corporations that used vile fascism to control workers and protect industry. Many caravans of frightened, desperate people, taking everything they can carry on their backs, hoping for a better life. They are sometimes barefoot, pregnant, carrying children. Elders ride in hand-drawn carts.

Mexico is a wild and forbidding land, variated and beautiful, but daunting to hike. These people are walking the equivalent of Maine to Florida, through jungle and desert.

It’s something the Pentagon has seen quite a few times, and very few of the people in the caravan actually make it to the American border. And when they get here, they aren’t interested in throwing rocks; they want jobs, and a chance to educate their kids, and a better life.

There has to be a lot of contempt and disgust for this President and his weak followers amongst the American military leadership. They signed on to defend America and the Constitution, and not a mob of inchoate, cowardly strutting bigots. Trump and his howling followers are as alien to American as Hitler and his brownshirts were to Germany in 1923.

Many Germans thought they were better than that, and most of them were. But enough weren’t.

Forty percent of Americans support Trump. They are the worst of America; the coward, the bigots, the vicious and violent, the ignorant and the godstruck. Their strutting masks deep fear.

So they consider it courageous to shoot Jews at their place of worship. They admire Trump for going and desecrating the grieving and mourning of the survivors. They moan about how they are victims and will be until they have put themselves above the law and all others are subject to their laws. Gays have no rights. Immigrants have no rights. African Americans have no rights. The list of people they think don’t deserve rights is very long, and based on a sense of grievance, an insane notion that people who have the same rights they do have an advantage.

Cowardice.

Trump is trying to harvest the Coward-American vote, with grandiose promises to throw hundreds of thousands into tent-cities (with hot and cold running Zyclon-B, perhaps) playing on their yammering fear to crowd around his ersatz aura of Father Invincibility. He vowed to greet the caravan with live ammo, perhaps the most craven moment in American history.

If you agree with Trump, you aren’t just wrong, not just inhumane. You are a coward. You are contemptible. Shooting kids because they look like they could be capable of throwing rocks? It’s why Israel, once the most broadly supported country on Earth, is now met with scorn and disgust. But Netanyahu, another strutting bully and coward and disgrace to his country, seems to be Trump’s role model. Shoot kids. I’ll make you look strong and resolute.

I believe Americans are better than this. The only question is if they contain the ones who aren’t better than this. After all, we have the example of Germany to look to. Lot of good people in Germany.

Just not enough.

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Madness Awaits – The savagery of the GOP laid bare

Madness Awaits

The savagery of the GOP laid bare

October 21st, 2018

As the midterms near, the sheer madness of America’s descent has become nakedly clear. A journalist, an American resident, is tortured and murdered in a Saudi Arabian embassy, and the President of the United States spins excuses on behalf of the Saudi Crown Efrit who doubtlessly ordered the murder.

The next day, Pissmop praises a Congressman who body-slammed a reporter for the crime of asking a question. Later, he claimed he was just joking, but the howling, maddened mob who cheered him and made death gestures at reporters in attendance were not joking.

Meanwhile, the propagandistic pseudo-reporters of the far right are transfixed by the existential threat of a group of men, women, and children who are slowly making their way out of the horrors of their homelands in central America, intent on walking the length of Mexico, some 1,800 miles, to petition for amnesty at the American border. Declaring them criminals—which they aren’t—Pissmop told his mindless screamers that something must be done right away, and only the GOP can save them from the ravening horde limping its way north.

The group includes old people and children, and are on foot, so they probably aren’t moving much faster than Pissmop can waddle around his golf course. Let’s see: 1,800 miles divided by waddle equals lots of time to figure out humane and sensible answers. But Pissmop doesn’t want that.

Pissmop claims that Democrats want open borders and this huge menace will invade America the day after the election unless Republicans keep Congress.

The Republicans have abandoned even the efforts to make their lies credible. Today’s local paper had a column labeling the return of insurers being able to deny insurance to people with pre-existing conditions a liberal lie, but the fact it that is exactly what is happening. Up to 40% of the population is at risk of far higher premiums or losing their coverage altogether.

Republican thieves in Congress, avid to steal the trillions allocated for Social Security and Medicare for their rich masters, have announced they plan to impose deep cuts to ‘pay for’ the huge deficits that they themselves have created. Social Security and Medicare aren’t even a part of those deficit and will make no differences to the deficits. But they will steal the pensions and health care from people who have spent their lives paying for it.

Back in 2002 I wrote an essay about a movie, The Man Who Cried with Christina Ricci and Johnny Depp. The movie concerned itself with the rapid descent into utter madness the citroyens of Paris experienced in the wake of the German invasion in 1940. You never see the German invaders. You just hear them marching. Cronch, cronch, cronch. (And I remember wondering what it must have been like for German citizens between 1932 and the final consolidation of Nazi power by mid 1934. Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner tells that tale).

Things in America were bad in 2002, as the country went through a big surge of hypernationalism and paranoia in the wake of the 9/11 attacks (brought to you largely by citizens of Saudi Arabia, the same nation Pissmop is being an murder accessory after the fact for), and the article address the snarling viciousness that consumed the country in the wake of the attacks.

While it never really did recover from that, America at least had a reason then. People were frightened and lashing out, and it was pretty easy to see why.

America doesn’t really have that excuse now. White citizens are not in danger of being subsumed by ‘dusky races’. Christians are not being persecuted or even inconvenienced. LGBT folks aren’t trying to force anyone to their lifestyle: they just want you to let them live their lives in peace.

Other minorities don’t want ‘special rights’; they just want the same rights you enjoy. People who recognize that aren’t employing ‘identity politics’; they just aren’t going to throw the rights of their fellow humans under the bus in order to try to appease swaggering bigots.

Yes, the economy is teetering and likely to crash between now and the next general election, but that’s the inevitable result of unrestrained capitalism. Give them enough rope. Entire economies vanish into oligarchic black holes. Republicans swear they are the solution to that, but the fact is they are the cause.

What’s more, it’s what they want. That’s why the deliberate sabotaging of the national treasury, pensions, health care, and the systematic destabilizing of American institutions from voting to the courts. Economies in vast turmoil mean societies in crisis, and that in turn means a cringing, frightened and dependent populace.

The cause of the crises are mostly imaginary, but the crises that arise are quite real, destructive, and useful to Pissmop and his cohorts who stand to benefit from the destruction and debilitation of your personal reality.

Republicans invent crises to try and panic you and make you their dependents, but the reality is that they are the crisis, and it’s one that can still be solved.

Next month, make the Republican party and its would-be dictator an unhappy footnote in history.

Or follow the path of Germany in the 1930s.

Cronch. Cronch. Cronch.

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