Tag Archives: Claudia Tenney

Political Rants

The “T” word.

Just when you think it can’t happen in YOUR town, well … it happens. Our odiferous president came to Utica, NY this past week, barking his acrid endorsement of our congressional representative, Claudia Tenney (a.k.a she who claims the $1.5 trillion in rich people tax cuts have “already paid for themselves”) at the old Hotel Utica. He was greeted by what was, by most estimations, the largest public demonstration in recent memory – somewhere between 1,700 and 2,000 people holding signs, raising their voices, pulling a large duck-like inflatable man-baby Trump replica. Back in 2003, just before the start of the Iraq war, we had what was for Utica a large demonstration downtown that was probably 200 or 250 people – nothing like this.

Trump / Tenney: a match made in heaven.Trump attended a fundraiser for Tenney that was supposed to be a closed-door, no-press event, but at some point they allowed pool reporters in to record his remarks, which were about typical. It amounts to the Democrats wanting to raise your taxes, open the borders wide, and take away your guns. Of course, the president was talking to a crowd of heavy-wallet donors: the cheap seats were $1,000 and sponsors paid $15,000. So, for once, he may be right about Democrats wanting to raise the taxes of the people in that room – they richly deserve it.

No comments from the president on the recent media tour of his former advisor and reality television co-star, Omarosa (whose name sounds like Elvis spoke it). The celebrity has released some recordings of conversations in the White House and on the phone with Trump, Kelly, and others. She has also claimed that Trump has used the N-word a number of times on his dumb-ass NBC show and as president. This is more reality-show fodder, of course, and particularly meaningless, as evidence of this kind would prove nothing that we don’t already know. Donald Trump is a racist and a bigot; we don’t need to hear him using that special word to know that much. He has been spouting bigoted rhetoric since day one of his campaign and long before. He has engaged in the equivalent of blood libel against muslims and refugees from the global south. He has elevated notorious racists to key posts in his administration and apologized for white supremacists.

People can get used to just about anything. But with an administration like this, normalization amounts to complicity. Glad to see so many of my neighbors making their voices heard.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

The visitor.

It looks like we’re getting a visit from the hair-hat in chief early next week. Trump will be here in Central New York in an attempt to boost the campaigns of two, maybe three regional republican representatives whose seats are seen as vulnerable in this November’s mid-term elections. I understand he’ll do one of his signature Klan rallies for GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik at Fort Drum in Jefferson County, then shuttle over to some rubber chicken fundraiser for our own Rep. Claudia Tenney, the Alex Jones-style congress member from New Hartford, my old home town. (Full disclosure: I graduated high school with her brother Bob and was a senior when she was a sophomore … so trust me, I know where she’s getting it from.) Maybe he’ll stump for Syracuse area Rep. John Katko, as well, though I don’t know that it would do him a lot of good.

Rep Tenney, ca. 1977Trump’s fundraiser for Tenney, reportedly, will be private, not open to the public, no lying media allowed. Like most politicians (Tenney included), he prefers a controlled crowd of sycophants to any even nominally open forum. At Fort Drum, however, Trump will be howling and baying his praise of Tenney, Stephanik, and others for co-sponsoring another crap piece of legislation that will pour more money into the base and build a fence around the former installation known as Griffiss, which still houses a raft of military contractors mostly working on high tech. (So, in effect, it’s still an air base, with a landing strip that can accommodate pretty much any military aircraft up to and including the C-5 transport.)

I wonder if some of our local conspiracy theorists and Tenney supporters will make their way over to the Fort Drum Klan … I mean, election rally. Perhaps we will see evidence of the Q-anon movement. Maybe that guy from Oriskany, NY who was flying a klan flag and displaying a black skeleton hanging from a noose will be there. It will certainly be a bigot magnet of the first order, given that Trump is doubling down on his anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric in the run up to the November election, hoping to pump up his base. As Michelle Goldberg said recently, it’s clear now that the key appeal to Trump voters in 2016 was not economics, as many have claimed, but good old fashioned hate. Very refreshing.

So, pull your sheets on, people, and grab the tiki torches: your low-rent fuehrer is coming to town.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Hostage crisis.

It took more than a week of growing pressure, but it appears Trump has blinked on the policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S. border. That hasn’t stopped them from using these people as hostages in an effort to pass draconian revisions to the country’s immigration laws. More than 2,300 minors, including many under 5 years old, remain in detention facilities across the country, under separate administrative jurisdiction than the entities that are holding their immigrant parents. Very little has changed, in effect, for these families that have been dismembered by this bigoted administration, acting out the fever-dreams of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and would-be school shooter Steven Miller (a.k.a. worst speechwriter in the history of the profession) in an effort to seem “tough” on those dark foreigners their constituents love to hate.

Miller, pictured here after drinking a tall glass of children's tears.As reported by Chris Hayes and commented on by the folks at The Majority Report, more than 90% of the adults with children caught crossing the border are being charged with a federal misdemeanor. So for a “crime” equivalent in the federal government’s eyes to transporting water hyacinths (title 18, section 46) or improperly using the image of Smokey the Bear (section 711), you can have your children taken away. That sounds fair, right? Still, to hear many Republican legislators or garden-variety Trump supporters describe it, a substantial number of these people are either (1) human traffickers posing as families, or (2) crisis actors deliberately trying to make Trump look bad. The first one is hilarious. In what world does a human trafficker bring just one kid across the border, let alone in a manner likely to get them arrested? Pretty bad business model for someone trying to profit off of human misery. (Claim #2 is just too ridiculous to comment on.)

My substandard Congressional representative, the fragrant Claudia Tenney, made a statement about this matter that parrots the administration, right down to the invocation of MS13, a Los Angeles-born gang whose terror is forcing many of the people she denounces into refugee status in the first place. No surprises there. For Trump and his GOP allies, like Tenney, this is really just a test of zero-tolerance policy moving forward. If we swallow this, what else can they put on our plates? It doesn’t require a lot of imagination to guess where they might go next. There are 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, give or take a few hundred thousand. If Trump and company choose to go “zero-tolerance” on them, we will end up with that “deportation force” he was threatening to establish during the campaign. Very likely, this is just the beginning, particularly as the White House is ranging around for ways to light a fire under their base in advance of the mid-term elections.

Collectively (and individually), we have to decide how much of this thuggish behavior we’re willing to tolerate before we ALL stand in the street. Stay tuned.

luv u,

jp