Tag Archives: immigration

Political Rants

Fourteenth.

Very nearly speechless after the heinous massacre of Jewish congregants in Pittsburgh. I am glad, at least, that reporting on this atrocity has attempted to capture the motivations of this neo-fascist killer. He was driven to attack the Tree of Life Synagogue by his outrage over the work of HIAS, a century-old Jewish organization dedicated to resettlement of refugees from around the world. The president’s, his party’s, and conservative media’s fulminations about the approach of an “invasion” of Honduran refugees, supposedly funded by “globalists” like George Soros, no doubt contributed to the shooter’s sense of urgency. And, of course, he had an AR-15 handy. Why not, right?

Two thumbs up (your ass)How did Trump meet this outrage? By doubling down on his anti-immigrant tirade. By sending hundreds of troops to the border to stop a group of poor people a thousand miles away. And by launching an attack on birthright citizenship, the principle at the core of the fourteenth amendment. It’s almost as if, while attending a memorial service in Pittsburgh, Trump is doing his best to make it up to the Synagogue shooter for falling short of his racist expectations. He seems to be under the impression, no doubt encouraged by the likes of Steven Miller, that he can, as president, undo the 14th Amendment by executive order or, in a pinch, through legislative action. As usual, Trump is skating on top of another constitutional question about which he knows less than nothing.

Regardless of its vacuity, his attack on the notion of citizenship is a toxic ploy one week in advance of the mid-term elections. As with his scare talk about the refugee “caravan” working its way north, Trump is using birthright citizenship as a tool to gin up his most hardcore supporters, including those on the extreme xenophobic right. For them, this speaks to Trump’s core brand proposition – the demonization of people of color that propelled him into the White House on a wave of white resentment. He entered the political arena railing about Obama’s birth certificate; essentially, attempting to undermine the legitimacy of his citizenship and, of course, his presidency, and fostering the notion that black people in general are not full citizens, foreign, illegitimate.

Will the ploy work? Tuesday will tell. All I can say is vote, vote, vote, and encourage others to do the same. Let’s prove him wrong. Let’s put a check on this disaster.

luv u,

jp

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

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