Category: Trump effect

October 28, 2018

     Yesterday’s massacre of eleven people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue was truly unspeakable.  Armed with an AR-15, the assailant burst in on Saturday morning, shouted anti-Semitic slurs and started firing indiscriminately.  It was the most deadly act of anti-Semitic violence in American history, capping a week which saw assassination attempts targeting two progressive Jewish philanthropists, along with most of the prominent leaders of the Democratic Party.

       The murderer was allegedly enraged that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was assisting Central American refugees attempting to flee horrible conditions (Source:  “11 Killed in Pittsburgh Massacre; Suspect Charged With 29 Counts,” by Campbell Robertson, Christopher Mele and Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times, 10/27/18).  Of course, Trump has been demagoguing this issue for two weeks, aided by outlets as disparate as The New York Times and Fox  News, all of whom treated a desperate group of women and children currently 1100 miles from the U.S. border and traveling on foot, as front page news.   Continue reading “Courage”

October 26, 2018

     The events of the last few days evoke memories of Fort Sumter.  On April 12, 861, four months after South Carolina had seceded from the Union, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, bombarding it for 34 straight hours, until Union soldiers gave up. In the last few days, a Trump superfan named Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe bombs to several prominent Democratic critics of Trump, including Presidents Clinton and Obama, Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, Congresswoman “Auntie” Maxine Waters, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan (sent to him ℅ CNN) and former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.  Philanthropists George Soros and Tom Stryker were targeted, as was actor Robert DeNiro. It is only because, Sayoc shares his idol’s incompetence, along with his virulent racism, that the bombs did not detonate (Source: “Bomb Suspect Arrested in Florida; Charged With Five Counts,” by William K. Rashbaum, Alan Feuer, and Adam Goldman, The New York Times, 10/26/18). Continue reading “Fort Sumter”

October 23, 2018

 

From the time Trump was elected, we knew it was only a matter of time before he openly declared his allegiance to the white supremacists’ vision for this country.  Of course every policy goal he pursued was evidence of that, but his statement at last night’s rally for soulless hack, Ted Cruz, deprives journalists and apologists of the fig leaf of deniability, (Source:  “Trump Comes Out As A White Nationalist,” by Stephen A. Crockett, Jr., TheRoot.com, 10/23/18).

Trump’s speech yesterday, along with the strategic leak of a plan to define transgender people out of existence- thereby validating and encouraging their persecution, is straight out of Hitler’s playbook.  Hitler started by destroying scientific works on the study of sexuality, moved on to closing gay clubs to drive gay people underground, and finally herded gay men into prisons and concentration camps (Source:  “Persecution of Homosexuals in the Third Reich,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, encyclopedia.ushmm.org).  Meanwhile, the Republicans’ contempt for the right of people with pre-existing conditions to have healthcare would be right at home in ancient Sparta. Continue reading “The first battle”

October 21, 2018

    On Friday, federal prosecutors in Virginia unsealed an indictment against Elena Khusyaynova, an accountant employed by Russian troll farm, Concord, for her role in its efforts to interfere with the 2018 midterm elections.  Concord was already indicted by the Special Counsel in February for its interference in the 2016 Presidential elections, (Source: “U.S. brings first charge for meddling in the 2018 midterm elections,” by Josh Gerstein, Politico.com, 10/19/18).

    The indictment charges that the Russian scheme, dubbed “Project Lakhta” aimed to “sow division and discord in the U.S. political system, including by creating social and political polarization, undermining faith in democratic institutions and influencing U.S. elections, including the 2018 midterms,” (Source:  Criminal Complaint, United States v. Khusyaynova, Case No. 1:18-MJ-464 (Dist. Ct., E.D.Va)).  The indictment alleges that the budget expended on this criminal conspiracy from 2016 to 2018 was $35 million dollars! Continue reading “The seeds of our destruction”

October 18, 2018

 

The details of Jamal Khashoggi’s grisly assassination are beyond shocking.  Turkish officials claim that the Saudi death squad who intercepted him at the Consulate employed particularly sadistic methods.  They cut off Khashoggi’s fingers, possibly while he was still alive, and then continued to dismember him, cutting off his head.  The forensic pathologist imported for the occasion advised the killers to play music while they tortured Khashoggi to “ease the tension,” (Source:  “Audio Offers Gruesome Details of Jamal Khashoggi Killing, Turkish Officials Say,” by David S. Kirkpatrick and Carlotta Gail, The New York Times, 10/17/18).  Given the fact that four of the members of this hit squad have ties to Mohammad Ben Salman, there can be no doubt that Khashoggi was murdered at his behest. Continue reading “Pulp (non)fiction”

October 16, 2018

 

With 21 days until the critical midterm elections, the news continues to give us cause for white hot rage.  Although polls continue to show Democrats with a 70% chance of re-taking the House, the Republicans have displayed ruthless determination to thwart the will of the people, using every method at their disposal.  This is the context through which we should view Senator Elizabeth Warren’s release yesterday of DNA test results “proving” her Native American ancestry (Source:  “Warren Releases Results of DNA Test,” by Annie Linskey, The Boston Globe, 10/15/18).  Warren’s gambit to silence Trump’s continued racist taunts was not only futile, but dangerous.

By releasing her results as “proof” of Native American heritage, Warren implied that membership in a tribe could be determined by DNA, rather than being a political and legal decision made by the tribes themselves, based on their own extensive records, (Source:  “Why So Many Native Americans Are Upset That Elizabeth Warren Tried Proving Her Ancestry with DNA,” by Molly Olmstead, Slate.com, 10/15/18). Continue reading “Don’t get mad…”

October 12, 2018

     Yesterday the Oval Office was the setting for a scene more fitting for Barnum & Bailey than for the high minded affairs of state that august setting usually requires.  Kanye West burst into the West Wing sporting a MAGA hat, armed with his unique brand of proudly narcissistic ignorance and delivered a rambling, incoherent paean to Trump.

     Predictably, everyone from Black Twitter to The Washington Post was mesmerized by the insane spectacle.  It is truly a sign that we are living in bizarro world when it is a sign of “wokeness” to delete Kanye West and stream Taylor Swift.  There was speculation about Kanye’s mental health, but whether he is bipolar or “sleep deprived,” he is clearly seen as nothing more than a prop by Trump.  It is the ultimate humiliation to be the useful idiot of Putin’s useful idiot, but in 2018, here we are. Continue reading “Leave nothing to chance”

October 10. 2018

     After the bruising fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, watching his jovial, backslapping, ceremonial swearing in at The White House was jarring indeed.  It was a stark reminder of how politicized and diminished The Supreme Court is in the wake of McConnell’s ruthless manipulation of the confirmation process. McConnell didn’t hesitate to steal a seat from President Obama or to conceal Kavanaugh’s record, suborn his perjury, and whitewash an investigation into possible sexual assault in order to ram him through.  To the contrary, McConnell is proud of his accomplishment- a partisan, conservative Supreme Court majority to enshrine minority rule for a generation. Continue reading “Stay thirsty”

October 8, 2018

 

It is no exaggeration to say, as Charles Blow has, that we are in the midst of a Cold Civil War.  On one side, we have people who happily put brown children in cages,  re-hire cops who have murdered innocent Black children in cold blood and privilege the rights of rapists over survivors.  They bond with their leader by delighting in cruelty to those of us they disdain as beneath them.  If you think that this is a new phenomenon in American life, I have some lynching postcards to show you (Source:  “Cruelty Is The Point,” by Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, 10/3/18). Continue reading “Civil War”

October 6, 2018

     In the last week, as we have watched displays of anger on all sides, we have once again been reminded, in ways too painful to contemplate, whose anger is deemed worthy of respect and response, and whose anger is belittled and dismissed.

    We had Kavanaugh’s red-faced tirade, his face contorted with rage at the thought that a woman might hold him to account for his behavior and keep him from his gilded perch on our nation’s highest court.  Kavanaugh’s entitled tantrum was so disturbing that it prompted former Supreme Court Justice Stevens to state that it disqualified him from a seat on the Supreme Court (Source: “Kavanaugh does not belong on the Supreme Court, retired Justice Stevens says,” Reuters.com, 10/5/18). Continue reading “The uses of anger”