Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Not Quite Color Blind



Racist? No. Inaccurate? Well, no. But from the spokesman for President Trump, he who (successfully) nominated Marco Rubio for Secretary of State? Hell, yes.

Decoding Fox News is wrong.


It is neither "incredibly racist" nor slightly racist to say

When you are flying on an airplane with your loved ones, which everyone of us in this room has, do you pray that your plane lands safely snf you get to your destination or that your pilot has a certain skin color? I think that we all know the answer to that question and as President Trump said yesterday, it's common sense.

Nonetheless, it is hypocritical for someone representing Donald Trump to pretend that the Administration doesn't care about an individual's skin color. According to Semafor

Secretary of State Marco rubio will appoint Darren Beattie, a speechwriter in President Donald Trump's first term, acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, two people briefed on the plans said.

Rolling Stone explains

Beattie is notorious for his affiliations with some of the most noxious corners of Trumpworld, and his appointment to the influential State Department role has revived scrutiny on his past writings and statements.

In October, for example, Beattie wrote on X: “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”

His fixation on denigrating racial minorities and women is longstanding. On Jan. 6, 2021, while rioters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the Electoral College certification of President Joe Biden, Beattie spent the day tweeting at prominent Black political figures and organizations, telling them they needed to “learn their place,” and “bend the knee to MAGA.”

Ibram Kendi needs to learn his place and take a knee to MAGA. Learn his proper role in our society,” he wrote of the famed Black author.

In May 2023, Beattie wrote: “Middle class and working class white men are treated far worse in America than Uiguhrs are in China,” a reference to the Turkish-descendent ethnic group targeted by Chinese government’s ethnic cleansing campaigns….

This appointment was not made by Donald Trump or President Musk. It appears to have been made by Marco Rubio, who was supposed to be the President's "good" Cabinet appointee. As The New York Times reported, with the support of all forty-seven democrats

The Senate confirmed Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, on Monday as America’s 72nd secretary of state, putting a former political rival of President Trump at the helm of American diplomacy.

Mr. Rubio, 53, was unanimously confirmed in a 99-to-0 vote, becoming the first Latino to occupy the job and Mr. Trump’s first cabinet secretary to be confirmed.

In his last act as a sitting senator, Mr. Rubio voted for himself, giving the Senate clerks a thumbs up as colleagues from both parties applauded.

No doubt many of those Democrats and Republicans were thrilled to be able to vote for "the first Latino to occupy the job." Evidently, he also will become the first Secretary of State to nominate for a high-ranking position an individual insisting "competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work."  

This is in an Administration whose chief spokesperson asks "When you are flying on an airplane with your loved ones, which everyone of us in this room has, do you pray that your plane lands safely snf you get to your destination or that your pilot has a certain skin color?"" Maybe she should be asked how Donald Trump, the boss of our new Secretary of State, would answer that question.




Monday, February 03, 2025

Four More Years Plus



“I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100% sure,” Trump told House Republicans at a gathering here, one week after he was sworn into office for a second term. “I think I’m not allowed to run again.”

Trump continued to entertain the prospect of yet another presidential run, prodding Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who moments earlier had introduced him onstage, to promise a “new renaissance.”

“Am I allowed to run again?” Trump asked. “Mike, I better not get you involved in that.”

A former constitutional lawyer, Johnson, standing on stage with Trump, chuckled at Trump's comments. Other GOP lawmakers present also laughed.

Lefty "Ring of Fire" podcaster Farron Cousins argues

There is a threat in that statement but it's not the threat of him running for a third term. And the threat was very subtle and it didn't come across as a threat. But I' gonna tell you what it was. Donald Trump is speaking to a group of Republicans that he needs to keep in line. He knows that the House of Represpresentatives has a razor-thin majority that he can't afford to lose more than two Republicans. the threat is, I've raised a ot of money for the next race.And the subtlw underlying threat of that is (that) if you don't go with me 100% of the time, I will fund a primary challenger to you. 

That is what the media missed in reporting on this story. They're too hypwer-focused on, oh my God, he's threateing to run for a third term. No, he is theatening, but he is threatening the Republicans in the House that I won't give you any of the money I've raised if you don't go along with me. Because he's admitting- he's like, I can't use it on myself, so who am I gonna spend it on?

Cousins correctly identifies Trump's primary (pun intended) objective in making this remark. The President wants to make sure that every Republican support him unconditionally and each understands that if he or she wavers, President Trump will finance a primary opponent.

Nonetheless, there is another threat there, one which Cousins explicitly rejects.  He sttates that the President wants people to believe that he's "gonna do a third term" but

It cannot happen. It will not happen. I am not certain about many things with the Trump Administration but this one I am certain of so don't waste your time freaking out about it. There's plenty of other crap to freak out about, trust me. But this ain't it.



The President does want to persuade Senators that he is not necessarily a lame-duck President while the conventional wisdom is that he is, unable constitutionally to serve another term. However, the Twenty-Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is silent on the issue of the number of terms a President might serve. In total, Section 1 reads (with the relevant portion in italics and in bold)

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not preventt any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

The Constitution thus prohibits an individual from being elected to the office of the President more than twice. It does not prevent him (or her) from serving more than two terms, or ten years.

Throughout American history, it seemed preposterous that a President would attempt to serve more than two terms. It also would have seemed preposterous that any President would: break the law by "freezing trillions of dollars in federal spending and dismissing members of the national Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); that his Administration would order the removal of all prosecutors involved in investigating an attempted coup against the US government and a list of all FBI agents who worked on it with the aim of dismissing many from employment; that he would defy the plain language of statue that he notify Congress beforehand with "a substantive rationale" before firing Inspectors General; or disregard the Constitution's plain language that anyone born in the USA is an American citizen.

These are only the most publicized, clearly illegal and/or unconstitutional acts taken in the first two weeks of the new Administration. Removing civil service protections from federal employees so they can be fired at will and replaced by toadies, withdrawing from the World Health Organization, imposing steep tariffs on allies, attempting to intimidate them and others, and the list goes on. 

Representative Andy Ogles of Georgia has introduced a resolution to amend the US Constitution to remove the prohibition on a President being elected to a third term. That is unlikely to prevail and with dozens of moves, ranging from the reckless to worse, made by the White House, there is- as Cousins maintians- no reason to "freak out" about the third term thing. Yet.

There are other ways to remain in power which, especially with the the Supreme Court's ruling last July in Trump v. United States, which eliminated virtually any check on criminal conduct by a President.  Donald Trump is a very elderly man and if physical appearance is any indication (often not), he may not make it tanother four years. 

Yet if he remains on two feet, he's not going anywhere. That's his goal and if the courts, law enforcement, and other institutions do not stand up to the despot, by that time all resistance may be futile.


Saturday, February 01, 2025

Untrue, Not Crazy


You will not be surprised that President Donald Trump and the White House press secretary lie like a rug. However, there is something basic to policy hidden here.

On Tuesday

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, made a similar claim on Tuesday during her debut news briefing. She stated that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) “found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.”

That would be an awful lot of sex, though "awful" and "sex" probably shouldn't be in the same phrase.The following day, the President, a little more weirdly, himself boasted "we identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. They used them as a method of making bombs. How about that?"

Though not most important to the story, the Trump-Leavitt claim was inaccurate, as explained by The Times of the United Kingdom. There is a province in Mozambique and

In this Gaza, and the adjoining Inhambane province, about a quarter of the adult population is HIV positive, and since 2021 the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation has received more than $82 million from USAid, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to operate reproductive health projects there. The support was expected to continue until 2026.

A comprehensive report issued in September by USAid was reviewed by The Times. Some $60.8 million in funding was allocated for condoms and female contraceptives in 2023, but not a cent of that seems to have gone to Gaza.

In fact, no condoms were sent to any part of the Middle East and just one small shipment — $45,680 in oral and injectable contraceptives — was sent to the region, all of it distributed to the government of Jordan.

The most common form of contraceptive paid for with USAid money was contraceptive implants for women ($23 million), followed by injectable ones ($17 million). Only about $7 million was allocated for “male condoms”.

Dan Evon, of the non-profit News Literacy Project, said: “It’s also worth noting that this is not a Biden programme. Trump, too, spent funds on sending contraceptives around the globe. In 2019, about $40 million was spent on contraceptives by the Trump administration.



Sending money "to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas" would be ridiculous policy. Sending money to Gaza to buy condoms for whomever probably also would be unswise because the millions would more likely be used for weapons or tunnels than for contraceptives.

Nonetheless, sending condoms themselves to Gaza is not such a crazy idea. At worse, they'd go unused, disposed of by Hamas or unused by the populace. At best, however, it would be vey wise strategic policy.

As a vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance said  "We owe something to our country. We owe something to our future. The best way to invest in it is to ensure the next generation actually exists. I think we have to go to war against the anti-child ideology that exists in our country."

Your mileage may differ. However, ridiculous hyperbole aside, the aggressively pro-natalist Vance arguably has a point, in that the USA- as nearly all of the West- has a fertility rate below replacement level. This affluent nation can afford to have a higher birth rate (or not).

The USA, with an estimated 12.2 births per 1,000 people, in 2024 ranked 145 out of 228 entities in fertility rate. However, the two entities most closely associated with having a "Palestinian" population, Gaza and the West Bank, do it differently. The Gaza Strip is #38 with 26.8 births per 1,000 while the West Bank comes in at #22 with 27.8 births per 1,000 people.

That's a lot of little children. That's not only a lot of mouths to feed, but also a tremendous number of children who grow up, potentially to become terrorists or, at least, voters.

This does not sit well with Jordan, whose population already is approximately half "Palestinian." (How one can be a Palestinan though never living in Palestine is an issue for another time.)  President Trump stated that he pitched to Jordan's King Abdullah the idea of sending displaced Gazans to Jordan and

"I said to him, 'I'd love for you to take on more because I'm looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it's a mess.'"

He said he was making a similar appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during a conversation they were having while Trump was at his Doral resort in Florida on Sunday. Mr. Trump said he would "like Egypt to take people and I'd like Jordan to take people."

Jordan's foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Sunday that his country's opposition to what Trump floated was "firm and unwavering"...

Egypt's foreign minister issued a statement saying that the temporary or long-term transfer of Palestinians "risks expanding the conflict in the region

This can be roughly, yet accurately, translated as "There are too darn many of them." The more individuals of an ethnic group in a country, the more influence, and eventually power, they can potentially wield. As is not fully appreciated, Jordan doesn't want Palestinians. Egypt doesn't want Palestinians. The Arab/Persian world doesn't want Palestinians, and we already know that Israel doesn't want any more of them. 

Short-term, sending Gazans to Egypt and/or Jordan would be a boon to the region because those individuals would at least be living in a region not beset by war or the destruction it wrought. It would be a convenient solution for the USA because its President would claim to have ended the wr and brought peace to the Middle East. And it woul assist the Israelis, who would face less threat of a terrorist attack and would not have to do as much as quickly to a place which has suffered tremendously from Israeli attack in retaliation to a brutal and evil attack from Hamas.

But it's not going to happen.  There is not a small number of Gazans, whom the world considers Palestinian, and they do not possess the "anti-chid ideology" which the American vice-president claims exist in the USA. They present a short-term, medium-term, and long-term threat to various nations in the Middle East and especially to the countries in which they reside.

That's the dirty little secret of all of this. The Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, is deeply unpopular there and is not self-sufficient, relying on Israeli help. Gaza is controlled and dominated by the deeply unpopular, deeply terroristic Hamas. Amd the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank renders establishment of a Palestinian state there highly unlikely.

Exacerbating these realities is the growht rate among residents of both the West Bank and Gaza. "For years," USA Today notes, "the U.S. government has provided millions of dollars worth of condoms and other contraceptives to foreign countries as a way to help prevent the spread of AIDS and HIV and to make sure that family planning is available in developing nations."  If condoms actually could get past Hamas and into the hands (and elsewhere) of residents of Gaza, it would be a wise investment.


Thursday, January 30, 2025

No Politicization Politicization



The good news is that Kash Patel

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, insisted to deeply skeptical Democrats on Thursday that he did not have an “enemies list” and that the bureau under his leadership would not seek retribution against the president’s adversaries or launch investigations for political purposes.

“I have no interest, no desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel said at a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing at which support for the nominee broke along starkly partisan lines. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken.”

The reassurances were aimed at blunting a persistent line of attack from Democrats, who throughout the hearing confronted Patel with a vast catalog of prior incendiary statements on topics that they said made him unfit for the director’s job and raised alarming questions about his belief in conspiracy theories and loyalty to the president. Patel, for his part, sought to distance himself from his own words, accusing Democrats of taking them out of context, highlighting only snippets or misunderstanding his point.

The bad news is that President Trump's choice to be FBI director has a very bad memory. Ranking member Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Patel whether he is "familiar with Stew Peters," an alt-right, podcaster and "prolific anti-Semite.". After the nominee responed "not off the top of my head," Durbin reminded him that he he had "made eight separtae appearances on his podcast" and that Peters "promoted outrageous conspiracy theories and worked with a prominent neo-Nazi." Alas, Durbin failed to jog the memory of the nominee, who referred to "appearing on the media over a thousand times."

And Patel did not renounce or denounce his enemies list, which Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar conceded Patel did not label as an "enemies list." Rather, in the appendix of his 2022 Government Gansters, Patel described  "Members of the Executive Branch Deep State" as being "a cabal of unelected tyrants" and "the most dangerous threat to our democracy." In December, Timothy Noah of The New Republic explained

The term “deep state” is most often used to disparage the civil service, which Patel more or less wishes to eliminate. In addition to reinstituting Schedule F, which would strip many civil service protections from government workers, Patel favors legislation that allows the president to fire civil servants directly. But almost all the people on Patel’s enemies list are political appointees.

The Definitely-Not-Enemies-List, according to Noah, includes

Michael Atkinson (former inspector general of the intelligence community)

Lloyd Austin (defense secretary under President Joe Biden)

Brian Auten (supervisory intelligence analyst, FBI)

James Baker (not the former secretary of state; this James Baker is former general counsel for the FBI and former deputy general counsel at Twitter)

Bill Barr (former attorney general under Trump)

John Bolton (former national security adviser under Trump)

Stephen Boyd (former chief of legislative affairs, FBI)

Joe Biden (president of the United States)

John Brennan (former CIA director under President Barack Obama)

John Carlin (acting deputy attorney general, previously ran DOJ’s national security division under Trump)

Eric Ciaramella (former National Security Council staffer, Obama and Trump administrations)

Pat Cippolone (former White House counsel under Trump)

James Clapper (Obama’s director of national intelligence)

Hillary Clinton (former secretary of state and presidential candidate)

James Comey (former FBI director)

Elizabeth Dibble (former deputy chief of mission, U.S. Embassy, London)

Mark Esper (former secretary of defense under Trump)

Alyssa Farah (former director of strategic communications under Trump)

Evelyn Farkas (former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia under Obama)

Sarah Isgur Flores (former DOJ head of communications under Trump)

Merrick Garland (attorney general under Biden)

Stephanie Grisham (former press secretary under Trump)

Kamala Harris (vice president under Biden; former presidential candidate)

Gina Haspel (CIA director under Trump)

Fiona Hill (former staffer on the National Security Council)

Curtis Heide (FBI agent)

Eric Holder (former attorney general under Obama)*

Robert Hur (special counsel who investigated Biden over mishandling of classified documents)

Cassidy Hutchinson (aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows)

Nina Jankowicz (former executive director, Disinformation Governance Board, under Biden)

Lois Lerner (former IRS director under Obama)

Loretta Lynch (former attorney general under Obama)

Charles Kupperman (former deputy national security adviser under Trump)

Gen. Kenneth Mackenzie, retired (former commander of United States Central Command)

Andrew McCabe (former FBI deputy director under Trump)

Ryan McCarthy (former secretary of the Army under Trump)

Mary McCord (former acting assistant attorney general for national security under Obama)

Denis McDonough (former chief of staff for Obama, secretary of veterans affairs under Biden)

Gen. Mark Milley, retired (former chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff)

Lisa Monaco (deputy attorney general under Biden)

Sally Myer (former supervisory attorney, FBI)

Robert Mueller (former FBI director, special counsel for Russiagate)

Bruce Ohr (former associate deputy attorney general under Obama and Trump)

Nellie Ohr (wife of Bruce Ohr and former CIA employee)

Lisa Page (former legal counsel for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe at FBI under Obama and Trump; exchanged texts about Trump with Peter Strzok)

Pat Philbin (former deputy White House counsel under Trump)

John Podesta (former counselor to Obama; senior adviser to Biden on climate policy)

Samatha Power (former ambassador to the United Nations under Obama, administrator of AID under Biden)

Bill Priestap (former assistant director for counterintelligence, FBI, under Obama)

Susan Rice (former national security adviser under Obama, director of the Domestic Policy Council under Biden)

Rod Rosenstein (former deputy attorney general under Trump)

Peter Strzok (former deputy assistant director for counterintelligence, FBI, under Obama and Trump; exchanged texts about Trump with Lisa Page)

Jake Sullivan (national security adviser under President Joe Biden)

Michael Sussman (former legal representative, Democratic National Committee)

Miles Taylor (former DHS official under Trump; penned New York Times op-ed critical of Trump under the byline, “Anonymous”)

Timothy Thibault (former assistant special agent, FBI)

Andrew Weissman (Mueller’s deputy in Russiagate probe)

Alexander Vindman (former National Security Council director for European affairs)

Christopher Wray (FBI director under Trump and Biden; Trump nominated Patel to replace him even though Wray’s term doesn’t expire until August 2027)

Sally Yates (former deputy attorney general under Obama and, briefly, acting attorney general under Trump)

"It's nevr a good time to bow down to a dictator," asserted Jim Acosta on Tuesday in his sign-off from CNN. Nor to his prsoanl FBI director, he might have added.

 

 


Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Christian or Catholic- Say the Word



Blown out in the 2024 election cycle, Democrats know they need a new message. They're all over the place, however, and the only common theme is Mark Cuban's simplistic advice: "just getting angry is not the way to go."

True, but not much of a game plan. Democrats had a chance to annoy Donald Trump and get under his skin by referring repeatedly to "President Musk."  They did so briefly and Trump was forced to play defense, pleading "No, he's not going to be President, that I can tell you. And I'm safe, you know why? He can't be- he wasn't born in this country." They had gotten the President-elect off his game, and Trump doesn't play defense well. So they stopped- too rude.

Currently, Elizabeth Warren has a clue.  She has sent to Elon Musk as chairperson of the Department of Government Efficiency a letter outlining measures which would reduce government inefficiency and save taxpayers at least two trilllion dollars "over the next decade." Noting that she has introduced the bipartisan Stop Price Gouging the Military Act, Warren explains that the Air Force has been overcharged by 7,493 percent for soap dispensers. 

Would it be so difficult for Democrats to deride, say, "$27,000 soap dispensers"?  Ir shouldn't be, but has been. 

"By the mid-1980s," Wikipedia reminds us, defense "spending became a scandal when the Project on Government Oversight reported that the Pentagon had vastly overpaid for a wide variety of items, most nefariously by paying $435 for a hammer, $6,000 for a toilet seat, and $7,000 for an aircraft coffee maker."

The numbers were "inaccurate," apparently, and insignificantly. President Reagan appointed a commission which made several recommendations to reform the procurement process and in 1986 Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 219. Soon after, the Goldwater-Nichols Act reformed the Joint Chiefs of Staff and implemented some of the recommendations.

Positive change came about after the President had responded to misguided, hyperbolic outrage from the public. Understandably, then, when asked whether the Democratic Party should nominate a celebrity as a presidential candidate, Mehdi Hasan in early Janurary explained (at 3:32 of the video below)

Whether it's a celebrity or not a celebrity, whether it's a normal Senator politician, you need Democrats who are not afraid to say wild shit. Focus group bulshit has got to stop. Like, it's got to be- I said this in 2016- Democrats to go on Meet the Press and say "we're going to have a $25 minimum wage" or "we're going to spend a trillion dollars on health care."   

"How are you going to pay for it?"    "We just will. Trust me."    

How are you going to pay for it?"   Canada's going to pay for it."   

Just say absolute bullshit. Trump has set the bar. Say whatever the hell you want. I'm so fed up with a political system, this assymetric warfare which Donald Trump gets up and says "I'm going to buy Greenland and then we have serious discussions about him buying Greenland. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris produces a 27-page policy document on child care fully costed. 

That's assymetric warfare, right? It just seems to be it needs to be apresidential candidate who says "vote for me and I'll make sure $30 minimum wage. I'll make sure everyone has the best health care in the history of the world." Just say wild things because that's apparently what the American public wants and that's what social media is mainly.





Saying "whatever the hell you want" may take the form of extreme exaggeration, as Hasan points out, or misrepresenting the opponent's motives while highlighting the effect of his actions. Such an opportunity has been presented to Democrats on a silver platter, and Vice President J.D. Vance has given the good guys a blueprint:

 

The criticism by rhe US Conference of Catholic Bishops is telling because it opposes punitive immigration policies for two reasons: 1) it is generally welcoming to immigrants; and 2) most of the immigrants affected are Catholic.

If most of the newcomers were not Catholic, the Church still would oppose the Trump Administration policy. However, the leaders of the faith are aware of three things: 1) most of the affected individuals are Catholic;  2) most of these Catholics are more committed to their faith then American Catholics are and 3) the Church, facing declining numbers, need these immigrants, their numbers and the vitality they bring. 

This situation is simultaneously both fundamentally different and analogous to the Trump Administration's attack on immigration eight years ago. Campaigning for the presidency, Trump demanded "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." Once he took office, he "stopped nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from being allowed to travel to America for 90 days."

The day before President Trump retroacitvely left office in 2021, the ACLU recalled

When Trump implemented his first Muslim ban, the public response was immediate. Crowds of protesters flooded airports in support of Muslims and other impacted communities who were immediately being detained or turned away all over the country. Lawyers and immigrants’ rights organizations nationwide, including the ACLU, filed a series of lawsuits as court after court ruled to block the ban. 

Despite the backlash, Trump issued new iterations of the ban to circumvent the law and conceal its real purpose, which in his own words was to block Muslims from entering the United States. Ultimately, the Supreme Court allowed the third iteration of the ban to be implemented. The Trump administration then further expanded the ban, explicitly targeting Africans. As a result, people from 13 countries still remain barred from coming to the U.S.

By contrast, the Administration crrrently is targeting individuals who entered the USA through our southern border. They are from Latin America and with a few exceptions, are not Muslim. They are not Jewish or Hindu. They are Christian- mostly Roman Catholic, with some evangelical Protestants.

Layered upon that, the Vice President has called out the Church with which most of them identify. Vance asks rhetorically "are they worried about humanitarian concerns or are they worried about their bottom line?"

Both, ovbviously, but there is no shame in doing well by doing good. Nonetheless, the Administration- if Vance was not talking out of his posterior- is hostile to the interests of the Church in building its numbers. Yet only last September

"They're anti-Christian, and it's driving people out," (Catholic League President Bill) Donohue said in a phone interview of Democrats, citing similar comments from former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently endorsed Trump. "And the guys I'm talking to, it's not even so much abortion. It's just they feel like they don't speak their language anymore. This whole idea of letting men compete against women in sports abuses the bathrooms, they think they've just gone off the deep end”….

"Kamala Harris hates Catholics and everything we hold sacred. We can’t pretend otherwise. Our institutions, families, culture and belief in the sanctity of all human life are the antithesis of her vision for America. Donald Trump and JD Vance — and now RFK — are the antidote to the ruling class that has destroyed our country," Brian Burch, president of conservative non-profit, CatholicVote, said in the Trump campaign’s press release.

It's time to turn the tables, for Democrats to point out that Republicans are trying to drive Catholics,or more generally Christians, out of the country. When it was Muslims, Democrats were apoplectic, especially outraged because Trump was singling out individuals based on their religion. 

Now, the Administration is discrimating against Catholics and other Christians. Presumably, that's not by intent, though Vance's comments can be interpreted otherwise. It is, however, a blow against Christianity in effect

However, if Democras truly wish to change their message, the President and the Vice President, the former by policy and the latter by words, have given them an opening. You can drive a Mack truck through that gaping hole. Unfortunately, Democrats may be waiting for an electric-powered vehicle to take that drive.


Sunday, January 26, 2025

They Can Choke On It


Congresswoman: you may want to check out last November's election results.

Steele and the tweeter are realistic. However, at the end of this video (more complete video below), Representative Sarah McBride, Democrat of Delaware claims "I think the American people want to see elected officials be serious and work together."

Steele replies "no, they don't," a truth which virtually no one (and "virtually" may be misleading) appearing in media ever acknowledges. Unsurprisingly, McBride, misunderstanding (probably intentionally) Steele's last point, responds

You're right, you're right. They're not doing that. They're not doing that. They've made it clear from immigration to economic policy and taxes to basic human rights. They have made it clear that they are more interested in driving forward an extreme partisan agenda rather than pursuing collaborative common sense solutions. I totally agree.

No, you don't. Of course, Republicans are more interested in an extreme partisan agenda than in collaborative solutions. But Steele was expressly disagreeing with the naive assumption of the Democratic Party and of the mainstream center and left media that "the American people want to see elected officials be serious and work together."

McBride is right that Republicans have made it clear on various issues that they're disinterested in cooperation.  Although not yet a member of the US House of Representatives, the freshman from Delaware undoubtedly remembers when last May

Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan border security bill for a second time, part of an attempt by Chuck Schumer to flip the script on immigration – a major political liability for Joe Biden and Democrats in this year’s election.

The 43-50 vote was far short of the necessary 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. Republicans, who have repeatedly demanded Democrats act on the border, abandoned the compromise proposal at the behest of Donald Trump who saw it was a political “gift” for Biden’s re-election chances.

And how did voters reward Democrats when the latter joined with Republicans in formulating a compromise immigration bill and then watching it go down because of Republican opposition?  They failed to regain the House, which at the beginning of the year they appeared to have an excellent chance to do; lost the Senate; lost the White House; and regressed slightly in control of state legislatures.

Voters knew which party wanted to work with the other, and which party knew what it wanted and would ruthlessly pursue its aims. "Wrong and strong," Bill Clinton would have called it.

Democrats must put Republicans on the defensive by putting them into a no-win situation. They can start by forcing votes Republicans to vote on "heads I win, tails, you lose" propositions, such as this one. It will seem rude to most Democratic members of Congress. But as Michael Steele put it, "they don't want to work with you, they're not going to work with you." So be rude, confrontational, and determined to win.


     .  



Friday, January 24, 2025

At That Time, In That Place

President Donald Trump was forced to sit in a church (no, he did not burst into flames) on Tuesday moring and listen to a dimunitive lady, Washington, D.C. Presiding Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, plead

In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We’re scared now. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.

Oh, the horror! Mr. Trump and acolytes were shockedt that a member of the clergy could ask for "mercy upon the people in our country," especially for the children who "fear that their parents will be taken away." His feelings hurt, the President posted on his ironically named Truth Social

She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!

That's a harsh critique from America's pre-eminent atheist. There is no "giant crime wave" taking place in the USA; Trump is confusing the past year with the last year, 2020, of his first term. Rev. Budde was polite, soft-spoken, and respectful, 

Yet, Budde joins a long list of people Trump has called "nasty": Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredericksen, Meghan Markle, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Omarosa Manigault Newman, April Ryan, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romeny, and Elizabeth Warren. It's a habit Trump enjoys almost as much as fantasizing about pleasuring two men at one time.


 



Still, the church service, as Sojourners pointed out on Inauguration Day, would not be partisan and thus

the church departed from the daily readings and chose scripture readings in conjunction with the Trump team.

All three scripture readers were close allies of the new Trump administration. Jack Graham, a Texas megachurch pastor and Trump advisor, read from Proverbs 3. Henry Stephan, a Catholic priest and mentor who baptized JD Vance, read 1 Peter 4. And Alveda C. King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr. and a Republican activist and politician, read from Galatians 3.

In addition to the scriptures, the church sang three hymns: “O God, our help in ages past,” “My country, ’tis of thee,” and “America the Beautiful.” All three selections are from The Episcopal Church’s hymnal.

Two of those three are not classic Christian hymns, but rather patriotic songs. Still, the pastor knew that the U.S. Park Police in June, 2020 delivered a volley of tear gas to clear the area between Lafayette Square and your church so the then-President, hostile toward Christianity, gets to hold a photo-op in front of your church without your knowledge. Five years later, that man, remaining pleased that non-violent protesters were squashed became President again and promptly signed an Executive Order to invalidate the 14th Amendment. Three days late, the federal judge considering the request for a restraining order recognizes the request is "blatantly unconstitutional" and notes "I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented was as clear."

The bishop then assumed the role of delivering a sermon to that individual, who is openly contemptuous of Christianity  If she had kept silent upon something which bears so heavily on her conscience and on the direction of the nation, it would have been an opportunity wasted, malpractice either in her role as a member of the clergy or simply as a concerned citizen.  

Afterward, Bishop Budde stated "I wanted to emphasize respecting the honor and dignity of every human being. I was trying to counter the narrative that is so divisive and polarizing and in which real people are being harmed." That narrative is being driven by the President, who has initiated, promulgated, and led a movement intended to be divisive and polarizing. The Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday was the right time and the right place to call out the demagogue behind it all.


 



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