Just Plain Foks

"It's time," a guy may say, to call "bull_ _ _ _ on that."

It's time to call it on Michelle Obama (photo below from Getty Images).  Vox reports that in an interview with Variety magazine, Mrs. Obama stated "My mom says it all the time: 'People are so enamored of Michelle and Barack Obama.'"

Imagine your neighbors, the Owens, telling you: "My mom says it all the time: 'People are so enamored of Jack and Jill Owens."  Humble folk, your neighbors, who know lots of odd people who use the word "enamored."

That statement at least has the advantage of being, in spirit, undoubtedly accurate.  But Mrs. Obama continues

And she says, "There are millions of Michelle and Barack Obamas." We’re not new. We’re not special. People who come from intact families who are educated, who have values, who care for their kids, who raise their kids — if you don’t see that on TV, and you don’t live in communities with people like me..."

There are millions of Michelle and Barack Obamas who, truth be told, are very impressive individuals.   As of 2013, Michelle Obama's net worth was estimated to be approximately 11.1 million dollars and that of her husband (as she would consider it) a paltry seven million dollars.

Unfortunately, the figures for this nation I could easily obtain were for 2009 and for individuals rather than households. Still, they are worthy for comparison with fairness compelling me to use the lower figure, Barack's $7,000,000.  In 2009 there were 320,277 individuals in the USA with equal or greater wealth.

It is difficult to determine their precise standing if Michelle's greater wealth ($11.1 million dollars) were added to Barack's wealth and the household figure of $18.8 million were compared to that of other households seven years later, during which wealth of the richest Americans climbed.  However, given  that the $7,000,000 was the lesser figure and relatively few homes feature two very wealthy individuals, their combined wealth compared to that of other couples would be far more impressive than that of Barack's alone.

One conclusion is clear and certain: there are not millions of Michelle and Barack Obamas. Take away their wealth, a move they would understandably find distasteful, and BO is one of 44 individuals ever to be President, and MO one of 45 First Ladies, of the USA ever.

But, gosh, there are millions of us, just average Americans, Michelle Obama assures us. No doubt you have several neighbors in the same class.  And yet, people are so enamored of us!

As much as the very rich claim they are just like you and me, normally something happens to them on the way up. That is nothing they should apologize for, nor anything they should deny. And if anyone reading this is convinced that were I so advantaged I would be even more self-delusional as Michelle Obama, please feel free to convey to me the mere $7 million or so Barack H. Obama is worth. Stocks, bonds, property, cash, or anything else would be gladly accepted at this blog's address.

I'll send you a nice thank-you note. As Donald Trump would say: believe me.

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All Or Nothing Not The Option

On its website, the Center for Immigration Studies proclaims it is "low immigration, pro-immigrant" and it is neither.

Observing Donald Trump's double somersault with a reverse on immigration, Politico notes

Both supporters and critics who study immigration law say it’s clear Trump hasn’t developed much knowledge about how the immigration system actually works since he first promised to build that border wall 14 months ago.

And they say his latest utterances are proof he’s no closer to having a comprehensive, workable approach to a long-broken immigration system.

However, if its director speaks for the organization, CIS supports high immigration while being opposed to the immigrant. We read further

“They were going to have to move beyond this knee-jerk reaction about deporting all the illegals because it’s just not a practical policy, and it never was,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors more restrictions on immigration. “But they could have done it in a more coherent and organized way. Instead it’s slapdash and confused.”

Although Donald Trump is prone to rhetorical excess and once recommended a deportation force, no one ever really believed all "11 million" (a number which has mysteriously declined from 12-13 million in the last 20 years) illegal immigrants would be returned to the country from whence they came.

Whatever is publicly argued, the policy divide is between those who want to deport individuals here illegally but without a criminal record vs. those who believe that absence of a record should provide immunity.

In a March debate, Univision reporter Jorge Ramos asked Hillary Clinton "and that you won't deport immigrants who don't have a criminal record? and Bernie Sanders "And can you promise not to deport mmigrants who don't have a criminal record?"  The replies, responsively: "I will not" and "I can make that promise."

Krikorian, from an organization proudly anti-illegal immigration, wants the illegal immigrants to stay, though short of citizenship.  With an opportunity to gain citizenship, they would not be easily exploited by employers (well, at least no more than native-born workers). Contemptuous of immigrants, he perverts the adjective "illegal" by converting it to a noun to form the derogatory "illegals." They can remain as long as they are dehumanized.  He is high immigration, anti-immigrant.

By contrast, Ann Coulter (whatever her over-the-top rhetoric), is more anti- illegal immigration than anti-immigrant.    Disappointed the flip-flop, softening, reversal, or intentional sowing of confusion was put forth on the day her "In Trump We Trust" was launched,  she issued a series of tweets on Thursday night criticizing the new policy or non-policy.

Most telling among her tweets, all delivered within 25 minutes, was the last, when she caustically commented:        Well, if it's 'hard,' then nevermind.  Trump: ".... to take a person who's been here for 15 or 20 years.... It's a very, very hard thing."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not been disbanded. Although conducted too infrequently and "a very, very hard thing," workplace raids lead to the deportation of illegal immigrants and prosecution of their employers.  Especially useful have been the "paperwork raids," which target employers, emphasized by the Obama Administration. There would not be, nor would there ever have been, deportation of all 11-20 million individuals, just as not all street criminals are apprehended by police.

The impediment is not the ability, but the will, to conduct raids.  Nationally prominent Democrats are opposed to the efforts, though the Party's 2016 platform falls (barely) short of endorsing any and all expulsion.  An overwhelming majority of Democratic voters opposes expulsion.

So, too, do many Republicans. The latter demand a wall: it's an act of defiance, a symbol of opposition to Mexicans, would be built by private contractors, and never will have to be paid for because it will never go up.  However, effectively expelling people in the nation wihout authorization requires effort and employment of more border patrol agents, who are government employees and hence anathema to GOP dogma. Lacking sufficient personnel, ICE nevertheless performs an important function, as Coulter realizes.

Even a stopped clock, it is recognized, is right twice a day. As a woman of the right, Ann Coulter isn't right twice a day, and is often bombastic and offensive.  Nonetheless, once a decade or so she makes a valid point other conservatives bypass.















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Not Happening

Channeling the minds- no, the emotion- of most Republicans

“Donald Trump understands that enforcing the laws and building a wall are paramount to what the will of the people is,” she told guest host Eric Bolling in an interview on "The O’Reilly Factor" on Fox News. “Thank God he’s still preaching that, because if he were not, then there would be a huge erosion of support.”

The Politico report explained

Trump over the past week has generated a flood of headlines by appearing to back away from his proposal for a "deportation force," saying he is open to "softening" immigration laws and that he's willing to "work with" certain undocumented immigrants if they pay back taxes.









Grump knows where the votes lie, for

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in May, a solid majority (72%) of Americans – including 80% of Democrats, 76% of independents and 56% of Republicans – say undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S.should be allowed to stay in this country legally if they meet certain requirements. Last year, we asked a follow-up question of those who opposed granting legal status to undocumented immigrants: Should there be a “national law enforcement effort to deport” all immigrants here illegally? Just 17% of the public overall favored such an effort, including about a quarter (27%) of Republicans. 

For practical purposes, this puts the majority of Americans- and of Republicans, including some Trumpists- in accord with the general approach of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party. Most individuals evidently want a path to normalization, some supporting citizenship, the others only legalization, a boon to unscrupulous employers and exceedingly destructive policy.

Admittedly, most Republicans want a wall, a vain yearning.  In testimony in May before a Senate committee, Richard Vitiello, deputy chief of border patrol for US Customs and Border Protection, noted "it is not necessary to have a pedestrian fence in places where the nfrastructure doens't support people walking toward the border." Moreover, in addition to pointing out the exorbitant price, this CNBC piece indicates

Border walls work in densely populated areas — such as Israel's wall in the West Bank — where slowing down a person trying to illegally enter by five or 10 minutes can make a difference to border patrol. But when the migrant trying to enter is traveling over remote mountains and deserts for three days, using a fence to slow them down by a few minutes doesn't have the same effect — it borders (pun intended) on the trivial, (deputy director of the US Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute Marc) Rosenblum said.

"There is a reason people don't build fences in the middle of nowhere; it doesn't change the enforcement profile in the middle of nowhere," the migration expert said. "The existing fence has worked because of where it is, near populated areas. Both Democrats and Republicans have testified that they have the fencing they need," Rosenblum said.

Both Democrats and Republicans have testified that they have the fencing they need. The message should be clear to conservatives who demand a wall, progressives who fear a wall, and Sarah Palin, relieved that Donald Grump has not relinquished his public support for a wall. Explosion of testosterone and display of beer muscles (for women and men) and anger at the Other aside, it's not going to happen. There will not be a wall. Believe me.






Up Next:  Mark Krikorian is wrong- and Ann Coulter is right.


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Price Still Not Paid

Speaking in Sioux City, Iowa in January, Donald Trump made one of his most telling remarks when he boasted “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters."

In a similar vein (even if not widely understood as such), Trump last year had commented “When I drink my little wine — which is about the only wine I drink — and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed.”  In one fell swoop, Trump had mistaken regeneration for communion and trivialized the latter, patronizingly dismissing one of its elements as "my little cracker."

Trump had thus nearly confirmed his earlier statement, having symbolically stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shot somebody, and losing few voters.

He may be doing it again.  Still a work in progress, Trump's immigration policy is nothing if not muddled now that he speaks of a "softening" but still supports his big, beautiful wall.

There is a strategic calculation taking place not only in seeming- maybe- to move to the center, but also in keeping anyone who is paying attention from understanding exactly what he believes about illegal immigration. However, there is one statement Trump has made in the last few days, while he appears to be working out his values in public, which harkens back to confidence that he could shoot someone or make a remark utterly ignorant of Christianity and still not lose any votes.

On Monday night on GOP TV, Trump explained

As far as everybody else, we're going to go through the process,  What people don't know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country. Bush, the same thing. Lots of people were brought out of the country with the existing laws. Well, I'm going to do the same thing.

Trump's campaign was based- we were told by it- on the understanding that the system is rigged, the country is broken, Bush and Obama were wrong about practically everything, and we must "make America great again."   Now he's going to do the same thing as Obama whose, Trump accurately points out, has been quite active in evicting illegal immigrants from the USA. He will act on immigration, he promises, similarly to the Kenyan-born president who founded ISIL, who "doesn't want to know about" terrorism, and "is more angry at me" (than) at the shooter" who murdered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando. (Below, view Trump adviser Sarah Huckabee Sanders inadvertently endorsing the Obama immigration policy.)








Donald Trump may be the liberal Ted Cruz argued he is. Or he may be what he appeared to be, a hateful demagogue (a loving demagogue?).   Alternatively, he all of the above or none of the above, reminiscent of answers to multiple choice questions in secondary school.   Within striking distance of the presidency, however, Trump most clearly is someone who has not paid the electoral price for things he has done as a businessman and said as a presidential candidate.   If you ever see him on Fifth Avenue with a firearm, promptly seek shelter.








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A Nearly Good Idea From Ben Carson

"This was the moment," Senator Barack Obama declared in June, 2008 upon clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, for which we will be able to look back and recognize "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Skeptics might note that with the rate of rise of sea levels growing and the spread of terrorism worldwide, Obama was only slightly more prescient than he was humble. Yet, perhaps the planet has begun to heal, we are leaving our "children a world that's better, kindler, and more just," and we are overcoming egomaniacal politicians and creating nirvana.  It could be- Ben Carson is making sense.

Asked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about Hillary Clinton's health, Dr. Carson replied

Well, you know, as a physician, physicians and scientists generally will not make a diagnosis based on something that they see from a long distance.  My diagnosis would be that anybody who is elderly should expose their records. And we the people should know what they are. Because it's a very stressful job.  It's not an eight hour-a day job, it's 24/7 and we need to make sure that is taken care of.

I know, I know. Any nominee for President of either major party should release his or her full medical records. It should not be done based on age, not only to avoid age discrimination but because some people are healthy at 80 years of age and others unhealthy at 40.  Still, Carson wisely suggested both Clinton and Trump should release their medical records.

That should be considered a mild rebuke to  Rudy Giuliani, M.D.  The former New York City mayor, who received his medical degree from The University of Nowhere, had argued on GOP TV that he had witnessed "several signs of illness" in the Democratic nominee and added "go online and put down 'Hillary Clinton illness,' take a look at the videos for yourself."







While you are on online, do a Google search for "Rudy Giuliani gay" and gaze upon "field negro: RUDY GIULIANI'S GAY LOVER COMES OUT AND SAYS....."  It may give your computer a virus, but it's "online" and thus must be true. Rudy says so.









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No Apology Necessary

Jesse J. Holland of the Associated Press reports

Good Morning America co-anchor Amy Robach has apologized for saying "colored people" on Monday's broadcast of the ABC program.

During a segment on diversity in Hollywood, Robach, who was substituting for Robin Roberts, noted recent criticism for casting white actors "in what one might assume should be a role reserved for colored people."

After the broadcast, Robach released a statement explaining she had meant to say "people of color."

She called the incident "a mistake" and "not at all a reflection of how I feel or speak in my everyday life."



 





Holland continued "her use of the term sparked criticism on soical media." Many Americans are English-impaired.

If you call someone a  "person of intelligence," you're calling her an  intelligent person. If you refer to her boyfriend as "a person of evil," he is an evil person.   And if that makes you a "person of rudeness," you're a rude person.

News flash to fans of "people of color"- you are labeling individuals "colored people."

This shouldn't be so difficult, and wouldn't be if our interests were accuracy rather than using language for strategic purposes.   Deborah E. McDowell, director of the University of Virginia's Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, responded to the brouhaha by noting "if you are referring specifically to African Americans, people will frequently be specific and refer to us as African Americans."

Presumably that's because such individuals are in fact African-American.  However, McDowell is blowing smoke up our posterior when she claims "the preferred usage is 'people of color' if you are speaking about people of color broadly."

Uh, no. The preferred usage in the USA is "minorities," "ethnic minorities,"  or a more specific term such as "Asian Americans" or Hispanics/Latinos.  "Colored people" was once (unfortunately) acceptable, then recognized as offensive. Hence, though "people of color" often is used when speaking of "people of color" (whomever they are) broadly,  it is sometimes employed to refer to blacks specifically.

But maybe that's just the point. The speaker gets to use it to mean whatever he wants or even to obsure his actual meaning.

In physics, neither white nor black is defined as a color, black because "it is the absence of light, and therefore color."  Hence, it always was scientifically eccentric to refer to black people as "colored" and it is now absurd to refer to them ever as "people of color."

So, please, drop the "people of color" or "person of color" made-up nomenclature.  Given that the majority of people in the USA are considered "white," others may be considered "black." "African-American" is more accurate, assuming the subject is person or persons descended from the African continent. Meanwhile, "people of color" is no more accurate or appropriate than "colored people," at least according to this person absent of color.










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Shortsighted Decision

"Supreme Court justices," according to Think Progress in March, "are nominated by the president and appointed with the advice and consent of the National Rifle Association, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)."

The writer observed

McConnell offered this unusual view of the confirmation process during an interview with Fox News Sunday. In response to a question from host Chris Wallace, who asked if Senate Republicans would consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court after the election if Hillary Clinton prevails, McConnell responded that he “can’t imagine that a Republican majority in the United States Senate would want to confirm, in a lame duck session, a nominee opposed by the National Rifle Association [and] the National Federation of Independent Businesses.”

If it is up to former US Representative Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), her husband Mark Kelly, and the PAC they formed, Americans for Responsibile Solutions, NRA ally Mitch McConnell will remain Senate Majority Leader.

That's a little harsh toward Ms. Giffords, who was gravely wounded in the mass shooting incident of January, 2011 in Tucson, in which Jared Loughner killed six individuals and wounded 13 people.  However, having a political blog with no advertising has its advantages.  In an op-ed on CNN's website, Giffords/Kelly write

In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook, Republican Sens. Pat Toomey and Mark Kirk broke from the gun lobby and supported a bill to help prevent felons, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill from obtaining firearms at gun shows and online.

This week, they are earning our organization's endorsement.

They acknowledge

With so many more candidates running on a gun violence prevention platform, in some places the changing politics of gun safety has made our endorsement decision difficult. In Pennsylvania, Katie McGinty is a passionate advocate for gun violence prevention and would be a consistent vote for life-saving gun safety laws in the Senate. Likewise, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois is not only a decorated veteran and an American hero, but has been a champion for commonsense gun laws in the House. We have no doubt she would continue to be a leader on gun safety in the Senate.

Mark Kirk, perhaps the closest Republican in the United States Senate to a "moderate," is a tough call. But Pat Toomey, once the head of the corporate-enamored Club for Growth, should not be, for as the Associated Press reported nine weeks ago

Among the Senate's most vulnerable Republicans, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey stood firmly with the powerful National Rifle Association on the latest ill-fated attempts at gun control. So did Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson.

Not so Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk....

Toomey, Portman and Johnson — as they did in December after shootings in San Bernardino, California — supported a NRA-preferred measure to deny a gun sale to a known or suspected terrorist, but only if prosecutors could convince a judge within three days that the would-be buyer was involved in terrorism. The three also helped to defeat a Democratic-sponsored bill to close the gun show loophole and expand background checks.

Kirk is an underdog, Toomey probably a slight favorite to retain his seat.  Nevertheless as Pennsylvania's Democratic Party spokesperson pointed out, “Pat Toomey isn't a moderate on guns, period.  He's stood in the way of common sense gun safety laws and he would happily keep Mitch McConnell as the Senate Majority Leader, meaning that gun safety laws have almost no chance in the Senate" (photo from AP/Susan Walsh).

Bipartisanship has its merits as well as rewards, the latter in fundraising, maintaining a moderate image in the mainstream media, not alienating old friends. In this case, however, the fetish of bipartisanship is destructive to the cause Giffords and Kelly (who have supported Democrats as well as Republicans) are interested in.  If Hillary Clinton- as expected- is elected President, Toomey retains his seat, and Democrats end up with 49 Senate seats, the Arizona couple will have a lot to answer for.

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