Open Borders Sarah

Sarah Huckabee Sanders- as well as most Republicans- wants to divert our attention. In her rebuttal in February to the State of the Union Address of President Joe Biden, the Arkansas governor declared

Upon taking office just a few weeks ago, I signed executive orders to ban CRT, racism and indoctrination in our schools, eliminate the use of derogatory term, LatinX in our government....

President Biden is unwilling to defend our border....

A rebuilt military and a world that was stable and at peace, are now killed from drug overdoses, largely from fentanyl pouring across our southern border. Yet the Biden administration refuses to secure the border and save American lives.

Do you know who else (or maybe not "else") is unwilling to defend or secure our border? It's Open Borders Sarah. While politicians, pundits, and people affix their glaze upon the governor banning history not taught in public schools and use of a fairly obscure term not widely used in Arkansas (Arkansas!), Sanders is going after her real target. CNN reports

Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill into law this week that rolls back a number of child labor protections across the state, including a measure that had required employers to obtain work certificates for children under the age of 16.

“The Governor believes protecting kids is most important, but this permit was an arbitrary burden on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job,” Sanders’ spokesperson Alexa Henning said in a statement. “All child labor laws that actually protect children still apply and we expect businesses to comply just as they are required to do now.”

Well, no, they don't expect businesses to comply because if they did, they wouldn't be giving encouraging them to employ children. Previously

minors under the age of 16 needed to verify their age and get the written consent of a parent or guardian before a work certificate could be issued by the state’s Division of Labor. But H.B. 1410, known as the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, which passed the Arkansas state legislature earlier this month, no longer requires youth under the age of 16 to have that work certificate as a condition of their employment.

The bill’s passage comes after the Biden administration announced last month plans to crackdown on labor exploitation of migrant children across the country, the New York Times reported, following an investigation conducted by the publication.

However, it appears the government in Little Rock is pleased to encourage exploitation of the labor of migrant children while

Proponents of the legislation argued that removing the certificate would eliminate a tedious step that stood in the way of minors getting a job quickly in the state. They also said that the bill would restore decision-making to parents about their children and streamline the hiring process for minors.

But opponents of the legislation have argued that the work certificate served as a form of protection for vulnerable youth, especially immigrant youth, who may not always have a parent or guardian to sign off for them to work and who could be exploited without that certificate.

“When we think about kids working who are 14, we think about who this might protect, it’s not the 14-year-old who’s working at the ice cream parlor in your hometown, whose parents have given them permission to work. We’re worried about the children who are at risk of being exploited and who are being exploited today,” Laura Kellams, the northwest Arkansas director of the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a group that advocates for children’s rights in the state, said earlier this month during a committee hearing on the bill.

It's not good for the rights of children because they will be easily exploited. It's also not good for the wages of adults and young men and women as children enter the workforce, compete for jobs, and drive wages down.

It is good, however, for private sector employers who want to pay their employees as little as possible with as few rights and benefits as possible. It's good for the business of immigration, legal and illegal, which Sarah Sanders is promoting.

Evidently, employing children is big business, one which the Governor is doing her best to encourage whileSanders’ signing of the bill comes after a major US food sanitation company that operated facilities in eight states, including Arkansas, recently paid a $1.5 million civil penalty for employing minors in hazardous conditions.

Packers Sanitation Services illegally employed at least 102 children between the ages of 13 and 17 in jobs that required them to use toxic chemicals and clean razor-sharp saws.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is striving to be the kind of Republican the party movers and shakers are looking for.  Get the left outraged about the indignities foisted upon racial and sexual minorities while boosting the interests of business by employing children of immigrants, keeping wages down and workers subservient. driven by a surprising source. woke capitalism is thriving in Arkansas.

 

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Focus Blame

This is a bad discussion (short clip from it, below; full video, here)- telling, but bad. And as conservative David Urban would put it (though his target here is inappropriate, "there's plenty of blame to go around when these kinds of things happen."   This is short and incomplete:

After being rejected by black and jewish voters in Ohio twice, Nina Turner has gone full MAGA. pic.twitter.com/s0ADdnsbAU

— gregoire.🌼 (@mistergeezy) February 28, 2023

Asked about the recent, infamous Norfolk Southern derailment, Nina Turner can be seen maintaining

And just one point. For the neo-liberals to say that the residents of that area deserve what they are getting because they voted for President Donald J. Trump is abhorrent. This is about poverty. This is about poor working class white people who are enduring some of the same things that working-class black people endure- whether it's Flint, Cleveland, or Jackson, Mississippi. . It's a sin and a shame that when people are suffering to this magnitude, you get people who will fix their mouths, to quote my grandmother, to say they are getting what they deserve.

Bash needed to challenge Turner on whom these "neo-liberals" are. I read multitudes of comments each day on Twitter, which is saturated with individuals whom Turner probably would classify as "neo-liberal" (though it's not completely clear exactly what she applies the label to). And the number of individuals I've seen stating or even implying that the residents of East Palestine have gotten what they deserve is between 1 and -1.

Though Bash continues the discussion, she does not ask Turner to name names but turns to Urban for his comments, which he begins with "there's plenty of blame to go around when these kinds of things happen."

Urban can suggest, reasonably, that none of the last three Presidents has clean hands, though Trump's are the dirtiest, Obama's the cleanest.  However, his remark is grossly misleading in an important way, with Vox's Jariel Arvin noting

Rail workers, government officials, and industry analysts have long warned that such disasters are an expected consequence of an industry that has aggressively cut costs, slashed its workforce, and resisted regulation for years....

Going back to shorter trains could also be beneficial, according to Ditmeyer. It would reduce internal forces and stresses within trains so derailments wouldn’t be as damaging. It would also effectively increase staffing per train car.

But the rail industry has been cutting its workforce for years despite turning record profits. Over the last six years, train companies cut 45,000 employees, 29 percent of their workforce. “In my view, all of this has directly contributed to where we are today — rail users experiencing serious deteriorations in rail service because, on too many parts of their networks, the railroads simply do not have a sufficient number of employees,” Martin Oberman, chair of the Surface Transportation Board, said in a statement last year.

Railroad companies are privately run and need regulations to fix their attention upon safety measures, sufficiency of employees, and even technological innovations  However, "free market" conservatives and their culturally conservative allies have worked tirelessly since the Reagan, if not the Carter, Administration to vilify the term "government regulation."  The failure of the regulatory regime is rooted in a lack of will and resources and the unwillingness of government officials and pundits to emphasize its importance.

While the GOP throughout the decades has aggressively pushed anti- government rhetoric which has encompassed a decided preference for deregulation, other politicians and pundits have failed to emphasize the importance of government regulation in a whole range of industries.

The mainstream media and even liberal media are not going to pick up on the importance of health and safety measures unless Democrats stress their value in the railroad industry and elsewhere.  With the decline over the generations of the labor movement, there has been little pressure to do so. Unfortunately, it appears that unless the LGBTQ+ community or the Congressional Black Caucus or its allies step up, there will remain little pressure on the Democratic Party to do what's necessary for consumers or the public.

 

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There She Goes Again

You may recall that in 2013, responding to an article in Slate, Megyn Kelly remarked on her Fox News show

When I saw this headline I kind of laughed, and I said, ‘This is so ridiculous. Yet another person claiming it’s racist to have a white Santa,’ And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white. But this person is just arguing that maybe we should also have a black Santa, but Santa is what he is, and just so you know, we’re just debating this ’cause someone wrote about it, kids.

She compared the issue to that of the portrayal of Jesus.

“Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change,” she said. “Jesus was a white man, too … He was a historical figure, that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa. I just want the kids watching to know that.”

The legend of Santa Claus was based on St. Nicholas, then a bishop in what is present-day Turkey. According to Sojourners magazine, "a composite, made from forensic anthropologists who reconstructed his skeleton from his crypt in Bari, Italy, shows that he looked very much like modern-day Turkish men." Jesus was a Palestinian Jew ("Palestinian" and "Jew" not being mutually exclusive) in 1st century Nazareth and "According to forensic anthropologists who examined countless remains from that time period to find the most likely image, he looked like a Middle-Eastern male of Arabic descent."

Kelly later acknowledged she had said "stupid things."  But last week, now a professional podcaster, she joked

about NBC’s swift response to host Savannah Guthrie testing positive for Covid-19 in the middle of the Today Show.

On Sirius XM’s The Megyn Kelly Show, Kelly spoke with the hosts of the Ruthless Podcast, Comfortably Smug, Josh Holmes, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook.

Guthrie hosted just 20 minutes of Tuesday’s broadcast before she disappeared from the set. Later in the show, her co-hosts announced she had tested positive for Covid and gone home.

Kelly — who previously hosted her own iteration of the Today Show before leaving NBC — pointed out that Al Roker slowly distanced himself from other co-hosts as they explained that Guthrie had tested positive for Covid.

Notably, Roker was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2020 and was recently hospitalized for several weeks due to blood clots in his lungs.

“Do you believe they’re like canceling her, she’s running home from the set! Covid! I mean, at this point, seriously?” Kelly said.

“They’re getting pretty low on the desk chart. I mean, we’re gonna come back from commercial break and Matt Lauer’s gonna be back,” Holmes joked.

“Like, is anyone still even testing for Covid?” Kelly asked.

“I love that Al Roker is disappearing like the Homer Simpson meme into the hedge,” Duncan said.

As the conversation continued, Kelly argued that many people on the left are still gripped by fear of Covid.

“I mean, it’s amazing to me. These guys are leftists and it’s amazing to me to see how the leftists still live. Like under the grip of Covid, terrified,” Kelly said.

“She’s gotta leave the set immediately. Even to say like, I’m gonna take the Covid test. I don’t test for Covid anymore. Who’s testing for Covid still?” Kelly said.

“By the way, this is reportedly Savannah’s third bout of Covid, and I guarantee you she’s had all the vaccines and the boosters, because you won’t be able to go into 30 Rock without them,” Kelly said.

The world has changed a great deal since 2013. In a way, it's comforting to know that despite everything that has gone on, some things never change. One of them is Megyn Kelly and whatever combination of bigotry, stupid, and nastiness she embodies.

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Money for Sex

Well, sure, it's creepy and weird, but it has long been obvious that something is wrong with Donald Trump, though probably only a urine test could confirm it.

I’m sorry, but even for Trump, this is f*cking off the charts creepy and weird. https://t.co/BT3b9habca

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) March 5, 2023

 

David Frum, channeling his unfortunate GOP roots:

The state offering a one time payment if you get pregnant but not offering to cover your health bills, paid paternal leave, subsidized daycare or additional income for child expenses , sounds like the crappiest policy idea that will get zero traction

— Slava Ukraine (@MartinJmcmah) March 5, 2023

There is another major problem, spoken of in locker rooms, bars, by the office cooler (if any remain in time of coronavirus), and anywhere men or women congregate, though not by public officials or the elite.

If a bonus were offered, it very probably would be the same per baby across the board.  The wealthy and the upper middle class would be unmoved. While paid paternal leave, subsidized day care, or free health care would be critical for needy couples, bribing poor people to have children is a terrible idea because it would add to the need for paid paternal leave, subsidized day care, or free health care. They'll take it, and it won't work out for them or for the general public.

The handout would be most effective with women who could least afford to raise children. Revenues for enhancing the social safety net would not be forthcoming, especially with the gargantuan level of funding which would be necessary to pay off the parents/woman for having children.

While sex is necessary for procreation, a woman does not typically need to be paid for it which, with his experience, Donald Trump may not understand.

 

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Close

As NBC News reports

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz sprung onto the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference and took a victory lap after federal authorities recently informed him that he would not be charged in a sex trafficking investigation.

 “If you don’t mind me saying so, I think vindication looks pretty good on me!” Gaetz said to a cheering crowd.....

 Minutes later, Gaetz, now serving on the select committee investigating the so-called weaponization of the federal government, suggested eliminating federal investigative agencies.

 “I don’t care if it takes every second of our time and every ounce of our energy, we either get this government back on our side or we defund, get rid of, abolish the FBI CDC, ATF,” Gaetz said to applause.

Gaetz had been under investigation for underage sex trafficking allegations that looked at his role in a larger scheme that led to the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl.

The core of that investigation included testimony from a former Gaetz associate, Joel Greenberg. Greenberg previously pleaded guilty to six charges, including sex trafficking of a minor, identity theft, stalking, wire fraud and conspiracy to bribe a public official, and agreed to cooperate with federal investigators as part of his plea agreement.

You would think that Gaetz would be appreciative that the Department of Justice helped him dodge a bullet by declining to prosecute him. Yet, moments before gloating

Gaetz, now serving on the select committee investigating the so-called weaponization of the federal government, suggested eliminating federal investigative agencies.

“I don’t care if it takes every second of our time and every ounce of our energy, we either get this government back on our side or we defund, get rid of, abolish the FBI CDC, ATF,” Gaetz said to applause.

"They say fascist so much it has no meaning anymore."

Is that so. https://t.co/lxh3mghgfa

— MMcConnell (@mattlogical) March 3, 2023

At first thought, Gaetz could seem like a reckless libertarian eager to demolish federal law enforcement. However, he's signaling what Republicans such as Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, by far the two individuals most likely to be the next GOP presidential nominee, would do if they became President. They would be determined to bring federal law enforcement agencies- and local and state police forces- to heel.

This would be the thrust of a Trump or DeSantis presidency, and the Florida governor recently

endorsed the revival of a Trump-era initiative aimed at stripping tens of thousands of federal employees of their civil service protections....

In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order establishing a new Schedule F job classification within the federal government’s excepted service for federal workers in policy-related jobs that would exempt their positions from most civil service rules. The edict ordered agencies to identify positions that would qualify for the new job category and convert employees in those jobs to Schedule F, effectively making them at-will employees.

So it's not only law enforcement that would be brought to heel but the entire federal government, which would be mobilized to enforce the will of the President and consolidate his power. Within the four years of the presidential term, an authoritarian state would be the favorite to overtake the representative democracy of the last two-and-a-half centuries. 

When he says the GOP would bring federal law enforcement agencies "to heel," it might not meet the dictionary definition of "fascism."  But it's awfully close.

 

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The Chosen One

According to Eric the Great

God said, ‘I’m going to take the most broken person and I’m going to elevate him to the place of being the mayor of the most powerful city on the globe. “He could have made me the mayor of Topeka, Kansas. He could have made me the mayor of some small town or village somewhere.

One week earlier, at an interfaith breakfast in the town he leads, New York City mayor Eric Adams had

said that he doesn’t believe church and state can be separated since he is an elected official with faith.

"Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state," Mayor Adams said. "State is the body, church is the heart. If you take the heart out of the body, the body dies."

Adams has been open about his Christian faith in the past and last February said that he believed God told him to become the mayor. But his comments on Tuesday seemed to go a bit further.

"I can't separate my belief, because I'm an elected official," Adams said. "When I walk, I walk with God, when I talk, I talk with God."

Adams seemingly even went as far as to blame everything from crime rates to low reading skills on the lack of faith in schools.

"When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools," Adams said

Steve Benen notes that mass school shootings occurred even before Supreme Court rulings on prayer and that voluntary prayer was never removed from public schools. Also: that's not Adams, who practices meditation and has collected images of the Buddha being "open about his Christian faith." That's Adams being open about faith in himself, which he may have gained in meditation. But Paul did not write the Philippians (2:3) "Do everything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others less than yourselves." Rather, it was "do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves." 

At the same venue twelve months earlier

He always believed he would one day lead New York City during his time as a state senator and Brooklyn borough president, Adams recalled.

“I never doubted it for one moment,” he said. “God told me, ‘Eric, you’re going to be mayor.’”

And that was ten months after he addressed congregants at the Church of God in the borough of Brooklyn, when he (or is it "He?") cited a Scriptural passage which in part reads "and who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" He claimed "I believe in all my heart that this is an Esther 4:14 moment. God made me for such a time as this." The similarity to our immediate ex-President is (or should be) stunning.

God, Eric Adams maintains, "could have made me the mayor of some small town or village somewhere" but instead "made me for such a time as this."  He should familiarize himself with an actual great ruler, David, son of Jesse, who wrote "Though the Lord is on high, he looks upon the lowly but the proud he knows from afar."

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Thinking Gone Haywire

On CNN in 2013 Don Lemon spoke directly to the black community and had five suggestions: "Pull up your pants"; don't use the 'n' word; stop littering; finish school, including high school and, preferably, college; get married, then have children if you wish

Referring to the video of Lemon's commentary, a right-winger with allegedly two million followers maintains:

I can't believe they're cancelling Scott Adams for agreeing with Don Lemon pic.twitter.com/cvmxaduYlm

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) February 27, 2023

I can't believe they're cancelling Scott Adams for agreeing with Don Lemon

During his podcast on February 22, Adams

cited a Rasmussen survey which apparently found out that 53 percent of Black people agree with the phrase “It’s okay to be White.”

“I’ve been identifying as Black for a while because I like to be on the winning team,” Adams said in a YouTube video. “And I like to help. I always thought if you help the Black community, that’s sort of the biggest lever, you could find, the biggest benefit.”

He added

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with White people — according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll — that’s a hate group.”

“I don’t want to have anything to do with them,” Adams added. “And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people, just get the f**k away … because there is no fixing this.”

Whether Adams' advocacy of segregation is more hateful or bizarre- in 2023 or, for matter, in 1983- is a matter of opinion. Your mileage may vary.

Yet while Adams' assertion that blacks constitute "a hate group" is intriguing because it not only betrays hate, hostility, or bigotry, it is also fundamentally inaccurate. Rasmussen asked "Do you agree or disagree with this statement: it's OK to be white" and the cartoonist concludes "nearly half of all blacks are not OK with white people."

Not exactly. Adams evidently added the 8% who opted for "somewhat disagree," the 18% for "strongly disagree," and the 21% who were "not sure" and came up with 47%.  Thus, almost half of respondents whom Adams interpreted as "not OK," perhaps confused as to why such a leading question was asked, were unsure.

That puts the results in a different light. However, even if 80% of blacks surveyed had somewhat  disagreed or strongly disagreed with the proposition, black people would not constitute a hate group. Instead, it would disturbingly reveal that a large majority of blacks were not "O.K." with people being white, or whatever it would mean. A hate group, by contrast, is formed with the purpose of hating another group. It is their raison d'etre. It's a group, coalescing around anti-social or bigoted notions, disliking individuals of a particular group (black, in this case) in a protected class.

Lemon's opening statement highlights the importance of avoiding Adams' error of attributing to a group the perspective of individuals. The CNN host stated "if this doesn't apply to you- if you're not doing this- then it doesn't apply to you. I'm not talking about you."  By contrast, the cartoonist said, roughly: "a lot of blacks dislike individuals because they're white. Shun black people."

If you believe someone is looking down upon you because of an inherited characteristic- such as race- it's only fair that you avoid them when practical. However, prejudging an entire group on the basis of how some individuals, connected to that group only by skin color, think or behave is slightly idiotic. "If this doesn't apply to you.... I'm not talking about you."

Also, wearing clothing covering the posterior, avoiding the "n" word whatever your race, disposing of trash properly, getting an education, and postponing childbearing until marriage only make sense. Whether today, ten years later, Don Lemon or an American of any race can say that is untested and uncertain.

 

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