APRIL 2019 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. The Texas State Legislature. The Texas secretary of state’s recent effort to target non-citizens for voting illegally was a giant mess—of 95,000 names flagged as non-citizens who had registered to vote, it turned out that thousands had become citizens before registering, and were doing absolutely nothing wrong. The state faces lawsuits over the effort to demonize immigrants, but that’s not stopping Texas Republicans from doubling down. Two bills in the Texas state Senate would force local voter registrars to strip their voting rolls of everyone who had at any point said they weren’t a citizen.

Under the Republican bills, people who had recently become citizens and registered to vote—as is their right—would have that right taken away without being notified so that they could set things straight. And voter registrars who failed to kick a group of mostly legal voters off the rolls would face penalties and possible removal from office.

Not that we needed any further evidence of how much Republicans want to suppress voting, but wow. Immediately after a list of supposed illegal voters was shown to be overwhelmingly a list of legal voters, Republicans are moving to use the same standard to disenfranchise voters without warning or recourse. They’re evil, they’re desperate … and they might prevent a lot of people from voting.

FEBRUARY 2019 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Graham is suddenly very concerned about due process and how suspects are taken into custody by law enforcement. That’s why he’s now demanding answers from the FBI about the arrest of former Trump political adviser Roger Stone. The South Carolina senator is leading a one-man pity party for Stone, insisting the agency address why it was necessary to have so many agents arrest Stone at his home in the early morning hours on Friday, Jan. 25.

In a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray dated Jan. 30, Graham asks (among other things) why Stone was simply not permitted to surrender himself voluntarily. He also asks if anyone at the FBI, Department of Justice, or the special counsel’s office alerted the media, specifically CNN. This is all because Stone’s arrest was caught on video and the incredible image of FBI agents knocking on the door of an adviser to the American president won’t soon be forgotten.

Republicans are trying their best to make this some kind of conspiracy where Stone is the victim of an out-of-control investigation by Democrats who just want to oust Trump. But facts are facts: No one made Roger Stone get involved in criminal activity on behalf of a corrupt and unfit president. He’s being charged with seven federal counts, which range from witness tampering to obstruction of justice. This is serious business, and none of us should feel bad for the way his arrest went down.

He got treated just like the millions of regular people across the country when they get arrested and don’t have money, power, and political influence. In a nation where inequality increases daily and money allows people to do whatever they want, consequences be damned, there is something a little bit democratic about the way Stone got nailed by an FBI SWAT team while he was still in his pajamas.

Where’s Graham’s outrage for the many people who are arrested or killed without due process? What about Walter Scott, Graham’s fellow South Carolinian, who was gunned down in 2015 by a North Charleston police officer, shot in the back as he was running away after a traffic stop? What about all the unarmed black and brown people who don’t receive just treatment by police? Did Graham demand answers from the Cleveland Police when they shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice within two seconds of arriving to a park because he was playing with a toy gun? It seems as if Graham’s passion for justice only emerges when rich friends of his president are in big legal trouble.

Just a reminder: Even though the charges against him are serious, Roger Stone was released on bail the very same day he was arrested. He was not allowed to surrender himself to the FBI because investigators were concerned that he would tamper with evidence. But he was still released on a $250,000 bond (that’s it!) and made the conservative media rounds later that day to proclaim his innocence. Even though Graham and Republicans want us to believe that the FBI was needlessly inappropriate and harsh with Stone, his arrest and release point out one thing quite clearly: If you have to get arrested at all, it’s you better be a rich, old, white dude.

MARCH 2019 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDIRTY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Senator Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota). Say what? According to Rounds, Donald Trump having an affair with Stormy Daniels—shortly after his youngest child was born—and then paying her hush money to keep the story under wraps before the election, is okay in his book because it just proves that Trump really, really loves his family:

“I honestly think this president loves his family … I think it has as much to do with trying not to have public discussions about something that is, for him, a private matter … and I don’t think he wanted his family to go through this.”

Some might suggest that Trump could have better proven his love of family by not having an affair with a porn star—again, shortly after his youngest child was born—but hey, who can argue with a family values guy like Mike Rounds? Of course, one does wonder if Mrs. Rounds is somewhere thinking, “If Mike loves me that much, I’ll kill him.”

MY SOCIAL AND POLITICAL AWAKENING: A SPECIAL THANKS TO SYDNEY VERBA AND BIRCH BAYH

By Ronald T. Fox

 

My Social and Political Awakening

I read in the March 18 New York Times that two men who were importantly responsible for my political awakening and the development of my thinking about government and politics had passed away. One was political scientist Sydney Verba and the other Indiana Senator Birch Bayh. Their passing moved me to reminisce about their roles in my intellectual and political maturation.

JANUARY 2019 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Fox News. Fox News has been a shameful apologist in its responses to the Trump Administration’s inhumane immigration policies on the Mexican border. With Americans being exposed to images of small children being stripped from their parents and held in caged-in detention centers, Fox has been steadfast in downplaying the cruelty and blaming, of course, Democrats for the inhumanity.

As we approach the new year, here’s a brief round-up of the more callous, hateful, embarrassing and downright jaw-dropping moments the entire Fox line-up has shoved to viewers throughout the year. Buckle up and ride this embarrassing wave until the end.

Fox has been consistent in contending that the children aren’t really being kept in cages. You see, they “are merely chain-link walls” to create rooms.  Small rooms, but hey! Definitely not cages! Back in June, Tucker Carlson summed it up:

"No matter what they tell you, this isn't about helping children. A lot of people yelling at you on TV don't even have kids, so don't for a second let them take moral high ground. Their goal is to change your country forever."

And with no irony detected whatsoever, Carlson’s guest, acting ICE Director Thomas Homan said the comparison to Nazis is unfair because “they are simply enforcing laws enacted by Congress.”

But, nothing, and I mean NOTHING could top The Ingraham Angle with host Laura Ingraham and special guest, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. First up, Laura Ingraham laughed off the suggestion that tearing kids, including babies, from their parents and sticking them in cages inside a former Walmart amounted to child abuse. Ingraham wanted her audience to know, these child prisons are “essentially summer camps!”

What the hell kind of summer camp does Laura Ingraham send her kids to? We have one working as a summer camp counselor right now and you know what they are doing? Zip lining, learning how to care for animals, doing craft projects, creating variety show skits and making s’mores over a campfire.

But, my God, nothing could prepare us for what came next on Ingraham’s show. Attorney General Jeff Sessions joined Ingraham to beat back the growing, legitimate comparisons between the concentration camps of Germany and these border facilities and the indefinite lock-up of migrants. Hitler whipped up nationalism using many of these same techniques, scapegoating Jewish people and immigrants. So, how did Sessions bat down these comparisons? By claiming they are nothing like the Nazis because Hitler wouldn’t let the Jews leave Germany.

In the last week of December, Fox excused ICE’s anti-immigrant actions when it featured New York’s jackass Representative Peter King saying:

“They’ve had hundreds of thousands of people that they had custody of over the years and I think these are the only two children that have died in recent memory.”

That’s right, he thinks it’s ONLY two dead kids. And, they weren’t even white kids. And besides, King points out, it “does happen in housing projects across the country” all the time. Which also sounds like dog whistle for “other kids who aren’t white, so who cares?”

What is wrong with these people? Where were they radicalized to be so cruel and inhumane? Every action they take is more deplorable than the last. It is past time for Congress to start acting as the check and balance they were intended to be. The need to find their spines. If they don’t, let’s hope American voters send them to the unemployment lines. In the meantime, pick up the phone and call your elected representatives today to demand this policy end and these children are reunited with their parents.

TRUMP’S DEBASED PRESIDENCY

By Ronald T. Fox

We’ve” endured” two years of the Donald Trump presidency. I put endured in quotes since the damage he has caused to our democracy, fundamental norms and global standing has not yet fully played out. Things could get far worse.  I can't help wonder whether American democracy, as we've come to know it, will survive the Trump onslaught.  

Trump’s incessant attacks on human rights, freedom of the press and speech, honesty in government, public health and safety and the rule of law, has seriously degraded the quality of democratic life in America. In addition, his attacks on our closest allies, while embracing brutal foreign demagogues, and his abandonment of long-standing international treaties and agreements have severely tarnished America’s international standing as a bastion of democratic rule and leader of the free world. His manipulations of fear and hate has widened political divisions to levels not seen since the Civil War.

Two-thousand eighteen finds him reeling from what he has wrought. Slumbering Americans may finally be waking up to the Trump ship wreck, at least let’s hope so.

One of the best summations of Trump’s 2018 was published in the Opinion Section of the December 24, Sacramento Bee, written by the progressive thinker and activist, Sasha Abramsky. For over three decades, Abramsky has been a tireless advocate for social justice. He pulls few punches in his extensive writings lambasting compromises made with our cherished democratic norms. His latest book, Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream, offers a personal, beautifully written and compelling exploration of the rise, and consequences, of irrational public fear, which he connects to our toxic politics and susceptibility to demagogic messages. It is a primer on the rise of Trumpism and where we may be heading if we don’t confront irrational fear.

I’m posting Abramsky’s opinion piece on Trump’s second year in office. It hits the proverbial nail on the head.

DECEMBER 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Republican Lawmakers in Michigan and Wisconsin. Two years ago, Republicans in North Carolina undertook a brazen power grab after their nominee — the sitting governor — lost re-election by deciding to weaken the governor’s office. The state legislature passed two bills stripping the governor of some powers, and the outgoing governor, Pat McCrory, signed them.

In doing so, McCrory and his allies rejected the peaceful transfer of power that is essential to democracy. They instead chose the peaceful transfer of some power.

In 2018, it became clear that this problem extended beyond North Carolina. Republicans in Michigan and Wisconsin are now following a similar script to protect partisan GOP power. Let’s see: