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Showing posts with label drumpf must go. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drumpf must go. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Sunday, April 05, 2020
A True View from Canada
OPINION
The plague of Donald Trump
SARAH KENDZIOR
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED MARCH 25, 2020
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-plague-of-donald-trump/
SHARE
Sarah Kendzior is the co-host of the podcast Gaslit Nation and the author of coming book Hiding in Plain Sight.
“Life is what you do while you’re waiting to die,” Donald Trump, then a real estate tycoon bound for bankruptcy, told Playboy magazine in 1990. “You know, it is all a rather sad situation.”
“Life?” the interviewer asked. “Or death?”
“Both. We’re here and we live our 60, 70 or 80 years and we’re gone. You win, you win and in the end, it doesn’t mean a hell of a lot. But it is something to do – to keep you interested.”
For his entire life, Mr. Trump has been a self-described fatalist. He has called himself a fatalist in interviews spanning nearly 30 years. This admission is a rare expression of consistent honesty for a man infamous for lying about everything – his fortune, his criminal ties, objective reality. It’s the outlook he hints at when he does things such as retweeting a meme of himself fiddling like Nero, while the novel coronavirus spreads across the United States.
Nothing seems to matter to Mr. Trump – not only in the sense that the things that matter to other people, like love and loss, do not matter to him. Nothingness itself matters: Destruction and annihilation are what he craves. “When bad times come, then I’ll get whatever I want,” he told Barbara Walters in an 1980s interview. His initial reaction to 9/11 was that the collapse of the World Trade Center made his own buildings look taller. His initial reaction to the 2008 economic collapse was joy at his potential to profit. Everything to Mr. Trump is transactional, and you – all of you – are the transaction.
U.S. President Donald Trump pressed his case on Tuesday for a reopening of the U.S. economy by mid-April despite a surge in coronavirus cases, downplaying the pandemic as he did in its early stages by comparing it to the seasonal flu. Yahaira Jacquez reports.
REUTERS
In February, 2014, when asked about the direction of the United States, Mr. Trump rooted for its demise:
“You know what solves it?” Mr. Trump told Fox News. “When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [laughs], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.”
Everything Mr. Trump has done since taking office has served to fulfill this goal, from appointing Steve Bannon, who also called for the collapse of the government, as an adviser; to gutting departments that protect national security and public health; to his disdain for slain soldiers and their widows; to his horrific handling of natural disasters such as Hurricane Maria.
For months, Mr. Trump has done little to stop the coronavirus from spreading throughout the U.S., creating a death toll that grows rapidly every day. As citizens self-isolate, he refuses to supply federal funds to states for the much-needed medical equipment, such as masks or ventilators. When a reporter offered him the chance to ease the fears of Americans, Mr. Trump instead lashed out at the reporter for even asking. Pundits have expressed confusion about why he will not invoke the Defense Protection Act, but they should have expected it.
This is who Mr. Trump is, who he always was. In a time when everything is changing, you can rely on Mr. Trump’s apathy to suffering.
What makes Mr. Trump particularly dangerous is that he is not acting alone. He is backed by the Republican Party, which translates his natural apathy to suffering into malicious policies. Mr. Trump is surrounded by brutal plutocrats such as Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, who, like Mr. Trump, are protégés of the infamous corporate raider and former White House adviser Carl Icahn, who set the standard of destroying companies for profit.
Mr. Trump is also flanked by a number of religious extremists, such as William Barr, Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence, who use biblical imagery to cloak their brutal goals. The overall effect is a group that will sacrifice human lives to lift the stock market. Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick of Texas stated that grandparents should die for the U.S. economy. In that mentality, the U.S. exists to be raided and razed, its citizens disposable and inconvenient.
Mr. Trump, a notorious germophobe with a lifelong fear of hand-shaking, is remarkably sanguine about the coronavirus, given that he is in the demographic more likely to die if infected. He is sanguine in the way he was about being impeached, or about being labeled Individual One in a federal indictment.
Maybe it is because the world finally exists as it has in his fantasies: Everything is collapsing, yet he remains untouchable. No GOP member has denounced Mr. Trump, just as they refused to impeach him; because Mr. Trump is still in office, public officials are struggling to contain the virus.
Mr. Trump is untouchable in a world where human touch literally kills. If the U.S. is to survive the pandemic, we need more than medical intervention. We need to get rid of the host.
Sign up for the Coronavirus Update newsletter to read the day’s essential coronavirus news, features and explainers written by Globe reporters.
In the interests of public health and safety, our coronavirus news articles are free for anyone to access. However, The Globe depends on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe to globeandmail.com. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support.
© Copyright 2020 The Globe and Mail Inc. All rights reserved.
351 King Street East, Suite 1600, Toronto, ON Canada, M5A 0N1
Phillip Crawley, Publisher
The plague of Donald Trump
SARAH KENDZIOR
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED MARCH 25, 2020
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-plague-of-donald-trump/
SHARE
Sarah Kendzior is the co-host of the podcast Gaslit Nation and the author of coming book Hiding in Plain Sight.
“Life is what you do while you’re waiting to die,” Donald Trump, then a real estate tycoon bound for bankruptcy, told Playboy magazine in 1990. “You know, it is all a rather sad situation.”
“Life?” the interviewer asked. “Or death?”
“Both. We’re here and we live our 60, 70 or 80 years and we’re gone. You win, you win and in the end, it doesn’t mean a hell of a lot. But it is something to do – to keep you interested.”
For his entire life, Mr. Trump has been a self-described fatalist. He has called himself a fatalist in interviews spanning nearly 30 years. This admission is a rare expression of consistent honesty for a man infamous for lying about everything – his fortune, his criminal ties, objective reality. It’s the outlook he hints at when he does things such as retweeting a meme of himself fiddling like Nero, while the novel coronavirus spreads across the United States.
Nothing seems to matter to Mr. Trump – not only in the sense that the things that matter to other people, like love and loss, do not matter to him. Nothingness itself matters: Destruction and annihilation are what he craves. “When bad times come, then I’ll get whatever I want,” he told Barbara Walters in an 1980s interview. His initial reaction to 9/11 was that the collapse of the World Trade Center made his own buildings look taller. His initial reaction to the 2008 economic collapse was joy at his potential to profit. Everything to Mr. Trump is transactional, and you – all of you – are the transaction.
U.S. President Donald Trump pressed his case on Tuesday for a reopening of the U.S. economy by mid-April despite a surge in coronavirus cases, downplaying the pandemic as he did in its early stages by comparing it to the seasonal flu. Yahaira Jacquez reports.
REUTERS
In February, 2014, when asked about the direction of the United States, Mr. Trump rooted for its demise:
“You know what solves it?” Mr. Trump told Fox News. “When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [laughs], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.”
Everything Mr. Trump has done since taking office has served to fulfill this goal, from appointing Steve Bannon, who also called for the collapse of the government, as an adviser; to gutting departments that protect national security and public health; to his disdain for slain soldiers and their widows; to his horrific handling of natural disasters such as Hurricane Maria.
For months, Mr. Trump has done little to stop the coronavirus from spreading throughout the U.S., creating a death toll that grows rapidly every day. As citizens self-isolate, he refuses to supply federal funds to states for the much-needed medical equipment, such as masks or ventilators. When a reporter offered him the chance to ease the fears of Americans, Mr. Trump instead lashed out at the reporter for even asking. Pundits have expressed confusion about why he will not invoke the Defense Protection Act, but they should have expected it.
This is who Mr. Trump is, who he always was. In a time when everything is changing, you can rely on Mr. Trump’s apathy to suffering.
What makes Mr. Trump particularly dangerous is that he is not acting alone. He is backed by the Republican Party, which translates his natural apathy to suffering into malicious policies. Mr. Trump is surrounded by brutal plutocrats such as Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, who, like Mr. Trump, are protégés of the infamous corporate raider and former White House adviser Carl Icahn, who set the standard of destroying companies for profit.
Mr. Trump is also flanked by a number of religious extremists, such as William Barr, Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence, who use biblical imagery to cloak their brutal goals. The overall effect is a group that will sacrifice human lives to lift the stock market. Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick of Texas stated that grandparents should die for the U.S. economy. In that mentality, the U.S. exists to be raided and razed, its citizens disposable and inconvenient.
Mr. Trump, a notorious germophobe with a lifelong fear of hand-shaking, is remarkably sanguine about the coronavirus, given that he is in the demographic more likely to die if infected. He is sanguine in the way he was about being impeached, or about being labeled Individual One in a federal indictment.
Maybe it is because the world finally exists as it has in his fantasies: Everything is collapsing, yet he remains untouchable. No GOP member has denounced Mr. Trump, just as they refused to impeach him; because Mr. Trump is still in office, public officials are struggling to contain the virus.
Mr. Trump is untouchable in a world where human touch literally kills. If the U.S. is to survive the pandemic, we need more than medical intervention. We need to get rid of the host.
Sign up for the Coronavirus Update newsletter to read the day’s essential coronavirus news, features and explainers written by Globe reporters.
In the interests of public health and safety, our coronavirus news articles are free for anyone to access. However, The Globe depends on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe to globeandmail.com. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support.
© Copyright 2020 The Globe and Mail Inc. All rights reserved.
351 King Street East, Suite 1600, Toronto, ON Canada, M5A 0N1
Phillip Crawley, Publisher
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth
From Facebook
Jon Kardon
11 hrs
WARNING: I'm furious and I'm going to rant. Scroll past or read, your choice.
Trumpers - You just killed my father, my grandma, my aunt, my brother. Not figuratively, literally. You and your president fiddled while Rome burns and now our families, our neighbors and our friends are dying.
You chose to elect one of the world's most horrible humans, known for decades for his pathological lies and narcism, racism and xenophobia, and put him in charge of this country's safety. It's not bad enough that he has taken, with your vocal support, sweeping measures to threaten our future, starting with pulling the US out of the Paris Agreements and the Iran Nuclear deals. You then allowed Trump to disband the National Security Council Pandemic Team that had been assembled so that we have the ability to quickly respond to a pandemic threat.
Even without the Pandemic Team in place you could have still responded to the threat and saved this country. We had the benefit of weeks of visibility of what was happening in China, Singapore and Italy, but no, you supported the usual gaslighting response that this was all a big Democratic hoax designed to take down Trump. And so we have lost months of valuable time to 1) put his country on lock down to flatten the curve 2) prepare ourselves for the pending medical emergency by ramping up production and distribution of protective gear for our doctors, nurses and medical teams, ramping up production and distribution of respirators, essential test kits and emergency treatment and quarantine facilities.
So here we are. Instead of facing a curve like Singapore's, our curve is mimicking Italy's. Italy had 475 COVID-19 deaths yesterday. We are realistically facing over a million COVID deaths in this country now with an almost certain overrunning of our ability to treat the coming cases due to lack of everything - test kits, beds, respirators, equipment to protect the doctors, nurses and medical teams.
Meanwhile, more than half of this country is unemployed with no end in sight. Many experts are saying we not only are staring down a major recession, but just as likely a depression of which we haven't seen the likes of since 1929. So much for managing the country for the good of the stock market and your billionaire friends.
So, this one is on you, you willfully ignorant (the root word is IGNORE) and evil spirited masses of human crap. We will all now fight to survive the plague you wrought on this nation and world. We'll do our best to take care of and support our families and communities. We'll watch our musician friends as they entertain us in our virtual world and we'll contribute to their virtual tip jars. But, we will never forget what you did to all of us with your election of and support for the most dangerous, evil and ill-equipped president in our history. This one is on you.
Jon Kardon
11 hrs
WARNING: I'm furious and I'm going to rant. Scroll past or read, your choice.
Trumpers - You just killed my father, my grandma, my aunt, my brother. Not figuratively, literally. You and your president fiddled while Rome burns and now our families, our neighbors and our friends are dying.
You chose to elect one of the world's most horrible humans, known for decades for his pathological lies and narcism, racism and xenophobia, and put him in charge of this country's safety. It's not bad enough that he has taken, with your vocal support, sweeping measures to threaten our future, starting with pulling the US out of the Paris Agreements and the Iran Nuclear deals. You then allowed Trump to disband the National Security Council Pandemic Team that had been assembled so that we have the ability to quickly respond to a pandemic threat.
Even without the Pandemic Team in place you could have still responded to the threat and saved this country. We had the benefit of weeks of visibility of what was happening in China, Singapore and Italy, but no, you supported the usual gaslighting response that this was all a big Democratic hoax designed to take down Trump. And so we have lost months of valuable time to 1) put his country on lock down to flatten the curve 2) prepare ourselves for the pending medical emergency by ramping up production and distribution of protective gear for our doctors, nurses and medical teams, ramping up production and distribution of respirators, essential test kits and emergency treatment and quarantine facilities.
So here we are. Instead of facing a curve like Singapore's, our curve is mimicking Italy's. Italy had 475 COVID-19 deaths yesterday. We are realistically facing over a million COVID deaths in this country now with an almost certain overrunning of our ability to treat the coming cases due to lack of everything - test kits, beds, respirators, equipment to protect the doctors, nurses and medical teams.
Meanwhile, more than half of this country is unemployed with no end in sight. Many experts are saying we not only are staring down a major recession, but just as likely a depression of which we haven't seen the likes of since 1929. So much for managing the country for the good of the stock market and your billionaire friends.
So, this one is on you, you willfully ignorant (the root word is IGNORE) and evil spirited masses of human crap. We will all now fight to survive the plague you wrought on this nation and world. We'll do our best to take care of and support our families and communities. We'll watch our musician friends as they entertain us in our virtual world and we'll contribute to their virtual tip jars. But, we will never forget what you did to all of us with your election of and support for the most dangerous, evil and ill-equipped president in our history. This one is on you.
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Friday, January 24, 2020
Adam Schiff's Closing Argument
Adam Schiff delivered an emotional closing statement on Thursday, January 23, 2020 at the Donald Trump Impeachment trial in the Senate. He called Donald Trump “dangerous” and criticized him for listening to Rudy Giuliani over US intelligence agencies. Read the full transcript right here at Rev.com.
But even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. Even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. This brings me the last point I want to make tonight, which is, when we’re done, we believe that we will have made the case overwhelmingly of the President’s guilt. That is, he’s done what he’s charged with. He withheld the money. He withheld the meeting. He used it to coerce Ukraine to do these political investigations. He covered it up. He obstructed us. He’s trying to obstruct you and he’s violated the Constitution. But I want to address one other thing tonight. Okay. He’s guilty. Okay. He’s guilty. Does he really need to be removed? Does he really need to be removed? We have an election coming up. Does he really need to be removed? He’s guilty. Is there really any doubt about this?
Do we really have any doubt about the facts here? Does anybody really question whether the President is capable of what he’s charged with? No one is really making the argument, Donald Trump would never do such a thing, because of course we know that he would, and of course we know that he did. It’s a somewhat different question though to ask, okay, it’s pretty obvious whether we can say it publicly or we can’t say it publicly. We all know what we’re dealing here with this President, but does he really need to be removed? And this is why he needs to be removed. Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own FBI Director. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own National Security Advisors. When all of them were telling him this Ukraine 2016 stuff is kooky, crazy Russian propaganda. He chose not to believe them. He chose to believe Rudy Giuliani. That makes him dangerous to us, to our country. That was Donald Trump’s choice. Now, why would Donald Trump believe a man like Rudy Giuliani over a man like Christopher Wray? Okay. Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rudy Giuliani over Christopher Wray?
Because he wanted to and because what Rudy was offering him was something that would help him personally. And what Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the truth. What Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the information he needed to protect his country and its elections, but that’s not good enough. What’s in it for him? What’s in it for Donald Trump? This is why he needs to be removed. Now, you may be asking how much damage can he really do in the next several months until the election? A lot. A lot of damage. Now, we just saw last week, report that Russia tried to hack or maybe did hack Burisma. Okay. I don’t know if they got in. I’m trying to find out. My colleagues on the Intel committee, House and Senate, we’re trying to find out, did the Russians get in? What are the Russian plans and intentions? Well, let’s say they got in and let’s say they start dumping documents to interfere at the next election.
Let’s say they start dumping some real things they hack from Burisma. Let’s say they start dumping some fake things they didn’t hack from Burisma, but they want you to believe they did. Let’s say they start blatantly interfering in our election again to help Donald Trump. Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will stand up to them and protect our national interest over his own personal interest? You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country. You know you can’t. You know you can’t count on him. None of us can. None of us can. What happens if China got the message? Now you can say, he’s just joking of course. He didn’t really mean China should investigate the Bidens. You know that’s no joke.
Now maybe you could have argued three years ago when he said, “Hey Russia, if you’re listening, hack Hillary’s emails.” Maybe you could give him a freebie and say he was joking, but now we know better. Hours after he did that Russia did, in fact, try to hack Hillary’s emails. There’s no Mulligan here when it comes to our national security. So what if China does overtly or covertly start to help the Trump campaign? You think he’s going to call them out on it or you think he’s going to give them a better trade deal on it? Can any of us really have the confidence that Donald Trump will put his personal interests ahead of the national interests? Is there really any evidence in this presidency that should give us the ironclad confidence that he would do so?
You know you can’t count on him to do that. That’s the sad truth. You know you can’t count on him to do that. The American people deserve a President they can count on to put their interests first, to put their interests first. Colonel Vindman said, “Here, right matters. Here, right matters.” Well, let me tell you something, if right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. Doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. Doesn’t matter how well written the Oath of Impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost.
If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. Framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. That’s what they do in the old country, that Colonel Vindman’s father came from. Or the old country that my great grandfather came from, or the old countries that your ancestors came from, or maybe you came from. But here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us, right doesn’t matter any more. And you know you can’t trust this President to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters and the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Sunday, January 05, 2020
Back up your data, we may be in for a bumpy ride
Whatever happens from here on out lies in the hands of drumpf and his merry band of evil do-badders: Pompeo, Miller, Bolton, etc.
A hackers from Iran have breached the website of a little-known US government agency and posted messages vowing revenge for Washington’s killing of top military commander Qassem Suleimani.
The website of the Federal Depository Library Program was replaced on Saturday (January 4, 2020) with a page titled “Iranian Hackers!” that displayed images of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian flag.
“Martyrdom was (Suleimani’s)... reward for years of implacable efforts,” read a graphic depicting US president Donald Trump being punched by a fist emanating from Iran as missiles fly by.
“With his departure and with God’s power, his work and path will not cease and severe revenge awaits those criminals who have tainted their filthy hands with his blood and blood of the other martyrs,” it said.
Musings of a Lunatic
From my twitter feed, this man must go. Tomorrow will hopefully be a better day than today. He is unhinged, no one is stopping him. He must go now.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
2h (January 5, 2020)
Untrustworthy
These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!
·
18h (January 4, 2020)
Untrustworthy<---i a="" app="" at="" determine="" font="" have="" looks="" plausibilty="" that="" their="" to="" tweets="" twitter="">---i>
The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way...and without hesitation!
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
18h (January 4, 2020)
Untrustworthy<---i a="" app="" at="" determine="" have="" looks="" plausibilty="" span="" that="" their="" to="" tweets="" twitter="">---i>
They attacked us, & we hit back. If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder than they have ever been hit before!
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
Jan 4
Untrustworthy
As hard as I work, & as successful as our Country has become with our Economy, our Military & everything else, it is ashame that the Democrats make us spend so much time & money on this ridiculous Impeachment Lite Hoax. I should be able to devote all of my time to the REAL USA!
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
2h (January 5, 2020)
Untrustworthy
These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!
·
18h (January 4, 2020)
Untrustworthy<---i a="" app="" at="" determine="" font="" have="" looks="" plausibilty="" that="" their="" to="" tweets="" twitter="">---i>
The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way...and without hesitation!
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
18h (January 4, 2020)
Untrustworthy<---i a="" app="" at="" determine="" have="" looks="" plausibilty="" span="" that="" their="" to="" tweets="" twitter="">---i>
They attacked us, & we hit back. If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder than they have ever been hit before!
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
Jan 4
Untrustworthy
As hard as I work, & as successful as our Country has become with our Economy, our Military & everything else, it is ashame that the Democrats make us spend so much time & money on this ridiculous Impeachment Lite Hoax. I should be able to devote all of my time to the REAL USA!
IMPEACHED BASTARD MUST GO
Here’s a pic of impeached Trump at his golf course yesterday, January 2, 2020. This is after he murdered an Iranian leaver with no provocation, without notifying Congress, but after he told practically EVERYONE at Maralago. This is after he has sent for than 3,000 young men and women to Iran to fight something he started to take away attention from his impeachment and Deusch Bank nonsense. This man must IMMEDIATELY be taken out and put out of our misery.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
drumpf's ANTI SEMITISM
From Igor Volsky on Twitter regarding the growing climate of anti semitism in this country that is "possibly" related to comment by someone posing as POTUS.
."On Tuesday 2 men, possibly motivated by anti-Semitism, opened fire in Jersey City, killing 4.
The incident is part of a growing tide of hate crimes against Jews
(NYPD received 200 anti-Semitic hate crime complaints in 2019, up almost 1/3 from the same period in 2018)
We don't know if there's a direct connection here, but what's troubling is that this shooting happened just two days after Trump peddled anti-Semitic stereotypes during a speech, portraying Jews as money-grubbing types who care only about their wealth
Opinion | Donald Trump Is Bad for the Jews
There are things more important than your tax rate.
The U.S. Jewish community experienced near-historic levels of anti-Semitism in 2018, including a doubling of anti-Semitic assaults and the single deadliest attack against the Jewish community in American history:
Anti-Semitic Incidents Remained at Near-Historic Levels in 2018; Assaults Against Jews More Than...
Hate + easy access to firearms = tragedy and mass murder.
But what's also troubling and disgusting is that Trump provides a platform to hate and anti-Semitism... literally echoing anti-Semitic tropes...repeatedly
I'll say it again: as a Jew who fled the Soviet Union to escape anti-Semitism, I'm so hurt and scared -- so scared -- to see a president echo such hate and the entire GOP political establishment simply look the other way... even when that same hate is used to justify murder."
Monday, December 09, 2019
What Did He Know and When Did He Know It?
From Twitter
@RepAdamSchiff
·
December 9, 2019
The famous question from the Watergate hearings was, "What did the President know, and when did he know it?"
We don't have to ask that of President Trump.
He knew everything, and from the beginning. How?
President Trump was the central player in this corrupt scheme.
Wednesday, December 04, 2019
Friday, November 15, 2019
Friday, November 08, 2019
Op-Ed by Bill Weld on drumpf
By BILL WELD |Bill Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, is a Republican candidate for president.
PUBLISHED: November 7, 2019 in the Boston Herald
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/11/07/bill-weld-ive-seen-enough-time-for-trump-to-go/
The recent actions of Republican Party officials in several states to cancel presidential primaries, organized and directed by the Trump organization in Washington, D.C., are not merely anti-democracy: they amount to an organized insurrection against our democratic elections and our Constitution that protects them.
It appears that the U.S. House of Representatives, exercising the sole power of impeachment under the Constitution, may send formal Articles of Impeachment against Donald Trump to the U.S. Senate, which has the duty under the Constitution to determine whether Donald Trump is to be removed from office.
If Republican Senators walk the plank for Donald Trump, they will deserve all the thanks they get from Mr. Trump in return.
Of course there will be no thanks whatever from a troubled egomaniac, but instead a harsh verdict from history.
Republicans will lose control of the Senate in a landslide similar to that which followed the removal of Richard Nixon from office, and the Republican Party as we have known it will cease to exist.
Impeachment and removal from office is a process that was enshrined in the Constitution. Article II, Section 4 was adopted not to undo elections, but to provide Congress, as our representatives, a way to protect the people in the event that a president’s abuses of power are so great as to threaten our democratic institutions, such as a free press, or our system of government.
In 1973, during Watergate, as a counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, I was among a team of attorneys tasked with preparing a report for the Committee on the Constitutional Grounds for Impeachment. That report remains today as a foundational reference for those in Congress contemplating the impeachment and removal of Donald J. Trump.
Our president’s actions don’t just “fit” within what we found to be grounds for impeachment and removal: rather, they are precisely what the Founders feared.
The top two concerns of the Founders were that a President might invite foreign interference in our internal affairs, and that a President might corrupt his public office by abusing it to seek personal gain for himself, whether financial, political or legal.
Mr. Trump’s actions check all the boxes.
He used hundreds of millions of dollars in critical military aid to a key European ally, fighting a hot war with Russia, to bully the president of Ukraine into digging up dirt on a political opponent. This time, he didn’t just tolerate foreign interference in our elections, he engaged in extortion to try to make it happen.
People in the Ukraine died and the national security of the United States was compromised because Donald Trump put a price on crucial assistance to an ally, and that price was entirely about insuring his own re-election — failing which, he has openly threatened Civil War!
A president abusing his power to insure his hold on that power — and enlisting a foreign nation to do so — is exactly what the Founders feared when they gave Congress the power to impeach and remove a president.
I’ve seen enough. If I were in the Senate today, I would vote to remove Donald J. Trump from office.
They say I am a dark horse as a candidate in this year’s presidential race. Who is darker, a proven economic conservative who takes environmental threats and military alliances seriously, or a man who sells out his own country for personal gain?
Donald Trump is a man who has his sycophants cancel American elections because he believes democracy must be dodged at all costs, so that later it can be abandoned.
These are ominous days for our Republic, and a weighty burden is soon to descend on the Republican members of the United States Senate. I pray they may shoulder it.
PUBLISHED: November 7, 2019 in the Boston Herald
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/11/07/bill-weld-ive-seen-enough-time-for-trump-to-go/
The recent actions of Republican Party officials in several states to cancel presidential primaries, organized and directed by the Trump organization in Washington, D.C., are not merely anti-democracy: they amount to an organized insurrection against our democratic elections and our Constitution that protects them.
It appears that the U.S. House of Representatives, exercising the sole power of impeachment under the Constitution, may send formal Articles of Impeachment against Donald Trump to the U.S. Senate, which has the duty under the Constitution to determine whether Donald Trump is to be removed from office.
If Republican Senators walk the plank for Donald Trump, they will deserve all the thanks they get from Mr. Trump in return.
Of course there will be no thanks whatever from a troubled egomaniac, but instead a harsh verdict from history.
Republicans will lose control of the Senate in a landslide similar to that which followed the removal of Richard Nixon from office, and the Republican Party as we have known it will cease to exist.
Impeachment and removal from office is a process that was enshrined in the Constitution. Article II, Section 4 was adopted not to undo elections, but to provide Congress, as our representatives, a way to protect the people in the event that a president’s abuses of power are so great as to threaten our democratic institutions, such as a free press, or our system of government.
In 1973, during Watergate, as a counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, I was among a team of attorneys tasked with preparing a report for the Committee on the Constitutional Grounds for Impeachment. That report remains today as a foundational reference for those in Congress contemplating the impeachment and removal of Donald J. Trump.
Our president’s actions don’t just “fit” within what we found to be grounds for impeachment and removal: rather, they are precisely what the Founders feared.
The top two concerns of the Founders were that a President might invite foreign interference in our internal affairs, and that a President might corrupt his public office by abusing it to seek personal gain for himself, whether financial, political or legal.
Mr. Trump’s actions check all the boxes.
He used hundreds of millions of dollars in critical military aid to a key European ally, fighting a hot war with Russia, to bully the president of Ukraine into digging up dirt on a political opponent. This time, he didn’t just tolerate foreign interference in our elections, he engaged in extortion to try to make it happen.
People in the Ukraine died and the national security of the United States was compromised because Donald Trump put a price on crucial assistance to an ally, and that price was entirely about insuring his own re-election — failing which, he has openly threatened Civil War!
A president abusing his power to insure his hold on that power — and enlisting a foreign nation to do so — is exactly what the Founders feared when they gave Congress the power to impeach and remove a president.
I’ve seen enough. If I were in the Senate today, I would vote to remove Donald J. Trump from office.
They say I am a dark horse as a candidate in this year’s presidential race. Who is darker, a proven economic conservative who takes environmental threats and military alliances seriously, or a man who sells out his own country for personal gain?
Donald Trump is a man who has his sycophants cancel American elections because he believes democracy must be dodged at all costs, so that later it can be abandoned.
These are ominous days for our Republic, and a weighty burden is soon to descend on the Republican members of the United States Senate. I pray they may shoulder it.
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Don't Look Away
Hot takes on AOC saying that the United States government is operating concentration camps:
76 people in a cell designed for 12.
155 people in a cell designed for 35.
41 in a cell for 8.
Don’t look away.
900 people total, or or more than seven times the 125-person capacity of the El Paso Del Norte immigration processing center.
If it weren’t for the white boxes shielding the faces of dozens of men and women stuffed into the overcrowded cell, it would be difficult to count the people in the photograph, since their overlapping limbs make it impossible to see where one body ends and another begins.
Standing room only cells, where people are held for weeks.
Limited access to showers and clean clothes, resulting in those held wearing soiled clothing “for days or weeks.”
People standing on toilets just to find air to breathe. 24 deaths while in ICE custody.
Johana Mediana Léon, 25 years old. Transgender. Passed away four days after release from custody after complaining of chest pains.
Mergensana Amar, 40 years old. Removed from life support after committing suicide in custody
.
Efrain De La Rosa, 40 years old. Committed suicide in custody by self-inflicted strangulation.
Roxana Hernandez, 33 years old. Transgender. Passed away in custody after experiencing cardiac arrest.
300,000-500,000 individuals per year in custody. Acting ICE director Mark Morgan’s response? Plans to increase large scale raids.
Don’t look away.
They’re not “centers.” They’re not “facilities.” They’re not “processing areas.” Let’s call them what they are.
The United States government is operating concentration camps. And we must act.
Memos surfaced by journalist Ken Klippenstein (https://muckrack.com/ken-klippenstein/articles) revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s failure to provide medical care was responsible for suicides and other deaths of detainees.
These followed another report that showed that thousands of detainees are being brutally held in isolation cells just for being transgender or mentally ill.
Two weeks ago, the Trump administration cut funding for classes, recreation and legal aid at detention centers holding minors — which were likened to “summer camps” by a senior ICE official last year. And there was the revelation that months after being torn from their parents’ arms, 37 children were locked in vans for up to 39 hours (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/botched-family-reunifications-left-migrant-children-waiting-vans-overnight-n1013336) in the parking lot of a detention center outside Port Isabel, Texas. In the last year, at least seven migrant children have died in federal custody.
Don’t look away.
It’s certainly been helpful for the Trump Administration that nobody has called them concentration camps until this week, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came under great fire for doing so.
It may well be a testament to the media machine that is the Trump administration. Look away! He wore an ill-fitting tuxedo to meet the Queen! Look away! He won’t acknowledge that the Central Park Five are exonerated! Look away! He fired pollsters for giving him numbers that he didn’t like!
Don’t look away.
It’s helpful to the President that the media covers these human rights abuses intermittently instead of as what they actually are: proof of a racist administration, unchecked by the law. It’s helpful that there’s so much else to look at right now. But more than anything else, it’s helpful that the places where these people are being tortured and left to die are hidden. They’re locked away from the eyes of journalists and concerned members of the public. They’re misleadingly named.
That’s what a concentration camp is. And the immediate outrage to AOC calling them that is the right response. Hearing that the government is running concentration camps is something one should feel scrupulous towards. A concentration camp isn’t the same as a death camp. We don’t have those yet. But when Hitler ran his, they started as the former, extending to the latter.
Don’t look away.
Hannah Arendt, imprisoned by the Gestapo and interned in a French camp, wrote about the levels of concentration camps. Extermination camps were the most extreme; others were just about getting “undesirable elements … out of the way.” All had one thing in common: “The human masses sealed off in them are treated as if they no longer existed, as if what happened to them were no longer of interest to anybody, as if they were already dead.”
Is that not what we were doing?
I hesitate to speak for my own ancestry, for my family members killed at Neuengamme camp along with more than 43,000 others. But I can’t hesitate long enough to sway my thinking away from confirming what AOC already said.
It’s easy to think of the Holocaust only in terms of the final outcome. But there was a beginning.
Don’t look away. It started with fear mongering. It started with ghettoization. It started with hidden camps. Then, the pogroms. Then, the extermination camps.
Mass detention isn’t new. But this president has made it a centerpiece of his rhetoric and his agenda. He’s perfected the extreme language that dehumanizes immigrants. At a rally in Florida last month, Trump was bemoaning migrants’ legal protections when someone in the audience suggested they should be shot. The president laughed and made a joke.
Through overcrowding and dehumanization, concentration camps became self-fulfilling prophecies. The culture of abuse leads to frustration and violence, thus “justifying” their incarceration after the fact. Other citizens become desensitized to the dehumanization of a group of people and thus implicitly give approval for concentration camps by our lack of pushback.
Do you see it?
It’s happening now.
Don’t look away.
~ Joshua-Rush ~
Here is a link to a report where the above info is quoted: https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/Mga/2019/oig-19-46-may19-mgmtalert.pdf
Here is a link to a report where the above info is quoted: https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/Mga/2019/oig-19-46-may19-mgmtalert.pdf
Tuesday, June 04, 2019
Saturday, January 12, 2019
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