4 IX 2019: Ozymandias gotta get his wall on time!

The Secretary of Defense, with no regard for his duty to the American people and their military, has authorized the diverting of $3.6 billion in military construction funds for 11 wall projects on the Southern border. His explanation is a masterpiece of BS. He told Congress that he determined, on the basis I suppose, of his long experience as Secretary, that “eleven military construction projects along the international border with Mexico, with an estimated cost of $3.8 billion, are necessary to support the use of the armed forces in connection with the national emergency.”

The military construction projects are not barracks, missile silos, air fields, or PXs, but chunks of Trump’s Folly, the Wall.

The national emergency is the prospect of Trump’s not being re-elected and having to go to prison. Preventing this requires an abundance of deceit hitherto unseen in American politics and fulfillment of the promises of BUILD THE WALL and MAKE MEXICO PAY FOR IT.

So this unexampled waste of money is required by Trump’s personal needs, not “to support the [wasteful] use of armed forces in connection with the [phony] national emergency.” I am again and again amazed at Trump’s ability to appoint administrators who are a) all quite incompetent and b) shameless liars.

Trump & Co. have made the U.S. Government into a “privately held” company in which the CEO can do as his fears and whims incline him. They are taking money appropriated by Congress for FEMA and for the real defense of the U.S. and using it to advance his personal interests.

Misuse of huge sums of government money for personal purposes and operating a deceitful p.r. campaign in support of this are behaviors I associate with Third World dictatorships.

1 IX 2019: Terror masked by affected pride

A “straight pride” parade took place in Boston, sponsored by a group that calls itself Super Happy Fun America. Apparently, the Super Happy Fun Boys feel that the civil rights of straights are under threat and decided they should protest. So much for the window dressing. 

In fact, it shouldn’t be called a “Straight Pride Parade,” but a “We’re scared to death we might not be 100% straight parade,” and it is held to give sexually ambiguous males an opportunity to assert to one another their aspirational masculinity. I do not know how well “super happy” and “fun” and “America” are a part of this rather pathetic “straight pride” protest. Maybe “Super-Frightened Feeling-Threatened America” would be a more descriptive name for the sponsoring group.

30 VIII 2019: “Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice”

This is the title of a report prepared by a team of prominent lawyers for the National Popular League that was published in 1920. It consists mostly of a series of sworn testimonies, each termed an exhibit, that describe the criminal activity of the U.S. Dept. of Justice during what is now called “The First Red Scare.” This was, of course, when J. Edgar Hoover, the famous blackmailer, was just getting started. Could be that “criminal activity” seems a bit strong, but f denying people due process and other rights guaranteed by our Constitution is not a crime, I don’t know what is. 

Times have changed. I don’t think our Dept. of Justice is so criminal, despite the fact that at its top the DOJ is wholly corrupt. And we’re not rounding up and deporting socialist politicians and labor organizers. No, we are expending a lot more money and energy to round up illegal immigrants and their families, not through the DOJ, but through the Department of Homeland Security, a barely legal offspring of 9/11 hysteria. How bad is this? I read that the DHS will no longer admit staff of the House Oversite Committee to ICE’s prison camps, so we can safely assume that conditions in them are as bad or worse than we had earlier learned. DHS needs to conceal its incompetence, general inhumanity, and contempt for immigrants. 

Where do they get their funding? Trump is siphoning off money that was appropriated for other appropriate government activities to fund a bloated ICE and run a crash program to get his illegal wall built in time for the 2020 election. None of this shell game with funds has been approved by Congress. But Trump’s métier is playing shell games with other peoples’ money, always borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and resisting fiercely any oversight. Is the Wall necessary or even useful for national security? Of course not. But it is necessary to Trump’s re-election, so it is Donald’s own Manhattan Project, a full-bore crash program to keep him out of jail. So he’s ready with implausible deniability and a pocket full of pardons for those he is encouraging to break the law.

18 VIII 2019: The war against children

Americans boast of our love of children. Childhood is routinely idealized as the happy, worry-free stage in life. We will do anything for our children, for they are the future of our country. 

Of course, the facts of our treatment of our children deny this. If we really loved our children and placed all our hopes of the future in them we would invest gladly and heavily in public education. We would not pass on to them an insupportable national debt. We would not squander their resources. We would not leave them with a corroded infrastructure and irrecoverably polluted land, water, and sky. We would not be shooting them on the streets where they play. We would not slaughter them in their schools. We would not be abusing them at the rate of some 700,000 children per year. We would not have aborted 45,789,558 of them in the period 1970 — 2015.

At the local level: We would not have allowed the state of Missouri to lead the nation in the number of children dropped from Medicaid — 16% in the last two years, as Tony Messenger reports in today’s Post-Dispatch. This is due to a mindless, heartless determination to save state money at the expense of children.

We would not allow a culture to be so inured to criminality as to refuse to disclose the identities of those who murdered their children. The Post-Dispatch reports one parent of a murdered child saying: “Around St. Louis we don’t snitch on people. We keep it in the streets.” “Snitches get stiches,” we were told in Ferguson, but can fear of retribution so paralyze people that they refuse to help defend their community’s children?

We would not allow our government to be hijacked by a man who cannot control his impulses that will bring our country ever closer to war, nor would we allow an entire political party to shelter him with barely believable hypocrisy.

We would not allow this same government to terrorize immigrants by taking children from their parents and subjecting them to imprisonment and abuse, hygienic and medical neglect, and incessant psychological trauma. This is a part of a policy of undisguised cruelty all to please those among us who want to “keep America white.” For I don’t think the American people would tolerate this mistreatment of children if the children were white. These foreign children present in our land are being subjected to what would otherwise be regarded and cruel and unusual punishment.

No, our idealization of childhood and sentimentalized attachment to children cannot protect them from our predatory behaviors. Our children make manifest our traditional national selfishness.

13 VIII 2019: Real malice of Trump Admin. towards immigrants revealed

I have long suspected that Trump’s antipathy towards immigrants is race-based. However, I did not think anyone from his administration would be stupid enough to state this. But today comes the news of Mr. Ken Cuccinelli (doesn’t sound like an American name to me!), the Acting Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services [sic] and his essays in literary criticism. He had earlier on Tuesday suggested a rewrite of Emma Lazarus’ celebrated poem that would run: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.” Later, in an interview, he backed away from his rewrite and claimed instead that the poem on the Statue of Liberty refers only to Europeans, i.e., says “Whites only.” What is this stupid, callous wannabe-WASP doing in government service. What an embarrassment for us all! I imagine he will next require an applicant for a green card to pass a color test and be able to prove that his grandparents and great-grandparents were white. He will have a team of right-wing scientists produce a color chart to guide the good old boys from ICE and the border patrol.

This is Trump all over. We don’t want <colored> people from shit-hole countries. Why can’t we get some <Aryan> people from Norway? Cuccinelli’s interpretation of Emma Lazarus’ poem is the clearest declaration of racism that we have heard from the Trump administration so far. As we approach the election we will hear, I believe, much worse.

11 VIII 2019: J. Epstein’s death

Trump has retweeted the wild surmise of an attention-seeking fellow called Terrence K. Williams who has the oxymoronic job description: “conservative comedian.”Mr. Williams’ latest joke is that the Clintons were behind Epstein’s murder. Our President, with his keen tabloid mind, grabbed this bit of silliness like a dog grabs a bone. The Attorney General, Mr. Barr, another lover of the truth, has announced a thorough investigation of Epstein’s death – harumph, harumph, harumph!

I am inclined to think that it will turn out that Epstein killed himself. But if it turns out that he was helped into the next world, I would look not to the Clintons, but to Trump and Barr for an explanation.

8 VIII 2019: Quick catch by the Trump Disinformation Team

When Trump visited the hospitalized victims of the recent shooting in Dayton he was attended by the Mayor Whaley of Dayton and Sen. Sheerod Brown. Trump’s behavior in the hospital seems to have been as bad or worse than usual (see https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/08/politics/trump-el-paso-coverage/index.html). Even so, in a press conference Whaley and Brown praised Trump’s performance at the hospital. However, each also made the mistake of criticizing Trump’s past rhetoric, and that spark set off a bomb. Apparently, Trump was pissed and at once made up the lie that they had ungratefully misrepresented his performance at the hospital. This bit of deceit was picked up immediately by his mouthpieces, and Daniel Scarino and Stephanie Grisham told the same lie. That they produce and spread disinformation does not surprise me, but the rapidity and coordination with which they do it is truly impressive.

7 VIII 2019: Brutal Patriotism?

One Curt James Brockway, a registered violent offender, fractured the skull of a teenager apparently because the kid did not remove his hat during the National Anthem. So you see, there are good people on both sides.

7 VIII 2019: Prince of the Church

If you will google “burke cappa magna” and click on Images, you can see lots of pictures of Raymond Burke wearing his cappa magna and even his ermine. The lad from Richmond Center WI is wearing the garb of a Prince of the Church — the Vatican City is certainly the Land of Opportunity! 

Cardinal Burke is, of course, the banner-bearer for retrogressive elements both in the Catholic Church and, to an increasing extent, in the political world. He was a keynote speaker at the recent meeting of the reactionary Napa Institute for which the registration fee for Clergy and Religious was $1,300 (discounted to $1000 for early registration) and the fee for all others was $2600 (discounted to $2300 for early registration). The meeting was held at the austere Meritage Resort and Spa (https://meritagecollection.com/meritage-resort?nck=8664946895). I wonder what honorarium was paid to the Cardinal. (Was he paid more than George Weigel, encomiast of JP II, another keynote speaker). Did he get the discounted price by registering early, or did he have to fork over $1300? Did he have time for a hot-air baloon ride?

Apropos of the cappa magna I refer readers to the article at http://www.eyeofthetiber.com/2015/06/25/missing-burke-found-alive-after-getting-lost-inside-cappa-magna-for-five-days/. As to the meeting of the Napa Institute, it was just another semi-secret reactionary rally, distinguished from the many other similar rallies by the presence of a much-aggrieved Prince of the Church.