Journal of the Plague Years

September 18, 2018

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s brave decision to go public with her accusation that Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her when he was 17 has thrown a grenade into the Republicans’ confirmation hearing charade. The reaction on the right has been predictable. Some have excoriated Dr. Ford as an opportunist- a risible assertion that only makes sense if we think that scores of women crave the “opportunity” to re-live scarring trauma while scores of people pore over every detail of our personal and professional life in an effort to discredit us. Continue reading “The Year of the Woman?”

September 15, 2018

The last two years have been a pitched battle between those of us pushing for a “more perfect union” and those wishing to normalize patriarchal white supremacy and abandon any pretense of democracy. From day to day, we rebound from this regime’s relentless assaults on those of us who are not straight, white, Christian men to trying to take solace in special election victories or court decisions that slow our country’s headlong rush into autocracy. For those of us on the side of democracy, this has been an encouraging week.

On Thursday, Tish James won the New York State Democratic Primary for Attorney General, positioning her to be the first Black woman to hold statewide elected office in New York. Additionally, six members of the faux Democratic I.D.C. were defeated by a diverse group of more progressive Democrats.

Continue reading “Predators”

September 12, 2018

 

While we gape in slack jawed horror at the demented antics of a racist moron who is dangerously unfit for office, his underlings are furiously erecting the edifice for genocide right in front of our faces.  Almost 500 immigrant children remain in detention, separated from parents who may have already been deported, in blatant noncompliance with the court order for their unification and release issued almost two months ago, (Source: “Dems demand plan for reunifying 500 children still separated from families,” by Rafael Bernal, TheHill.com, 9/4/18).  The lazy defiance of the federal government has the ACLU scrambling in remote Central American villages in an effort to locate these parents.

The DHS response has been to seek to tear up the 20 year old Flores settlement, which prohibits the long term detention of children, in order to incarcerate immigrant families indefinitely (Source:  “Trump admin seeks to keep undocumented families in detention far longer,” by Tal Kopan, CNN.com, 9/6/18).  Those who harbor any doubt about this administration’s goal need look no further than yesterday’s announcement that , DHS transferred $10 million dollars from the FEMA budget to ICE and CBP in order to build more detention centers for immigrants, at the height of hurricane season, (Source: “Dem Senator releases documents appearing to show DHS diverted $10M from FEMA to ICE,” by John Bowden, TheHill.com, 9/11/18).  The echoes of Japanese internment are impossible to ignore.

Keep in mind that our government is doing this to people who are legally seeking asylum or guilty of a misdemeanor, at most.  This exposes their true aim — to place insurmountable obstacles in the path of any non-white person seeking residence or citizenship in the United States.  Lest we think that the government’s attack on people of color is limited to those seeking entry to the country, consider two insidious stories that show this administration’s determination to eject non-white people who are in this country legally.

Just yesterday, The United States Citizenship and Immigrations Services announced a new policy that would  allow them to deny visa and green card applications on technicalities without giving applicants notice and a chance to correct errors.  Nor can we overlook the recent report of the government denying passport renewals to American citizens of Latinx descent along the Texas/Mexico border, challenging their birthright citizenship.  This dragnet has snared veterans and has resulted in some U.S. citizens being thrown into immigrant detention centers (Source:  “U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question,” by Kevin Sieff, The Washington Post, 8/29/18).

This is why John Bolton threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions.  He is not merely  seeking to escape punishment for war crimes that we may have committed in Afghanistan, he is seeking carte blanche for the ones we are in the midst of committing.  We must face it:  November represents our last chance to keep our country from descending full throttle into authoritarian madness, but we won’t get there unless every one of us does everything we can to retake the House and even the Senate.  Sign up with Swingleft.org to help flip a nearby district.  Make phone calls for Beto O’Rourke and of course, VOTE.  After all, if they get away with this coordinated assault on birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment, who do you think they’ll come after next?

 

#AntonioDelgadoNY19

#MikieSherrillNJ11

#TomMalinowskiNJ7

#BetoO’Rourke

September 9, 2018

 

At first blush, there would seem to be no connection between the disastrous end of the U.S. Open Women’s Final and the confirmation hearing of Bret Kavanaugh last week, but both illuminated something powerful and frightening – the determination of far too many men to deny women respect, equality or our very bodily autonomy.

Everyone knows that the historic matchup between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka was marred by the Chair Umpire’s actions.  His decision to penalize Serena’s rule violations by awarding first a point, and then a game, to Naomi Osaka, permanently tainted a victory that Osaka seemed on track to win anyway. Much of the media coverage has described Serena as having a “temper tantrum” or the “mother of all meltdowns.”  Reaction has broken down along gender lines, with many men saying that Serena should have controlled herself; blaming her for not clamming up over what she saw as an unjust penalty that impugned her integrity.  Washington Post columnist, Sally Jenkins, handily refutes that argument, pointing out that the issue was not whether Serena lost her temper (she did), but whether the chair umpire insinuated himself in an unseemly power play to put Serena in her place. Continue reading “Women’s rights”

September 6, 2018

 

Not since we were ruled by a late stage syphilitic monarch from across the ocean have we had a ruler so manifestly unfit for office and so single mindedly dedicated to rapaciously plundering our coffers for his own selfish gain.  The one-two punch of the release of Bob Woodward’s “Fear,” and the publication of the anonymous Op-Ed written by a cowardly conservative cowering in The West Wing, have confirmed beyond cavil that Trump is exactly as he appears—amoral, cruel, impulsive, ignorant and blisteringly stupid.

 

The question is, what are we to do in the face of this confirmation of our worst fears?  Should we be mollified that Trump’s dangerous impulses are allegedly being restrained by shadowy, unnamed officials, whose most fervent hope is to execute his tax-cutting, nativist agenda more competently?  The answer is a resounding “No!”

 

The fact is that the Constitution provides not one, but two, routes out of this crisis.  The most obvious one, suggested by the anonymous Op-Ed writer, is to invoke the 25th Amendment.  Section 4 of the Amendment provides that, “[w]henever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the office of Acting President.”  Anonymous claims that this option was considered and rejected for fear that it would “precipitate a Constitutional crisis,” a self-serving statement that ignores that we are already in one.

The other obvious mechanism for resolving this crisis is through impeachment.  Article II, Section 4 states that the “President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”  Although we know that impeachment is a political question and that Mueller has yet to complete his investigation, Trump has committed enough acts in plain sight for Congress to at least consider the question.  From nakedly profiting from the office of the Presidency, to violating the Emoluments Clause, to admitting to obstruction of justice on the evening news, to the numerous convictions and guilty pleas of his campaign chair, National Security Advisor and personal lawyer, the mountain of evidence that Trump is guilty of impeachable offenses is harder to ignore than a ten car pileup on the 405.

 

Despite that, outside of the faint murmurs of disapproval from lame duck Senators, Congressional Republicans have been stunningly silent.  The reason is obvious — as long as Trump has a functioning right hand with which to sign executive orders and legislation unleashing unchecked corporate power, they will prop him up.  The sham hearing being conducted to confirm a baby-faced sociopath lacking in empathy to the Supreme Court is just the latest evidence of the Republicans’ bad faith lust for absolute power at any cost.  They know that the majority of Americans detest their agenda, so they aim to lock in a Second Redemption Court that will secure the reign of a white supremacist patriarchal minority for a generation. To a person, the Republican vision for this country is a demented mash-up of “Cry the Beloved Country,” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”  They have forfeited every shred of legitimacy. We must never forget that they are the authors of this nightmare. If our democracy still has a pulse after November, never let a single one of them near elected office again.

#25thAmendment

#KavaNAH

#VOTE

September 4, 2018

 

If we had any doubt that the lazy days of summer end the Tuesday after Labor Day, regardless of what the calendar says, today snapped us out of that torpor with a vengeance.  The Republicans were “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” in their determination to push pedigreed toady, Brett Kavanaugh, onto the Supreme Court, despite the fact that only 4% of his records had been made available to the Senate, as of the start of hearings this morning (Source:  “The fight over the release of Kavanaugh documents as hearing gets underway, explained,” by Li Zhou, Kay Steiger and Andrew Prokop, Vox.com, 9/4/18).  That is a level of secrecy unprecedented in the history of Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

It is even more alarming, because what we do know about Kavanaugh suggests that he is an affable extremist.  In a 2009 law review article, Kavanaugh opined that sitting presidents should be provided with “a temporary deferral of civil suits and of criminal prosecutions and investigations,”(emphasis added), (Source:  “Separation of Powers During the Forty-Fourth Presidency and Beyond,” by Brett M. Kavanaugh, Minnesota Law Review.org, 2009).  There is little doubt that this expansive view of executive power was the most salient part of Kavanaugh’s record, as far as Trump was concerned.  Make no mistake, Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court will profoundly endanger the bedrock principle that no person, including the President of the United States, is above the law.

In addition, despite Kavanaugh’s meaningless recitation of the truism that Roe v. Wade is settled law, his antipathy to a woman’s right to choose is evident in his recent opinions in Garza v. Hargan, 875 F.3d 735 (D.C. Circuit, 2017).  When Kavanaugh wrote the decision for the three judge panel, he had no problem delaying the ability of a 17 year old refugee to get an abortion, despite the fact that she had complied with the already onerous waiting period required under Texas state law.  When that decision was overturned by the full Circuit, sitting en banc, Kavanaugh penned a vehement dissent,accusing the majority of creating a “new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.”  He went on to contemptuously denigrate the majority’s opinion as being “in line with dissents…by Justices, Brennan, Marshall and Blackmun,” (Garza v. Hargan, 875 F.3d at 753).

Those two sentences reveal a tremendous amount about Kavanaugh’s point of view.  His emphasis on J.D.’s status as an “unlawful immigrant,” whose “home country does not allow elective abortions,” is evidence that Kavanaugh has greater fealty to patriarchy than to the Constitution, since it is settled law that undocumented immigrants are entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment (Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S. 202 (S.Ct. 1982)).  Secondly, it is telling that the most damning criticism that Kavanaugh can conceive is to liken the majority’s opinion on an abortion issue to opinions written by Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of the opinion in Roe v. Wade, or liberal lions of the Court such as Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall.

The truth is, what we do know about Kavanaugh’s views is repugnant enough.  How much worse is what he’s hiding?

 

#KavaNAH

#VOTE

September 1, 2018

Yesterday’s homegoing service for our beloved Queen of Soul was a glorious celebration that was like the woman herself – regal and unapologetically Black, from the fleet of pink Cadillacs to the gold casket. Aretha Franklin was eulogized and celebrated by an array of luminaries who spoke, sang and preached about her singularity. You cannot divorce Aretha Franklin’s greatness from the context that created it – an otherworldly talent forged in the inextricably linked Black church and Black freedom struggle. It is not surprising that the daughter of legendary preacher and civil rights leader, Reverend C.L. Franklin, would leverage her gifts in service to Black people. The theme that speakers returned to again and again was that, despite Aretha’s once in a millennium talent, global fame and wealth, she never divorced herself from her community or her people. She remained in her native Detroit, a fiercely proud hometown girl. Speakers cited numerous examples of times when Aretha selflessly helped people in large ways and small – from arranging an 11 city tour with Harry Belafonte to bail Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference out of a financial emergency, to offering to post bond for Angela Davis, to performing a free, impromptu concert (complete with band and backup singers) at a senior citizens’ home. Continue reading “RESPECT”

August 29th, 2018

 

To be black in America is to cycle endlessly through feelings of hope and despair.  No date is more emblematic of that cycle than August 28th.  August 28th, 1963 is justly celebrated every year as the anniversary of the historic March on Washington, famous for Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.  In that speech, Dr. King spoke of  his hopeful “dream” for an America where people would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Those are the words always cited, which most Americans can recite by heart.  People overlook that in that same speech, Dr. King challenged America, stating that “we have come to our nation’s Capitol to cash a check…[because] America has given the Negro people a bad check…, ”  defaulting on the promises inherent in the Declaration of Independence as far as black people were concerned. Continue reading “Account past due”

August 26, 2018

Senator John McCain died yesterday, after battling glioblastoma, the same cancer that killed Beau Biden and Senator Ted Kennedy. The tributes pouring in have been legion, none more fulsome than from many liberal Democrats. The backlash on social media has been critical of how, in our haste to mythologize Senator McCain, his conservatism has been overlooked. If for no other reason than to honor the Senator’s vaunted distaste for b.s., we should be clear eyed and honest in eulogizing him.

John McCain was a third generation Navy man whose callow youth ended when he was captured during the Vietnam War. He endured five years of torture and solitary confinement as a prisoner of war, famously breaking under pressure and signing a false confession and just as famously, refusing the early release offered because of his father’s stature. Continue reading “R.I.P. Senator John McCain”

August 24, 2018

All of the commentators are saying that the Cohen plea and Manafort conviction on Tuesday mark a watershed moment; that the seismic impact of those twin developments has altered the trajectory of Trump’s presidency. Trump seems to realize it, with his deranged rambling that impeaching him will tank the stock market and his whining that flipping should be “illegal.” Although we’ve long known that Trump was a corrupt racist authoritarian, it was still a shock to hear the current occupant of The White House openly speak like a two-bit mobster. Continue reading “The Turning Point”