The majority of Americans under 18 live in households that receive “means-tested assistance” from the US government. In 2016, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, there were approximately 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States, and 38,365,000 of them, 52.1%, resided in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.
Those programs include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Medicaid, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and the National School Lunch Program.
And when the Census Bureau excluded school lunch programs from its calculations, the percentage of those under 18 who lived in a household receiving means-tested assistance (44.8%), still exceeded the percentage in any other age bracket.
We have now had four straight years: 2013 – 2016, during which a majority of those under 18 lived in a household taking means-tested benefits.
The primary reason for this is that most in this category are single parent households headed by a woman. Many canât find employment paying a decent wage with some benefits. Many have to choose between full-time work and childcare. Some are working 2-3 part time jobs but still can’t cover their expenses.
But, the economy is good, the stock market is great, so why worry about these banana republic statistics, America? On to cartoons.
Trump sings the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, âWhatâs That Smell?â
Speak to a Trumpist, and youâll find a reasonable, fact-driven human being:
Trump tweets about âwidespreadâ killings of white farmers in South Africa. Hereâs the truth:
Immigration unmasks the hate:
DeVos shows that sheâs a helper:
Mitch reserves his looks of disgust only for Democrats:
And the much-publicized search for yet another white co-ed comes to a tragic end.
But for Donald Trump, it was a beginning. Trump and other conservatives quickly cited Rivera, who worked on a farm owned by a prominent Republican family, as proof of the flawed immigration system and lax border security the president has long warned about. Hereâs Trump on CNN:
You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in very sadly from Mexico. And you saw what happened to that incredible beautiful young woman. Should have never happened. Illegally in our country…We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad, the immigration laws are such a disgrace. We’re getting it changed but we have to get more Republicans.
Iowaâs Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, released a statement saying she was:
Angry that a broken immigration system allowed a predator like this to live in our community.
Fox News led with the story. After all, why would they voluntarily be talking about Manafort and Cohen?
A side note, Riveraâs employer, Yarrabee Farms, a company that operates dairy farms in Iowa, said that Rivera had been an employee in good standing for four years. They said initially that they had checked his immigrant status with the Fedâs eVerify system. Use of the eVerify system is not mandatory. In fact, the White House dropped its call for mandatory E-Verify in February when trying to reach a DACA deal.
Later, Yarrabee admitted that they hadnât used eVerify, but had used another verification system. The company is owned by the family of Craig Lang, a prominent Republican who previously served as president of the Iowa Farm Bureau.
We should note that many undocumented workers are hired â often knowingly â by employers, particularly in agriculture. And typically the employers suffer few consequences when ICE raids, and takes their illegal employees away.
Trump and the GOP will try to turn this into a “Willie Horton” moment in the mid-term elections. Willie Horton was serving a life sentence for murder, but was released by Massachusetts for weekend furlough. He never returned, and committed rape, assault and armed robbery before being recaptured. This happened on the watch of Democratic governor, Michael Dukakis. The GOP then used the Horton case very successfully against Dukakis, who lost the presidential election in 1988.
And the Mollie Tibbetts murder is another example of Republicans using fear to scare the electorate. Facts never seem to matter, here are a few: (emphasis by Wrongo)
The CDC analyzed the murders of women in 18 states from 2003 to 2014, finding a total of 10,018 deaths. Of those, 55% were intimate partner violence-related, meaning they occurred at the hands of a former or current partner or the partnerâs family or friends. In 93% of those cases, the culprit was a current or former romantic partner. The report also bucks the strangers-in-dark-alleys narrative common to televised crime dramas: Strangers perpetrated just 16% of all female homicides, fewer than acquaintances and just slightly more than parents.
If you say none of that matters to Mollie Tibbetts, or her family, you would be wrong. Sam Lucas, a cousin of Mollie’s, tweeted a response to Candace Owens, a representative of a right-wing student organization:
Hey Iâm a member of Mollieâs family and we are not so fucking small-minded that we generalize a whole population based on some bad individuals….stop using my cousinâs death as political propaganda…. https://t.co/xxZNBF0Uv9
Our hearts should break for Mollie and her family. But why then, is the GOP dragging out the old Horton playbook to whip up racism? Trump wouldnât have made any mention about her murder if it had involved one of the many white men who rape and murder women (of any race) in our country, every day.
This is an entire political party dedicated to promulgating fear of the âotherâ, and a huge swath of the media are dedicated to blasting it out to their audience of (apparently) timid white people.
Where the killer comes from shouldnât have anything to do with the publicity any crime receives. Except in Trumpworld, where it has everything to do with why they pay attention.
Their strategy is: Find one bad apple and then say no one should eat applesauce.
Wake up America! The Nation reports that a 6-year old migrant girl, who was separated from her mother at the border was sexually abused while in the âcareâ of your government: (brackets by Wrongo)
According to immigrant-rights advocates, a 6-year-old girl separated from her mother under the Trump administrationâs âzero-toleranceâ immigration policy was sexually abused while at an Arizona detention facility run by Southwest Key Programs. The child was then made to sign a form acknowledging that she was told to maintain her distance from her alleged abuser, who is an older [male] child being held at the same detention facility.
Letâs start with: What kind of company would make a 6-year old sign a release form? Second, what kind of company thinks a statement signed by a 6-year-old, will protect the company from liability?
It didnât end there for the child, known by her initials D.L.:
But the nightmare wasnât over. On June 22, Southwest Key again contacted D.L.âs father and informed him that the same boy initially cited for abuse had hit and fondled D.L. again.
The child, her mother and her father, who was already living in the US, have been reunited, but it wasnât a happy ending:
According to D.L.âs mother, when the family came together again, the young girl was confused. âI hugged her, I was crying. She didnât recognize me,â the mother said. âShe told me that she thought I was never going to be with her again and that she was going to have to live with another lady. She behaved like she was still in detention. She wouldnât touch me, hug me, or kiss meâ….âShe is still…following the rules of the detention center,â said the mother. âShe doesnât let them touch her, she doesnât touch them. She wakes up at 6, and bathes and eats. She behaves like she is programmed.â
Recall that 30 days ago, one US immigration judge tried to call a halt to what ICE was doing: Bringing one and two-year-old children into the courtroom for proceedings where the children were supposed to represent themselves. That judge refused to move the cases forward.
Trump and his minions are willfully creating a generation of displaced people. People who have been traumatized so badly that they have lost the ability to stay connected to their families, pushed to estrangement by what had happened to them while in custody.
Abject cruelty has to be a dividing line for Americans. We need a new policy for dealing with families at the border. We need a top to bottom reform of ICE. The easiest question for any Independent voter or Democrat to answer is: “Here’s something Trump and the Republicans want. Do you want the same thing?”
There’s no excuse for agreeing with a party that celebrates cruelty to children.
Itâs your Monday Wake Up. There are 99 days left until the midterm elections. Register friends who arenât registered. Drive people to the polls on Election Day. To help you wake up, listen to Dave Alvin performing his version of a Tom Russell song, âCalifornia Snowâ. This is from Alvinâs 1998 album âBlack Jack Davidâ. It is a story by a border patrol agent:
Sample Lyric:
I catch the ones I’m able to
And watch the others slip away
I know some by their faces
And I even know some by name
I guess they think that we’re all
Movie stars and millionaires
I guess that they still believe
That dreams come true up here.
But I guess the weather’s warmer down in Mexico
And no one ever tells them ’bout the California snow.
Last winter I found a man and wife
Just about daybreak
Layin’ in a frozen ditch
South of the interstate
I wrapped ’em both in blankets
But she’d already died
The next day we sent him back alone Across the borderline.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
(Today, Wrongo and Ms. Right are on our way to Cape Cod for a few days of bonfires, bicycling, surfcasting, and hanging with kids and grandkids. Blogging will be infrequent, but you can expect a Saturday Soother on, well, Saturday.)
This morning, Wrongo feels the need to bore you with a concept from historian Peter Turchin, taken from his book Ages of Discord, which provides some insight into where America is today. Turchin posits that historical eras are either integrative periods when people find reasons to cooperate, and join forces, or disintegrative periods, when reasons to split apart become dominant.
Turchin identifies three key factors that can create the disintegrative periods:
Competition and conflict among an expanding population of elites
Declining real wage for an expanding population of workers
State financial collapse (unpayable debt)
Does any of that sound familiar? Turchinâs theory is that history experiences cycles which, in non-industrialized economies, tend to last between 200-300 years. In America, the cycles from start to finish are much shorter, about 150 years, due to a faster pace of change.
His demonstrates his theory about a positive phase (the integrative phase) and a negative phase (the disintegrative phase) in the first of two American cycles, from 1780 to 1920. The positive phase lasted from about 1780 to about 1840, while the negative phase lasted from about 1840 to about 1920. Turchin contends that the second American cycle began in 1920, and is not yet complete. The positive phase lasted from 1920 to around 1970, and the negative stage has lasted from 1970 to the present.
He contends that the best parts of positive eras typically last only a generation or two, such as 1810 â 1840, and 1940 â 1970 in the US, before elite individuals and groups abandon consensus politics to pursue ever harsher exploitation and competition to enrich themselves.
A cycle begins with an undersupply of labor, such as happened after the American Revolution. This shortage of labor caused a rise in real wages and general economic progress. This positive phase peaked around 1820. It was a time that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the War of 1812.
But the division between the industrial North and the slaveholding, agrarian South continued, creating rivalry among the elites, along with political polarization, culminating in the Civil War. The negative phase of the cycle continued afterward, with massive strikes, many of them violent, in the late 19th Century. Meanwhile, income inequality peaked during the Gilded Age as elites profited from low workerâs wages and poor working conditions.
In modern America, we are largely governed by religious, geographic (local, state and federal), and economic institutions. And many compete with each other for resources, and the separation of powers among them is becoming hazy. Today, our âeconomicâ government is the corporation.
If you think about it, our current political struggles are between geographic governments and both the religious and economic ones. Republicans, and many Democrats, support the efforts of both to increase their influence over the lives of the people, often through the geographic governments.
And this isnât simply a minor change in who is doing the governing, they threaten our democracy.
Weâre blowing up our institutions, but itâs not in reaction to any looming danger. Itâs because weâve been conned into thinking that September 11 was the same as Pearl Harbor. And the threat of immigrants today is the same as the threat of a Japanese invasion was in 1941. And that modern social policies threaten the religions of some people.
Time to wake up America! We cannot surrender to fear, to corporatism, or to forever war. We have entered a disintegrative phase, but there is time to pull out of it.
If you care.
To help you wake up, here is Pink Floyd with âOrdinary Menâ from their classic album, âDark Side of the Moonâ:
 Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Spice Stall, Istanbul, Turkey – 2013 photo by Wrongo
This week, there was plenty of talk about âTrump Fatigueâ. This, from Just Above Sunset is a good example:
The Trump presidency has been exhausting. Maybe that was the idea. Itâs one outrageous thing after another. Everything is âbig newsâ â but when everything is big news nothing is. Everyone goes numb. The United States now has concentration camps for children? Canada is now our enemy and North Korea is not? CNN gave up. Every single news story is âBreaking Newsâ there…but everyone else is tired of this. That was the idea. Make America shrug. They wonât know what hit them. They just donât care. Theyâve had enough. Theyâll worry about their own lives. Trump will be Trump. Life will go on.
The biggest, baddest, worst-est bad news was the retirement of Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. When the court reconvenes in October, there is likely to be a majority willing at least to gut, if not formally overrule, Roe v. Wade. The hope that the Supreme Court will enforce voting rights is now dead. The Court will not strike down gerrymandering, despite ample evidence that it renders quite a few elections undemocratic. And this week, in supporting Trumpâs Muslim Ban, it said it was overturning Korematsu vs. The United States. In fact, it really reaffirmed it, under the guise of overruling it.
We had another mass shooting. This time itâs five journalists dead at the hands of a shotgun-toting man with a grudge against the paper: he lost a defamation suit against it in 2015. So the media presents us with yet another day of video loops from helicopters showing police cars and emergency vehicles lined up, and a ceaseless round of cable TV reporters trying new ways to say they have nothing new to report.
Trump is planning a summit with Vladimir Putin on July 16 in Finland. Maybe itâs his annual performance review, maybe itâs just an effort to get superpower relations on a better track. Hard to know.
We will be getting a new Democratic Congressperson in NYâs 4th district. A 28 year-old first-time candidate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will replace Joe Crowley in the Queens-Bronx district that includes Archie Bunker’s old neighborhood. But the old neighborhood ain’t what it used to be. Today the district is roughly 50% Latino and 25% other minorities. It is unclear if this portends anything for Republican House seats in November.
Wrongo knows that our only hope is voter turnout in November. But, has there been a fair election in this century? Probably not. The media and the Republicans will say that our democratic process continues, but as the NYT reported:
Eight of the tech industryâs most influential companies, in anticipation of a repeat of the Russian meddling that occurred during the 2016 presidential campaign, met with United States intelligence officials last month to discuss preparations for this yearâs midterm elections.
The conclusion was that the US government is doing nothing to secure the 2018 vote. Apparently, the Trump administration is hoping for a red wave in November. Combine their hope with SCOTUSâs apparent support of gerrymandering, and we can practically guarantee that our democracy is dying.
And hereâs a cartoon that canât wait until Sunday:
Sorry to be so negative on your Saturday morning. We need to drop this, at least for a little while, and find some way to get a little soothing going. Start by brewing up a vente cup of Laderas del Tapias coffee from Barrington Coffee Roasting Co. in Lee, MA ($21.95/12 oz.), with its chewy fruit flavors of blackberry, plum, and apple. Bostonians can visit their store on Newbury Street.
Head outside to a shady spot. Now, listen to Hugo Alfvenâs Swedish Rhapsody No. 1: “Midsommarvaka” (midsummer vigil), written in 1903. Â It is performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Petri Sakari. The section from ~5:45 to ~9:00 is particularly beautiful:
Percy Faith had a US Top 30 hit with a selection from it in 1953, so it may sound familiar to older readers.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
George Peabody Library, Baltimore MD – via themindcircle
The immigration issue confounds all the developed countries. People who yearn for a better life hit the road (trail), and try to resettle in a better place. That’s ingrained in human nature, and is unlikely to change. The US has its illegal immigration problems, as does Europe. It is hard to reconcile branding the US as the “shining city on the hill” and then wall America off when people are seduced by the image.
In order to plan for our future, we have to look carefully at forecasts of long term population growth in Central and South America. That’s where the pressure by illegal immigration will most likely come. If you would like some professional immigration law help then you may be interested in Frost Law Group, LLC, which can help you with any legal problems you may have.
According to Worldometers, the current population of Central America is 179.5 million, and it is forecasted to reach 231.6 million by 2050. That means it will be growing at an annual rate of less than .5% by then, down from about 1.3% today. The census bureau forecasts that the US population in 2050 will be 388.4 million.
Importantly, the census bureau says that in 2050, the foreign-born Hispanic origin population will be 6.89% of our total population, up from 6.08% in 2016. If they are correct, we are tearing ourselves apart about what will be an increase of Hispanic origin population of about .8%.
For what it’s worth, the foreign-born white population will grow from 7.91% in 2016 to 9.28% in 2050. It’s growing faster and will be larger than the Hispanic foreign-born population.
All the talk that the majority in the country in 2050 will be minorities is true. However, Whites will still be 47.83% of the population, while Hispanics will be substantially smaller at 25.66%.
We already know that Hispanic immigration isn’t driving the Hispanic percentage of the total, so what problem are we trying to solve? Also, arrests of illegal immigrants at the Southern Border are down significantly in the past couple years. From the WaPo:
But, it appears that the political fallout in 2018 could be immense. Trump paints a picture of societal disintegration if we allow illegal immigrants into the country. He says that Democrats want open borders:
What we have is very simple: We want strong borders, and we want no crime. Strong borders, we want no crime. The Democrats want open borders, and they don’t care about crime, and they don’t care about our military. I care about our military. That’s what we want, and that’s what we’re going to get, and we’re going to get it sooner than people think.
His message is that outsiders sap our strength, they’ll take our jobs, and exploit the freedom and openness of America. Trump is playing politics with people’s lives, and that’s both cruel and immoral. There should be no doubt about his playing politics. He said so in a White House meeting last Friday, as reported by the NYT: (emphasis by Wrongo)
…One person close to the president said that he told advisers that separating families at the border was the best deterrent to illegal immigration and that he said that “my people love it.”
Trump is ginning up the same paranoia about ‘the other’ that is prevalent all over Europe. So far, the GOP has allowed this to happen because in the background, they’re making gains in their overall political agenda, and polls show that the Democrat’s 2018 advantage is narrowing.
We need to take a longer view about immigration, both legal and illegal. We can help to make a positive change to someone’s life, just like countries from all around the world can do, as this could be considered to be a global crisis. Many people face the trials and tribulations that immigration can bring on a daily basis, but it can be made easier if they decide to find an immigration solicitor here, to offer help and guidance when it comes to overcoming the challenges they could face before being reunited with their family in their chosen country. Congress has to exercise its law-making prerogative over the migrant issue. We need to stop governance by tweet and executive order.
We shouldn’t forget that we are a vast country, with vast resources. We have been defined by migration, wave after wave of it. Despite the current chaos on the Southern Border, we have the resources to process migrants efficiently. We simply need lawmakers with the courage to see the problem for what it is.
Long after we’ve forgotten about what jacket Melania Trump wore, where Sara Huckabee Sanders ate dinner, and all the little “oh-look-at-the-kitty” distractions have come and gone, we’re going to be left with the clean-up that comes after a disaster. No matter where those refugees end up, we will still be confronting not only what was done to them in the real sense, but also the cost to our nation in terms of being able to set an example of morality and democracy for the rest of our civilization.
We are blending chaos with callousness. What’s the fix?
Raul Ilargi of The Automatic Earth gets us thinking about truth in journalism:
The two most viral photographs of the âTrump Separation Scandalâ have now been debunked, or at the very least been proven to have been used âout of contextâ. This is a dangerous development, as are the reasons to use them the way they have been. Both pictures are of children who had not been separated from their mothers at all. But both were used to depict just that: a child being taken away from its mother.
Here are the two pictures. The first shows a Honduran toddler sobbing. The photo was taken on June 14th. It was used widely by the media, with the accompanying message that the child was about to be separated from its mother:
But the NYT reports the child was not separated from her mother. That was reported on June 23rd. Pro-Trump news outlets have had a fine time calling the photo fake news. And the same photo was photoshopped by Time Magazine for a cover that used the little girl juxtaposed with Donald Trump looming over her, with the caption, âWelcome to Americaâ:
Now, Time may not have known the true status of the child at the time when they made the choice to place her on the cover with Trump, but theyâre absolutely ok with using it. The NYT quotes them:
Our cover and our reporting capture the stakes of this moment.
But, there is a major difference between illustrating a moment, and reporting. A Facebook funds-raising page using the original photo above inspired hundreds of thousands of people to donate $19 million for a nonprofit legal defense fund for immigrants and refugees.
Is that a good outcome from bad reporting? If people are interested in donating, why trick them into doing it? Back to Ilargi:
Thatâs what is dangerous: seeing a photo of a child in distress makes people halt their critical thinking. Thatâs also why such photos are used. They help build a narrative that doesnât have to be factual to shock people. But at that point TIME becomes a fiction magazine; itâs where it leaves journalism behind.
There also was a picture of a caged little boy crying, âDetained by ICE at a border facilityâ said the caption:
But the image of the crying, caged young boy, which went viral, was actually taken at a demonstration. RT reports that this photo was shared by activist journalist Jose Antonio Vargas as a comment on the Trump administrationâs immigration crackdown on families. More from RT:
It has since emerged that the picture was in fact not from a detention facility at all, and instead was taken at a protest against Trumpâs immigration policies held on June 10 outside Dallas City Hall.
Some activists argue that the origin of the photo is irrelevant, that it portrays a true problem, even if this particular image is not a true representation of the facts on the ground.
But weâre on a slippery slope with that reasoning. We shouldnât be using any available means to message against even a wrong policy.
Whatâs dangerous about this approach is that if journalists are allowed to spread a narrative that isnât confirmed as true, they may be âreportingâ unsourced stories simply to make a point. Then, no one will ever know fact from fiction.
This is the downside of instant, global communications. The narrative can outrun the truth, the myth can become fact. Since social media compensation is often tied to âclicksâ on an article, publishers and editors have a conflict of interest: sell the truth, or sell the narrative?
Children are being taken from parents at US borders, and Trumpâs policy needs a healthy debate. But playing loose with the facts cannot be permitted by the media.
Time for the media to wake up! It helps no one if the charge âFake Newsâ is true. To help them wake up, here is Billy Bragg doing âIt Says Hereâ from his 1984 album âBrewing Up with Billy Braggâ:
Sample Lyrics:
It says here that the Unions will never learn
It says here that the economy is on the upturn
And it says here we should be proud
That we are free
And our free press reflects our democracy
If this does not reflect your view you should understand
That those who own the papers also own this land
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Apologies for the lack of posts, but it wasn’t a good week at the Mansion of Wrong. We said goodbye to Ms. Right’s favorite dog, the 15 year-old Havanese, Tuxedo. Tux lost his two-year battle with congestive heart failure. He was a brave little boy right to the very end. I think sometime in the future it might be a good idea to surprise Ms. Right with a new Havanese puppy, I might do some research into other crosses such as the bichon havanese or others that Ms. Right will instantly fall in love with.
Here is a picture of Tux when he was young, with his favorite yellow ball:
Tuxedo in California â 2007 photo by Wrongo
All in all, another week filled with big issues: Toddler care by government contractors, a real trade war, and the World Cup without a US team. But let’s focus on small, but significant indignities. From Thursday’s Bangor Daily News:
US Customs and Border Protection agents set up a checkpoint Wednesday on Interstate 95, stopping drivers and asking them questions about their citizenship before letting them proceed.
Agents set up cones narrowing the highway to one southbound lane, and then asked vehicle occupants about their citizenship. One agent was quoted as saying:
If you want to continue down the road, then yes ma’am. We need to know what citizen – what country you’re a citizen of…
When questioned about what would happen if a driver declined to answer, he said the car would only be able to keep going if, after further questioning and in the agent’s judgment, “the agent is pretty sure that you’re US citizens.”
These same border agents perform immigrant checks at Maine bus stops, where agents have been captured on video asking riders about their citizenship. More from the Bangor News:
In recent months, the bus stop checks have come under fire from the Maine American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing the federal agency for records to learn more about the practice. Lawyers for the Maine ACLU said they have questions concerning “the intrusive operation,” and whether it infringes on the Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights of bus passengers.
The Bangor Daily News quoted attorney Emma Bond:
People have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, whether at a bus station or on the road.
Bill of Rights? We have no stinkin’ rights where Homeland Security is concerned. The tradeoff is to accept that immigrants, or possibly, terrorists, could make their way into the US from the enemy outpost of Canada. They could be infiltrating America.
For that, we are giving away the Constitution.
This isn’t some abstract abuse of internet privacy rights, these are uniformed federal government agents rousting people to produce their papers. Americans shouldn’t be required to answer questions about their comings or goings, unless law enforcement has probable cause to believe a violation of the law has occurred.
Stopping people for no reason is against the Constitution. It must be called out, and should be stopped immediately. We should not have to answer to anyone while driving down the roads our taxes pay for.
These are shock troops, exercising government power in a direct, one-on-one way. Let’s close with a cartoon that can’t wait until Sunday to be seen:
Another tough week. Unplug from the web and social media, it’s a time to cherish those closest to us, and to spend a little time away from the world.
Take your hot steaming cup outside, where you can hear the birds singing, maybe hear a distant lawn mower, and get comfortable. Now, listen to Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City” with solo trumpet by Winton Marsalis, backed by the Eastman Wind Ensemble. It is from the album, “Works by Copland, Vaughan Williams, and Hindemith“:
Now, let go of another pretty difficult week.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Jeff Sessions isnât the only Republican who is anti-immigrant. Arizona Republican State Representative David Stringer addressed the Yavapai County Republican Menâs Forum this week. He called immigration an âexistential threatâ to America: (emphasis by Wrongo)
60% of public school children in the state of Arizona today are minorities. That complicates racial integration because there arenât enough white kids to go around.
Stringer helpfully explained what happens when there arenât enough white kids:
And when you look at that 60% number for public school students, just carry that forward 10 or 15 years. Itâs going to change the demographic voting base of this state…..Immigration is politically destabilizing.
He says 60% of the kids are “minorities”, but the math says they are the majority. Maybe he’s using the “nonwhites are 3/5ths of a person” rule.
On to cartoons. It was difficult to know if Singapore was real, or a reality show:
Kim and Trump agreed on one thing:
Kim debriefed the team back home:
The big thing we have to fear:
Sessions fails bible study. The Boss wasnât amused:
Sessions asks excellent question in bible study. Gets correct answer:
Californiaâs referendum on whether to break into three states isnât necessary:
Abandoned schoolhouse, Colombia Hills, WA – 2018 photo by Sean Peterson
Trump and Kim dominated the news this week. So many hot takes on the one-page agreement: Who won, who lost, it will take some time to digest. Today, it seems that there is less risk of another war on the Korean peninsula than we thought last fall, but letâs not celebrate just yet. We have a long way to go before there is peace in Korea. Kim still has his nukes, and his cannons are still pointed toward Seoul. Trump seems to have cancelled the joint military exercises, but that could change on his whim. Kim or Trump could decide to blow up their agreement, like Trump did with Iran.
Wrongo has followed with complete disapproval, the administrationâs moves to separate children from their parents at the border, and to deny asylum to victims of domestic abuse and gang violence. As we cruise into this weekend, we should remember the curious bible talk by Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to a group of law enforcement officials in Indiana on Thursday:
I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
This is from a senior person in the GOP, the party that SAYS their prime directive is to get the government out of peopleâs lives.
Splinter reports that Messiah College professor John Fea told WaPo that Sessionâs quoted verse has been used before in American history. The first time was by British colonists opposed to the War of Independence. The second time, per Fea:
…is in the 1840s and 1850s, when Romans 13 is invoked by defenders of the South or defenders of slavery to ward off abolitionists who believed that slavery is wrong. I mean, this is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made.
It was also used by white religious leaders in South Africa to justify apartheid.
And, recently, Trumpâs booster, Pastor Robert Jeffress cited the verse to support Trumpâs threat to murder millions of North Koreans with âfire and furyâ last year.
Sessions either didnât know the verseâs racist and authoritarian history when he used it to justify tearing families apart, or he simply didnât care. And what about Obamacare? Isnât that also the law of the land? Shouldnât Sessions agree that we respect, and obey it? But here is the GOP, once again cherry-picking the bible, this time to justify treating immigrants from south of the border as subhuman.
Letâs agree that Jeff Sessions is wrong. Separating families is wrong. Using the Bible to justify it is wrong.
Leave the final comment to long-time Sunday school teacher, Steven Colbert, who nailed Sessions:
But if he just read a little bit further into Romans 13:10, it says âLove your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.â Iâm not surprised Sessions didnât read the whole thing. After all, Jesus said âSuffer the children to come unto me,â but Iâm pretty sure all Sessions saw was the words âchildrenâ and âsufferâ and said âIâm on it!ââ
Enough! Time to downshift, to disengage from the political world for a few hours. To help you get started, head to the kitchen and brew up a vente cup of Koffee Kultâs Dark Roast Coffee ($15.99/lb.), roasted by Koffee Kult Roasters of Hollywood, FL. Enjoy its heavy body, cinnamon notes, and bright, long finish.
Now sit outside. And listen to Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott play âRomance for Cello and Pianoâ by English composer Frederick Delius, who died in 1934. This is from Maâs 2015 album with Stott, âSongs from the Arc of Lifeâ:
Ma and Stott met in the summer of 1978, when Kathryn Stott, then a student of classical piano, returned to her apartment after a holiday. She found a young Asian man practicing the cello inside the place she shared with violinist Nigel Kennedy. Stott recalls: “It seemed Nigel had sublet the apartment”.
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