Breathless

Events Reach New Climax

Our Military Leader Blindsides America Again


Even though I have written and reported on the facts of a Republican-lead theft of the Presidential election of 2016, and even though I do not yet have the staff to keep up with this President's administration -- still I wanted to express my dismay and concern about the latest astonishing firings coming from the Oval Office. 

While I cannot say I was pleased with Mr. Tillerson (see comment about a stolen election above), he did seem to be a mature adult.  At this point, almost all we can say is time will tell whether a new head at the State Department will make any kind of substantive difference.

Meanwhile, the ship of state careers and careens with a solitary and capricious captain at its helm.  Let us hope there are enough life rafts on this Titanic voyage.  

Former Rep. Scarborough Compares Trump to Mussolini

It is time to tell the media to stop treating OML* like a normal President.  First, he is the beneficiary of a stolen election (stolen not by Russians but by big-money operatives right here in the U.S.)  Second, he is unlike any President we have ever had.  No matter what one thought of his main opponent in the past race, surely OML is not the answer.  The time-honored techniques of propaganda, including the oft-repeated lie, are all too apparent.  Plus, there is the Scarborough denunciation.

It is long past time to hold the media accountable.  


Via Patriot in Exigency --  
Scarborough Compares Trump to Mussolini



*OML = Our Military Leader

Rep. Maxine Waters Says Black Women Key to Removing Trump from Office

Quick Link --  


Maxine Waters On How to Get Trump Out of Office


More on this matter later.

--  TMP    

Kansan's Voter Suppression Scheme Goes to Court

I M P O R T A N T 

via e-mail:  


Trump’s Alien Voter Claim Goes to Court
Kobach rule blocks 1 in 7 New Voters
Could decide 2018 & 2020 Races
By Greg Palast for Alternet

The mainstream media has simply missed the voting rights trial whose outcome could unleash the newest mass vote suppression weapon, the invention of Donald Trump’s chief vote suppression tactician, Kris Kobach of Kansas.


Clip from Palast's film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
On Tuesday, the trial of the lawsuit by the League of Women Voters against Kobach, Kansas’ Republican Secretary of State, began in a Kansas City courtroom. The League has sued to block the state’s law, drafted by Kobach, requiring all new voters to show proof of citizenship.

Kobach’s law has blocked an astonishing 1 in 7 new registrants from voting in the state because they did not satisfy his citizenship paperwork requirement.

The ACLU, which represents the League of Women Voters, has sent in its top litigators, led by its voting rights director Dale Ho, because of the nationwide implications of the case. If Kobach’s law is upheld and spreads to other GOP controlled states, just over one million Americans could lose their right to vote by 2020.



Oddly, Kobach has chosen a lawyer with little courtroom knowledge—himself.

Judge Julie Robinson was not amused by what many see as a publicity stunt. Robinson, the chief justice of the federal district for Kansas, excoriated Kobach for not knowing “Evidence 101,” and curtly coached Kobach’s amateur team on the correct procedure for cross-examination.

Buffoonish antics in the courtroom drew some laughter. But the partisan result of Kobach’s law is deadly serious. According to the ACLU’s expert witness, University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, nearly half (44.6%) of the voters blocked are young, 18 to 29 years old.

It cannot be lost on Kobach, former Chairman of the Kansas GOP, that young Americans voted overwhelmingly Democratic, 55% for Clinton and only 36% for Trump in 2016.

To justify the paper proof-of-citizenship requirement, Kobach told the court the requirement has blocked 30,000 non-citizens from voting in Kansas. However, he has been unable to prove that even a single one of the 35,314 voters blocked by the law is an alien.

Kobach’s Alien Voter Hunt
Just after the 2016 election, Secretary Kobach called me to confirm he was the source of Donald Trump’s claim that a million aliens voted in the 2016 election. (Kobach also confirmed it was his idea to force Mexico to pay for Trump’s border wall.)

Noting to Kobach that he is the nation’s only Secretary of State with the power to prosecute illegal voters, I asked if he planned mass arrests of alien voters. (Kobach had claimed on Fox News, for example, that “50 Somalians are stealing my vote!”)

Kobach told me, “Just wait! Convictions are coming.”

I’ve waited. But so far, his manhunt, begun five years ago, has produced just a single conviction of a non-citizen voter out of 1.8 million Kansas registrants. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of Kansans are blocked because they cannot produce the evidence—an original birth certificate or passport or naturalization papers—his law requires.

---

Call From the Prison Parking Lot?
Not surprisingly, lower-income voters are less likely to hold these documents—and less likely to vote Republican. Voters earning less than $50,000 per year voted 53% to 41% against Trump.

And no, neither a driver’s license nor a Social Security card proves citizenship. The alternative, obtaining a birth certificate, can be a costly paper chase, as plaintiff Donna Bucci testified. Bucci, who gets by on the limited income she earns working in a local prison cafeteria, told the court Tuesday that she could not pay both her rent and the $50-$60 total cost to obtain her birth certificate from Maryland.

Kobach cross-examined her, hoping to get Bucci to admit to simple laziness. Kobach asked her why she didn’t call during work hours to arrange a special hearing before a state agency. Bucci replied that no cell phones are allowed inside prisons. Kobach attacked, asking why she couldn’t have run to her car during a break and phoned from the parking lot.

But even if Bucci had reached officials and obtained a hearing date, it would cost her a day of work, assuming she would be allowed the day off, to attend the hearing.

Judge Robinson will have to determine whether this bureaucratic rigmarole constitutes an unfair obstacle to voting. The National Voter Registration Act permits states to require only the “minimum amount” of information from a voter.

Up to now, “minimum” has meant checking the box on a registration form by which you swear, under penalty of imprisonment, that you are a citizen, and signing your name, to complete the registration form.

Neither Kobach nor his spokeswoman have responded to our requests for comment.

The jury-less bench trial is expected to run through Friday.
 

Danger for White House Rises

Rush Post --

“... it’s likely that a number of additional people will be going to jail and that Trump’s criminal conduct on one or more levels will be apparent."

                                                                  --  Harry Litman, a former deputy assistant attorney general. 

Last several days have seen a flurry of developments in the Mueller investigation, says The Hill: 



Waters Said to Be Rising for White House Amid Mueller Investigations

Why the Arming of Teachers Depresses Interest in Teaching as a Career

The Dean of the School of Education at American University says arming teachers will discourage college students and others from pursuing a career in education.  As an educator myself I can attest to the fact that arming teachers is no panacea for the problem of violence in schools.  And as the writer of this article makes so clear, it is no encouragement to potential teachers.


Arming Teachers A Bad Idea

Economic "Violence" Sets the Stage for Physical Violence

New Series:  The Violent Nation


The article referenced here invites careful consideration.  I like it quite a lot.  At the same time -- as the article suggests -- there is more to the story of mass killings than social conditions.  But this article shows important ties between public policies, especially beginning in the Reagan years and rising anger in the workplace and beyond.

Recommended. 


Economic "Violence" Begets Physical Violence

Water Systems Major Part of Nation's Infrastructure

The web site ScienceDaily reported early last year that water rates in the U. S. had increased 41% just since 2010.  At this rate the percentage of households unable to afford water would triple to some 36%.   

As politicians promise action on infrastructure, it is good to look at specifics.  Most infrastructure projects in the U.S. are financed at the local and state level.  But, clearly, the federal government has a role to play.  By most estimates, the U. S. is behind in necessary repairs to water systems, I believe.  This threatens to endanger access to this essential resource.

Read more at the link here:


Water Costs Rising Quickly

An Anti-fascist Group. In Nazi Germany

I knew Hitler had his detractors before he assumed power.  And I was aware of Dietrich Bonhoffer and the confessing church.  But college students in 1942?  That was long after the lead-up to Hitler's ascension to the Chancellorship.

Yet in 1942 a group of students in Munich began distributing white-hot pamphlets denouncing in no uncertain terms the inhumanity of the Jewish pogroms and other atrocities of the Hitler regime.  This group was called The White Rose and made themselves useful by writing such things as "Every honest German today is ashamed of his government."   And -- "Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history.  For Jews, too, are human beings."

These quotes are from a New York Times editorial from Thursday, February 22, 2018.  Later in the article the writer claims we are far from fascism in this country.  I beg to differ, for what is the difference between targeting Jews and targeting youthful immigrants who were brought here by parents as children?

The balance of the op-ed, however, is most useful indeed. 


The Sweet Smell of the White Rose

Did Russia Determine the Outcome of Election 2016?

The indictment does not say that Russia changed the outcome of the election, a fact that Mr. Rosenstein noted repeatedly. American intelligence officials have said they have no way of calculating the effect of the Russian influence.

-- The New York Times

Nyet.  No.  Russia did not determine the outcome of the 2016 Election.  Republican operatives took care of that dastardly deed.  This according to the esteemed reporter Greg Palast as related on this blog numerous times.  Republicans used nine different methods of voter suppression including voter I.D. laws, voter caging, and various other dirty tricks.  This is all being documented on gregpalast.com  .   This news has also been shared on the blog you are now reading.  I have been proud to be one of the first and the few to report on this issue.  So -- while what Russia did was execrable, their efforts did not decide the outcome.   

gregpalast.com

Voice Heard in the Patriotic Countryside: I Ain't Doin' No Parade

Americans are remembering what we fought against in World War II.  


GIF credit:  Talking Points Memo

It's Worse Than Most People Think

Rush Post --

A Kleptocrat at Work

Earlier this evening I purchased a brand-new book entitled It's Even Worse Than You Think.  Perhaps you have heard of it. The book shines a huge flood-light on the machinations of Our Military Leader (OML) now sitting in the Oval Office in Washington.  The author is long-time investigator of OML, David Cay Johnston.  Johnston teaches at Syracuse University's College of Law and has followed the  p-Resident (if that he can be called) for many years.

I have also begun reading Fire and Fury, another recent and famous book.  So far, of the two, It's Even Worse Than You Think is the more important of the two.

There will be more to say later.  

Rule of Law Under Serious Attack from White House

U R G E N T

 

 Quick Link --

When reason leaves, and hysteria walks in through the door:

 

Rule of Law Under Attack at White House 

Dear Wealthy American:

I Don't Care


Dear Super-wealthy American:


I don't care.  Of course, I care about you as a person.  But about your wealth, I don't give a rip.  A million is fine.   Maybe two million.  Heck, even five million may be okay.  But, tens of billions of dollars?  Not a chance!

As one friend said, America is about coming from one challenging situation into another challenging situation, but one with a real chance of success through honest work.  And in your case, you have received many, many billions of dollars because of a corrupt and evil system -- one which takes from the many to give to the few.

This is a system which is unsustainable, for history shows that a top-heavy economy cannot forever be supported.  Sooner or later it crashes of its own weight and hubris.

But back to the subject of caring, or the lack thereof.  Some of your friends have expressed a healthy (almost) regret at having "made" so much money.  Perhaps you have felt this, too.  Indeed there is an underlying unease which one can come to by possessing ill-gotten gain.

So it is good to say that I don't care.   I don't care how many billions in wealth you and your cohorts have lost over the last week.  The sooner the world is rid of the evil system which brought you ever so much extra money, the better off we will all be -- including yourself.

May you live a long and happy life -- with much less money.


Sincerely,

The Musical Patriot 

Dow Jones Plunge

The world today is concerned about the steep decline in stock prices.  I am monitoring the situation and plan to have more to say in the near future.  

For now -- this stock market plunge may be a sign the profit system has become unsupportable.  Only time will tell for sure.  

Please return here soon for more.


Photo courtesy Socialist Worker (.org)