Martial Law

It may not have been officially declared, but when President Lyndon Johnson had to send the U.S. Army into Detroit (below) to restore order after the 1967 riot broke out and the Detroit police and the Michigan state militia could not contain it, the Johnson administration's actions were tantamount to martial law.

There's nothing going on in the U.S. today that's as fierce as what happened in Detroit in the summer of 1967, or even any disturbances as chaotic as the George Floyd protests of 2020, but with protests against his rule becoming more frequent by the day, Donald Trump could be ready to declare martial law in These States and use the immigration issue as an excuse.  On the day he came back into office, Trump demanded that the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security do something about the southern border with Mexico and signed an executive order requiring a report on the situation ninety days from them.  That's next Sunday, April 20, a week from today.  Trump might decide, based on the report, which will likely tell him what he wants to hear, that the country must be placed under martial law immediately to re-establish order.  That means that any protests against him - the next major day of protest is the day before, April 19, the 2500th anniversary of Lexington and Concord - will be broken up and the protesters arrested.  And likely held without bail, if not disappeared.

Many conspiracy theorists believe that Trump has been wanting to declare martial law on April 20 all along, the executive order a fig leaf for the opportunity to do that.  Trump and Elon Musk specifically chose April 20 for the declaration, we are told, because of a triple entendre:

• April 20 is written as "4/20," a code for marijuana, which Musk smokes regularly.
• April 20 is the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth.
• April 20, this year anyway, is Easter Sunday, symbolizing the rise of Christian nationalism.

There's no hard evidence that any of this is true.  But a lot of people aren't taking chances.  They're hunkering down and preparing for the worst.

Martial law would not only mean the suspension of civil liberties, it would likely mean strict control of our everyday lives.  Maybe there would be curfews - lights out at ten o'clock, even for Manhattan.  It would mean sending the military to numerous cities,  made that much easier by the Interstate Highway System, built for defense uses as well as for civilians.  Also, alas, it might mean the end of free travel within the country and a ban on foreign travel, as I've mentioned in this space before.  Plus other nasty things I haven't even thought of yet.  

I don't know if Trump will try anything a week from today.  But, on this Palm Sunday, it appears that something is happening, something we're not quite prepared for. 

Crossing the Line

The Senate, under the leadership of arch-conservative Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma (below), has conceived a tough immigration bill that cracks down on border crossings and offers no pathway to citizenship for migrants already here.  It also provides aid to Ukraine and Israel, fro a total of $118 billion.  Of course, progressives are against it, as it is too tough against people breaking the law by crossing the border illegally.  But the biggest opposition comes from MAGA Republicans who don't want the bill - which some say is the best possible border bill to be negotiated - to pass, and Republican Speaker Mike Johnson ahs promised to stop it.  Why?  Because it will help Joe Biden and hurt Donald Trump.

So, the GOP doesn't really want to solve a problem because keeping it alive is good politics.  

And why would they do this? Mainly because it works.  Americans who don't follow politics regularly already blame Biden for the crisis at the border, which is why Trump leads him in the polls in six swing states.  Biden has already indicated he will support this Senate bill, and he's prepared to remind voters that he wanted to sign it but MAGA Republicans in the House wouldn't send it to him.  The only trouble is that voters won't care.  Because the President takes all the blame with failed legislation he had nothing to do with stopping.  Voters don't seem to get that Biden can't do everything.  He's only the President.

The bill also ties aid to Ukraine with border reform, so if this bill does fail, Ukraine won't get any aid and Putin will get the upper hand with the war in Ukraine that the Russian leader started.  A lot of people have a little problem with that.  Because if Putin were to emerge victorious, he would likely start a new war against the Baltic States and reincorporate them into the Russian state.  The last time the Kremlin annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into what was then the Soviet Union, Republicans were as isolationist as MAGA Republicans are now.  Only now they're letting the Kremlin take over small countries not because they're not paying attention.  They are paying attention - to Donald Trump.  

There might be a chance for border reform, and maybe sme aid will get to Ukraine, but I wouldn't bet on it.  

Oh, and by the way, on the subject of immigration, Martin O'Malley would have done something about it . . .

Immigration Man

A couple of border-state Republican governors have been sending migrants to Democratic-run sanctuary cities in the northern United States, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida - which is not a border state unless you consider its tenuous proximity to the Bahamas or Cuba - went them one better by sending migrants to Martha's Vineyard in a deliberate attempt to instigate the most embarrassing incident to happen to the Democratic Party in Dukes County, Massachusetts since Ted Kennedy made a wrong turn and drove his Oldsmobile into a pond and swam away with a young lady still in the car.

DeSantis, running for re-election as governor of Florida in November, wanted to show up the liberal elite who live and vacation in Martha's Vineyard (and, of course, Chappaquiddick) by giving them a taste of what states on the southern tier of the country have to deal with on more regular basis.  He made a few strategic errors, however.  First of all, most if not all of the migrants he sent to Martha's Vineyard were Venezuelan; they'd been escaping the left-wing dictatorship of President Nicolas Maduro, whom Republicans hate with a cold passion.  Many Republicans happily welcome Venezuelan immigrants to this country to show up Maduro.  What would DeSantis have done if he couldn't send them elsewhere in the United States, send them back to Venezuela?  Send them back to live under the very sort of left-wing socialist government he despises?   Second, the people of Martha's Vineyard were happy to receive these migrants, because people on the island have a history of welcoming outsiders.  It's why many black families have vacationed there for decades, in fact.  They gave the migrants a warmer welcome that they would have gotten if they'd stayed in Florida.  Third, DeSantis sent them there under false pretenses, promising them "work opportunities, schooling for their children, and immigration assistance – in order to induce them to travel," according to Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based lawyers' group, which is calling for DeStanis to be criminally investigated.

Alas, none of that matters. DeSantis achieved exactly what he wanted - to make Americans stop talking about abortion and voting rights and start talking about immigration, an issue that Democrats are trusted in handling well as much as an elephant can be trusted to bring you a bag of peanuts.  The Republican elephant just motivated the peanut gallery to come out and vote in November  - not just for DeSantis in Florida but for Trumpist candidates in other states.  

Democrats somehow thought that they could play Republicans over the loss of fundamental reproductive rights, but given that immigration has been an issue for longer than the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision on abortion has been, they forgot one thing in taking on the Republicans - you can't play a player.  

Distant Early Warning

The New York Times has reported that the Biden White House received warnings from pollsters as far back as five or six months ago that concerns over inflation, immigration and crime needed to be dealt with, but the Biden administration chose to concentrate on its Build Back Better initiative.  But as long as that well-known West Virginia Republican, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, was not going to support Build Back Better, President Biden's poll numbers were only going to go from bad to worse.

Now it's May, the midterms are only six months or so away, an the President is trying to play catch-up with issues the voters care about rather than try to push child care, the environment, or prescription drug prices, which, if you believe the Republican Party, voters couldn't care less about.  It may already be too late for that. Antipathy toward the Biden administration appears to be set like concrete, and the Republicans are so heavily favored to win the midterms that the actual election may just be a formality (provided any Democratic voters are actually allowed to cast ballots).    

I'm pretty much resigned to seeing a Republican congressional takeover in 2022 and possibly a Republican presidential victory in 2024.  The GOP has been able to figure out how to manipulate the system to win all the power in Washington.  After that's it's one crisis away from a declaration of martial law the dissolves the Democratic Party in a case of what some progressives might call euthanasia.  And though Manchin may be responsible for stymieing Build back Better and voting-rights legislation by stabbing Biden in the back, he may yet get his.  After all, we remember what happened to Judas after he got his thirty pieces of silver.

(As all this goes on, the U.S. Senate Republican primary in Ohio will decide today who goes up against Democrat Tim Ryan for Rob Portman's Senate seat in November.  "Hillbilly Elegy" author and front-running primary candidate J.D. Vance, who once despised Donald Trump but later sucked up to him and got his endorsement over rival Josh Mandel, could be a formidable nominee against Ryan, a true champion of the working class.  I'm hoping that the GOP nominated whomever Ryan can defeat with little or no effort.  I just don't know who that would be.)

Crisis? What Crisis?

The media call the surge of migrants to the Mexican border a crisis.  Something that happens regularly every year is not a crisis, except for maybe hurricane season.  Migrants come from Central America every winter and early spring because that's when the weather is most favorable for migrating up to the Rio Grande.

President Biden has made it clear that people should come legally and not try to cross the border illegally, just like Donald Trump. Except that Biden wants to facilitate legal entry into the country, while Trump wanted to build a wall.

And when children manage to get into Texas and get into a temporary immigration processing facility like the one above, with little more than a phone number for a family member already living in the U.S., Biden doesn't turn them away.  He actually tries to help them and get them to safety.

Why he does not get plaudits for his humanity by the same press calling this migration wave a crisis remains unexplained.

Many of these migrants are feeling the destruction in Central America caused by hurricanes.  Which brings me back to how hurricane season, fueled by climate change, is becoming an annual crisis . . . 

Panic In Detroit

Mitch McConnell boasts about having spent his Senate career ensuring that America won't become like Europe (right, good schools, gun control, public support for the arts, a humane criminal justice system, universal health care, high-speed rail, who wants any of that?), and recent polling shows that Democratic voters, while ready for a change from Trump, aren't prepared to go all the way down the European social democratic path anyway.  They may want universal health care, but not Medicare for all.  They may want Amtrak and even local public transit, but the don't want to give up their Explorers and F-150s for Yarises.  They may want immigration reform, but that don't want to decriminalize non-sanctioned border crossings.  They do want a moderate presidential candidate, but they don't want Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.  Though progressives would blame the centrist media for suggesting all that and telling you want to think.  But I, as someone who voted for Jill Stein in 2016, have come to the conclusion that Democrats cannot have a progressive presidential candidate for 2020.  A progressive agenda would have been possible for 2016, but Donald Trump has taken us so far backwards that we have to get back to where we were when Barack Obama left the White House before we can start dreaming big again about emulating European social democracies.

So the two-part debate in Detroit this past week satisfied no one. In the first night, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders stood in solidarity for their progressive goals, but the so-called moderates (any Democrat not liberal enough for the Sanders/Warren crowd is called one) had the upper hand as a group.  But no one centrist candidate dominated the field like Sanders and Warren did, exposing the weak standings of these lower-tier candidates as they wait to take the mantle of the leading centrist or center-left candidate should Joe Biden fumble in the long run.

Biden did not fumble in the second night, despite a mass onslaught from opponents like New Jersey senator Cory Booker, and he did better than in Miami, but he didn't do great either.  This led many to wonder if he can take on Trump in a general election debate.  But what was really eye-opening were the other candidates on the second night going after the President's record.  Not Trump - Obama.  They picked on Obama's various failings as President as if they were running against him.  And Biden, Obama's Vice President, staunchly defended Obama, which makes him look good in the longer run.  The piling on top of Obama's record proved to be too much for many rank-and-file Democrats to stomach, especially when Trump exploited it in a rally in Cincinnati the following day.

The only reason Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez isn't pulling his hair out is because he's bald.    

The primary/caucus debates get harder to qualify for after this, but the field is hardly going to winnow any time soon, because there are likely enough Democratic presidential candidates who can get enough support from the polls and individual donors to keep on going and make the next couple of debates a two-night affair like Miami and Detroit were.  And they'll debate about the same old things - immigration, Medicare expansion - and not talk so much about the economy and the everyday struggles of ordinary Americans.  Good grief, a GM transmission factory in the Detroit suburb of Warren just closed, and even that couldn't spark a discussion among the candidates in the Detroit debate on what they could do for average voters who don't want to hear about exotic or revolutionary programs when all they want to know is how they're going to make it.  The factory closing was a tailor-made subject for someone like Tim Ryan, yet he was unable to get the opportunity to break out of the pack. As for Biden, he wants to talk about meat-and-potatoes issues, but he's constrained by what many of the other candidates want to talk about, and, say, rebuilding our infrastructure isn't one of them.  So don't expect him to stand up for Amtrak - a pet issue of his - any time soon in one of these debates.

And you know the Democrats are in trouble when pundits are actually finding Marianne Williamson impressive.

I'm not supporting anyone for President in the Democratic nomination process because I'm an independent.  Instead, I've been continuing my quixotic efforts to get Volkswagen to keep the standard Golf in its North American lineup when the eighth-generation model debuts.  Between that and supporting a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, I'd rather continue to fight to keep the standard Golf in this market.  At least I know I have a better chance of success there.     

Hot Buttons

Okay, I'm going to be brief on the issues of abortion and immigration.  The Alabama abortion law (that's right, the governor of Alabama, a woman, signed it) that criminalizes all abortions except to save the mother's life is either the dumbest political move or the brightest one.   Republicans in other states are running away from this law, saying it's too extreme and doesn't offer exceptions for rape or incest (yeah, just like the 1984 Republican platform), but they must know full well that this could bring out the evangelical vote in 2020 and possibly consign the Democrats to Whig-like extinction with a GOP victory all over the political spectrum.  But it could also galvanize abortion-rights supporters into pushing back by coming out in droves to vote Democratic.  I have a feeling that the latter scenario won't happen.  (Remember the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision?)

And immigration?  Trump's new bill, conceived in large part by Jared Kushner, wants to bring more immigrants with skills at the expense of family reunification but does noting about the DACA immigrant children.  Republicans have dismissed this bill for letting in more legal immigrants while Democrats find the bill to be condescending toward unskilled laborers and families.  Since this plan satisfies no one, it's not going to help Trump soften his xenophobic image. Especially when he's telling migrants who are already here not to get to comfortable here.

Because of these two toxic issues, neither he nor House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can get too comfortable in their respective positions either.  For 2020, all bets are off.

The Ghost Of Martin O'Malley

You knew I was going to bring Martin O'Malley up again eventually.  Because the more I consider the Democrats running for President in 2020 and the Democrats who may be running, the more I miss him.  I happen to think he made a big mistake by choosing not to run for President in 2020 after he was laughed out of the 2016 campaign with no real chance to make his case.  

So far, I haven't seen a single Democratic presidential candidate who's impressed me, at least not among the announced candidates, and I have one misgiving or another about the prospective candidates who haven't entered the campaign yet.  That includes Beto O'Rourke, whom I call Hamlet-on-the-Rio Grande.  It seems that none of them have the right mix of policies and purpose that I saw in Maryland's former governor.

I do see some of what he advocated in 2016 surfacing among Democratic members of Congress.  The Green New Deal that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) proposed sounds a lot like the economic program O'Malley ran for President on.  Point being, when it comes to promoting an environmentally sustainable economy, Ocasio-Cortez, Markey and others are spreading the word.  O'Malley's word.  And I applaud him for letting others take the credit for an idea he championed when it's an idea that must be discussed and debated.  If no one will listen to O'Malley, they'll bloody well listen to Ocasio-Cortez, one of the biggest rising stars in the Democratic Party. 

But what if no one is listening to your ideas because no one is advocating them?  Just as the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, the only thing worse than an idea that gets mentioned and rejected without discussion is an idea that doesn't get brought up at all, and that's where O'Malley's all-payer health care proposal from 2016 comes in.  I mentioned this plan before; it's a system that sets hospital fees to a global standard by having all third parties pay the same for services, which can increase the power of insurance companies to lower health care costs.  While other countries have used this system successfully, Maryland is the only U.S. state that uses it.  Unfortunately, because it's only used in Maryland, no one running for President - okay, except maybe O'Malley's fellow Marylander and fellow Irish homey John Delaney - is talking about it.  Democratic presidential candidates either champion Medicare for all - which may not work all that well - or tweaking the Affordable Care Act, although I don't know how you tweak a tweak.  All-payer sounds like a good step toward a real single-payer plan, yet there's no one out there to advocate for it. There wasn't even anyone to advocate for it in 2016; O'Malley tried to, but when he attempted  to  bring it up in a CBS Democratic presidential primary debate, moderator John Dickerson cut him off and went to a commercial break; when the commercial break was over, Dickerson moved on to another issue, and O'Malley didn't get much of a chance to bring it up in the two debates that followed before he withdrew as a presidential candidate. 

O'Malley's decision not to run for President in 2020 for what were likely trivial reasons involving his lack of pizzazz and his lack of melanin or a pair of X chromosomes still sticks in my craw, and his voice is sorely missed.  Well, I miss it.  O'Malley has become like Marley's ghost, witnessing debates he can't take part in but might have taken part in, had he chosen to walk among the likes of Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.  But maybe, just maybe, Beto O'Rourke - whom O'Malley has been encouraging to run for President - might be the antidote to those of us suffering from O'Malley withdrawal.  At a rally in his hometown of El Paso in which he corrected Donald Trump's lies about immigration and border security - lies Trump told at his own rally in El Paso that same night - O'Rourke came out as a passionate man of conviction who wants to do right by those who come to this country, and that's precisely the reason O'Malley wants him to run. Stay tuned.  Despite my doubts, Beto may be the one after all.

But if Beto doesn't run for President, I would hope that O'Malley reconsiders and reverses his decision. 

You Want ICE With That?

Okay, now this immigration debate has just gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Numerous Democratic politicians, including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (hmm, wonder what they all have in common?), as well as New York Democratic House nominee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have all called for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau.

What?

It is true that ICE has been pursuing the policies of the Trump administration to crack down on people entering the country by means other than legal ones, and these policies have been punitive and unfair, but this doesn't reflect badly on ICE.  It reflects badly on Trump.  See, we need an agency to patrol or borders and regulate the way people come into this country.  In fact, we need an Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau to enforce laws governing not just how people enter this country but also how goods and services enter this country.  I would love to live in a nation and on a planet where we have entirely open borders, as if there were no borders at all, and as rock star Graham Nash once said, the fact that you see no borders when you look at a picture of the earth shows where our hope as a planet lies.  But we're not there yet - neither here nor elsewhere.  If you don't police and regulate the borders, then you don't have order.  You have chaos.   

As bad as Trump's zero-tolerance policy is toward illegal immigrants is, can you imagine how bad it would be if people crossed the borders without anyone patrolling them?  If you want to get a handle on the border, you don't get rid of ICE.  You change the laws and the policies behind it.  We need to reform ICE, not get rid of it, but at the same time we also need to reform our immigration laws to allow people to come in more easily and treat immigrants - especially asylum seekers - more fairly.  And the first step to dong that, at least the first step after getting rid of at least one Republican congressional majority in the 2018 midterms, is getting rid of Trump.

I do understand, though, that talking about abolishing ICE is a big political boon to the party.  The Grand Old Party, that is.:-O        

Driven To Distraction

With Robert Mueller possibly getting closer to finding out what really happened with regard to Russian influence in the 2016 election and a possible trade war with the Chinese, Donald Trump is getting desperate.  He tired to reconnect with his base by sending National Guard troops to the border to Mexico to stop illegal immigrants from crossing.  The Guardsmen won't have to do much . . . the flow of illegal immigrants over the southern border is currently at its lowest point since 1971.     

Tariffs against Chinese products?  I'm all for it, so long as it's done the right way.  But Trump is going about it in such a cavalier fashion that it might have the unintended consequence of making it impossibles for American farmers to sell grain and soybeans to China and cause a severe agricultural recession.  Most of the states and counties affected supported Trump in 2016.

The attempt to ignite the Republican base by highlighting illegal immigration may backfire on Trump and the GOP when they see Guardsmen lying about and doing nothing.  (You know what Republicans think of layabouts!)  But they might be distracted enough not to realize that teachers in reliably Republican states are striking for not only better pay but for more money for their schools, so they don't have to pay for their own supplies.  By the time these Republican voters, who think the education is bad or you, see that they're about to be hit with the biggest sh--storm since the Never Again anti-gun movement, it'll be too late.

Meanwhile, the FBI raided Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's office to investigate his alleged payment to Stormy Daniels.  And Trump, bemoaning the loss of attorney-client privilege (which isn't relevant in this case), wants to get back at the FBI for looking into this sex scandal by . . . firing Robert Mueller, an ex-FBI guy investigating Russian meddling in our elections?  That makes no sense at all . . .

I can't believe I just covered so much ground in such a short post . . ..      

Nancy With the Running Mouth

So, Nancy Pelosi went on the floor of the House of Representatives last week to press for the House to do something about the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in the budget deal and used her status as House Democratic Leader to talk for a little while.  Well, maybe eight hours . . .  eight hours and seven minutes, to be exact. 

Yes, Nancy Pelosi talked for as long as people work in one day, earning her pay.  And I'm not going to ask for equal time by writing commentary on it that takes as long to read.  I am going to say this, though:  What Pelosi did was a stunt to show how vital and relevant she is.  It did nothing to ensure that DACA would be included in the budget deal (and did nothing to help the Democrats in the 2018 House elections).  House Speaker Paul Ryan said that Pelosi's 487-minute speech, the longest House speech ever, was impressive, but not impressive enough to include in the budget bill a provision on DACA that Trump won't support.  Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer belatedly realized this, which is why he agreed to a budget deal in the Senate that didn't include DACA after engineering a shutdown over DACA that only helped the Republicans in the polls.  People want DACA to be settled - but they also want the government to keep functioning while it gets settled.

Look.  The current DACA program expires on March 5.  Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has uncharacteristically made good on a promise and plans to open debate on DACA on the Senate floor this week.  Speaker Ryan has to start debate on DACA in the House soon.  Otherwise, deportations of young people to countries they're too young to remember living in start on March 6.  No one, not even Trump, wants that to happen.  Something has to give, and that would be the case even if Pelosi had not gone on and on and on and on in the well of the House.     

No, Nancy Pelosi did this to discourage Democrats form getting rid of here, not to encourage Democrats or Republicans to get DACA taken care of.  And she did this to discourage Ryan from getting too comfortable with the idea of being in a position of House leadership.

Not Paul.  Tim. 

Right, I gotta get back to the Winter Olympics . . .

Martin O'Malley Takes a Run To Fox . . .

. . . and hides himself away.

Martin O'Malley, the Democrat other Democrats love to ignore, has disappeared from MSNBC of late, but he's still on TV.  But it doesn't look the same . . . the way it did before.

That's because O'Malley has been going on Fox News.    

The would-be 46th U.S. President has been spending the last couple of weeks debating and defending his specialty topic, immigration, with the likes of Tucker Carlson, who rejected as stupid the idea that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were refugees on their flight to Egypt, and Martha MacCollum, who tried to inject the case of Kate Steinle (who was accidentally killed by an immigrant) into the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals issue. O'Malley is a skilled, knowledgeable politician who can give as good as he gets, but he's wasting his time trying to argue with preppie snobs like Carlson and bottle-blondes like MacCallum.  He'll get the TV exposure that MSNBC no longer seems to be giving him (did Phil Griffin tell his talent at MSNBC not to waste precious air time talking to him because he's yesterday's news?), but his argument will always be cast in a negative light by the conservative pundits over at Fox, and he won't win any converts; no one watches Fox News to get their minds changed by a former Democratic governor.

Okay, okay, okay, he thinks he's got a pretty good case.  But going on Fox News is out of place.  He looked all right before, trying to persuade fellow Democrats and fellow liberals to consider him for the Presidency, which, even for him, is definitely easier than trying to get Fox News's right-wing audience to agree with him.

I've heard it all before . . .

I hope O'Malley recognizes the folly of hanging out with Carlson and MacCallum and goes back to his place - MSNBC, where he can build himself support for 2020.  Because at Fox, they, they, they don't wanna know his name.

Even less so than the liberal pundits who made fun of him before.

S***hole President

Can someone tell me why Donald Trump is President of the United States?

One noteworthy takeaway from Michael Wolff's new book that I didn't spend much time on earlier is Trump's mental health.  Several aides have suggested that he deserves to have a thorough mental evaluation, and he seems so unhinged that involving the 25th Amendment and removing him from power might be a good idea.  Trump tried to show how engaged he was by hosting a public bipartisan meeting of members of Congress on immigration reform, and, at first glance, he seemed genuinely interested in and attentive to the various points of view.  The veneer of command began to unravel when he seemingly agreed with both Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and House Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy, both of California, on their positions regarding congressional approval of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that gives sanctuary to immigrant children brought to the U.S. by their parents on his week. Feinstein wanted a clean bill on the issue; McCarthy wanted border protection included.

Trump could have salvaged his fast-declining reputation by agreeing to a reasonable compromise worked by six U.S. Senators, including Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), that would feature more than $2.5 billion for border security and offer protection to DACA immigrants but not allow them to sponsor their parents for citizenship.  But when Trump found that the deal would replace the immigration lottery program with new visas to protect immigrants living in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status - immigrants from places like Haiti, El Salvador, and numerous African countries - he responded, “Why are we having all these people from s***hole countries come here?"

With all due respect to Einstein, this is the definition of insanity.

Trump just proved how racist and insensitive he is, showing no empathy or understanding on black and brown people whom we have traditionally welcomed to this country, with all of their talents and their abilities, and making America look like, well, a s***hole country - a country that would allow such a man to serve as its leader.  His ignorance of the people of other countries and his disregard for humanity is more than enough to disqualify him for the office.  He also said he preferred immigrants from ultra-white Norway, even though Norwegians, who enjoy amenities that many Americans lack, like guaranteed health insurance and living-wage incomes, would probably have no reason to to come here.  (And can you blame them for not wanting to?)

I give up.  Trump is destroying this country, and Republicans are letting him get away with it. I used to think that Republicans would allow him to be impeached, convicted and removed from office as soon as he did or said something outrageously disgusting.  But I can't think of one outrageously disgusting thing that he hasn't already done.

November Surprise

The gubernatorial race in Virginia is so close, although Democrat Ralph Northam seems to have the edge, that no one can call it and Republican Ed Gillespie can still pull victory from the jaws of defeat.  In the New Jersey gubernatorial election,  Phil Murphy appears to be on course to win but Kim Guadagno is still pegging away and could gain enough last-minute momentum to pull an upset.  You scoff at that suggestion? Well, you remember what they said about the ant who tried to fell a rubber tree.     

Up to now, I've been worried about a surprise development that could cost Murphy the election.  At the height of hurricane season, I feared that a storm would strike New Jersey and Governor Chris Christie would put Guadagno in charge of emergency operations and allow her to prove herself as a leader . . . and overtake Murphy in the polls.  No.  Then I feared that Murphy's lieutenant-gubernatorial running mate Sheila Oliver's vote in the state Assembly against a bill meant to deny state contracts to companies that boycott Israel would cost him the extremely important Jewish vote.  Not quite.  Then came his promise to make New Jersey a sanctuary state for undocumented immigrants, which could cost New Jersey in federal aid (you mean we actually get some??)   It's driven up anti-Murphy enthusiasm among Republican voters but not so much for pro-Murphy voters in the immigrant-heavy Democratic base in the state . . . but no, Murphy's poll numbers are still holding.  But anything could happen, given all of the garbage that Guadagno has dumped on him.  I've even been wondering if the October 31 terrorist attack in Lower Manhattan, given the fact that an Uzbek national living in New Jersey (albeit on a legal visa) perpetrated it, would play into Guadagno's naked immigrant-bashing as well as the line that Democrats are soft on terrorism.  

The most gratifying sight of Murphy advocating sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, apart from the fact that it's the right thing to do, is that Murphy could have talked his way out of his hardline stand with the mealy-mouthed language commonly associated with wimpy Democrats and backpedaled on it to avoid offending centrist independents, but instead he doubled down and stood on his principles.  If he wins, his courageous stand for immigrants will hopefully embolden Democrats in other states as the 2018 midterm elections approach.        

I'm still nervous, if only because the last Republican woman to face a Democrat in a New Jersey governor's election, Christine Todd Whitman, upset the conventional wisdom by winning, something Whitman herself has recently made a point of in advocating for Guadagno.  (Except that Whitman was seven points behind Democrat Jim Florio going into the 1993 election, not fourteen points behind like Guadagno is behind Murphy, and Florio was an unpopular incumbent governor - much like Guadagno's boss, Chris Christie.)  But Murphy, who says he has our backs, has Democrats who have his back.  Including this one.

Yes, that's Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland and 2016 presidential candidate, stumping for Phil Murphy on October 29 in Paterson, near where I live.  (I didn't learn about it until after the fact, of course.)  It was one of four stops O'Malley made in New Jersey on that rainy day.  He didn't attract the number of people that Hillary Clinton might (okay, would), but with each person he meets and interacts with while campaigning for Democratic candidates nationwide, he makes a presidential run in 2020 more doable . . . one voter at a time.

I recall that ant and the rubber tree again . .  .    

Murphy's Law of Polls

Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy is leading by eighteen points over his Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, in a recently released poll, and he's benefiting from Guadagno's association with lame-duck incumbent Governor Chris Christie.  So it looks like the Democrats are going to score their first major electoral victory in the age of Trump, right?

Not so fast.  

At the first debate between the two candidates, Murphy may have had his own "basket of deplorables" moment when he said he would declare New Jersey a "sanctuary state" for undocumented immigrants, shielding them from federal authorities.  Guadagno immediately responded by suggesting that Murphy would give sanctuary to undocumented immigrants like a Peruvian national who murdered children in a Newark schoolyard in 2014.  Murphy has come back hard and strong on that charge, saying that no state or city offering sanctuary for undocumented immigrants extends its protections to criminal suspects.  But since Guadagno is a Republican, that hardly matters.  She's been hammering the issue home, misleading potential voters with a deceitful misrepresentation of the truth - that is, a lie - and appealing to same bigoted set of voters Trump won in 2016.

To respond to the inevitable point that Donald Trump lost New Jersey to Hillary Clinton by nine points, it's worth noting that voters in New Jersey have acted differently in the past when choosing a governor.  New Jersey Democrats have lost four out of the last seven gubernatorial elections since the state last went Republican in a presidential election, and no Democrat has served two full terms since Brendan Byrne from 1974 to 1982.  New Jerseyans have been partial to Republicans when it comes to running the state, trying to keep taxes under control, and helping suburban areas (mostly white) over the cities (mainly non-white).  Guadagno's latest trick - in place of her attempt to capitalize on New Jersey's astronomically high property taxes, which hasn't helped - may bring out enough Republican voters in the exurban and rural areas to counter Democratic strength in urban areas and in older, more established suburbs that are in greater proximity to the cities.

In other words, Guadagno could find a way to pull an upset.  If that sounds unthinkable, look at the 1993 gubernatorial election and consider that Christine Todd Whitman was expected to lose to incumbent governor Jim Florio despite his unpopularity over increasing taxes in a recession.  She won by one percentage point.  How far back do you want to go?  Brendan Byrne was just as unpopular in 1977 as Florio was in 1993 over taxes - it was Byrne who imposed New Jersey's income tax, leading Republicans to label him "One-Term Byrne."  His Republican opponent in the 1977 election, Ray Bateman, cam up with a plan to replace the state income tax but, when asked how it would work, Bateman gave an answer that revealed the plan to be more of a fantasy than a workable solution.  He ended up losing what was the one of the least loseable elections for a challenger against an incumbent in New Jersey history.

Oh yeah, Phil Murphy is pushing a very progressive - and very expensive agenda, but he hasn't come up with an explanation of how he's going to pay for it.  Sound familiar?  

Actually, the only reason it does sound familiar is because Guadagno can't explain how she's going to pay for property tax relief.  But Murphy is still leaving himself open to an upset if he doesn't respond more forcefully to his opponent's more aggressive attacks on him.  

I hope Murphy - whom I support and whose agenda I support - comes back harder still.  Maybe he will at tonight's second gubernatorial debate.  Because if he somehow manages to lose, that will effectively put an end to the Democratic Party.  Not just the party in New Jersey - the national party.  Because if the Democratic Party can't even win the governorship of an increasingly Democratic state like New Jersey in the age of Trump, it might as well go full Whig.             

DACA Caca

Trump got his henchman Jeff Sessions to announce that former President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for children brought into this country illegally by their parents was being wound down and terminated by March 2018.  Such individuals - called the Dreamers because they would benefit from passage of the as-yet unpassed immigration-reform Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act - are now in jeopardy of being tossed out of the country despite having been brought here as kids, despite the fact that they are now in college or in the workforce and are contributing to society, and despite the fact that they know no country other than this one.

Everyone, including I myself, agrees that Trump shouldn't have done this.  Now even Trump agrees that Trump shouldn't have done this.  Because although some liberal commentators have accused Trump of playing to his base of white men who want to make America more purely Caucasian than Sweden, he wants to try to find some way to get Dreamers to stay, because they themselves have done nothing wrong.  However, he believes - and to be fair, he has a case - that it is the legislative and not the executive responsibility to fix what passes for our immigration system. That's why he moved to let Dreamers know that he hopes to ensure that they'll be able to stay in the United States through congressional action.

Marco Rubio, Florida's Republican U.S. Senator and the son of Cuban immigrants, can relate.  "I know how difficult it is,"  He recently said, "I know how highly charged immigration can be as an issue. I know how difficult it can be to narrowly address one piece of the puzzle. So I’m concerned about those things."

So now it's crunch time.  Washington has to get this sucker fixed.  But don't expect Steve Bannon to give Trump a pep talk to get it done.  He's been insisting that the Catholic Church in America wants illegal aliens to swell their ranks.

Where's Martin O'Malley when you need him?

And by the way . . . we should stop calling Obama's program by its acronym.  No one knows  what it means, and DACA sounds like the capital of Bangladesh.  Also . . . the Dreamers?  They're immigrants, not Freddie Garrity's backing band. 

I'm telling you now . . ..

The New Odor

Donald Trump has done one thing remarkably well; he's keeping all of his promises before February.  The Democrats, meanwhile, go around looking like they've been slapped around.

Trump announced an executive order banning citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries entering the United States for 90 days, along with a 120-day ban on admitting refugees and an indefinite pause on admitting Syrian refugees pending a review of the vetting process - a vetting process that may already be one of the most thorough in the world.   The countries are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.  Not surprisingly, people all over the world and all over America are outraged and are taking to the streets demanding that something be done about it.  Congressional Democrats, as always, have merely been whining about it. True, Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer has pledged to sponsor a bill repealing the order, but what power do the Democrats have to get it passed?  In the Senate, maybe, but in the House?

The White House said that these seven countries were singled out not because of their Islamic-majority populations but because of "concern" that these particular countries breed terrorism.  The administration has been quick to note that forty-odd Muslim-majority countries are not affected - including Saudi Arabia, the country all but four of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from.  And why is Iraq on the list, when the Iraqis are helping us fight the Islamic State and trying to take back Mosul from that same would-be nation?  This is something even John McCain can't comprehend.   

To be fair, the White House's bans on these countries and on non-Syrian refugees are temporary, and they could easily be rescinded sooner than scheduled if the Department of Homeland Security sees fit.  But Trump has been overplaying the bans and downplaying their temporary status to the point where people think they're permanent, causing a very serious public relations problem.  Nor did the Trumpster do himself any favors by exempting refugees fleeing religious persecution such as Christians in many of these same Muslim countries.  If he expressed any welcome for Muslims under religious persecution in countries dominated by non-Muslims, I must have missed that.

Meanwhile, leaked audio from the congressional Republican gathering in Philadelphia revealed that the House and Senate GOP leadership have no idea on how to replace the Affordable Care Act - though they're still hell-bent on repealing it.  Paradoxically, they're wringing their hands over the possibility of angering voters who have benefited from Obamacare by taking away their health insurance, though offending the Trump supporters within their base seems more suicidal.   The Democrats, again, offer talk but not much action, at least as far as I can tell from my vantage point - which is a laptop in my kitchen as I type this, so I suppose I have to make some allowances.

The truth of the matter is, though, that while the Republicans have firm group on the three branches of government despite their internal disagreements, the Democrats seem to be at loss for how to use what little power they have to stop Trump's worst initiatives in this new order that has descended upon Washington.  While people take to the streets and demand justice and fairness, Democrats in Washington react as if the old rules still apply.  The people are well ahead of the Democrats - supposedly the party of the people - and the party is losing the fight while increasingly showing signs of Whiggishness.  To wit: When it comes to political power, it's the GOP's world.  The Democrats are simply dying in it.

Phoenix Falling

It's back to the ashes for Arizona's immigration law, which was partially blocked by federal judge Susan Bolton yesterday only hours before it was to take effect. Judge Bolton said that more time was needed for the judiciary to resolve some of the law's most contentious provisions, such as the requirement for police officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws. This means that Steve Nash won't have his visa questioned if he ever gets piked up on a DWI after a rowdy Suns game and possibly get sent back to Canada. But, much more importantly, it won't subject anyone of Mexican descent to racial or ethnic profiling . . . at least for awhile.

Other delayed provisions include requiring immigrants to carry their papers and the requirement of officers to make warrantless arrests of immigrants suspected of both being and doing something illegal.

Many of these provisions smack of wrongheaded unfairness at best, a violation of the Bill of Rights at worst. Some pundits have suggested that the Obama administration's efforts to blunt or strike down this law will cause an anti-immigrant backlash against the Democrats in November, but challenging this law in Arizona is the right thing to do, and sometimes you have to buck popular opinion if you want to do the right thing. That's what leadership is all about.

Some provisions of this law - banning illegals from seeking employment in public places, for example - may have some merit, at least on face value. But while some provisions make sense and others are just flat-out dumb, the overall question is about state sovereignty, and whether or not a state can supplant or override federal law. That question was settled by President Andrew Jackson in the Nullification Crisis of 1832 (when South Carolina voided a federal tariff law) and re-affirmed by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War - the federal government has the last word on federal issues like immigration.

So maybe Congress should pass immigration reform and resolve this once and for all before we have another Nullification Crisis.

By The Time I Get Phoenix. . . .

Arizona, the home of national embarrassments like J.D. Hayworth and overpriced resort housing, has added another item to its impressive list of bad ideas - a racist immigration law so blatantly offensive it's created opposition all across the country and put Congress on notice to do something about immigration on the national level that's hopefully far saner than this law.

The Arizona law states that anyone in the state whom the police has reason to believe is in this country illegally can be pulled over and asked to prove they are U.S. citizens. What is this, South Africa in the apartheid era? Everyone knows this law will mostly affect the state's Hispanic residents because of their names and their complexions. Mexican-Americans born in Nogales - Nogales, Arizona - Tucson, or Phoenix are susceptible to this harassment, while Canadians in Arizona - say, basketball star Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns - don't have to worry about getting their papers checked.

The argument goes that since Washington has done nothing to resolve the immigration issue, Arizona feels the need to take action in securing their border with Mexico and controlling Mexican criminal activities that affect the state. Although Governor Jan Brewer - facing a tough bid for nomination by her fellow Republicans for a full term - says she believes the law can be enforced with great care and sensitivity and without violating civil rights, the law's success on these points is based on the ability to the police to enforce it objectivity and without prejudicial action. Okay, police officers are human beings like anyone else and likely won't act objectively. If they have reason to believe that a person of Mexican origin is an illegal alien without empirical evidence and go by their gut, they're going to feel compelled to check the person out. Maybe that's why so many municipal police departments in the state have opposed the law.

Say, why not get robot cops for this job? Just like in one of those Will Smith movies! :-D

Congress has little stomach for tackling this issue, despite the prodding of Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, and the Obama administration, despite its promise to do something about immigration, has reluctant to go forward. They'll all have to, because this issue isn't going away on its own. In the meantime, those of us who have any business in Arizona but live elsewhere should boycott the state as much as possible.

Meanwhile, Steve Nash is going to have to get used to showing his green card. ;-)