Tag: Nancy Pelosi

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At Large Opinion

The Memory Hole

Marjorie Taylor Greene (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Memories are ephemeral things. They get stacked like dishes in a cabinet, most never brought out until evoked by happenstance — a story told by a friend, an unexpected phone call, an old family photo. We more easily recall the high moments, the weddings, births, holidays, deaths. The events of an ordinary day from, say, seven years ago, are mostly forgotten.

Unless, that is, you have a device like the Portal that’s in our kitchen. It’s a screen on a stand that will play music or perform other web duties as needed, but we mostly use it for long-distance calls with family, so everyone can see each other at once.

You can also link the Portal to photos from your camera or computer. Portal then cycles through your pictures at random, posting them for 10 seconds at a time, before sliding into the next one. Since we have made hundreds of photos available to Portal, this can be both delightful and disconcerting.

Walk into the kitchen and you might see a photo of a gorgeous sunset from a long-ago boat ride, followed by a shot from that horrible February when your roof had to be replaced, followed by a picture of your beloved old mutt, Trotsky, who died in 2015. Every 10 seconds, it’s a new memory to think about, a new reminder of how much past has really passed and how many of life’s transitory moments we forget.

Yesterday, a picture I took of then-President Donald Trump’s infamous 2017 “covfefe” tweet appeared. It was once a big deal. Was the president delivering a secret message? What did it mean? I hadn’t thought about “covfefe” and the temporary nuttiness that ensued for a long time. I bet you haven’t either. Once, it was the story of the week. Now it’s just another “WTF?” moment from the Donald years.

The photo reminded me of last week’s kerfuffle involving Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, in a rambling tirade, accused “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police” of spying on her and other members of Congress. The pundits had a field day making sport of MTG. Pelosi was a “soup nazi.” She’s connected to “anti-pho.” Ha ha, etc. Afterward came a tepid debate about whether Taylor Greene was really that stupid (I vote yes) or whether she was playing a clever four-dimensional chess game to get people talking about her.

Who knows? Nobody but Marjorie Taylor Greene. But as the “covfefe” incident demonstrates, none of it will matter in a couple of weeks. Today’s distraction will be yesterday’s soup.

But the distractions can present a real danger, not just fodder for foolishness. While everyone is yukking it up about MTG’s gaffe, GOP-controlled states around the country are continuing to pass laws that restrict voting rights, a woman’s right to choose, and the rights of LGBTQ people. They are redistricting their party into permanent majority status. It’s happening here in Tennessee as we speak. In addition, Governor Bill Lee is proceeding apace with his audacious plan to pay a Michigan-based Christian school to create up to 500 private charter schools in Tennessee, using tax dollars meant to go to public schools. It’s a huge grift and a deep dive into unconstitutional waters. But that won’t stop “Bible Bill” from pushing like hell to make it happen.

All the national talking heads are making dire forecasts about the 2022 midterms for Democrats, saying the GOP is likely to take back the House and Senate. This isn’t a drill, anymore. It’s no longer politics as usual. One of the two major American parties has skied down the slippery slope, has gone all in for establishing a one-party Christian autocracy as our new system of government.

You have but to listen to the tweet-rants of senators Marsha Blackburn, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and others. They don’t speak of policy or lawmaking. It’s all about spreading fear and disinformation. That’s it. That’s the play. You and I can stand up and fight like hell, or we can sit back and enjoy the shit gazpacho we’re all about to be served.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Prickly City

Irish poet Oscar Wilde opined in his 1899 essay, “The Decay of Lying,” that “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” The shortened version of Wilde’s quote — life imitates art — has become something of a go-to aphorism in the ensuing decades. But it seems to me life is no longer imitating art so much as it is imitating a reprise of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and we’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole.

How else to explain the bizarre phenomenon of Fox News spending countless hours of airtime last week on the decision by the publishers of the Dr. Seuss children’s books to not reprint six titles because they contained ethnically insensitive or xenophobic content? You can easily look up the images in question online. They’re mainly racial-stereotype caricatures that were commonly used in the 1930s and 1940s, and it’s pretty understandable why the books wouldn’t be reprinted in 2021.

But that reasoning doesn’t adequately stoke the Fox News outrage machine. Nope. The real reason Seuss books are going away is because of liberal “cancel culture,” the current rallying cry of the snowflake right. To their credit, it’s a useful phrase, really, one that can be applied to almost anything that is stopped or rejected.

The Commercial Appeal, for instance, has just replaced its long-running conservative cartoon, Mallard Fillmore (which “balanced” Doonesbury), with another conservative political cartoon, Prickly City, which features the adventures of a conservative young Black woman who once fell in love with Tucker Carlson. I am not making this up. Unless Wikipedia made it up.

At any rate, letter writers to the CA are predictably complaining that lame duck (literally) Mallard Fillmore is the victim of cancel culture. The truth is less outrageous: The editors at the CA, a privately owned company, decided to pull one conservative cartoon and replace it with another one. It’s kind of like when Beverly Hill SVU (or whatever) gets the axe from CBS.

Or like when thousands of Fox viewers demanded the resignation of Shepard Smith when he came out as gay. Or was that different?

But wait, there’s more. It turns out that the ancient plastic toy, Mr. Potato Head, is also a victim of cancel culture. And also the subject of many hours of pearl-clutching commentary in conservative media circles. How dare they remove the fedora and mustache of Mr. Potato Head?! What’s next, G.I. Josephine?

It’s kind of like when conservatives went nuts and boycotted the Dixie Chicks after they criticized George W. Bush. Or was that different?

Cancel culture has also become the rallying cry of conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill. Last week, in referencing public attitudes toward COVID, President Biden said, “The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking, that in the meantime everything’s fine, take off your mask. Forget it. It still matters.” The nerve!

Thankfully, our own Senator Marsha Blackburn was quickly on the case, defending the downtrodden Neanderthal people on Fox News: “Neanderthals are hunter-gatherers. They’re protectors of their family,” she said. “They are resilient. They’re resourceful. They tend to their own. Joe Biden needs to rethink what he is saying.”

No one had the heart to tell Marsha that Neanderthals have been extinct for a few thousand years. I mean, except for a few descendents in Congress, the ones who tried to cancel the last election. Or was that cancellation different?

Senator Ted Cruz asked Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland how he felt about cancel culture in a Senate hearing. Garland responded: “I do not have an understanding of the meaning of the term sufficient to comment.” Which sounds about right.

Shouty Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan demanded that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hold a congressional hearing on the pressing national crisis of cancel culture. She ignored him, thereby missing a golden opportunity to schedule such a hearing and then cancel it at the last moment.

That would have been artful.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Twitter End

It’s so nice when we finally get a slow news week.

I mean, except for the whole “Let’s instigate a mob attack on the nation’s Capitol to go after Congress members and senators and get five people killed and build a gallows so we can hang Vice President Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi” thing. Which was almost a week ago. So.

I want to talk about social media. It’s hard to imagine the Trump presidency playing out as it did (or even happening) without Twitter. No one has ever used a social medium more effectively than Donald Trump. Twitter was his hammer and everything was a nail. He utilized it to communicate directly with his base, to tap into and spur their anger, their frustrations, and the racism that still infects so many of them. Via his tweets, Trump demonized Muslims, Mexicans, and Blacks. He tweeted warnings of “caravans.” He tweeted no-fly bans. He tweeted outsized fears of immigrant gangs. He tweet-fired cabinet members. He amplified white supremacists and QAnon conspiracists by retweeting them. He tweeted about his wall, about being cheated out of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump also used Twitter for “diplomacy,” tweeting derisively about “Little Rocket Man” and leaders of Canada, France, Iran, and Germany. He tweeted threats of war. And Trump used Twitter to offer helpful criticism about television shows and networks; from SNL to OANN to Fox to CBS to CNN, Trump had an opinion to tweet. And, of course, Trump used Twitter to misinform Americans about COVID, over and over again. You name it, Trump tweeted about it.

Now it’s finished. Twitter has muted Trump, banning him from the platform that he could reasonably argue he helped build into what it is today. Many of Trump’s supporters are calling Twitter’s decision an assault on free speech. It is not. A private company has the right to refuse service. Twitter’s move is more like a bar kicking out a drunk who’s chasing off other customers. Or a bakery refusing to create a cake for a gay wedding, if you prefer.

Many Trump supporters got another shock when the right-wing social media platform Parler was effectively disabled by Google, Apple, and Amazon. And the shocks may keep coming. It was revealed on Monday that Parler’s entire trove of user data has been hacked and stored, to what end we still don’t know.

Social media works by collecting our data and selling it, and they’ve got a lot of it on all of us. So do cell phone companies, which came as a shock to many of the “patriots” who ransacked the Capitol last week. Turns out the building has a massive cell phone infrastructure, one that can (and will) be used to determine what cell phones were in and around the area, and who they were communicating with. Using that data, law enforcement officers pulled many rioters off their return flights last week by tracking their cell phones, much to the Trumpers’ shock and dismay. (The hashtag #noflylist on Twitter and Facebook has compiled a number of videos of these folks being hustled off planes and out of airports, in case you’re needing a quick dollop of schadenfreude.)

It’s still astonishing to me that so many people apparently thought they could break into a federal building, destroy public and personal property, attack the police, take selfies of it all, and then just hop on a plane and head back home with no consequences. Sorry, folks, if you had your cell phone with you in the Capitol last week … well, oops. And according to what limited geographic cell phone data has been released thus far, quite a number of folks in Shelby and Crittendon Counties should be expecting a call from law enforcement soon.

Meanwhile, members of Congress were given a briefing Monday about numerous plots and demonstrations still being planned for Washington, D.C., in coming days. The FBI is also warning of demonstrations of one kind or another for state capitals around the country. Whether the takedown of Parler and the arrests of what will soon be hundreds of Capitol terrorists will impact these nefarious plans is anyone’s guess.

In any event, with another impeachment in the works and the Biden inauguration still to come, the week ahead looks to be another challenging one for all of us living in these turbulent and not-so-United States. Buckle in. Stay safe. We’ll get through this. The current wave of madness is surely cresting.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Four Nights in Cyberspace — the 2020 DNC

My chief fear, as the virtual DNC began on Monday night, was that they didn’t make the mistake of over-producing it. Not for the last time, I found myself wishing it were possible to have a real rough-and-tumble convention.

And, after a needlessly slow start, killing prime time with the kind of desultory welcoming and filler material ordinary conventions start with in the morning or early afternoon, the DNC got going and massed several strong speeches and moments. The point to keep in mind is that in normal convention years the strong stuff starts right away— at 8 p.m. CDT or 9 p.m. EDT.

Having Bernie Sanders on fairly early was a good move toward answering several questions at once. A runner-up in 2020 as he was in 2016, could the Vermont Senator, an

Bernie Sanders

icon of the progressive left, close ranks with the Democrats’ centrist standard-bearer? Though he had made a speech on behalf of Hillary on opening night of the 2016 convention, it seemed not to have cleared away doubters — either in the Clinton ranks or in his own — and the remaining sense of suspicion left a tuft of malaise stuck to the coordinated campaign.

What he said this time around, speaking on a studio stage to the camera, not only sounded fully sincere, it was less a concession than a bona fide endorsement of the candidate who had bested him, Joe Biden. Indeed, it was the first example, of many to come in the convention, of what might be called testimonials from The Friends of Joe Biden — a group of illustrious and/or affecting exemplars who could implicitly be compared to the cronies and satraps of the incumbent President.

Bernie professed himself open to liberals, moderates, and even conservatives — a statement that put him on the same unity-minded platform as Biden — and provoked this thought: Those folks who worried that Sanders could not appeal to a national electorate, what were they thinking? Nobody could have been more obscure than an Independent Senator from Vermont, and look at the national following he had inspired with his attacks on economic inequality! And, the reality of Trump now a given, who could doubt this time that Bernie’s following would come with him in full support of the Democratic ticket?

In juxtaposition to Bernie Sanders on that first night was John Kasich, the moderate former Governor of Ohio who had been in the Republican field of candidates in 2016 and now served to bracket the ticket’s potential from the other side of the political spectrum. (In a sightly jarring and probably unnecessary acknowledgment of his role, Kasich would say he doubted that a President Biden would take any “hard left” turns.)

Michelle Obama was not a matter of right nor left. Nor was the former First Lady an old-fashioned adornment to the patriarchy. She came across as a truth-teller and a judge, sounding this more-in-sadness-than-in-anger note: “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He 

Bennie Thompson

simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”

One more notable fact of that and subsequent nights: Mississippi’s venerable African-American congressman Bennie Thompson, sounding agreeably Old-Southern in his role as permanent Convention chair.

How about our girl Raumesh, one of several virtual testifiers on Joe Biden’s behalf to kick off Night Two of the DNC as sequential keynoters. Remember her floor speech from Phiadelphia in 2016? (Hillary, the state Senator from Memphis memorably said, was “a bad sister.” Unfortunately, she was also, arguably, a bad candidate.)

Raumesh Akbari

Raumesh Akbari, in any case, has been sprinkled with stardust twice — deservedly.

And, one thought, lookee at Caroline Kennedy and son Jack Schlossberg in a brief camera turn. Dang, he’s got those looks, almost a double for his late uncle JFK Jr.

A future-tense candidate?

Youth was similarly served by a pro forma nominating speech for Bernie Sanders by New York Congresswoman Aexandria Ocasio Cortez — AOC, as she’s increasingly called in tribute to her out-of-nowhere celebrity as an instant eminence of the left. Her speech was less about Bernie than it was about her wish list for the political future: “… 21st-century social, economic and human rights, including guaranteed health care, higher education, living wages and labor rights for all people in the United States; a movement striving to recognize and repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny and homophobia …”

It may have been obligatory to give time at some point to John Kerry, the party’s unsuccessful 2004 nominee — or was that old footage of Edmund Muskie? Not much, in any case, was advanced from the moment. Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were more effective links to the party’s past. It is impossible not to respect Carter nor to appreciate Clinton, for all the fresh tarnish on the latter’s image.

Caroline Kennedy and Jack Schlossberg

It was nice to see the friendship between Joe Biden and the late GOP maverick John McCain being remembered — not so much in the somewhat exaggerated hope of attracting fall-away Republicans as to remind the audience of Biden’s ability to work across third rails and party lines.

The absolute hero of the evening — both emotionally and ideologically — was the long-term ALS survivor Ady Barkan, who by his courage, perseverance, and very presence embodied the case for a revamping and extension of national heath care — a wider one, alas, than is envisioned (or at least publicly sanctioned) by Biden.

Jill Biden was a delight, and it was revealing to see her widen the domestic profile of her husband a bit further while giving us a preview of her likely presence-to-be on the national scene.

But, by all odds, the high point of Tuesday night was the roller-coaster ride across America in the form of the live roll call for President — the casting of the votes made sequentially from the scene of each of the nation’s 57 states and territories. What a trip, in every sense of the term! A virtue made of necessity — surely to be repeated in less pandemic future times.

Immigration had been touched on as an issue here and there on the Democratic Convention’s first two nights, but it became something more than that on Night Three when the nation was exposed to videos of 11-year-of Estela Juarez, daughter of an ex-Marine and an undocumented Mexican, crying over her mother’s forced deportation, alternating with excerpts of the President snarling about “animals” and his intention to “move ’em out.”

Estela Juarez

Yes, of course, Trump’s defenders would decry this as a trick of editing and would maintain that he was speaking of criminal elements in the illegals among us. Still, the images of Estela and her mother speak for themselves.

The evening would also see the wounded heroine, former California Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, survivor of a shooting at point-blank range in the back of the head by a zealot with a gun.

Another survivor of sorts was Hillary Clinton, the party’s 2016 standard-bearer, whose very presence, as much as her words, was a warning against complacency at the polls. It is pedantry of a sort, even nit-picking, to complain about certain kinds of style points, but here we go: “As the saying goes” is not the right way to introduce a certain famous comment by Ernest Hemingway, which, in its verbatim version, in “A Farewell to Arms,” goes, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Unmentioned by Clinton, as by most alluders to the sentiment, is the next sentence: “But those that will not break it kills.”

One very live and unbroken specimen is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who took her turn Wednesday night, as did Elizabeth Warren — both of them properly aggressive and examples of the unprecedented prominence of women in today’s Democratic Party.
At one point viewers were treated to a recitation of legislative accomplishments of Joe Biden, one of which was his sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act. This was appropriate, but also a little brazen, in that Biden, as chairman of the Senate committee looking into sexual-harassment complaints of Anita Hill against then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, had been regarded as less than properly vigilant.

The night would end with the two biggest moments — a take-no-prisoners address from former president Barack Obama who, from within his customary restrained persona, threw protocol aside and gave it back to his presidential successor, Donald Trump, followed by a This-Is-Your-Life bio of Kamala Harris, and then Harris in the flesh, to accept the vice-presidential nomination.

Obama stood before the cameras as an elder statesman, but you could still sense within him the wunderkind who came from out of nowhere at the 2004 Democratic Convention — the moderate, sensible presence that his political enemies insisted on trying to characterize as a radical Zulu. But Obama’s inner flame never materalized as firebombs; he could provide heat and light but never explosions. So it was this night:

“I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.
“But he never did. For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.”

There was no tit-for-tat to this, no understandable human response to the torrent of verbal abuse he has suffered from Trump. It was, more than anything else, a report card and a severe one.

Kamala Harris

And Harris, when she came on stage, was thereby largely enabled to eschew the tradition vice-presidential role of attacker, so as to complete the job of revealing herself to an America where she is still something of an unknown quantity. Smiling, and not without a fair amount of glamor, she described her scrambled ethnic heritage (part Black, part Indian of the East Asian variety), her stroller-view of the Civil Rights revolution, her rise in the legal world as a professional woman, and her simultaneous persona as a stepmother called Mamala. A homey presence altogether, but still a seasoned prosecutor and very much woke Senator. Someone who could plausibly say, “We can do better and deserve so much more.”

At the end of her remarks she was joined on stage by her husband Doug Emhoff, while the head of the ticket, Biden, stood awkwardly with his wife Jill a good 12 feet away. The two groups waved at each other and at the large overhead Jumbo screen showing a Zoom crowd applauding. No hands joined overhead of the two ticket heads, not in this socially distanced time. With the climactic night to come it all left an air of incompleteness. Or of expectation.

By and large, on the eve of the finale, the Democrats had managed to bring off a passable, even an impressive virtual show. Now, on Night 4, it was up to Joe to deliver. His surrogates, as well as his advance history, had created the profile of a likable, sincere and well-meaning presence. His adversary President Trump, had countered with a gaffe-prone bumbling caricature he called Sleepy Joe.

Thursday night would determine which of those personas would finish up on the stage.

Things didn’t begin all that auspiciously with some cheesy jokes in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus tried to riff on Mike Pence’s “foreign-sounding” name and declared, “I’m proud to be a nasty woman.” Functioning as the evening’s M.C., she would continue to be something of an edgy presence, only fitting into the mood of the Convention at the point later on when she spoke of her bout with cancer, thereby becoming one of the victims for whom Joe Biden is being posited as the hope.

Following a child’s reading of the Pledge of Allegiance, the erstwhile Dixie Chicks — now, post-George Floyd, just The Chicks — did the Star-Spanged Banner, and Sister Simone had to be in there somewhere because Senator Chris Combs thanked her by name when Wolf Blitzer of CNN cued him back in after a station break.

Civil rights icon John Lewis, memorialized upon his death two weeks ago, got one more lengthy reprise, and it seemed appropriate. Still, the evening was mounting toward Joe’s climactic moment, and everything else was patently build-up. Deb Haaland, a Native American member of the House from New Mexico, Cory Booker bloviating, Jon Meacham pontificating, Mayor Pete introducing all the old gang from the Democratic primaries who looked like Hollywood Squares as they traded Joe memories from their places on a Zoom screen.

Michael Bloomberg came on to boost the ticket and excoriate Trump. Smooth and fluent, he went far toward erasing the memory of that flat and defensive debate performance back in the winter that doomed his campaign and prepared the way for the revival of Joe’s.

There was a moment that mesmerized many onlookers when young Brayden Harrington, who met Biden in New Hampshire and was embraced there as a fellow stutterer, worked his way bravely through a reminiscence of the event before what he had to know was a national television audience.

Brayden Harrington

Then we got what looked like a sleepover image featuring the nominee’s four granddaughters, all smiles and fond recollections of their eminent senior kinsman. Steph Curry and his wife and two daughters would add their impressions, and the moment of truth got ever nearer as Biden’s two living children, son Hunter and daughter Ashley, prepared to bring him on with their own recollections.

Ashley is the daughter of second wife Jill, and, Hunter — he of Ukraine fame — is the survivor of two family catastrophes: a car crash that killed Biden’s first wife and a daughter and left both sons hospitalized; and the agonizing death from cancer of brother Beau, an ex-Marine war veteran and state Attorney General in Delaware on his way to higher things when the Reaper intervened.

Joe Biden’s all-too-obvious grief over Beau, coupled with the pummeling Hunter had taken from the Trump crowd, had created inevitably a sense of Hunter as a possible black sheep. He did not appear so Thursday night; in his coming-out before a national audience he looked and sounded like Joe’s son in every particular, more so than Beau in many ways. He was sympathetic and sincere about his dad, and Ashley, a bright presence, was another revelation.

And finally, after we got a filmed bio of the nominee’s life and times, the triumphs and tragedies, along with the curriculum vitae details of his long government service, there he was, all by himself, Joe Biden.

At this point, I am going to presume to borrow from a Facebook post by by former colleague and frequent partner on the campaign trail, Chris Davis:

“Joe did good. Between his lifelong stutter and a real affinity for putting his foot in his mouth, oratory never has been his thing. But tonight’s performance reminded me of the turning point in narrative cinema when filmmakers realized movies were fundamentally different than stage plays. This wasn’t the typical convention where viewers at home watched a public speaking event built to ignite a massive live audience. It has been intimate, if sometimes imperfect. One commentator positively described it as an infomercial, and that’s not a terrible comparison. I’ll continue to hold breath every time I see him on a live mic. But tonight Joe did good, and as several folks have pointed out before me, the medium really worked for him.”

Joe Biden

That’s one way of putting it. And the content of Biden’s speech complemented everything else that had been said and done earlier in the convention — in its concern for the powerless and the victims of injustice, its determination to transcend the Charleston debacle and fat-cat white supremacy and achieve at long last something resembling racial equity; in its defense of beleaguered pubic institutions like the Affordable Care
Act and the Postal Service; in its determination to revive our foreign alliances and confront the adversaries that the Trump administration has ignored or coddled; in its simple avowal that government is meant to serve and protect the American people.

“This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment,” Biden said. “This
is our moment to make hope and history rhyme.”

And with that the ticket’s two couples were on stage together again, waving at the applause on the Jumbo Zoom screen and, with obvious delight, turning to face the sky auspiciously exploding in fireworks.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Suffering From Trump-itis?

This president makes me sick. Literally. After enduring relentless night sweats during restless sleep, I felt light-headed and dizzy. Any exertion left me exhausted. I thought a nice shower might help, but I ended up having to lie down while attempting to zen away my rapid, palpitating heartbeat. Walking from bedroom to den was encumbered with an equilibrium imbalance that left me clutching the wall. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I tried to act calmly so as not to frighten my wife, but Melody could see through my charade and suggested we go to the emergency room.

Rather than go to the ER on a Saturday night, we instead called the doctor’s service, which asked if we had a blood pressure monitor in the house. When Melody hooked me up and the cuff finally loosened from my bicep, my blood pressure was off the charts. A Xanax eased the situation until I could call my doctor on Monday. By miraculous luck, someone had canceled their three o’clock appointment and I was able to grab it. When my blood work was suspect, I was sent to a nephrologist, then a urologist, before returning to my primary doctor. The prognosis? Hypertension combined with acid reflux was disturbing my stability.

So, now I’m on daily blood pressure and digestive medications. When I asked the doctor if he had any further instructions, he said, “Turn off the news and play more guitar.”

But it’s hard to ignore or escape the American Horror Story sitting in the White House. After the thoroughly co-opted and corrupted Republican Senate aquitted the president from two articles of impeachment, the gaseous windbag felt emboldened enough to take a couple of victory laps. After President Clinton’s impeachment, Wild Bill appeared in the Rose Garden alone, showed contrition, and apologized to the country for his indiscretions that prompted the R-rated ordeal that followed.

Trump chose to show up at the annual prayer breakfast, ordinarily a non-political event that focuses on faith, and launch a diatribe against his perceived enemies, calling the top FBI officials “scum” and questioning Nancy Pelosi’s faith while she sat just feet away. Trump addressed the gathering declaring: “As everybody knows, my family, our great country, and your president have been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people.” He could just as well have been referring to his rotten cabinet that cheered him on.

Appearing in the East Room of the White House after the breakfast, Trump instigated a vendetta against impeachment witnesses that would have made Richard Nixon blanch. Referring to fired FBI Director James Comey as “that sleazebag” and Nancy Pelosi as “a horrible person,” Trump gathered his minions, sent them out on cable TV, and prepared to get some payback.

Gordon Sondland, the million-dollar Republican donor recalled from his post as ambassador to the European Union, was the first victim of Trump’s retribution. Then, “simmering with rage,” as his aides attested, Trump had impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman fired from his position on the National Security Council and escorted by security guards from the White House grounds — along with his twin brother, who had nothing to do with the impeachment, just in case Trump couldn’t tell them apart.

Only a month ago, Trump pardoned an Army soldier convicted of war crimes. Now he’s dismissed a decorated veteran who had earned a Purple Heart in combat. Trump then asked the Pentagon to investigate Vindman for any potential wrongdoing. The Pentagon declined.

The idiot man-child then demanded that the House “expunge” his impeachment, calling the whole thing a “hoax.” Like the Bizarro Superman of comic book fame, Trump protects the guilty while punishing the innocent.

Emboldened by his acquittal, Trump began to purge the unfaithful from his administration, enlisting the Justice Department and Trump’s slavish attorney general, William Barr, to exact revenge on his critics. Trump’s obedient protector immediately appointed an outside prosecutor to examine the origins of the investigation into the former National Security Advisor and disgraced convicted liar Michael Flynn. After that, Barr interfered with the sentencing recommendations of convicted comic villain Roger Stone. All four government prosecutors resigned from the case, prompting more than 1,100 former prosecutors and Justice Department officials to call for Barr’s resignation.

I say impeach his ass again. Seriously. This bloated megalomaniac thinks because he was acquitted by a fearful Republican Senate that he’s home free to continue his work as capo of the Trump crime family. There were at least 10 more charges of obstruction of justice outlined in the Mueller report. They weren’t included in this impeachment go-round because Robert Mueller wasn’t very telegenic and failed to move public opinion. Mueller clearly stated that the outlaw president could not be charged only because of a legal “opinion” that prevents a sitting president from indictment. Mueller told congress, “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” He never said so. In fact, Mueller reported to the shyster Attorney General that his probe found “multiple acts by the president that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations,” which translates into a profusion of abuse of power.

Mueller’s 448-page report was dismissed after most Americans didn’t bother reading it. I ordered the report in book form, but the print was small enough to require a magnifying glass, and was so dense, it was like trying to read War and Peace in Sanskrit.

It didn’t matter. All of Mueller’s evidence of criminality was ignored. No president in history has been more deserving of removal from office than this counterfeit con man. Until this cruel fool is displaced from our collective reality, I’ll be here at home — playing the guitar.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

All the President’s Hits

CREDIT: Laurence Agron | Dreamstime.com

And the hits just keep on coming. The President killed an Iranian general in a drone strike early this month, and it’s already old news. There’s an old Southern expression you’ve probably heard. When a bad person comes to a violent end, somebody’s bound to say, “He needed killin’.” If anybody needed killing, it was General Qasem Soleimani, a brutal terrorist with buckets of blood on his hands. The president could have basked in reflected glory for a moment or two, but he couldn’t resist embellishing the event by claiming that the general was planning “imminent” attacks on at least four U.S. embassies, with absolutely no evidence. President Norman Bates then threatened to target 52 Iranian sites, one for each hostage taken 40 years ago, including cultural sites, which is against international law and considered a war crime.

A shooting war with Iran on the eve of the House of Representatives’ vote approving impeachment articles seemed inevitable, and the world held its breath waiting for the Iranian response. Everyone exhaled a bit when the Iranians shot rockets onto U.S. bases, causing no loss of life, then accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet and lied about it.

Laurence Agron | Dreamstime.com

Nancy Pelosi

That may have tempered their retaliation for now, but you’re kidding yourself if you think this is over. Recent reports emerged saying Trump approved the strike seven months ago. That’s a long way from “imminent.” In return, the Iranians said they will no longer restrict the enrichment of uranium, something they had agreed to in the Obama-brokered nuclear deal. I’ll confess I never heard of Soleimani until they killed him, but I was stunned at how many of my Facebook friends suddenly became experts in Middle Eastern affairs.

On the cusp of the Senate impeachment trial of DonJohn the Cruel, I’d like to take back all the unflattering things I’ve written about Nancy Pelosi in the past. I sincerely apologize and freely admit that she is a badass. Her strategy of holding onto the articles of impeachment produced two beneficial results: She got under Trump’s skin, bigly, and every day that has passed has produced more incriminating evidence regarding the president’s crime ring’s dealings with Ukraine.

The two-part interview with Rudy Giuliani’s co-conspirator Lev Parnas by Rachel Maddow blew the lid off the entire shadow government conspiracy to coerce the Ukrainian president to publicly announce an investigation into the activities of Joe and Hunter Biden. An actual investigation wasn’t necessary, just the announcement would suffice to dirty up Biden.

Mr. Parnas said “everyone was in the loop,” including the president, Vice President Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and Attorney General William Barr. This isn’t an administration. It’s a criminal enterprise that includes the Departments of Energy, State, and Justice — and whatever and whoever Rudy represents.

Parnas claimed one of his reasons for going public was that he didn’t trust William Barr. “Am I scared? Yes,” Parnas said, making an end-run around the attorney general to get the truth in the open. I understand Parnas is under indictment for campaign finance charges, but I’d believe him before the proven serial liar who claims he doesn’t even know the guy who sat next to his personal attorney in numerous meetings together.

Now that this mess is in the Senate’s hands, I’ll never understand why the House allowed government officials and the White House to stonewall their investigation. Trump instructed his minions not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee in any way, including providing document requests and appearances, and when nothing happened, it was — correctly — assumed that they got away with it.

Doesn’t anyone remember Susan McDougal? She was a Clinton associate prosecuted for fraud in the Whitewater investigation, which ultimately morphed into the Lewinski affair. She was offered a deal if she implicated Bill Clinton in wrongdoing. When she refused, she was declared in contempt of court and was incarcerated for 22 months, eight in solitary confinement. Shouldn’t the same fate befall Mick Mulvaney and Mike Pompeo? Getting numerous court orders might drag the process out until the election, and since the president’s noxious behavior was becoming more erratic by the hour, the House opted to just go ahead and impeach the morally challenged capo di tutti capi. 

Trump tweeted in all caps, “I JUST GOT IMPEACHED FOR MAKING A PERFECT PHONE CALL!” It turned out to be the perfect justification for impeachment.

We’re about to see if the Senate will hold a real trial, including witnesses, or if “Grim Reaper” Mitch McConnell will bury the evidence and make it all go away. If witnesses are allowed and the Republicans want to call Hunter Biden, let ’em. What can he say that’s relevant to this conspiracy? Impeachment manager Congressman Adam Schiff said John Bolton’s testimony would be a “game changer,” although I wouldn’t expect Bolton to do the Democrats any favors. One positive is that a subpoena from the Senate can’t be ignored. If attempted by, say, the attorney general, the Senate sergeant at arms can forcibly retrieve him. Or he can take the Susan McDougal approach and go to jail until he changes his mind. Barr wouldn’t be the first attorney general sent to jail. Nixon’s A.G. John Mitchell holds that distinction. The Trump bunch should take a close look at the Nixon example. Everything always comes out eventually. Even if Trump completes his term, a plethora of books will be written by insiders ready to cash in. The senators who will decide the president’s fate have sworn an oath “to administer impartial justice, so help me God.” Since Trump is fond of quoting scripture to his rapture-crazed devotees, here’s something from Matthew 5:33: “You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.”

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Real UFOs. Fake News.

Did you read The New York Times story Sunday about Navy pilots who’ve encountered UFOs? Here’s the lead paragraph: “The strange objects … appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.”

The story quotes six pilots who had encounters with these mysterious objects, and it even links to a video filmed by two Navy pilots that shows incidents of U.S. planes pursuing mysterious flying objects. The video showed objects accelerating to hypersonic speed, making sudden stops and instantaneous turns — something beyond the physical limits of a human crew.

After one pilot had a near-collision with one of the UFOs, the pilots began to complain to superiors that something needed to be done, so a system was set up to monitor and record observations of encounters with UFOs.

This story was being widely circulated on social media. Oddly, I saw no one who claimed that the story was “fake news from the failing New York Times.” Maybe that’s because everybody loves these kinds of stories, no matter their politics. I don’t know.

I do know that the Memorial Day weekend was particularly rife with fake news memes, including a photo of former President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama supposedly taken at a Memorial Day celebration in which Michelle did not have her hand on her heart and had a surly look on her face.

Here’s a sampling of comments: “Disgraceful!” “They are both sh*t.” “Thank God we have a real patriot as president now!”

Of course, there were the usual well-meaning folks who pointed out that the photo had been widely debunked as a photoshop from 2015, but to little avail from the “Obummer” haters, who doubted the legitimacy of the fact-checkers.

Similarly, some anti-Trump folks circulated a meme showing the cost of the president’s golf outings at $102 million and counting. Some doubters claimed that since the president owned his golf resorts and takes no salary, these numbers were bogus. Others claimed that Obama golfed much more than Trump. When folks pointed out that the amount spent on Trump’s golf trips had been researched and validated by numerous legitimate news outlets, the responses were that it was “fake news” from fake news outlets. Of course. This is where we are, America.

With the 2020 election campaign drawing nigh, this sort of misinformation will only increase in frequency and subtlety. See last week’s wide-spread dissemination of an altered video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, slowed down to make her appear drunk. It was viewed more than two million times on Facebook pages and conservative websites. Hours after it had been debunked, it was shown on Fox News as legit, and later tweeted by the president and by his consigliere Rudy Giuliani.

There was once a time when America had what was called a “fairness doctrine,” in which the FCC required that broadcast media give “equal time” to opposing views. How quaint that seems now, in this era where we all choose our own facts. It’s the Wild West, where anything goes, and the truth is just the latest clever meme.

I don’t know how we fix it, but there are countries that are taking real steps to assure that poisonous lies don’t get spread so easily. One example is the tiny nation of Estonia, which suffered a Russian cyber attack on its elections in 2008 (widely seen as a dress rehearsal for later, more ambitious cyber-meddling). Estonia instituted a national cyber-security strategy (ENISA), which consisted of a basic reboot of its election systems, heightened security measures for banks, utilities, and other high-risk targets, and a massive public information campaign designed to help Estonians become more cyber-literate, better able to spot mischief and misinformation masquerading as truth.

It’s a subject that needs to be addressed as soon as possible in the U.S. — “as soon as possible” meaning as soon as the Senate is loosened from the grasp of Mitch McConnell and the GOP, which has steadfastly refused to take any measures to improve the nation’s electoral cyber-security. It’s almost as though they wouldn’t mind if the Russians got another shot at screwing up our elections. Weird, huh?

Not weird. Very sad and troubling, actually. But at least the government is finally taking UFOs seriously, so we’ve got that going for us.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Just Shoot Me

CREDIT: REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert

Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump has admitted to shooting Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross during a tumultuous cabinet meeting on Monday. Ross, 81, is in a Washington, D.C., hospital, where his condition is listed as critical. Trump tweeted Monday night that Ross “had it coming.” Trump went on to tweet that Ross had “fallen asleep” while the president was speaking about the border wall, and that he wanted to “send a message” to other cabinet members. He then tweeted “NO COLLUSION!” and “HAPPY EARTH DAY!”

Since the Justice Department has issued an opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted, Trump appears to be in no danger of being prosecuted for the shooting.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a briefing Tuesday morning that “the president has been very clear on what he will put up with from his cabinet members. While the president wishes the commerce secretary a speedy recovery, he reiterates that he was well within his rights to shoot Mr. Ross under Justice Department guidelines that a sitting president cannot be indicted. He hopes that Mr. Ross has ‘learned his lesson.'”

On Tuesday evening, presidential spokesperson Kellyanne Conway was interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “All right, Kellyanne Conway, what’s your take on this bizarre shooting in the White House yesterday?”

“Well, Wolf, the mainstream media is reporting that a bullet struck Secretary Ross in a cabinet meeting. The president takes full responsibility for being in that meeting, but beyond that, what do we really know? Did you hear the gunshot, Wolf? I don’t think so. Do you know for a fact that Mr. Ross didn’t assault the president? Maybe it was self-defense. For all we know, it could have been a drive-by shooting. We just don’t have all the facts at this point, Wolf, but I remain confident in this president and his policies, which are supported by the majority of the American people.”

“Kellyanne, the president has tweeted that he shot Wilbur Ross. That seems pretty definitive …”

“The president was possibly being sarcastic, Wolf. Or it may have been a retweet.”

“[sighs] All right, let’s go to our panel. …  Rudy Giuliani, what’s your response to this surprising bit of news?”

“It’s simple, Wolf. It’s not illegal for the president to shoot someone. In fact, it’s not illegal for him to do anything, if you think about it. If you can’t be indicted, then you can’t be proven guilty, and if you can’t be proven guilty, then you’re not guilty. Simple as that. I’m not saying he did it, but if he did, that’s well within his rights as president.”

Sean Hannity, speaking on his Fox News show later Tuesday night, also defended the president: “I commend the president for taking this bold stand against incompetence. He’s merely doing what he promised he’d do — draining the swamp! When the president speaks, cabinet members should be listening, not sleeping. Do you think President Obama would have had the courage to shoot a cabinet member? Or Crazy Bernie? Don’t make me laugh.”

On Wednesday morning, Attorney General William Barr issued a statement: “The president’s actions — if he took any actions — regarding the shooting of Commerce Secretary Ross were well within the jurisdiction of the president’s powers. We suspect some of the negative reports regarding this incident that have come out in the press are a result of illegal leaks from FBI spies. We also must bear in mind that the president has been very frustrated lately, which has caused him undue stress and may have contributed to this unfortunate but justifiable incident of a stray bullet striking Secretary Ross.”

House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement on Friday: “The House Judiciary, Oversight, Ways and Means, Budget, and Homeland Security Committees will begin hearings on the recent incident concerning President Trump and the late Wilbur Ross (RIP) on Thursday next week. While Mr. Trump’s actions have brought dishonor to the presidency — and are possibly murderous — our hands are tied by the Justice Department’s ruling that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Further, we do not feel at this time these actions warrant impeachment, which would only rile up Mr. Trump’s supporters and divide the country. We think it’s better to leave it to the American people to decide. The 2020 election is only 18 months away.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Pelosi Has Got to Go

Dear Congressman Cohen,

The Democrats are practically salivating over their chances to retake the House and possibly the Senate in November, especially since the treasonous antics of this aberration of a president in Finland with his handler, Vlad the Impaler. However, there are still some major obstacles. I believe that among the reasons that so many people sat out the last election rather than vote for Hillary was their reluctance to return Bill Clinton to the White House. Similarly, I sense that the same voters who mistrusted the Clintons, do not want to see the speaker’s gavel returned to Nancy Pelosi.

You know me, Congressman. I have no special insights or inside sources to assist me in formulating an opinion. I’m like a Will Rogers for the electronic age. All I know is what I see, hear, and read from multi-platforms and trusted sources, so when I say the Democrats have problems, that’s just my perception of things, backed up with a generous knowledge of history and politics. I believe that this will be a generational election, much like 1960, when the torch was passed to JFK.
Former DNC Chairman Howard Dean said, “Nancy [Pelosi] is probably the greatest speaker since Tip O’Neill,” but, in the next breath, he said it was, “time for [his] generation to get the hell out of the way.” Pelosi has been in the party’s top spot for 15 years. That’s five years longer than Tip O’Neill. She has been a familiar face since she was elected to Congress in 1987, representing most of San Francisco. That was the same year Michael Jackson released “Bad” and the No. 1 movie was Dirty Dancing. As effective a leader as I believe Pelosi has been, I fear she has stayed too long at the ball.

We both know that a great deal of politics is perception. For instance, the Republicans are perceived as the Neo-Know Nothing Party, thoroughly corrupted and devoid of any social conscience, while the Democrats are perceived as either whimpering simps or simpering wimps who have allowed the word “liberal” to become a filthy epithet and have no true compass for the future of the nation. We also know that the Democrats could fuck up a mayonnaise sandwich and are entirely capable of doing it again.

People are clamoring for fresh voices and new leadership, but I only hear crickets from the Dems. The ages of the House Democratic leadership are respectively: Pelosi,78; Party Whip Steny Hoyer, 79; and Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn, 78. I’m not sure if these are politicians or the cast of Cocoon.

During a brief discussion, you told me that Nancy Pelosi accomplished more in a day than others did in a month and that she had the energy of others “half her age.” Therein lies the problem. Representatives half her age should already be rising into positions of influence in the party. At least 20 current Democratic candidates have said they will not vote for Pelosi as speaker, causing the party leadership elections to be postponed until Thanksgiving. Matt Fuller of the Huffington Post wrote, “Pelosi was able to save face, delaying the elections herself instead of actually letting the group force her into moving the date.”

It’s not all about age. We know Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker in history, a champion of women’s rights, and perhaps the greatest fund-raiser in party history. She also blocked George Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security and helped shepherd Obamacare through Congress when others had given up. Conversely, after the Bush regime misled the American people about “weapons of mass destruction” and took the country into an unnecessary war, Pelosi said impeachment was “off the table.” Concerning Trump, Pelosi said that impeachment would be “a gift to the Republicans.” She concluded, “this is not the path [the Party] should go on.” 
Don’t talk about impeachment? I want that lying, ill-tempered, conniving, money-laundering, puffed-up Putin punk not just impeached but arrested and jailed. Our democracy is burning. If there were ever a time to discuss impeachment, it’s now. I don’t care if it motivates the Trump cultists, the Democrats’ job is to turn out more voters than they do. The Republicans are actively involved in their favorite activity; suppressing the vote. 

The right-wing perception of Nancy Pelosi is a blood-sucking San Fransisco liberal who wants to raise your taxes and give it all to MS-13 gang members and abortion clinics. The GOP spent $65 million on anti-Pelosi ads in 2010 and are gearing up to spend even more this time around. The Trumpsters need an enemy, and now that Hillary’s gone, Nancy Pelosi is the best they have. Republican ad men believe “her face on the screen stokes fear and anger.”

Since Nancy Pelosi took the gavel in 2007, Democrats have lost 39 House seats, yet she still claims impeachment is a “distraction.” Former CIA Chief John Brennan tweeted, “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous.” The Need to Impeach campaign of billionaire Tom Steyer has accumulated over 5.4 million signatures, 60 percent of which are “registered voters who don’t vote.” Steyer said, “We believe fighting against a reckless and lawless president is not something that will turn off voters. I have immense respect for Nancy Pelosi. … I love her, but I disagree with her on this.”

One representative has said, “The time has come to make clear to the American people and to this president that his train of injuries to our Constitution must be brought to an end through impeachment.” That was you, Congressman Cohen, and I respect and admire you for your courageous stance.

It is imperative that the Democrats succeed in washing the poison from the body politic in November. There are excellent chances this may happen but not while Pelosi’s amped-up, hysterical backbiters blame her for everything from the wildfires in California to trapping a Thai soccer team in an underwater cave. We should honor Nancy Pelosi’s long and brilliant service as party leader, but as near-President Al Gore once famously said, “It’s time for them to go.”  

Respectfully, your loyal Tennessee District 9 constituent.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Prospects for good-sense immigration policy were reawakened by “Chuck and Nancy.”

CREDIT: Reuters

Reuters

Sixteen years ago, Senators Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch introduced the DREAM Act on the Senate Floor. Had it become law, the DREAM Act would have offered permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship for young people who graduate from our high schools, have clean criminal records, and want to live and prosper in the U.S.A. These non-citizen kids were (in most cases) brought here by parents fleeing either economic insecurity in Mexico or socio-political violence in Central America and other places in the Americas and the world.

Since the United States shares a 2,000-mile border with Mexico, most of the Dreamers (as kids eligible for protection under the DREAM Act are called) are from that country. When the DREAM Act came up for a Senate vote in late 2010, it was killed by 41 Senators; three Republicans voted for the bill, but two — Senator (now Attorney General) Jeff Sessions (AL) and Lindsey Graham (SC) — campaigned vigorously against the bill, and they prevailed.

Fast forward to 2012 and a tough political campaign between the sitting president, Barack Obama, and former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney. Obama wisely chose to fortify his base with Hispanics and others, and he signed an executive order called DACA, for “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.”

This temporary “fix” allowed young people who had been denied congressional protection through the DREAM Act to apply for “deferred action” concerning deportation proceeding by submitting to a background check and paying a processing fee.

So far, about one million people have taken advantage of DACA; they can attend college, they can work, they can serve in the U.S. armed forces. Additionally, they can buy automobiles, pay rent, contribute to the tax base of cities and towns, and apply their talents and energies in ways too numerous to mention here.

Five years later, we’ve inaugurated a president who championed an anti-immigration platform and promised a problem-solving “beautiful” wall that would separate the U.S. from our Mexican and Central American neighbors.

Apparently prompted by his base — represented in this case by nine attorney generals from conservative states and a looming September lawsuit — to end Obama’s executive order, President Trump announced (through Attorney General Sessions, who gave a disconcertingly giddy but remarkably revealing press briefing) that DACA would not accept new applications and would, essentially, expire six months from now. Trump then kicked the conversation back to Congress, instructing them to come up with a permanent fix (i.e., an ad hoc law) before DACA expires.

Enter Chuck and Nancy. President Trump, since assuming the presidency, has nourished the base with talk of walls, border security and protecting American jobs from rapacious foreigners. But by feeding Chinese food to Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leaders, at the White House last week, the president now seems to understand that lasting policies cannot be made exclusively through the medium of an angry partisan base representing a fraction of the electorate.

Will the DREAM Act become law in the near future? We hope so, but we also know that, for years, the Dreamers have been savaged by detractors as law breakers, jobs takers, and “bad hombres.”

We believe Republicans at the base will turn on their elected officials who support the DREAM Act and, with the Republican Party in control of the House, Senate, and executive branch (plus the majority of statehouses in the nation), it’s refreshing to watch the head of that party, Mr. Trump, offer support for a “deal” that would permanently regularize the immigration status of the Dreamers. Luckily, Trump may have cared more about making a deal than the risk of offending the “Fifth Avenue Phalange” — i.e., those members of his base who, putatively, would support him even if he should walk onto Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody.

Let’s hope no shots are fired, and let’s hope that we have a permanent Congressional solution to 16 years of uncertainty for good kids who want to live here, work here, and study in the America that has always been a nation of opportunity for immigrants.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board chair at Latino Memphis; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.