Tag: Trump

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Stop the Steal

Senator Turd Ferguson

In a democracy — or, if you prefer, a republic — the government’s actions are supposed to reflect the will of the majority. That’s why we vote: to discover who the majority of the citizenry wants to hold office and what policies they want to have put in place by those they have elected. That’s how it’s supposed to work. But the sad reality is that the United States has for years been ruled by a backward-thinking, repressive, xenophobic minority.

There are many reasons for this, starting with the fact that the nation’s most powerful legislative body — the U.S. Senate — is absurdly undemocratic. Republican senators haven’t represented a real majority of the country’s population since 1996, yet the GOP has managed to delay and obstruct the will of the majority for 25 years.

Currently, the 50 GOP senators represent 43.5 percent of the country’s population, mostly due to the absurdity of states such as Wyoming, which has 578,000 citizens (about half the number of people living in Shelby County) having the same representation in the U.S. Senate as California’s 40 million citizens. California has 80 times the number of people as Wyoming and both states have equal representation in the Senate. It’s ludicrous.

More than 56 percent of the country’s population is represented by 50 Democratic senators, but they can’t pass gun-control measures, election reform, healthcare reform, tax reform, or any number of mildly progressive laws, because Senator Turd Ferguson of South Dakota doesn’t like it.

There’s little likelihood real change will take place in the structure of the Senate, and the GOP knows the only chance of retaining power is to continue to thwart the will of the majority by making it harder for people to vote, especially people of color and people with limited resources, who tend to vote for Democrats.

All across the country in states controlled by the GOP, restrictive voting laws are being proposed and enacted, including reducing the number of polling places and early voting days, restricting voting by mail, purging voter rolls, limiting voter-registration periods, restricting absentee ballots, eliminating Sunday voting, and even banning anyone from providing water to people in long voting lines. It’s Jim Crow all over again. And it’s out in the open.

From last November through January 6th, the former president defamed the American electoral process. But those who went along with Trump’s Big Lie weren’t trying to “stop the steal,” they were trying to stop democracy. And they still are.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed (on a party line vote, naturally) a bill known as H.R. 1 — the For the People Act. It would eliminate the voter suppression tactics that Georgia just enacted, for example, and would codify the voting process to make it equal for all U.S. citizens, no matter what state they live in. The bill requires states to maintain a voter database with universal automatic registration. In other words, if you’re a citizen and can prove it, you’re registered to vote. No more jumping through hoops at the local level. H.R. 1 mandates at least a 15-day early voting period, and institutes independent commissions to set Congressional district boundaries to eliminate gerrymandering.

It’s a big deal, but it has no chance whatsoever to pass the Senate, since it would need at least 10 GOP votes. Which brings Senate Democrats to a crossroads decision: Should they attempt to eliminate the filibuster so that the bill could pass with 50 votes, plus one from the vice-president, or just let the GOP do what it’s done for the last 25 years: undermine the will of the majority?

Eliminating the filibuster means if the GOP gets control of the Senate back at some future date, they could ram through all kinds of racist and corporatist policies (kind of like they’ve done for the last four years). But this is no time to be timid. Democracy is in the balance. It’s time to take back the reins of power and respect the will of the people. It’s time to stop the steal.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Case for Amending the 20th Amendment

Regardless of personal politics, all of us who have endured this strangest of “lame-duck” presidential transitions can agree that this 2020 changing-of-the-guard has been among the most difficult our country has endured, perhaps ever.

The beaten Republican incumbent president has now cried “fraud!” several thousand times, continuing to demand a whole new election, long after the Supreme Court has dismissed all of his legal complaints. More importantly, Donald Trump’s refusal to provide most of the usual courtesies provided to presidents-elect has assured that this Trump-Biden transition continues to flow like glue.

We’re not finished yet, by any means. Even top White House aides are clueless as regards what exactly Trump might do between now and January 20th. We are just three weeks from Inauguration Day, in the midst of the worst pandemic in our country’s history, alongside a Russian security breach whose dimensions are still largely unknown, and we have no idea whatsoever what our 45th president will do next. This isn’t democracy; this is purgatory.

It’s too late to change things this time around, but the current nightmare must never be repeated. It’s time to shorten the period between Election Day and Inauguration Day. To do so, our elected representatives should take a close look at the 20th Amendment, and to shrink what is now a roughly 12-week transition In no other major democracy, around the world, does the outgoing leader take so long to pass the baton to his successor.

We can either amend the existing 20th Amendment, or simply create a new one, one that would be the 28th Amendment in our nation’s Constitution. I have no idea which approach is best, but that’s why God invented lawyers.

The 20th Amendment is not ancient; it was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1933. It shortened the length of time between outgoing and incoming administrations, moving up the original Inauguration Day set in The Constitution, from March 4th to January 20th, shortening the lame-duck period by roughly five weeks.

In many ways, this 1933 change (passed unanimously by all states) was simply good housekeeping. The original 1789 Constitution dated from an era when long-distance travel usually was measured in weeks. The Founding Fathers knew nothing of trains, let alone how to change planes at airport hubs.

But by 1923, when Senator George Norris of Nebraska first proposed this amendment, a lame-duck period of four months no longer made much sense, given 13 decades of travel improvements. As is customary with constitutional amendments, however, Norris’ proposal of what would become the 20th Amendment took a decade to pass muster among two-thirds of the state legislatures for it to become law. Not much has changed, has it?

Ironically, the 20th Amendment became official in January of 1933, in the middle of Herbert Hoover’s four-month lame-duck term in the White House. The Stanford-educated engineer had been roundly beaten in the November 1932 presidential election by New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a bitter contest resembling our current one. Hoover had the misfortune of being president when Wall Street crashed in 1929, and despite his skills, the economy fell into deep depression over the final three years of his single term in office.

Unfortunately, Herbert Hoover was not a good loser. He never thought the Crash was his fault, and believed that FDR’s economic plans were hogwash. So for four long months, Hoover did next to nothing to prepare for a smooth presidential transition, as The Great Depression got more and more depressed.

Governor Roosevelt finally took office as president on March 4, 1933, and the rest is history. Ironically, by that date, the 20th Amendment had actually been ratified, and so when FDR was re-elected after a 1936 landslide, he took the oath of office, yes, on January 20th, 1937.

Given the snail’s pace at which potential constitutional amendments get ratified, someone needs to start the ball rolling, perhaps by offering up a first draft for a 28th Amendment that will override the existing 20th one. We can’t just sit on our hands, hoping that nothing like this 2020 transition nightmare won’t ever happen again. Prayer can only do so much.

Here, then, is one layman’s first draft of a revised 20th Amendment. You’ll note I’ve worked around the big holidays, of course, presuming Saturdays and Sundays are off-limits, especially during NFL playoff season. As a nation, after all, we do have our priorities:

1) Inauguration Day should be held on the third Thursday of December; the earliest it can be held is on the 11th of that month; the latest this can be done is on the 18th.

2) Members of the outgoing Congress must meet and report to said Congress no later than the first Thursday of December, to certify the Electoral Vote itself. The earliest that date could be is on the 1st of December, and the latest it could be is the 8th of the same month.

3) The newly-elected Congress should gather at the Capitol on the first Thursday of the New Year, no earlier than January 3rd, i.e. it can be as early as January 3rd and as late as January 8th. A State of the Union address should be given by the incoming President as expeditiously as is feasible shortly after that date.

I need not tell anyone how strange the events of this particular post-election period have been. This year’s court fights and Donald Trump’s abandonment of his day job for nearly three months have been not just toxic, but borderline suicidal in places. Our transition process must be tightened up, and shortened by what is essentially a month.

As we watch this year’s bizarre transition take place in real time, it may occasionally seem quaint, entertaining, or just plain different. Future historians will consider it just plain insanity. Flying on automatic pilot, the way we are now, risks national suicide.

Kenneth Neill is the founding publisher of the Flyer. 

Categories
Cover Feature News

It’s On!

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

For Democrats, especially, the memories of four years ago are still very much alive — not just the nerve-crunching countdown of election night but the hopeful dawning of January 21st, just after Donald Trump‘s inauguration, when, on an unseasonably warm day, multi-gendered masses of Memphians gathered for the Women’s March Downtown — not a protest of the new regime so much as an affirmation that a reckoning would come, that the historical moment could be reversed.

It was the first act, enacted simultaneously in virtually every other American city, of what would come to be known as the Resistance, not just by those involved in it but by Trump, the intended target and unexpected winner of the presidency, who, clearly, could boast his own crowds, with a wholly different set of hopes and fears.

Jackson Baker

Roadside stand, 2020-style

The unprecedented rush of early voters to the polls this year, which began, locally, on Wednesday, October 14th, undoubtedly derives from both sources. Records will almost surely be broken by the end of early voting on Friday of next week, October 29th. A big vote is also likely for Election Day itself — Tuesday, November 3rd — and the real unknown quantity, undoubtedly huge and perhaps decisive, is expected to come in a flood of mail-in ballots, a volume made possible in Tennessee only through the tireless legal efforts of local activists.

As was the case under the wholly different circumstances of 2016, the Democratic candidate — in this case former Vice President Joe Biden — is favored by the polls. Nationwide, that is. Here in Tennessee, where the Republican Party still dominates the electorate, it’s considered to be in the bag for Republican Trump.

The U.S. Senate Race

Nowhere has the generational sea-change been more obvious than in races for the state’s major offices. In 2018, Republicans won decisive victories for governor and U.S. senator over name Democratic candidates after competitive Republican primaries in which the winners — Governor Bill Lee and Senator Marsha Blackburn — were actually decided.

The action was similar this year when GOP senatorial candidates Bill Hagerty and Manni Sethi vied in a bitterly fought Republican primary, with Hagerty, the hand-picked candidate of President Trump, emerging triumphant.

Hagerty, a former state industrial development commissioner and Ambassador to Japan, no doubt expected, like most other observers, that his Democratic challenger would be Nashville lawyer James Mackler, a former Iraq war pilot who had basically been running for two years. But Mackler would finish second in the year’s biggest upset, as unsung Memphis environmentalist Marquita Bradshaw pulled off a win in the Democratic primary. 

Jackson Baker

Republican Senate candidate Bill Hagerty with supporters in Millington

Starting the general election with approximately $22,000 in funding, compared to Hagerty’s $12 million, the plucky Bradshaw has advanced her receipts to the level of just under $1 million — still far short of Hagerty’s current $14 million.

The two Senate candidates had been scheduled for a statewide debate on the Nexstar television network, but mostly unexplained circumstances caused a cancellation. 

Other Senate candidates on the ballot as independents are: Aaron James, Yomi “Fapas” Faparusi Sr., Jeffrey Alan Grunau, Ronnie Henley, G. Dean Hill, Steven J. Hooper, Elizabeth McLeod, Kacey Morgan, and Eric William Stansberry.

Jackson Baker

Republican U.S. Representative David Kustoff at the podium

U.S. House Races

Incumbent Congressmen David Kustoff and Steve Cohen are also up for re-election. Eighth District Representative Kustoff, a Republican, is opposed by Democratic nominee Erika Stotts Pearson and by independents Jon Dillard and James Hart. Ninth District incumbent Cohen, a Democrat, is opposed by Republican nominee Charlotte Bergmann and by independents Dennis Clark and Bobby  Lyons. Both incumbents are expected to win handily.

Jackson Baker

at TV taping

Legislative Races

In Shelby County itself, there are several competitive legislative races, and, as is the case with the presidency, most of them involve comeback hopes on the part of Democrats, who over the last several decades have seen their ancestral control, in every place but the inner city, yield to a new breed of buttoned-down Republicans. The competitive races are those along the line where city and suburb meet in a zone of shifting populations.

Jackson Baker

Dems on display

State House District 96, which is focused on Cordova, a sprawling mix of blue- and white-collar ethnicities, reverted to the Democrats four years ago. Democratic State Representative Dwayne Thompson faces a challenge there from Republican regular Patricia Possel, well-known for her efforts in the de-annexation movement.

In House District 83, a somewhat more glam neighboring district to the immediate south, incorporating hunks of East Memphis and Germantown, a largely managerial class of voters will decide between incumbent GOP Representative Mark White, who heads the House education committee, and Jerri Green, a promising new Democratic face who hopes to punish White for his pro-voucher efforts in an area whose public schools are a major source of local pride.

Jackson Baker

House candidate Gabby Salinas

District 87, the third part of this triadic battle zone, lies to the north, stretching from parts of East Memphis through Bartlett to the Gray’s Creek/Eads area. The District 87 seat is open. Incumbent Republican state Representative Jim Coley, a teacher, is retiring. The contestants are the GOP’s John Gillespie, a Republican activist and grant coordinator at Trezevant Episcopal Home, and Gabby Salinas, a scientific researcher and former cancer patient at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital whose backstory of immigration from Bolivia and survival has gained her abundant publicity and inspirational cachet over the years. Salinas came very close to upsetting GOP mainstay Brian Kelsey in a state Senate race two years ago, and her message of Medicaid expansion and her ample finances give her good chances again.

Jackson Baker

State Rep. John DeBerry speaks to GOP group

State District 90 is where a fourth legislative race has attracted serious interest this year, and the main issue is party loyalty itself. For the last 26 years, minister/businessman John DeBerry has represented the highly diverse district, which connects Frayser and South Memphis with sections of Midtown and Chickasaw Gardens.

An African American (and uncle of the aforesaid Senate candidate Bradshaw), DeBerry has consistently opposed abortion and supported school vouchers, and his stand on those two issues was, along with his affiliation with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), enough to provoke the state Democratic executive committee to remove him from the Democratic ballot this year.

On the strength of his name recognition and with somewhat more than tacit encouragement from the local Republican establishment, DeBerry is campaigning for re-election as an independent. He is opposed by Democratic nominee Torrey Harris, a member of the LGBTQ community who works in human resources and has the declared support of numerous progressive sources to go with the party label.

The other legislative races are either unopposed or pro forma cases. Incumbent Democrat Barbara Cooper is opposed by Republican Rob White in District 86, and Republican incumbent Kevin Vaughan has a Democratic opponent in Lynette Williams. Democrat Julie Byrd Ashworth challenges GOP incumbent Paul Rose in District 32.

Municipal Races

Various local municipalities have elections on November 3rd, as well:

In Bartlett, incumbent Alderwoman Paula Sedgwick in Position 6 is opposed by Kevin Quinn. Brad Ratliff, and Portia Tate are on the ballot for School Board, Position 1.

In Germantown, here are several Alderman races: Sherrie Hicks vs. Terri Johnson for Position 3; John Paul Miles, Roderick Motley, and Brian Ueleke for Position 4; and Jon McCreery and Brandon Musso for Position 5. There is one Germantown School Board race: Brian Curry and Scott Williams for Position 3.

In Lakeland, Jim Atkinson, Scott Carmichael, and Wesley Alan Wright are vying for the two open city commissioner positions.

In Millington, the position of Alderman for Position 7 is sought by Mike Caruthers and Tom Stephens; school board races are between Marlon Evans and Greg Ritter for Position 1, and Mark Coulter and Deanna Speight for Position 3.

In Collierville, Harold Curtis Booker, Thomas J. Swan, and John Worley are competing for Alderman Position 1. Position 3 is sought by William Boone, William Connor Lambert, Missy Marshall, Rick Rout, Scott Rozanski, and Robert Smith. Position 5 is contested by Gregory Frazier and John E. Stamps. For Collierville School Board, Position 3, the contestants are Madan Birla, Paul Childers, Rachelle Maier, and Kristina Kelly White.

REMINDER: The deadline to request a ballot by mail is Tuesday, October 27th, and the completed ballot must be received by Tuesday, November 3rd, by close of polls. However, voters who are at least 60 years old, people with underlying health conditions including conditions arguing for a susceptibility to COVID-19, and those caring for others susceptible to the illness can apply for an absentee ballot. 

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: COVID’s Web and Sexy Treats

COVID’s Web

Citizens of the MEMernet have been sharing photos of the hilarious Halloween decorations at this Central Gardens home.

The scene is an IRL political cartoon. In it, Donald Trump is spider-webbed to a tree surrounded by coronavirus particles. Imaginary polling data shows the homeowner is a front-runner to win Halloween.

Dog whistle?

Memphis Reddit users talked through the seemingly odd price of a propane tank at a West Memphis Tru Value hardware store last week.

The store had the tanks listed at $14.88. Some believed the price referenced the 14/88 white supremacy symbol. The “Fourteen Words” slogan seeks to secure a future for “our people” and “white children.” The “88” is a veiled reference to “H,” the eighth letter of the alphabet, which together is “Heil Hitler.”

Memphis Reddit users thought the price was too arbitrary to be anything other than a dog whistle and that tank prices are usually higher than that.

Sexy treats

Over on the Where Black Memphis Eats Facebook group, someone requested this dessert but with chocolate-covered strawberries.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Justice Ginsburg Succumbs to Pancreatic Cancer

CREDIT: Official Photo

Official Photo

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

As the weekend began, amid what was already a smoldering political landscape, the nation got the sad and long-dreaded news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aged 87, had died, a victim of recurrent pancreatic cancer.

Justice Ginsburg, who had been the leading liberal light on the Court, leaves behind a tribunal dominated by conservative jurists, and speculation inevitably ensued as to what comes next.

Meanwhile, the immediate reaction, transcending partisan divisions, was simply one of sorrow. Among the early reactions:

“I’m very sad to learn of the passing of Justice Ginsburg. She was a marvelous lady who valued justice and nurtured justice and loved life to the fullest. She made a major difference in the lives of all Americans, but particularly in the lives of the young women who just want a chance to compete on a level playing field and pursue their dreams. Hers was a life well-lived. Thank you, RBG.” — 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen

“Justice Ginsburg brought decency, intelligence, and principle to the Supreme Court. Her life inspired many Americans, especially young women. Her service to our country deserves great respect.” — Senator Lamar. Alexander

“We are heartbroken to hear of the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering jurist and an empowering figure for the most vulnerable. She was a kind and gentle soul who never shied away from a fight for what’s right. The country was fortunate to have Ruth Bader Ginsburg for as long as we did. Her contributions made the United States a more just and equitable place.

“Today we lost the best of America. But it’s not just the nation that is forever changed by her service and her commitment to uphold our Constitution and the progress it demands. Every day we see women stepping up to stand on her shoulders and continue her fight. We honor her legacy, we are grateful for her work, and we are fortunate to watch the impact her life has had, and will have, on future generations. L’Shana Tovah, Justice Ginsberg, and may God rest your soul.” — Mary Mancini, Chair, Tennessee Democratic Party

“Justice Ginsburg was a smart, talented trailblazer who paved the way for women in the judiciary. She worked hard to achieve prominence on her own merit, and I thank her for her service to our country. My condolences go out to her family and friends in the wake of this loss.” — Senator Marsha Blackburn

“Justice Ginsburg was a pioneer for gender equality and an American hero. There’s so much at stake with the selection of her replacement — the fate of the Affordable Care Act and abortion rights are just two issues among many. We’ve got to vote like our lives depend on it because it’s true.” — Ashley Coffield, Tennessee Planned Parenthood

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Justice Ginsburg’s family and friends during this difficult time.” — 8th District Congressman David Kustoff

Beyond the condolences, there were immediate indications of the political undercurrent to Justice Ginsberg’s passing. The obvious question, crucial to both Democrats and Republicans: Would President Trump attempt to appoint a successor either before the November 3rd election or in the interregnum between then and January, when either he for Joe Biden would begin the next presidential term along with a new Congress?

More, as the story develops. 

Categories
News News Blog

President Trump Bans Social Media Apps TikTok and WeChat

CREDIT: Kon Karampelas

Kon Karampelas

Late Thursday evening, President Donald Trump issued two executive orders banning social media apps TikTok and WeChat from operating in the United States in 45 days.

President Trump Bans Social Media Apps TikTok and WeChat

Under the ban, transactions between American companies and citizens and the Chinese tech giant Tencent would be prohibited if they are not sold to American companies under the allotted time.

The executive orders do not state what ownership percentage or global markets would have to be given to American companies to pause the ban. The Trump administration has also stated that any deal would have to include a “substantial amount of money” coming to the U.S. Treasury.

The Trump administration had been critical of the apps, stating that their data collection process could put Americans at risk despite numerous experts citing their data collection practices were on par with the industry standard.

Nonetheless, in his executive orders, President Trump stated that the apps could “allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

President Trump had initially set a deadline of Sept. 15 for when ByteDance, owner of TikTok, would need to sell the social media app to an American-owned company. Microsoft has been in talks of acquiring TikTok’s business in certain markets, specifically the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but has shown little interest in their other markets.

The move leaves a lot in the air as Tencent is also the owner of some of the largest U.S.-based game developers in the world. The company retains full ownership of Riot Games, developers of popular games League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, and Valorant; 40 percent ownership of Epic Games, developers of the popular shooter Fortnite; and 5 percent ownership of Activision Blizzard, the parent company of the developers of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Destiny 2.

Though White House officials confirmed that the initial wave of bans will not affect video game companies owned by Tencent, potential Chinese retaliation and subsequent executive orders could put them at risk.

President Trump Bans Social Media Apps TikTok and WeChat (2)

TikTok released a statement following the announcement where it expressed confusion and shock at the decision.

“For nearly a year, we have sought to engage with the US government in good faith to provide a constructive solution to the concerns that have been expressed. What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Pot is Bubbling

CREDIT: CNN.com

This country, like most around the world, has its haves and its have-nots. Only a blind fool would argue that those with money, influence, and the right skin color don’t have it easier than those with none of the above. There’s no official caste system in the United States, but there are two Americas — two judicial systems, two kinds of law enforcement, two healthcare systems, two tax systems, two educational systems, two voting systems, two media ecosystems — two kinds of democracy.

CNN.com

Our Constitution proclaims lofty ideals, meant to apply to all of the American people. But too often those ideals are circumvented by money and influence. Too often, poverty is a permanent position. Poor and under-educated people are useful to those in power, and can be more easily controlled — or provoked. They can be pushed around, kept in place by sub-standard pay and work conditions and lack of healthcare, kept in place by restricted voting rights, fewer voting locations, and cartoonish gerrymandering. Voting by mail? Don’t be silly. That’s reserved for important people.

Those without influence or power have few options for expressing their frustrations. Senators don’t take their calls. Congressmen are at lunch with lobbyists. The people don’t have lobbyists. Most in power pay little attention to the people, until things boil over.

The pot is beginning to bubble.

Governors and cabinet ministers and federal and state agency heads are not out of work, nor are they particularly or personally impacted by a disease that’s ravaging communities, overloading our hospitals, shutting down small and large businesses of every stripe, putting millions out of work, and disrupting our children’s education.

Too often, our leaders sound like Governor Mike Parson of Missouri, who said this week: “These kids have got to get back to school. And if they do get COVID-19, which they will — and they will when they go to school — they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.”

Because that’s how this virus works. Nobody else will get the disease. Just the children — your children — and they’ll be fine. Nothing to see here. Get your brats in school. And get the teachers and support staff in there, too. Shut up. Move along.

This attitude comes from the top, from a president who sees the opening of schools as the critical pivot point to opening the economy, the only chance he sees for his re-election. Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary who’d like to privatize the education system, echoes the president’s sentiments. Open the schools. Or else. I am the boss of you.

I’ve got news for them: Schools are not going to open next month in places where this disease is running rampant. Those that do open in those areas will have very few kids and very few teachers. They will be battling quarantines, shutdowns, and disruptions every day. People will not risk their children’s health, no matter who tells them to do it. Mothers and fathers can take to the streets, too, believe it or not. I’ve seen it.

The pot is bubbling.

Two systems. In one, convicted felons like Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort are escorted from prison in nice suits and allowed to serve their sentences at home because the threat of COVID is too great for men of their stature to be in prison. The thousands of others who remain behind bars, many convicted of lesser crimes? They’re on the wrong side of the divide. Sorry. No power, no money, no friends in high places? Suck it up. Wash your hands.

Two systems. In one, the nice uniformed police officer pulls you over in your nice car and politely issues you a ticket — or a warning. In the other, you’re tackled on the street by unidentified men in camouflage carrying automatic weapons and thrown into an unmarked van. No arrest warrant, no reason given. America!

I haven’t seen the country this angry, this divided, since the late 1960s. The pot is bubbling. And the man at the top is preparing to turn up the burner, planning to put more unmarked, unidentified troops from Customs and Border Patrol in more American cities, hoping as hard as he can that protesters will come out to help make great television for the rubes who fear the scary BLM peril and the Marxists and the Antifa, and who love seeing them get beaten and tear-gassed on Fox News. Law and order!

We’re living in historic and momentous times. The choice is coming for all of us. Stand and be counted or watch a wave of authoritarianism roll over us. Two systems. Two ways forward. One future. Our choice.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

“Bounty” Scandal Shows Again How Putin Owns Trump

Stop it!

There is no way to explain President Trump’s lack of action in response to U.S. intelligence showing Russia paid bounties for the murder of American soldiers. Even worse, there is no explanation for why congressional Republicans aren’t raising hell over Trump’s silence.

Juan Williams

Some military veterans are speaking up: “Putin pays bounties to Taliban enemies to kill American soldiers and not a word from Donald Trump,” says the narrator in an ad from the group “VoteVets.” In a different ad from the same group, the narrator says: “Benedict Arnold can step aside, because Benedict Donald is America’s No. 1 traitor.”

I get uneasy when political players start throwing around loaded words like “traitor.” But what’s the choice now? Trump’s only defense is to say he was not told about the intelligence and did not read his briefing book.

“Either way, it is an unjustifiable dereliction of duty,” tweeted Joe Biden, the Democrats’ nominee for president.

Trump is also hiding behind the fact that the intelligence is not totally confirmed. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed the idea that Trump did not react to the report because the intelligence agencies did not have a “100 percent consensus.” She called it a “con.”

“We would practically be investigating nothing if you had to start off at 100 percent. … Just because they didn’t have 100 percent consensus, should this not be briefed to the president of the United States?” Pelosi said.

Keep in mind the seriousness of the Russian bounty report. The Washington Post reported that in April 2019 there was an attack in Afghanistan killing three Marines and “those who planned it may have been paid a bounty by a Russian military intelligence unit to kill Americans.”

So it is hard to say which is worse: Either Trump did not read his written briefing report or his aides thought it best not to tell him. Whatever the case, it is shockingly clear that the President of the United States did nothing.

So, where is the shouting from all those flag-waving congressional Republicans? Their current silence reminds me of their quiet when the Trump administration did nothing to punish Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Trump even enlisted fellow Republicans in demonizing the FBI for looking into the plot.

Trump called the probe into Russian election interference a “hoax.” Now he is calling news of the Russian bounty intelligence a “hoax.” He is keeping Republicans in line by linking the election-tampering probe to the questions about the bounty scandal. He said this latest outrage is “possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax … wanting to make Republicans look bad!!”

But it is an outrage to play politics with a matter of life and death for American soldiers.  And it is particularly galling when you consider how they attacked people who asked questions about the Iraq War — people like me. They smeared critics of Bush’s Iraq War as traitors. So, where are today’s Republicans calling out the Trump administration for its lack of response?

The only action by the Trump administration has been to start a probe to find out who leaked news of the intelligence reports to newspapers. That diversionary tactic is consistent with Trump’s failure to handle foreign affairs throughout his presidency.

The American people see it. In the current RealClearPolitics average of polls, 52 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of foreign policy. Trump’s foreign policy failures are too numerous to list in one column, but here are some of the lowlights:

Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has not only cost Americans jobs but has ceded our leadership role in the world to countries like China.

“Trump didn’t want to hear [early reports about the coronavirus in China] because he didn’t want to hear bad things about [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping. … He didn’t want to hear bad things about the Chinese economy that could affect the ‘fantastic’ trade deal he was working on,” former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton recently told ABC News.

Trump failed to act against North Korea for the murder of American student Otto Warmbier and never got a nuclear deal with Kim Jong-un.

He has exacerbated tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians by giving enormous concessions to the Netanyahu government.

And perhaps, most dangerously, Trump failed to halt Iran’s nuclear program after ripping up President Obama’s nuclear deal — which was working.

The Democratic National Committee has started running ads hitting Trump’s stumbles on foreign policy. “Trump said he’d get tough on China,” a narrator intones. “He didn’t get tough. He got played.”

And once again, Trump — and our troops and the American people — are getting played by Russia.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

American Idiot

Was it only a little more than three months ago when President Trump was loudly disparaging countries that hadn’t controlled the coronavirus — like China, Italy, Greece, and Germany? When the president of the mighty United States was smugly banning travel from China and the European Union?

Well, yes, actually, it was. I know it’s hard to keep up with such things when every day brings six new scandals, but on March 12th, in a nationally televised speech, the president unilaterally and abruptly announced that the United States would ban travelers from Europe, following an earlier ban on travel from China.

At the end of his 10-minute speech, Trump added this amazingly arrogant and stupid prediction: “The virus will not stand a chance against us.”

Actually, COVID-19 now stands a better chance against the United States than against any other country on the planet. Along with Brazil and Russia (two other countries with incompetent leaders), the United States is now a raging epicenter for the COVID pandemic. With 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has 25 percent of the world’s coronavirus cases — and 25 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths. The infection level in this country is rising at an unprecedented rate, as several Republican governors scramble to close down their states after arrogantly and stupidly opening them for business as infection rates were rising — following our “stable genius” president’s lead. 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee gets a special “I’m Extra Stupid” award for even now not allowing the state’s mayors to require masks in their cities. (And for pushing through an illegal and unenforceable abortion ban bill. But I digress.)

Science is so overrated, apparently. Karma, unfortunately, is not.

Thanks to this administration’s incompetent response to the global pandemic, my wife, a French citizen, can no longer go visit her family — nor can millions of other Americans who want to do business or take vacations or visit family in Europe. Now, we are a shithole country, banned from traveling to civilized societies.

Several other significant stories have broken recently, collapsing on top of each other like a tower of Jenga blocks, each a stunner that would have destroyed any presidency before this one.

The president’s personal lawyer, aka Attorney General Bill Barr, has been stepping all over the justice system — getting friends of the president out of stiff sentences, releasing them from jail, and firing the attorney general in the Southern District of New York (who happened to be handling several cases involving Trump and his allies). Barr’s behavior was so egregious it caused longtime Justice Department prosecutors to turn whistleblower. But, meh, now it’s just another small explosion in Trump’s media minefield. A mere diversion.

Then CNN broke a story from Trump officials who had witnessed the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders. Here’s a sample: “In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior U.S. officials — including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers, and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the president himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

“The calls caused former top Trump deputies — including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials — to conclude that the president was often ‘delusional,’ as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders.”
CNN.com

One final detail: Our president called German Chancellor Angela Merkel “stupid.” Merkel, it should be noted, has a doctorate for her thesis on quantum chemistry.

Okay, so Trump screwed up the coronavirus response and got us banned from Europe; his AG is deconstructing the Justice Department; he’s stupid, ill-informed, and abusive on phone calls with foreign leaders. A pretty devastating week, right?

Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that little thing where Trump was informed that Russia had set up a cash bounty hunt with the Taliban on U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan — and ignored it.

The president at first denied he’d been informed about it. The next day, The New York Times, citing two U.S. intelligence officials, reported that the information was in Trump’s daily briefing on February 27th. The White House spokesperson then responded that the administration was still considering its options.

The United States has become a banana republic, run by a narcissistic grifter, the kind of guy who blithely posts a video of a man shouting “white power” and then goes to play golf. We have a vice president who again this week praised the president’s response to the pandemic as “wonderful.” We have an administration run by incompetent toadies and lobbyists. And we have the entire leadership of a major American political party marching in lockstep with it all, as if blindfolded.

I’ve run out of faith that the American democratic institutions that have guided the country past the pitfalls of nefarious leaders and human inadequacy for 250 years are going to put the brakes on Donald Trump. Except for maybe the election process. Maybe. At this point, our only hope seems to be to survive this idiot until November and vote him out, along with his corrupt enablers. Only then can we begin the long and painful recovery from this unprecedented disaster of an administration.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Spiking the Ball Too Soon: The March Against Racism Isn’t Over

CREDIT: Dubesor | Dreamstime.com

I spiked the ball way too early. It was January 20, 2009, and I was sitting on makeshift bleachers inside the Children’s Museum of Memphis for a live viewing of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the United States. My daughter, Sofia, was there with her 4th-grade class from Grahamwood Elementary, seated in a larger section for other Shelby County children. She was four months shy of her 10th birthday, but Sofia knew she was witnessing a moment. I knew we were witnessing a moment.

I chuckled — much of the adult audience chuckled — when Chief Justice John Roberts stumbled in reciting the oath of office Mr. Obama was to repeat. Hey, the Chief Justice was witnessing a moment. At the conclusion of President Obama’s inspiring speech — so many delivered before that moment, and so many delivered since — I stood up and tightly hugged the person next to me, a complete stranger. An African-American woman smiling, like me, to hold back the tears. It was a moment.

Dubesor | Dreamstime.com

And I spiked the ball. My family actually blew out candles that night on a cake with “Obama” and blue stars scripted in frosting. I never said it out loud, but I convinced myself that America had finally arrived at a place where racism could be swept into the dustbin of human failures, our country’s original sin finally exorcised, the symbol being an eloquent, composed, funny, and compassionate 47-year-old man whose father was Kenyan. A black man was president of the United States. Turns out there was, in fact, an American dream. One for all of us.

Yet somehow we’re here, in June 2020, a month history will record as the first in which an American president sprayed chemicals to disperse a crowd of Americans, then built a fence around the White House. The atrocity of Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t painful for who he is: a hopelessly deficient thinker, a liar and narcissist, and a racist who doesn’t recognize the reasons for his racism. No, it’s the fact that a monster like Trump could be elected via the experiment in democracy we call the United States. Whatever we gained on January 20, 2009 — the energy within every hug shared that day — has been leg-swept by forces that, quite literally, threaten the democratic framework of our country.

Inspiration is there, though. And hope, that human trait President Obama identified as audacious. Thousands of Americans have taken to city streets all across the country — during a pandemic — to say we, as a people, have had enough, that cruelty toward any American is cruelty toward all of us. We’ve had enough. And don’t expect the protests to “die down,” like others we’ve seen after one unarmed black man was killed or another. George Floyd is this century’s Emmett Till. Just as Till’s 1955 lynching added booster fuel to the American civil rights movement, Floyd’s murder will change policing in America. I’m not sure if she coined the phrase herself, but I love an expression my sister (in Seattle) recently shared: “Respect existence, or expect resistance.”

Change is coming. Matter of fact, it’s already happened. Not one, but four white police officers are facing charges in Floyd’s death. “Black Lives Matter” can be read from outer space on a Washington D.C. street that leads to the White House. As for the current commander in chief, military officials past and present are speaking openly and publicly against Trump’s unhinged approach to what he calls law and order.

January 20, 2009 seems so very long ago. I don’t regret my joy that day. I only regret leaping to conclusions our country wasn’t ready to confirm. But we’re getting there. And I’m prepared to continue the march toward a promised land — however we might define it — even if I do so wearing a mask.

Frank Murtaugh is managing editor of Memphis magazine. He writes about sports for the Flyer.