🤡AMERICA’S CLOWN PRINCE DECLARES WAR ON: AMERICA! — As America Burns 🥵, He Throws Gasoline On Fire, Poses For Photo Op! — Malicious Incompetence, Unsuitability For Office On Full Display As Leaderless America Careens From Pandemic to Civil Rights Crisis! — “ Trump appeared to be trying to project strength at a moment when his presidency seems feckless and as the nation spins out of control. If it occurred abroad and not in the White House, Americans might perceive a ridiculous self-deluding act of a wanna-be strongman.”

Trump Clown
Donald J. Trump
Dangerous American Clown
Stephen Collinson
Stephen Collinson
White House Reporter
CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/politics/donald-trump-george-floyd-protest-military/index.html

Stephen Collinson reports for CNN:

(CNN)President Donald Trump‘s made-for-TV embrace of authoritarianism’s imagery and tools at a brittle national moment risks unleashing toxic political forces that threaten America’s democratic traditions.

Trump on Monday turned security forces on peaceful protesters in front of the White House, as tear gas and rubber bullets flew, before declaring himself the “law and order” President. Then, in one of the most bizarre moments in modern presidential history, he strode across the park to stand in front of an iconic church holding a Bible aloft in a striking photo op.

It was a moment of vanity and bravado — orchestrated for the cameras and transparently political — as Trump struggles to cope with protests sweeping the country after the killing of George Floyd and tries to cover up his botched leadership during the coronavirus pandemic. Overnight, the White House’s official Twitter account released a triumphant video of the moment set to music but omitting any signs of the mayhem unleashed on the protesters.

Trump appeared to be trying to project strength at a moment when his presidency seems feckless and as the nation spins out of control. If it occurred abroad and not in the White House, Americans might perceive a ridiculous self-deluding act of a wanna-be strongman.

Trump threatens military force if violence in states isn’t stopped

“I thought I was watching a scene from something in Turkey, and not in the United States,” retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who commanded National Guard troops in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

And after using St. John’s Church, the “church of the presidents,” which had experienced a basement fire during Sunday’s demonstrations, Trump drew immediate criticism from faith leaders, including Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

“The President just used the Bible, our sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus,” Budde said on “AC360.”

Trump’s showmanship was motivated in part by anger at media coverage saying he had sheltered in a bunker below the White House on Friday night amid protests in Washington, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Liptak reported. It shows how far Trump will go to protect his own thin skin and how his power plays are often motivated by assaults on his dignity.

But his behavior is also alarming, considering the vast power at his command, uses of demagogic tropes and capacity to buckle the traditions and structures of civilian, democratic government. So while Trump’s turn to the rhetoric of the despotic leaders he so admires had elements of farce, it opened a sinister new chapter in his presidency and a challenge to American norms.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Stephen’s report at the link.

America’s national nightmare can’t end until Trump and his GOP enablers are removed from office at the ballot box. Just because he’s an incompetent, cowardly, bully doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. He is!

This November, vote like your life and our nation’s future existence depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

06-02-20

WASHPOST EDITORIAL BOARD:  TRUMP IS “EXACTLY THE WRONG LEADER FOR OUR TIMES” — “The right message would combine an insistence on keeping protest peaceful with assurances that justice will be done in Mr. Floyd’s death and a recognition that righting deeper wrongs is an urgent priority. That message will not come from a White House that has used racial hatred as a wedge and repeatedly made clear its contempt for urban America.”🤮

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/as-cities-burn-trumps-bullhorn-drowns-out-the-voices-of-our-better-angels/2020/05/31/97a259e8-a367-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html

☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️

As cities burn, Trump’s bullhorn drowns out the voices of our better angels

AS BUILDINGS and businesses burn in many cities across America, state and local officials and community leaders are desperately and at times bravely saluting the justifiable moral outrage of peaceful protesters while seeking to ensure that looters and hooligans whose only agenda is mayhem do not irreparably sully the cause. Meanwhile, President Trump, whose words could matter most, plays his customary role as human flamethrower: exactly the wrong leader for the times.

No magic elixir could extinguish the rage overnight, nor ensure that the fury over George Floyd’s brutal killing in Minneapolis is channeled in a constructive direction. But this much is certain: Words matter, and a commitment to reform matters. Some leaders are trying to deliver both. They recognize the challenges of systemic injustice; the pattern of brutality suffered by African Americans at the hands of white officers; the racism manifested in so many ways, including unequal rates of imprisonment and, now, unequal suffering from the novel coronavirus, both medically and economically.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump, the divider in chief, fulminates as the nation burns. He does not counsel restraint; nor issue appeals for unity, nor acknowledge the roots and reasons for the fury of black Americans who see white men in uniform as threats to their lives. To his administration, there is no systemic challenge, only “a few bad apples” among police, as Robert C. O’Brien, national security adviser, said Sunday. Even as police train their weapons on journalists doing their jobs by covering the unrest, Mr. Trump attacks the media. As the president vents — warning that “the most ominous weapons” and “the most vicious dogs” would be unleashed on protesters; threatening to deploy the active-duty military; attacking Democrats; relishing the Secret Service’s readiness for “action”; suggesting he may summon his MAGA supporters to the streets — the country’s more emollient voices are muffled.

Live updates on Minneapolis

Wanton destruction, looting and firebombing are unacceptable and unjustified no matter what the provocation, as Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said on Saturday. Responsible leaders are trying to send that message. But against the president’s bullhorn, it becomes harder to hear leaders like Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, whose anger at destructive rioters in her city was tempered by a heartfelt appeal. “We are better than this as a city, we are better than this as a country,” she said. “Go home. Go home!” It becomes more difficult to focus on the message of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who tweeted, “Minnesota consistently ranks highly for our public schools, innovation and opportunity, and happiness – if you’re white. If you’re not, the opposite is true. Systemic racism must be addressed if we are to secure justice, peace, and order for all Minnesotans.”

So much depends right now on moral authority, yet so little of it can break through the chaos of events and the venomous soundtrack from Washington. The right message would combine an insistence on keeping protest peaceful with assurances that justice will be done in Mr. Floyd’s death and a recognition that righting deeper wrongs is an urgent priority. That message will not come from a White House that has used racial hatred as a wedge and repeatedly made clear its contempt for urban America. It is left to other leaders to try to break through the mayhem of the moment, and give voice to our better angels.

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Trump, already the worst President in U.S. history, has been a clear and present danger to the welfare, security, and continued existence of our nation since he took office. 

His malicious incompetence, corruption, ignorance, racism, meanness, and lack of humanity are now on full display. Trump and his band of grifters, White Nationalists, toadies, and incompetents are a big part of the problem, not the solution!

Indeed, we can’t even get a constructive start on solving the problems of institutional racism, inequality, and failure to take equal justice for all as a serious goal with Trump in office. For example, Trump and the GOP have it very clear that they have the intent and a variety of schemes to suppress African-American and Hispanic-American voting and voting power this November — so far, with no meaningful pushback from the Supremes.

Still, we “are where we are” today because those institutions with a responsibility and the authority to curb his abuses, hold him accountable for his racism and dishonesty, and enforce our Constitution, namely, the U.S. Senate, the Supreme Court, and the GOP have failed to do so. Beyond that, on many occasions they have actually encouraged and joined in his misdeeds.

This November, vote like your life depends on it.  Because it does!

PWS

05-31-20

SHOCKER: Trump’s Shockingly Disingenuous & Inappropriate Speech About El Paso Is Perceived By Many El Pasoans As . . . Shockingly Disingenuous & Inappropriate! — Fails To Mention Or Reach Out To Majority Latino/Hispanic Community Targeted By His Consistent Message Of Hate & Dehumanization!

https://apple.news/AvS_y1RcRTB66pEMhqUbLPg

SUZANNE GAMBOA
Suzanne Gamboa
Reporter, NBC News

Suzanne Gamboa reports for NBC News:

Some El Paso residents outraged by Trump’s speech that ‘failed to mention Latinos’

EL PASO, Texas — President Donald Trump condemned white supremacy from the White House Monday, but left Hispanics and Latinos out of his speech.

It’s a significant omission and a stark difference from the written document that has been linked to the 21-year-old gunman who allegedly opened fire on weekend shoppers Saturday at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The shooter’s alleged document mentions a Hispanic invasion, the increasing Hispanic population and a decision by its writer to target Hispanics after reading a right-wing conspiracy theory asserting Europe’s white population is being replaced with non-Europeans.

The death toll in the El Paso attack, which is being investigated as domestic terrorism, rose to 22 on Monday.

“We’ve got dead bodies. The majority are Hispanic. Some are foreign nationals from Mexico and we got a manifesto describing what he intends to do and why,” said state Rep. Cesar Blanco, a Democrat who represents El Paso.

“I think it’s telling; he failed to mention Latinos,” Blanco said of the president. “He failed to mention that our community is majority Latino, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

The Mexican government confirmed that eight of the victims identified so far were Mexican citizens, not unexpected considering the city of El Paso and surrounding communities of El Paso County, Texas are about 83 percent Latino.

Add to that the number of shoppers and workers from Mexico who legally cross the international border each day to shop, dine, work and visit family. The Walmart is part of a complex of retail outlets, with a Sam’s Club and the Cielo Vista mall next door. There is also a theater close by along with many restaurants and hotels.

Trump did say in the speech that he had sent his condolences to Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, because eight citizens from Mexico were among the dead. But he didn’t make specific mention of El Paso’s residents of Latino descent, who comprise the majority of the community.

Jeramey Maynard, 26, a local artist and restaurant manager, said Trump’s response has been largely political, exemplified by the president’s call to combine gun regulation reforms with immigration reform.

“He’s choosing his words without saying Hispanic or immigrant and making it about other things,” Maynard said. “He’s been having these racist comments. When it comes time to defend the community, of course we are not going to hear him say anything about the Hispanic community.”

Maynard added that he thought Trump “would paint it with the broadest brush he can. Why would he say something he thinks supports the Democratic Party?”

‘Target on our back’

Trump launched his 2016 election campaign with disparaging words, seen by many as racist, about people in the United States who have come from Mexico.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems,” Trump said to a largely white crowd at Trump Tower in New York. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people …”

Some defended the president saying he was referring only to immigrants who commit crimes and not speaking of Latinos in the United States as a whole.

But then Trump went on to question the ability of a U.S. district court judge to be impartial because he is of Mexican descent.

Trump’s political rallies have often been filled with chants of “Build the Wall” in reference to his pledge to build a wall across the entire border and make Mexico pay for it.

He responded to the influx of Central Americans seeking asylum by separating children from their parents and allowing border officials to hold them in chain-link pens.

In the past several days, many Latinos have been vocal about what they see as a through line between the president’s rhetoric and the shooting in El Paso.

Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes El Paso, said she had hoped Trump would have apologized for his rhetoric, which she said put a target on the city’s back.

“I would encourage him to do that,” she said.

The city has seen stark evidence of fear that exists among families because of the Trump hardline on immigration, according to several residents.

Marisa Limón Garza, deputy director of the Hope Border Institute, said the organization fielded calls from families who were directly affected by the shootings and families who were looking for loved ones.

They were afraid to go to the hospital or to interact with police and border enforcement, who responded to the shooting.

“If you are undocumented or of a mixed status household, the last place you want to go is where there is a tremendous amount of police presence,” Limón Garza said. Immigrants often are part of families that may include a mix of citizens, legal residents and people without legal status.

Her organization has been working with families to help them get the help they need, but she said it is a daily occurrence for people without legal permission to be in the country to be afraid to go to the hospital.

“This is just another layer of psychological trauma that this community has to face when we have already been ground zero for so many other challenges,” she said.

‘The illness is racism and xenophobia’

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus pushed Trump to commit to no longer using “invasion“ to describe Hispanic communities, immigrants or refugees to the country.

The caucus also asked the Trump administration to “acknowledge the threat of white supremacy and domestic terrorism” and to “combat this state of emergency head-on” with federal resources.

Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-Texas, twin brother of presidential candidate Julián Castro, said in a statement that the caucus is grateful Trump addressed the El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, tragedies.

But he said, “this does not make up for the years of attacks by President Trump on Hispanic Americans and our immigrant communities.”

“During the president’s address, he blamed the Internet, news media , mental health and video games, among others … Unfortunately, he did not take responsibility for the xenophobic rhetoric that he has frequently used to demonize and dehumanize Hispanic Americans and immigrants over the past four years.”

But Limón Garza said the tragedy has not been confined to immigrants.

“Here in El Paso we are a community that is over 80 percent Latino and that means people that are immigrant themselves and then people who have been here for generations,” she said. “It’s clear it was not just a random attack. It’s clear that this cannot be called someone with a mental illness. This illness is racism and xenophobia.”

Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Trump delivered a dishonest, divisive, and totally insincere condemnation of White Supremacy designed and delivered primarily to reassure his White Supremacist supporters that he’s really still on their side.

His ridiculously inappropriate upcoming visit to El Paso is a totally dishonest and divisive self-promotion stunt which all residents should either ignore or peacefully protest.

There is no human good, empathy, or redeeming quality in Donald Trump. Decent folks have to stop looking for that which doesn’t (and never did) exist and band together and use what remains of our Constitutional system to remove him from office before he destroys our country and everyone in it. It won’t be easy, but the lives of generations to come and the world’s future are at stake.

PWS

08-06-19

MEXICO A “SAFE THIRD COUNTRY?” — No Way! — “‘It’s a Crisis of Civilization in Mexico.’ 250,000 Dead. 37,400 Missing.“

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-a-crisis-of-civilization-in-mexico-250-000-dead-37-400-missing-1542213374?emailToken=b782c4822fa5027d9168b45cd695195eFqzrxRlC5OCkGVY8Z0EA4pb8VXl6RHkHREQ1AmaH8yMyeAlVb6MpXqPHHsAocieCxuQWuPDERMwhcxLvXsFRFQsRI5WkHZo3DKDR+cMb5uAd8bNn8ryiZ5q4Nt0344LX&reflink=article_email_share

José de Córdoba and Juan Montes report for the WSJ:

That day, the mothers scoured the site outside El Fuerte, a town in Sinaloa state, on Mexico’s northern Pacific Coast, looking for one of two men presumably kidnapped by cartel gunmen in recent weeks. One body had already been found in a field. The women believed the other may be nearby. In the end, they came up empty.

“This is my life,” said Mirna Medina, a forceful woman who holds the group together. “Digging up holes.”

Her son, who sold CDs by a gas station, was kidnapped in 2014. Three years later to the day, she and the other mothers of the search group dug up his remains. “I felt his presence,” she said, remembering the day and breaking out in tears. “I wanted to find him alive, but at least I found him.”

Some 37,000 people in Mexico are categorized as “missing” by the government. The vast majority are believed to be dead, victims of the country’s spiraling violence that has claimed more than 250,000 lives since 2006. The country’s murder rate has more than doubled to 26 per 100,000 residents, five times the U.S. figure.

Because the missing aren’t counted as part of the country’s official murder tally, it is likely Mexico’s rate itself is higher.

The killing and the number of missing grow each year. Last year, 5,500 people disappeared, up from 3,400 in 2015. Mexico’s murders are up another 18% through September this year.

Victims’ families, mostly mothers, organize search parties, climbing down ravines or scouring trash dumps. Their technique is crude. Sometimes they hire laborers to hammer steel rods into the soil and haul them up to see if they smell like decomposition. Other times, they simply look for an exposed body part or shallow grave.

The sheer numbers of the disappeared now rival more famous cases of missing people in Latin American history.

The Disappeared, or Desaparecidos, became a chilling part of Latin America’s vocabulary during the Cold War, when security forces kidnapped, killed and disposed of the bodies of tens of thousands of leftist guerrillas as well as civilian sympathizers. The most infamous case is Argentina’s “Dirty War,” where at least 10,000 people vanished from 1976 to 1983. In Buenos Aires, mothers of the missing organized weekly vigils in front of Argentina’s presidential palace, gaining world-wide prominence.

Mexico fought its own far-smaller war against Marxist guerrillas during the 1970s. According to the government human-rights commission, 532 people went missing, and at least 275 people were summarily executed by security forces.

This time around, the horror in Mexico is bigger and its causes more complex. Many of the disappeared in recent years are believed to be the victims of violence unleashed by criminal gangs fighting to control drug routes and other lucrative businesses such as extortion, kidnapping and the theft of gasoline from pipelines, often with the complicity of police forces, government officials say.

“It’s a crisis of civilization in Mexico,” said Javier Sicilia, a poet and victims’ advocate whose son was murdered in 2011. “It’s diabolical—an unprecedented perversity to disappear human beings and erase any trace of them from the world.”

The trauma of Mexico’s missing is an open wound in the nation’s psyche. Families who can’t grieve for their loved ones spend the day alternating between doubt and despair, praying for, and dreading, the blessing of certainty.

“We don’t sleep nights, we have nightmares wondering what happened, where can he be,” said Maria Lugo, 62, whose son disappeared in 2015.

. . . .

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Those with WSJ access can get the rest of the gruesome story at the link, along with pictures and graphs illustrating the extent of the problem.

Obviously, by no stretch of the imagination is Mexico a “Safe Third Country” for purposes of U.S. asylum law. The brazen attempt by the Trump Administration and GOP Senators led by Chuck Grassley and Mike Lee to force such an agreement down the throat of Mexico is as disingenuous as it is immoral.

It also is appalling the number of Trump Administration senior immigration officials who parrot the bogus claim that “refugees from Central America are required to apply for asylum in Mexico.” Neither international law nor U.S. law imposes such a requirement, for good reasons. Actually, the single “Safe Third Country Agreement” that we have negotiated with Canada in compliance with our immigration laws is quite circumscribed and very limited in scope. And, there are ongoing efforts in Canada to force Canada to withdraw from this agreement because of the Trump Administration’s mistreatment of asylum applicants.

Nevertheless, as I have previously pointed out, given conditions in the Northern Triangle, while Mexico isn’t a “Safe Third Country” for purposes of our law, it might well be a “safer third country,” in practical terms, for many Central American refugees and their families. It’s bigger than the Northern Triangle countries, somewhat better governed than the “failed states” of the Northern Triangle, easier and less dangerous to reach, has more economic opportunities and resettlement options, and is generally (although, sadly, not always) not as overtly hostile to refugees as is the U.S. under Trump.

To encourage (rather than attempt to force) more individuals to apply for asylum in Mexico, our Government should:

  •  Publicly acknowledge and treat the migration from Central America as a “humanitarian situation,” rather than a law enforcement issue;
  • Work with the UNHCR and Mexican authorities to improve asylum processing, adjudication, and resettlement in Mexico;
  • Provide financial aid and incentives for Mexico to improve its asylum system (rather than law enforcement money or threats to cut off funding);
  • Emphasize to Central American refugees the possible benefits of applying for asylum in Mexico (or elsewhere), rather than threatening them and trying to intimidate them from coming to the U.S.
  • Finally, and most important, the U.S. should be taking a leadership role with the UNHCR and other countries in our hemisphere to address the endemic problems in the Northern Triangle that are creating these refugee flows.

Refugee situations are complex, on a number of levels. They won’t be solved by the simplistic approaches (a/k/a political stunts) currently being taken by the Trump Administration, including the ridiculous “Wall.” Indeed, they can’t be solved by any single country. It takes the countries of the world working together to resolve them. That’s exactly what the mechanisms set up under the U.N. Convention on Refugees were intended to do. It’s beyond foolish for our Government to ignore them.

PWS

11-16-18

 

 

 

MS-13 MEMBER FILMS BRUTAL TORTURE-MURDER!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/ms-13-gang-member-narrated-video-of-teens-killing-fbi-agent-testifies/2017/07/10/88f90b08-65b2-11e7-8eb5-cbccc2e7bfbf_story.html?hpid=hp_local-news_damaris-1130pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.626af5bc6f07

Justin Jouvenal reports in  the Washington Post:

“The MS-13 gang member filmed the killing with a cellphone, barking out orders and narrating as fellow gang members set upon the 15-year-old girl with a knife and a large wooden stake in a suburban Virginia park, an FBI agent testified Monday.

The green-light to kill Damaris A. Reyes Rivas had come from the transnational gang’s leadership in El Salvador, payback for her alleged role in luring another MS-13 member to his death a week earlier, the FBI agent told a Fairfax County judge.

But it was 17-year-old Jose Cerrato who allegedly helped orchestrate the killing, part of a plan to send the video back to those MS-13 leaders as proof of his willingness to carry out orders, the agent testified. It’s unclear if the video was ever sent, but the FBI agent testified Cerrato soon earned a promotion within the ranks of the gang for his role in the slaying.

The testimony by FBI special agent Fernando Uribe came during a hearing in Fairfax County juvenile court in which a judge certified that Cerrato would face murder, abduction and gang participation charges as an adult.”

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Read the complete, very disturbing, story at the link.

PWS

07-11-17

WashPost: GANGS — A Complicated Problem With No Easy Solution — Budget Cuts Undermine Some Local Programs!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/ms-13-gains-recruits-and-power-in-us-as-teens-surge-across-border/2017/06/16/aacea62a-3989-11e7-a058-ddbb23c75d82_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_ms-13-1240pmm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.5745c22fb3d0

Michael E. Miller, Dan Morse, and Justin Jouvenal report:

“The increasing MS-13 violence has become a flash point in a national debate over immigration. President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have vowed to eradicate the gang, while immigrant advocates say the young people are being scapegoated to further an anti-immigrant agenda.

Danny’s case illustrates just how difficult the balance between compassion and safety can be. Was he a child who needed help? Or a gang member who shouldn’t have been here?

“Do you close the doors to all law-abiding folks who just want to be here and make a better life . . . and in the process keep out the handful who are going to wreak havoc on our community?” asked one federal prosecutor, who is not permitted to speak publicly and has handled numerous MS-13 cases. “Or do you open the doors and you let in good folks and some bad along with the good?”

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Read the entire, much longer, article at the link.

it does seem short sighted to save a few bucks by cutting some of the few programs specifically designed to address this issue.

PWS

06-16-17