The International Criminal Court today issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Putin’s commissioner for children’s rights, for war crimes: kidnapping Ukrainian children and transporting them to Russia. Russia does not recognize the ICC, which is established at The Hague—the government seat of the Netherlands—and for its part, the Russian government claims its deportation program is humanitarian and patriotic. The international assessment that Putin and one of his top officials have personally engaged in war crimes drives another wedge between Putin and the rest of the Russian people as over time his inability to interact successfully with the rest of the world will have growing consequences for the people at home,
American power, hard and soft, gives rise to imitation.
Would-be rivals have always been inspired by American exceptionalism.
The racist policies of Hitler and Nazism drew on American ideas and realities. Everywhere, tyrants and would-be tyrants have claimed that Might is Right and, like America, the States they lead are too big to be subject to any Law other than their leader's will.
This comes uncomfortably close to how millions of armed-to-the-teeth individual Americans view what they call "Liberty".
Putin, for one, has always cited America's imperial example in defense of his every action.
"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL. BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS"
Orwell's derisive slogan says it all.
Every view, every policy that is grounded in exceptionalism, notions of intrinsic inequality, races of masters, races of servants, races unworthy to exist, races above Law, races subject to the power that comes out from the barrel of a gun, is adding many miles to the wrong road. The road that leads to hell on earth.
Such views undermine not only our humanity but the survival of humanity. Not only the survival of humanity, but that of life on the surface of our planet.
By Ishaan Tharoor, with Sammy Westfall, in Today's World View, Washington Post, newsletter
'The U.S. invasion of Iraq, which occurred 20 years ago this week, was seen at the time by critics as both “wholly unjustified” and potentially “brutal” — views that have only become more widespread in the years that followed.'
'The Bush administration sold a false bill of goods to justify its “preemptive” intervention against the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Its hunt for Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction proved futile and built on bad intelligence. Its insistence that regime change would bring greater stability to the Middle East proved exactly the opposite, sowing a legacy of instability that would lead to the rise of extremist organizations like the Islamic State and the growing regional influence of Washington nemesis Iran. Its vision for stamping liberal democracy on Iraq proved illusory, with the country consumed by years of political upheaval, parliamentary paralysis and corruption.'
'Iraqis have their own diverse views on the legacy of the U.S. invasion, but some baseline realities are inescapable: Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed in the wake of Saddam’s ouster, their deaths at least indirectly linked to the chaos unleased by the United States. The American conduct of the war also has numerous grim chapters, from the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib to the near destruction of the city of Fallujah.'
'The Iraqi author Sinan Antoon told me this in 2021: “No matter what — and I say this as someone who was opposed to Saddam’s regime since childhood and wrote his first novel about life under dictatorship — had the regime remained in power, tens of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive today, and children in Fallujah would not be born with congenital defects every day.”
'What does this have to do with Ukraine? For months, U.S. and European officials have cast the conflict in Ukraine in stark moral terms. If Putin can succeed with a war of aggression across his borders, the argument has gone, then a dark agenda of territorial conquest and might making right wins out. President Biden has framed the contest as a clash between “all democracies” and Putin’s authoritarian project. Last November, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described the collective efforts of Ukraine’s Western allies as a reflection of “how much countries around the world value and respect the rules-based international order.”
'The legacy of Iraq undermines this rhetoric. For many people in the Middle East and elsewhere in the global South, the U.S. invasion is the most glaring recent episode in a long history of Western meddling and U.S. hypocrisy on the world stage. For officials in China and Russia, de facto adversaries of the United States, the Iraq War is an easy precedent to put forward to shoot down Washington’s talking points, no matter how self-serving and cynical that may be.'
“U.S. officials frequently invoke [the rules-based order] when criticizing or making demands of China,” noted Paul Pillar, a veteran former U.S. intelligence officer. “In no way can the offensive war against Iraq be seen as consistent with respect for a rules-based international order, or else the rules involved are strange rules.” (Sorry that gifted link is not available)
Does not all this -- both crime and punishment -- prove that rules are not enough?
Rules are only proof of failure, mere compensations for inadequacy... a fleshless skeleton; scaffolding for the work of first salvaging, then rebuilding better. If we can...
If we can?
We human beings have no choice but to do better. No choice but to achieve the impossible.
Does this not mean aiming beyond what is now seen as impossible?
Only one force can achieve that. A force neither material nor mechanical.
A force beyond naming, therefore I leave this space blank.
[We do have names for this. Only we must reach out beyond names, reach out beyond thinking and saying "the right thing", reach out towards living it.]
Peter, rules are crucial but without upholding them through monitoring and educated populace, they are as you wrote or I would say 'ghosts' that haunt our failure.
Peter “The right thing” in war is determined by the winners. In private life, frequently it is cloaked in religiosity, which, unfortunately, has not been especially pure historically.
Thank you, but has HCR not been showing us how close the losing side has come to conclusively winning the Civil War?
Have we not all seen the resurrection of Nazism and Fascism, which those of us who are old enough to remember WW2 believed to be defeated, dead and buried?
Do we not know how China's skilled Mandarinate transformed the defeat and humiliation of the Empire by barbarians from the borderlands into the means of vast territorial expansion?
There's that Spanish saying, "The defeated are defeated, the victor is lost".
As I write this, I see that the loser in 2020 is at this very moment rallying his troops for yet another attempt to transform his defeat into victory.
Those who burrow into history may now remember such episodes as the Nike riots that came close to overthrowing the Roman Empire or the Taiping rebellion that cost tens of millions of Chinese lives.
Peter I vividly recall the Nuremberg War Crime Trials and the Japanese War Crimes Trials in Tokyo and elsewhere. I have no memory of trials of Allies who violated ‘rules of humanity.’
I recall someone saying “The victors write history.” Of course many years later other might add post scripts. I was a student of both sides’ accounts of the American war in the Philippines 1898-early 1900s. The American military behavior often was despicable. Several of the most despicable officers were decorated and promoted.
We shouldn’t need rules. We break them all the time anyway. We shouldn’t need rules. In the kingdom of old king Cole there would not be enough rules. We could write until the end of time and not have enough rules. We shouldn’t need rules to be who we need to be.
Peter Burnett, the force is love, right? Reach out toward loving and the right actions will come from this. People who love don't lie, don't hurt others, and are energized by chasing after the truth.
I followed the Bush administrations hollow justification of invading Iraq closely and was amazed that Bush was allowed to perpetrate the crime. The aftermath with every aspect of the occupation and destruction of any forms of Governance by Paul Bremer ensured the chaos of a divided religious society.
But trying to use Iraq as a comparison to Ukraine is unfair to both episodes.
Especially telling is the Wests abandonment of the Bush/ Cheney crimes compared to Joe Biden’s reforming of the NATO decision to fully support the elected Government of Ukraine.
I think each war effort is separate and any comparison weakens the obvious justification of defending Democracy against Totalitarian expansion. If there is any viable comparison it is that of Hitler quietly daring the Allies with the occupation of Rhineland and so encouraged began his Eastward expansion.
Art, I think that it is absolutely appropriate to compare the US’s invasion of Iraq with Putin’s war on Ukraine. The US attacked with a false premise for self-interest and greed. The invasion was based on a lie. This country’s moral superiority over Russia looks rather quaint to me on this basis.
PS To compare the US with Russia on this basis does not minimize the culpability of both nor in any way mitigate Putin’s genocidal actions against Ukraine.
I totally didn't agree with how we particiapted in the Iraq conflict (not a declared war). However, the US didn't try to annex Iraq into our country and take over their government (as putin is doing in Ukraine). The plan was to free the people to run themselves. However, that certainly didn't happen. I blame it mostly on the greedy corporations who were managing Bush and getting rich off the whole fiasco.
I don't think the American Public ever got a sensible reason for Iraq, and indications at the time were that -- and I don't think there's been any real clarification since -- it was a "crime of opportunity." The NeoCons were looking for a new Pearl Harbor (i.e. an outrageous attack on the US, which they got with 9/11), to justify a major war somewhere, anywhere. The Pentagon was looking for a reason to exist post-USSR. Peak oil was projected for 2005. Bush was looking for a "legacy." Cheney was looking for power, and God-alone-knows what else.
So it's hard to compare it to anything, without comparing it to everything.
”the US didn’t try to “annex Iraq into our country and take over the government”
Huge difference — Iraq was “never” part of the USA. I hope we can agree that’s not an accurate comparison. Ukraine and Russia’s history are completely different than the USA & Iraq.
Curious if The International Criminal Court has figured out who destroyed the Nord-Stream Pipeline? And just like Putin’s charges, we should all assume whomever was responsible for the pipeline’s destruction would also receive an arrest warrant…yes/no?
My view is that in Iraq the nation was sold the notion that sinister weapons of mass destruction had been developed by Hussein. This translated to nuclear and chemical weapons.
In the wake of 9/11 the plausibility of a threat to America was implicit with delivery not necessarily through military might but terrorist subterfuge.
This is far removed from agreeing to support the pleas of the Democratically elected leader for support of his efforts to stop Russia.
I think remaining silent in the Russian invasion of Crimea was Obama’s biggest error. But aiding a nation from being eradicated by another nation is not the same as invading a nation, destroying its culture and walking away.
Art, Please don’t conflate the comparison of the US invasion of Iraq and Putin’s War on Ukraine with questioning the US’ and NATO’s support for Ukraine. Total support for Ukraine was never in question.
Setting aside Democracy and Totalitarianism, the issue is whether to allow an ally to suffer at the hands of a bully, or to give assistance to that ally to fight off the bully, especially when the bully has additional victims in mind.
Putin wants everyone to agree that someone else’s crime justifies his crime. As everyone’s mother has said, two wrongs don’t make a right. Right (meaning correct), or Right (a moral entitlement.)
Putin and his defenders want the issue to be our hypocrisy, not his actions. Pure distraction technique, Other Things Are Worse (Whataboutism). OK, we are hypocrites. So what?
“In no way can the offensive war against Iraq be seen as consistent with respect for a rules-based international order, or else the rules involved are strange rules.”
Yes. We can definitely, in part, blame ourselves/the USA, for the war of aggression currently being waged by Putin on Ukraine.
After all: George W. Bush role modeled ignoring international law, human rights, the ICC rules, as he invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq.
If we, the USA, are going to role model behavior, well, we, the USA should expect others to emulate that behavior.
Like Putin. Who is emulating George W. Bush at the moment.
It is impossible to "like" this fact unless we hate ourselves and hate America, yet we must accept the truth. Only by accepting the reality of our errors can we learn from them. Only by learning from our errors can we overcome them.
As I have heard in hallowed rooms many times over 28 years: If I am not the problem, there is not solution.
Realizing I am accountable is an act of self love and strength! I can hold two thoughts about the USA at the same time: I love it and we have done and continue to take horrible, cruel actions. I love it enough to want to help prevent our soul-searing mistakes. As we hurt others, we hurt ourselves.
Shamefully, at the present time, the Repubs refuse to accept "the reality of our errors" AND refuse to learn from them. CRT? Woke? Nothing more than pretense that US is completely and absolutely "exceptional"! Perfect!
The metaphor that has always come to me for the far-Right's war against woke is a horrible one: trying to stuff back into an abscess the pus that has oozed forth from it.
Considering how dreadful the almost unending nightmare of oppression has been, one might have expected "woke" reactions to be more extreme.
I was among the millions who marched in an attempt to stop GWB from committing the atrocity we call the Iraq War.
I was listening to the radio (Thom Hartmann on Air America radio) when Shock and Awe hit Baghdad. Just sound because radio, but it was so horrendous that I was on my knees and crying as the bombs rained down on so many innocent people.
SinceTrump is so horrible, we tend to forget the war crimes committed by GW Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, etc., but they ruined Iraq and led to so much unnecessary death and destruction!
I did the same! I couldn't believe that the crowds of us ythat marched in Washington and all over the country couldn't force them to stop this travesty, though I been part of the Anti War movement in Vietnam..."when will we ever learn..."
The most awful thing is how many generations may suffer the damage inflicted by actions like these, in Iraq, throughout the region and far beyond it. Without forgetting the effects on those who took part in the assault.
U.S. foreign policy exists in a hall of mirrors of hypocrisy.
Biden has begun sending political refugees back to Russia.
“Immigration advocates were taken by surprise when a young Russian man, who came to the US fleeing Vladimir Putin’s efforts to mobilize citizens to fight in Ukraine, was abruptly deported at the weekend from the US back to Russia.”
FIRST—How do we get this KAFKA IN AMERICA lunacy out into the open from our hole-in-a-corner discussion here and shine bright arc lights on it? How do we make it a national issue—as VOLTAIRE would have done?
Maybe the Guardian's use of the words “BIDEN” and “BIDEN ADMINISTRATION” do just that. The first is manifestly unfair yet points to where the buck ultimately stops; the second is a statement of fact, outrageous fact, showing how the reality of malign bureaucratic idiocy can and does hide in any and every administration, public or private, that is trying to do its job.
Not only in America, in Ukraine and in many European countries too, the horror unleashed by one criminal madman at the head of a vast bureaucratic cobweb has brought hell to ordinary human beings—branded “Russians”—doing their damnedest to escape from the demons and their poisoned trap.
Revulsion at what Russians are doing and have done infects both victims and witnesses with the vile racist plague Putin has unleashed on the world.
Germans and German Jews trying to escape Hitler had to face this—read Auden's Refugee Blues now. Yes. Read it TODAY. https://allpoetry.com/refugee-blues
“Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.”
*
One significant cavil about both the Guardian article AND the crazed bumblings of America's immigration services:
Even if you want to send all Russian refugees back to Putin in a big package tied with a red bow, HOW THE HELL DO YOU PROPOSE TO DO IT?
Russia is sealed off from the rest of the world both on the inside and on the outside. Do you send them to Erdogan's Turkey or to Xi's China—maybe to Tblissi, Georgia—for “Return to Sender”?
Sounds more like labeling them “Stateless” and delivering them to bureaucratic limbos—like the kids escaping with or without parents from their Central American hells, grabbed on Drumpf's orders... then lost in the Ice's labyrinth...
*
Even further down in these cellars far under the main discussions of the day, JL Graham draws attention to KAFKA IN TENNESSEE:
Excuse me, Sir, for repeating your references to ordinary everyday American-as-apple-pie oppression here—but the sorry tale raises one and the same issue: How do we get these gross scandals out into the open?
HOW?
How do we educate the seemingly uneducable, seemingly unreformable officials in our midst and prevent them from committing crimes even greater than those they themselves are paid to prevent?
HOW?
Noting, all the time, that in drawing attention to the endemic diseases of bureaucracy, we shall be feeding the evil propaganda of so-called libertarians, happy to damn all government activity save that which they themselves have instigated for their own nefarious purposes.
"The racist policies of Hitler and Nazism drew on American ideas and realities."
Correct. In particular, the Nazis carefully studied the U.S. Jim Crow laws as part of defining who was a Jew during the building the racist Nazi empire.
However, for the Nazi's, Jim Crow was too harsh. Instead of "one drop of blood" in a relative, like the Jim Crow definition of "Black", Jews were defined as Jews if they had one grandparent that was Jewish.
"The racist policies of Hitler and Nazism drew on American ideas and realities." Before laying all this on the USA, we should remember that the rising and brutal anti semitism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in eastern and central Europe had nothing to do with American ideas. Eugenics as an ethnically and racially biased concept was widespread across modern nations - Europeans and Americans widely believed in their "inherent superiority" over the races they had either conquered and/or enslaved. What kicked antisemitism into high gear in Germany and elsewhere was the 19th century mass migrations of Jews from Ukraine / Russia thanks to the expansion of the Russian imperial state. Small wonder the Nazis focussed on Poland in the "final solution"... cruel as Jim Crow was, hardly a match for the 12 million murdered or incinerated in the German crematoria. (6 million Jews, and 6 million others)
Without downplaying the horror of the holocaust, it is necessary also to consider that Soviet Russia starved or murdered perhaps twice the number of humans the Nazis murdered; and slavery, Jim Crow and continuing systemic racism in the US has cost many millions of lives as well. None of this grim history means that the US and its allies are wrong to support Ukraine as Putin imitates Stalin.
Any retracing of the roots of evil must be too simplistic, must ultimately be vain. We can only fail in our responsibility, in our duty, if we dwell on attributing blame.
Our best possible look into the past is, at least from my perspective, often very important. In fact, that is why I am reading Dr. Richardson's page every day.
She connects the past to the present to help us better understand the world as it is today.
If we take a pass on condemning that which, in the past, certainly needs to be condemned, then, we might be taking a pass on letting it all happen again.
I am in truth very much with you on this, or we would not be sharing the same reading or engaging in this conversation.
Insistence on NOW does not mean denial of the vast root system of our Now.
I once said to a friend that we need sometimes to go down into our roots, but we cannot live there, without air or light.
Besides, we cannot indulge in killing the tree by uprooting it to examine and analyse all that's hidden from plain sight...
My emphasis on America is entirely an effect of American power now, but when I write of American deeds, misdeeds, ideas and policies, I am never forgetting those of my own or other countries, other people. That should go without saying.
Thoughtfilled discussion for me. Our nation's leaders and policies have not ever been pure ... or consistently right. Impulsive, adhering to the beliefs and grudges of some portion of our people, too often. Yet, some how, despite our impure and too often policies with horrifying loses in live of our nation's sons and daughters, where on the arc do we continue to pursue the good on behalf of humanity or democracy as we propose it? Fern, Peter, Mike, Keith ... your questioning and experiences remind me (us?) of the importance of being critical of tents in light of our history. I think we can do right things, sometimes for the wrong reasons, but can never claim the high ground as defense for trying to do so or as shade for hypocrisy. Thanks to all of you at HCR LFAA. By the way, IMHO, I do see our helping coalesce nation's in defense of Ukraine as one of those right things to do in defense of liberal Western democracy as we know it. Perhaps because I forsee lessons from those democracies as pertinent to our struggles to achieve our aspirations and as a leader (model?) nation among them.
Then we wake up and find ourselves lying there in the filth.
The answer’s dead simple.
STAND UP!
Stand up, look for water, wash, then get on with living.
Yesterday, I used the term “Original Sin” in another context. But there’s no such thing as Original Sin, that’s just a brand for our backsides. A Scarlet Letter to keep us feeling guilty, the better to oppress and control us. When I’ve fallen, the choice is simple: lie there and grovel or rise to my feet as soon as I’m able to.
When the ICC was formed the president was W, who himself could have been indicted for war crimes for attack on Iraq, which of course had neither nukes nor viable biological weapons, was president. Of course the “greatest democracy “ wouldn’t submit its dear leader to an international court.
America’s greatness has passed. We have outrageous inequality, half the wealth owned by less than 1% of the population while children sleep in cars, and the wealthy pay virtually nothing in taxes but buy congress and seats on the Supreme Court, which says of course it’s perfectly legal.
Maybe my cynicism will be ameliorated a bit if Old Teety does a peep walk. On Fifth Avenue would be appropriate.
It's looking like Trump will actually be indicted and arrested this coming Tuesday, so I hope your cynicism will be so ehwt ameliorate.
I do disagree that America's greatness has passed. It seems to me that we have not yet achieved the greatness so many like to claim. I hope to see us move toward it during my lifetime though, admittedly, these times are pretty dark. 😪
Dumpty claims he’ll be arrested. Far from something to bet on, and he won’t be arrested but asked to come in. You might assume he’ll refuse in favor of making a big drama out of it. That is probably a safe bet.
I hope your optimism is warranted. I don’t think humanity has the time for any more glory. I expect more wars, more squabbling over resources and population displacement. 8 billion is far too many humans.
It looks like most, if not all, of the charges against tr... will be misdemeanors, but it might start the cascading effect of all the other cases in line, which can eventually bring that crook down. We can only hope!
Campaign finance violations are misdemeanors. When a crime is committed in furtherance of another crime, it’s a felony. That’s the Bragg case, and the fact that he waited so long to bring it (if indeed he does, as dumpty is braying this morning) seems auspicious. I’m more hopeful about the RICO case in Georgia , which might get Meadows, Giuliani and graham along with others and the fat orange Cheeto himself.
And then there what Jack Smith is pursuing. As a former ICC corruption dragon, I’m optimistic about at the least the documents case, but also the coup case.
Am so disappointed in Garland. He would have made a far better Supreme Court justice, with his careful weighing of matters, than a knight fighting corruption and crime. Imo the worst crime ever committed on American soil.
Not sure, but those children entered our borders on their own volition or with family, rather than being dragged into our country and then "placed for adoption." That doesn't excuse the atrocity, but it is not the same thing. Having said that, our own aggressive history of wars and incursions brings shame to the US, too. It is hard to reconcile that with our own love of country.
Hope, your comment is the first I have read today, and I wish I hadn't. Your "of their own volition" characterization implies that the children of any age are responsible for the consequences of their actions, that these babies should have been aware of the risks they took and cognizant of the unsettled political climate on our side of our border with them.. It smacks of the charge that poor folks are responsible for their condition; worse, that a 10-or-12 year old girl should have known she might be impregnated during rape and should have acted accordingly.
Some children hopped "The Beast" the slow freight train that meanders through Mexico. Usually they are pre-teens or older. I should have said "by their own means." Migration is a problem that is immense, world wide. 100 million people are migrating. Their home countries are corrupt, in war, destitute, and ravaged by climate issues.
As someone who lived in Central America I understand the causes of migration. I am also someone who lived among the very poor and continue to do all in my power to illuminate the causes of poverty. They are horrific. However, once again, unlike the issues of Putin's indictment, no one in this nation entered another country and abducted children to be raised here. I am responding to the original question far above, "Why wasn't Trump also singled out by the ICC?"
The assumption that I am blaming the children who entered the United States is very far off base. Frankly, I hope Trump is indicted right here in this country for his many conscienceless actions.
This country repeatedly entered other nations and abducted children from their families and communities, either to be reared by white families (or used as servants), or placed in schools deliberately located to be difficult or impossible for parents to find. This continued until just a few decades ago. I'm not blaming you: overlooking these events is a convenience imployed throughout America to preserve our sense of privilege. It's easier to admit the wrongs done overseas, it seems.
I really appreciate your reminder, Annie. After 400+ years, the large majority of Americans still want to act like the extermination of millions of Native people and the assimilation efforts and oppression of millions more wasn't an enormous atrocity.
Living as an Anglo in New Mexico the last 20+ yrs., with multiple Pueblo and Hispanic communities nearby, I've slowly learned how blind, brainwashed, and mythologized I was before re: the US's "Westward Expansion". Northern Europeans, and especially English-speakers (my ancestors), had an awesome arrogance and willingness to treat other cultures ruthlessly - for centuries.
These terrible injustices should be taught straight out in our schools. The periodic brutality of tribes to one another should not be skipped either. The depravity of Jim Crow can not be downplayed. But neither should thousands of acts of bravery, kindness, and wisdom by Americans from dozens of backgrounds. It's complicated!!
Most of human history carries tons of cruel baggage. My highest hope is that people - starting right here and right now - will start getting steadily better at squarely facing the evil, remembering those who did very moral and/or inspiring things, and holding all of that at one time.
If that becomes the rule rather than the exception say 50 yrs from now (assuming we've survived), Americans will be repulsed by the idea of repeating things like our Iraq invasion and putting immigrant children in cages.
But there will still be tyrants in the world who want to steal territory for wealth and power, crushing communities in the process. Many nations, working together, will still need to violently stop them. Just without the self-righteousness of "our people have never done such a thing".
I certainly agree, Annie. I hope you realize that I am only referring to the current moment in time; the equivalency of Putin's scheme and genocide with Trump's immigration policy, not this nation's horrific history of slavery, assimilation, and it's own form of genocide.
IMO, Putin deserves every illumination upon his craven criminality. I think I will keep that focus for the time being, while hoping next week sees indictments of Trump, too. Like Putin, the charges may be small potatoes in comparison with a lifetime of depravity, but it's the outcome that matters.
Your point is much clearer with this post, and I adjust my reply in consideration of that. Sometimes what is intended and what is read are misaligned, as in this case. As far as your second part, "no one in this nation" , I hope you are referring to recent history so I don't react as I did previously. History shows us repeatedly that the Overclass, some of whom were formerly Underclass, controls the policies, the financial strength, the direction and the narrative, and as a result place those not in their camp in the Underclass to be dismissed, maligned, treated poorly, and stomped on at every opportunity. We are approaching Dictatorship status in our country, and soon what is left of our middle class will be seriously depleted, to increase the population of lower socio-economic levels. Best if I stop here. Thank you for reiterating your earlier comment.
Well, infants, toddlers, children and adolescents were torn from their family and tossed to the wind. Perhaps go back to WSJ archives and see how many full page ads were ran by various adoption resources. Your last point is well taken. Wars and incursions to support and preserve corporate profits.
Hello? How did you conclude I was blaming the kids? Please note I used the word "atrocity" when referring to Trump's policy. I was saying that unlike Putin, our "dear leader" did not go to another country and devise a scheme for repatriating its children.
Hope, it was simple to come to that conclusion because that is exactly the language you used. Perhaps it would be helpful to admit that you need to be more careful with how you express your thoughts rather than blaming others for "misunderstanding" you.
I think that my response was so far down the line from the opening question, why wasn't Trump indicted by the ICC, that it truly was misunderstood. I also acknowledged that "own volition" should have been "by their own means," i.e. older children.
I strongly reacted to the impression others had that I disregarded the children themselves. I would never do that, Annie. Yes, taken out of context, I can see the misunderstanding that I also had.
I've spent a life-time reaching out to the world's disadvantaged people and I am of the mind that the issue of immigration (far different form Putin's actions) is an immense problem which I hope will see the influx of funding and attention to causes that it needs, desperately.
No. He's simply saying the children entering the United States entered under their own or their parents volition. They came for opportunities not incarceration. The Ukrainian children have literally been kidnapped. They and their parents had no interest in becoming Russian. Many of these children are too young to understand what's happening to them. When they do, they'll be angry.
Some children hopped "The Beast" the slow freight train that meanders through Mexico. Usually they are pre-teens or older. I should have said "by their own means." Zella, you really need to get this, because it is a problem that is immense. World wide, 100 million people are migrating. Their home countries are corrupt, in war, destitute, and or ravaged by climate issues.
As someone who lived in Central America I understand the causes of migration. They are horrific. However, once again, unlike the issues of Putin's indictment, no one in this nation entered another country and abducted children to be raised here. I am responding to the original question far above, "Why wasn't Trump also singled out by the ICC?"
The assumption that I am blaming the children who entered the United States is very far off base. Frankly, I hope Trump is indicted right here in this country for his many conscienceless actions.
Our government, whichever party is in power, has never wanted to be held liable for all of the war crimes that we have committed over the years, so the U.S. has always refused to join the ICC.
The US is not a member of the ICC. Exactly why George W. Bush has not been in jail for the last 20 years after the huge number of war crimes he committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. At least Trump did not machine gun the migrant children like George W. Bush did.
"KABUL - Troops in attack helicopters that belong to the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan mistakenly killed nine boys Tuesday with machine-gun and rocket fire as they collected firewood, the international forces acknowledged Wednesday.
U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, ordered all field commanders and helicopter crew members to study their orders again on when coalition aircraft can open fire on people on the ground.
The coalition said it was "deeply sorry" for the error."
Or, torture the kids parents like George W. Bush did:
"Documents popularly known as the Torture Memos came to light a few years later. These documents, prepared in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States Department of Justice, authorized certain "enhanced interrogation techniques" (generally held to involve torture) of foreign detainees. The memoranda also argued that international humanitarian laws, such as the Geneva Conventions, did not apply to American interrogators overseas. Several subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), have overturned Bush administration policy, ruling that the Geneva Conventions do apply."
Betsy, that's the truth of it! We are blind in many ways, but conscious enough of our own guilt to fear submitting many of our leaders to that jurisdiction
I, too, am very disappointed in HCR for failing to mention that the US does not recognize the ICC, and in fact sanctioned its members for their attempt to hold us accountable for the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo. The issue of the Putin indictment seems an excellent source of insight into war crimes committed by ANY nation.
There's only so much room in these letters. Bush and Guantamo aren't current events. But it probably does explain Bush staying in Texas and painting. He'd be vulnerable to arrest in countries that are signees of the ICC.
Yes there are countries who found members of the George W Bush administration guilty of war crimes in abstentia and there are active arrest warrants to serve if those found guilty travel outside the US to certain areas.
United States participation in the ICC treaty regime would also be unconstitutional because it would allow the trial of U.S. citizens for crimes committed on U.S. soil, which are otherwise entirely within the judicial power of the United States. Actually, dozens of countries are not ICC members, including China, India, Russia, and the United States.
We are also one of a handful of nations who did not join the ban on the use of land mines. These devices are notorious for injuring civilians long after the military combat has ended.
“That the warrant focuses on children is also significant. Of the 123 countries that are parties to the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court, 33 are African, 19 are in the Asia-Pacific region, 18 are in Eastern Europe, 28 are in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 25 are in Western Europe and elsewhere.”
“The international assessment that Putin has engaged in war crimes is significant in the United States as well, even though the U.S. is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. “
HCR wrote “ The international assessment that Putin has engaged in war crimes is significant in the United States as well, even though the U.S. is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.”
The U.S. is not part of the ICC. Frankly, I'd be happy if Russia kidnapped Trump, Miller, Meadow, Stone and a dozen others. Relocate them to Siberia, keep them in cages like they kept the little ones at the border.
Thank you. I just subscribed. "Free" is more doable for me, as I am retired on fixed income. I was fascinated at one time by and with Greco-Roman history. Perhaps this has rekindled that interest!
They realise that it's probably pointless. The US is not a member of the ICC, and in a more general sense, is more or less untouchable by the outside world where its internal affairs and policies are concerned.
We get all shame-scaping about the Russian children's relocation program (which I consider an horrific crime) while the Trump Admin farmed out children to "parents" who were not their biological parents. In fairness, for the most part those children have been paired back with their biological parents. Yet, we do not get a "pass".
Very heavy news day. Thanks HRC for organizing it for us. So much corruption and spin and helpful to find clarity here.
I must say the conscription of Ukrainian children certainly pulls at the heart and the future of Ukrainian culture. As any history lover will know it is an old playbook used to crush a culture. One that was used with Native Americans here in our own history. So sad to see these terrorizing acts against culture continued
'There is little prospect of Mr. Putin standing trial in a courtroom anytime soon. The International Criminal Court cannot try defendants in absentia and Russia, which is not a party to the court, dismissed the warrants as “meaningless.”
'Yet the court’s move carried indisputable moral weight, putting Mr. Putin in the same ranks as Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the deposed president of Sudan, accused of atrocities in Darfur; Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader imprisoned for abuses during the Balkans war; and the Nazis tried at Nuremberg after World War II.'
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility,” said the court, which was created two decades ago to investigate war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.'
'Both Russians, the court said, bore “responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
'As a practical matter, the warrant could restrict Mr. Putin’s travels, since he could face arrest in any of the 123 countries that have signed on to the International Criminal Court — a list that includes virtually all European countries and several in Africa and Latin America, but not China or the United States.' (NYTimes)
YOUR CORDIAL PUBLIC SERVICE REMINDER that the end of gerrymandering, limiting dark money, ending voter suppression, codifying reproductive rights, codifying LGBT rights, commonsense gun regulations, police reform, a Civilian Climate Corps, drug price caps, universal childcare and elder care, free preschool and community college, paid family and medical leave, a $15 minimum wage, federal union and worker protections, the child tax credit, 2 new senators from the new state of D.C., a general respite to the nonsense, and so much more... can be all yours in just a little over 600 days if the following things happen with regards to the federal government, which MAKE NO MISTAKE, we still control the composition of. (Call now and tell a friend! Limited time only with a set of steak knives!)
1) Joe Biden needs to stay President. Obviously. And since he is a) doing a good job by b) enacting very popular policies, and c) the US has never elected back-to-back one-term Presidents of different parties, I'd say we are looking good.
2) We need one more anti-filibuster vote in the Senate. To make this happen:
John Tester and Sherrod Brown will need to outperform the rest of the party in their red states of Montana and Ohio, respectively. Both of them have in fact previously outperformed Kerry, Obama, and Clinton by very large margins. They clearly think they can do so again, and we shouldn't doubt them. (If Joe Manchin does so as well, then yay, because an extra seat is helpful. If not, then I can't be bothered, because f#ck that jagweed.)
Elissa Slotkin needs to hold Debbie Stabenow's current seat in Michigan. Slotkin is a fantastic candidate who has won multiple times now in a swingy/conservative area. The Repubs have not won statewide since the early 90s, and have yet to begin finding a viable candidate.
Ruben Gallego needs to replace Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona. He is one of the most popular, vibrant, and hardworking politicians in the blue-ing state, and early polling shows that even in a potential three-way race, he runs neck-and-neck to win. (It will very likely not be a three-way, as our favorite "independent" hasn't even said if she will run again. Anyone want to make bets on which corporate boards she is deciding between? Or maybe she'll just go work at The Gap. Or Gymboree.)
Are you in one of these states? THEIR CAMPAIGNS HAVE ALREADY STARTED! Donate, volunteer, write letters to the editor in support, start talking them up to neighbors. The works!
3) We need to win the House back. Where to look?
The following 23 Repub-held districts were won (or would have been won) by Biden and/or had a margin of ~3% or under in 2022:
Arizona 1st (Schweikert)
Arizona 6th (Ciscomani)
California 13th (Duarte)
California 22nd (Valadao)
California 27th (Garcia)
California 40th (Kim)
California 45th (Steel)
Colorado 3rd (Boebert)
Iowa 3rd (Nunn)
Michigan 10th (James)
Montana 1st (Zinke)
Nebraska 2nd (Bacon)
New Jersey 7th (Kean)
New York 1st (LaLota)
New York 3rd (Santos)
New York 4th (D'Esposito)
New York 17th (Lawler)
New York 19th (Molinaro)
New York 22nd (Williams)
Oregon 5th (Chavez-DeRemer)
Pennsylvania 1st (Fitzpatrick)
Virginia 2nd (Kiggans)
...and the following are the mirror-image Dem-held districts (* means they already won in 2020 with Biden):
Alaska (Peltola)
Colorado 8th (Caraveo)
Connecticut 5th (Hayes)*
Maine 2nd (Golden)*
New Mexico 2nd (Vasquez)
New York 18th (Ryan)
North Carolina 13th (Nickel)
Ohio 9th (Kaptur)*
Oregon 6th (Salinas)*
Pennsylvania 7th (Wild)*
Pennsylvania 8th (Cartwright)*
Washington 3rd (Gluesenkamp-Perez)
If all the Democrats win (and that's plausible - no incumbent Repub was beaten in 2020 after their down midterm), then we only need to flip FIVE of 23 races to take back the trifecta. That's not even all our options in New York ALONE! (Seriously, WTF went on in New York last time? I need it to make sense.) Statistically, a winning presidential ticket should see at least that coattails effect naturally through increased turnout.
Are you in one of these states or districts? Are you anywhere near one of these districts? START GETTING FREAKING READY. We can do this, y'all. Don't let the fact the dreams of glory got another delay distract you. We are so, so close.
IN THE MEANTIME, use the this world wide web of ours to find ways to support Janet Protasiewicz for Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Her winning in a few weeks would flip the court, pretty much guaranteeing gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the chance of election subversion stops in the ultimate tipping-point state.
Don’t forget to support Ohio’s remapping of congressional and state districts that are currently considered unconstitutional under state law. That alone would add three Dems to Congress.
Ohio is only a red state because Democrats quit voting. It is so heavily gerrymandered, they don’t bother to participate.
Oh, we have voter suppression to go along with our gerrymandering too. But to be fair, Ohio is very red outside of our blue cities. Getting out the vote in our urban and suburban areas is key. I live in an affluent suburb of Columbus. When we moved here in 1994, it was solidly, mainstream Republican. It’s now pretty solidly liberal, and that gives me hope. We have, of course, been chopped off from our old half rural, half suburban congressional district and added to Columbus’s, because that blue shift was beginning to threaten a previously safe Republican congressional seat. At least l like my representative now, for the first time in a long time.
My daughter lives in the Columbus district that’s shared with Zanesville, and has a rep who proudly pronounces that he only represents the voters of Zanesville. Ugh.
God forbid he might represent those liberals in Athens! At least she doesn’t have Jim Jordan, it could be worse. It’s obscene that we’re using unconstitutional maps.
Every day between the local news and the national news there is an ad against Biden and then it tells people to call Gluesenkamp-Perez. I have taken to actually shutting off the TV for a couple minutes. I have not seen anything yet against Salinas whose district I am in. We will also donate to whomever takes on Chavez-DeRemer who barely won even after that jerk Schroeder refused to help the D who was running. Here in Salem, not too far away from us we had the Flynn show aided and abetted by the Keizer Police. In some good news a school district near Portland refused to take some books off the shelves that were under attack. Here in Salem the wing nuts have been busy dissing the new school superintendent who starts in the summer. She is too woke. Gosh, she believes in inclusion of all students....comes from the Tulsa Oklahoma school district, so has had practice dealing with people like this. And i agree that Bush should have been held accountable for Iraq. I thought the Bush crime family was bad until death star came along.
Depends on where you go in Oregon. We still have our MAGAts, but Michele has far more of them in her area than I do here in Eugene, although ours are getting more vocal and outlandish.
Will, the two Oregon districts you mention are interesting. The 5th district (southern and eastern Oregon) is the heart of conservative thought; rural and disconnected from the Willamette Valley, and most demonstrative of the current US rural/urban divide. The 6th district was a brand new one created for Oregon after the results of the 2020 census. It is oddly small, nestled west of Salem and east of the Coast Range with a finger extending to the west end of the Portland metro area and is, I suspect, the smallest district in both size and population. Great effort was taken by the legislature to avoid a gerrymandering situation where (with a supermajority in the state legislature) Democrats could have insured a democratic outcome.
I think the 6th is a realistic target; the 5th wants to be Greater Idaho.
Ally, the eastern/southern Oregon district is the second represented by Cliff Benz. The fifth is the one here in the valley, parts of Schroeder's old district, but stretching to Bend, represented by DeRemer. We are in the 6th district represented by Salinas. Our state legislators are worthless Rs.
l live in MT & can tell you that the MAGA Christian Nationalist are alive & flourishing. The super majority in the MT legislature have been turning out bills reflecting their "Christian Values". The 3 R(RINOs) in US Congress post mis leading statements, usually with faux news as their source or feel good photo opts. Tranel ran for Zinke's seat. I dont know how much the DNC spent on her campaign but Z out spent her & won. I hope she runs again! & gets more support $$$$
For sure I am sending money to Tester. MT folks like him so he might have a good chance at reelection. My daughter lives in Helena and is aghast at the bills the Legislature there is trying to pass.
Actually she works for the state of Montana and is frequently asked to testify for/against bills. She will be so glad when this legislative term is over.
It’s past time to recognize that The United States is under attack by domestic Christo-Fascists willing to use violence to achieve the goals they are unable to achieve in fair elections. These efforts are funded by a cabal of Wealthy White Male “Christian” oligarchs and authoritarian foreign governments. Letting this assault continue under the guise of Free Speech is suicidal.
So the Federalist Society claims that “democracy… would result… in the tyranny of the majority.” Perhaps they need to be reminded the etymology of the term: “The word democracy comes from the Greek words "demos", meaning people, and "kratos" meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as "power of the people": a way of governing which depends on the will of the people.” https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/democracy
The F.S. and the right wing are much like Putin and his Russian dolls. Spin and gaslight, spin and gaslight. Whatever you do, spin the truth and tell others they are wrong. It's maddening, but it's beginning to seem like the jig is up.
Fundamental to our form of government is majority rule, minority rights. But a segment of the population wants to have it both ways when it suits them.
I concluded a while back that right-wingers simply view people as inherently greedy and selfish, and therefore see staunch withholding and denial as necessary to keep society from collapse. They just don't trust people is the long and short of it. But really it's because not-so-deep-down THEY are greedy, they know they are, and they do not possess the imagination to realize that other people may possibly have different base desires than they do.
Yes, Will, I agree with you. But their lack of imagination could be understood as a lack of evolving to a state where empathy for others beyond their own group, however they might define it, is possible. I'm reading Ken Wilber's book, Trump and a Post-Truth World, which looks at stages of human evolution, which we all must traverse, and how people's thoughts and actions reflect where they are or are not in this evolution. It is worthwhile reading and opened me up to some new ways of appreciating the various states of consciousness being reflected in our world and how best to move forward. It's intense reading, but thankfully, as Wilber is known to do, he repeats what he is trying to say in many different ways to drive his point home.
The Federalist Society thinks that Democracy doesn't know the difference between it's €£¥hole and a hole in the ground. They are the turd that made the journey.
Power to the People. Yes. But right now the people of France are running amok because Macron wants to increase the retirement age to 64 in order to balance the national budget. France has the most cushy employee regulations one can imagine, with breathtaking social security benefits.
Had this conversation last night with my significant other. Yes, worker benefits for French workers are higher than most Americans can imagine, but that is not the issue. The French people support this, the right and the left, and Macron has used extraordinary measures to deny them. There are factors we might not have considered—opportunities for younger French workers, the distribution of wealth, the need for child care provided by older people, for example. I don't know, but it's a dangerous assumption that Macron is wiser than the people who put him in power.
Huh. Funny, the very definition of the word "Democracy" is "majority rule" ( oversimplified by me, best described by Rose). I think they misplaced their label of "tyranny" there, since that is what minority rule would be, especially as they want to define it.
Also, thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole investigating the difference between etymology and etiology.
I wonder why the DOD hasn't punished Flynn for his behavior? I thought they could recall and court martial him, or at least deny his benefits and pension due to his being involved in attempts to undermine our government. Is he being protected by his brother and other officers who agree with his right-wing rhetoric?
A very long and detailed and informative discussion of the issues surrounding a court martial of Michael Flynn. The answer appears to be yes without needing to recalled to active duty first. But I am not a lawyer and this a heavy read for this early in the morning. It may be that his statements in his new speaking tour are explicit enough to pass the test.
I suspect your opinion is erroneous given the thoughtful consideration of the issue in the link provided below by Georgia. The article is well worth reading/consideration.
I'd like to see them really pin down what they mean by a lot of things, including the specifics of MAGA. Without Newspeak, they wouldn't have words at all.
Stupefied Speaker McCarthy and his Animal House renegades are playing Russian roulette. A stray bullet could splatter the American economy, trigger millions of job losses, and sully the ‘full faith and credit’ of the United States.
These would-be suicide bombers are seeking to hold the once-routine raising of the national debt limit hostage to their demands of no new taxes and draconian slashes in ‘social spending.’ (Such has never occurred under Republican presidents.)
The recent Fed/Treasury emergency measures to prevent a cascade of regional bank bankruptcies following the Silicon Valley Bank depositor debacle is a fire bell of the fragility of our financial system.
Default on America’s national debt would spark a roaring financial fire that would push the United States into recession, shatter our vulnerable credit network, and spread flames throughout the global financial world.
THIS CAN NOT BE PERMITTED TO HAPPEN!
House arsonists may, with their warped minds, believe that triggering a recession would be blamed on President Biden and would assure a White House Republican in 2024. They are woefully mistaken.
President Biden displayed steely boldness in spearheading America’s leadership of an unprecedented Western, NATO, Eastern European, and global riposte to Putin’s brutal assault on Ukrainian sovereignty.
He must be equally bold in assuring that our national debt limit is increased this summer. This is not a matter for fatuous ‘negotiation.’ Rather, it is an imperative for the United States.
President Biden should confront these naysayers with an ultimatum: approve a national debt increase with no supercilious strings.
Were this not to occur, then Biden can accomplish this unilaterally under a legal interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
Good old fashioned American common sense is the appropriate response to Russian roulette.
Keith, I certainly hope that you are accurate in your assessment. I would love to see the scenario play out where the Klown Kar Kaucus rants, raves, and refuses to raise the debt ceiling, provoking that application of the 14th Amendment. Once that matter is settled, there is another section of the 14th Amendment that could (and should) be applied following that rigamarole: Section 3.
AH The Stench Court would be faced with either approving Biden’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment or plunging America and other countries into economic chaos. I doubt that the six black robes would wish to Court disaster.
Tuba mama Klown Kar Kaucus (KKK) joins our dictionary of despicables that includes Repulsive Racist Republicans (RRR). 24 more letters in the alphabet.
Dave So McCarthy, Roberts, and the rest of the motley crew would be hoisted on a Constitutional petard. ‘Let the rockets red glare…and our flag was still there!’
I am still in shock that these clowns were elected !!! Should we not have strict screenings required by those who want to run to govern/lead in any office within our country? They are making up their own rules as they destroy our nation for short term selfish gain that will lead to destruction!!
We have elected complete liars....I would even say enemies of democracy..... to serve in the Congress of The United States of America and nothing can be done about it. ( I am not naive as to believe members of our congress, men or women are innocent....or that our government is "pure" but this is beyond my imagination!)
I do pray that Biden and others who are wise and trained by experience and the knowledge of how to govern this country we love and that is our home, will overcome.
They will still twist Putin's war crimes against Ukraine's children as virtues and not authoritarianism. As fascists they will fall into Putin's propaganda that someone else (Russia) can raise the children better. It's the same in the U.S. when conservatives have the idea they can raise kidnapped South American children, or poverty level U.S. children their "proper" way. They just can't seem to grasp the concept of it's kidnapping someone else's child. They think their cult will "save" the children. 🙄
Yes soldiers arm up to fight and die in war. woman and children die in often greater numbers as collateral damage, or suffer with life long trauma as survivors.
I would think that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would sanction Michael Flynn and take away all of his pension and court martial him for going against the constitution. The democrats must be louder than the republicans. The don't understand that the only message getting across is the GOP rewrite
Christopher, I really hope Flynn will be punished. Dump is the highest on the list for justice to be done. We may have to give up on the lesser miscreants involved with Dump.
What I find surprising is that US pols (including the President) are not linking Putin to the atrocities committed by Hitler: Violating borders, killing civilians, destroying cities. This man is "Hitler revisited." He needs to be correctly identified as the international pariah that he has become.
…and one of our most recent crimes against children here in the US!
'When a fourth-grader in Florida was frustrated about having to sit out his afternoon recess, he penciled a word on an outdoor bench: kill. A teacher asked him about it, and he said it was what he wanted God to do to him.'
'His mother, Marah Marino, guessed he was hurt and angry. “He’s not a mature 10-year-old,” she said.'
'But soon, a sheriff’s deputy who was working in the school stepped in, using a controversial state law to order an involuntary psychiatric evaluation and confinement for up three days in a mental health facility. Marino, who rushed to the school after getting a call about the incident, was stunned, pleading with the officer and asking to be with her son.'
'The deputy drove away with the terrified boy, and Marino followed closely behind them in her car, watching her son stare out the back window, sobbing, his hand on the glass.'
'Every day in Florida, children and adolescents are involuntarily committed for psychiatric assessments under the Baker Act, a 1971 law. In fiscal year 2020-21, involuntary exams happened more than 38,000 times to children under 18 — an average of more than 100 a day and a nearly 80 percent increase in the past decade, according to the most recent data. The law is so deeply enmeshed into the state’s culture that it is widely used as a verb, as in: The 6-year-old was “Baker Acted.”
'Some children have been taken away in handcuffs.'
'In Florida, showing mental health struggles could get a child detained'
'Advocates say the Baker Act, designed as a measure of last resort, is not used that way. The result: Kindergarteners can be forcibly committed to psych centers for exams.' (WAPO) Sorry no gifted links available to me.
I am sickened by the inhumanity of this 10 year old being treated this way. Professionally trained mental health professions are the only people qualified to intervene in situations like this. It is extremely abusive to a child with life long implications of ptsd. Shame on the laws that treat children this way. As a social worker who worked with families in head start and schools I can not imagine working in an environment that you describe. These are children and we treat them as criminals. Shame on Florida and supporting a law like this. We are in big trouble if DeSantis is wins president.
Fern McBride, thank you for sharing this policy; it’s important for Florida parents, all parents, to know. I read about this before. “Some children have been taken away in handcuffs.'” There is a great measure of insanity going on in this country. It’s not new, but it’s spreading just like tfg and his lies spread.
This is so tragic although not surprising as FL is one of worst states for mental health services.Also, all those boomers moving here discover the “freedom” state is severely lacking in funding/services for aging seniors.
Kathy, yes, and there is too much tragedy. It may seem to some that the word 'tragedy' is overused. Our sorrow is that 'tragedy' is now a major aspect of life in the USA today.
I do wonder, the claim Fla./Tx getting such influx of pop. True? Because it’s warm there? No children in tow nor concerns of the Ed quality? No serious health issues mental or physical, yet. No income tax on SS? Just those ? Tx much the same ? They’re all relatively unscathed for a goodly period, their anticipated longevity?
Let me get this straight — the folks upset that hospitals are refusing to use ivermectin, horse deworming medicine that is not approved for human use, to treat Covid are the same folks who are upset that mifepristone, a drug that been FDA approved and used safely for 20 years, claiming it was approved improperly. Oh, I get it. Logical inconsistencies and hypocrisy are not flaws in right wing thinking, they are features.
Ivermectin is the dewormer of choice not only for horses but for most mammalian pets: what stands between a beloved dog or cat and a nasty death by heartworm is a regular dose of ivermectin. Excessive demand for veterinary ivermectin for use by humans can mean there's not enough to treat other people's animals on schedule. I know at least one veterinarian who is scathing on this point.
Ivermectin is approved in humans - for issues the worst of which most Americans don't normally face: diseases caused by roundworms. External parasites are treated externally, with a topical ivermectin cream. Internal parasites can be treated by injection or pill. River blindness is caused by a worm that lives and reproduces in the human body for ten to 15 years; nothing kills the adult worm without making the human host much sicker, but an annual dose of ivermectin slows down the adult while killing the year's crop of larvae, and it follows that missing a year because the supply has been bought up is not a good idea. Jimmy Carter had hoped that river blindness would be eradicated in his lifetime, and as of 2019 that was looking achievable - but the disease is on the upswing again.
Thank you! I wanted to comment to someone else's post, in which a claim was made that "profits" were the reason that Ivermectin was not approved against Covid, despite it's success against river blindness. Uhm ...or it could be because a corona virus is not a worm, unlike the parasite that causes river blindness. Your comment comes from a much deeper level of expertise than I have on the subject. Again, thank you!
As a strange and funny anecdote, in some areas of the country, horse owners had to actually prove they owned horses before stores would sell them ivermectin. Showing your phone’s photo roll full of pictures of your horse was sufficient, because we’re all so horse crazy that our phones are, indeed, full of pictures of our horses. For a while, the ivermectin was in a locked cabinet at Tractor Supply and one had to get an employee to open it up and give you a tube. Insanity. Plus that stuff tastes nasty. I only know that because my horse doesn’t like it either, flings his head, and sprays my face with it as he spits it out. It’s just out on a shelf now, I think that craze has run its stupid course.
Full disclosure here.. I 'so' envy that you have horses KR ! Incredible creatures once we 'know and want to know' them ! How different would our history and reality today 'look' if our ancestors from all the places they came from approached natives with any similar humble, caring 'intent' ? Not viewing them as 'pets', but as uniquely, mutually beneficial beings, and human beings at that ? But no, they saw 'difference', through the basest lens with intent for dominion, conquest, and profit. You would certainly know that you can never teach, much less communicate good and trustworthy intents with a differently intelligent creature - like a horse, with only a whip - nearly never in the facts of practice. Cheers KR ! I'm ashamed today to tell you that Ohio, 'the commodified and brainwashed' is my adopted piteous home - for now anyway. I'm tempted to cut and run, denying them anymore of my pitiful income and care. I have zero representation here anymore. Feeling so denied fills me with a rage I can't quench.
The sad thing about this sentiment, which many including me have privately shared, is that speaking publicly in this fashion brings us right down to the level of the radical extremists, who would just as soon eliminate their detractors as debate with them. The only acceptable means of silencing tfg is by use of the law by law enforcement, which has been maddeningly slow to act. The lack of precedent for prosecuting a former US president and the fear of what setting that precedent means is an existential barrier to taking such a step, no matter how egregious the behavior. One of the fundamental principles of our nation and way of life is that no one is above the law, so we absolutely MUST take that step against the grifter extraordinaire. And, we must examine ourselves collectively in a fundamental sense to understand how we were so fooled as to allow such a petty criminal to slip into the White House in the first place. Law enforcement had literally decades to sideline this guy before he stole the keys to the executive branch. I'm in favor of an orange jumpsuit to match his spray-on tan, a ball and chain, out in the hot southern sun for everyone to see, working a hoe on a chain gang along the highway. As in, "I think what we have here is a failure to communicate"...
You are generous: I would not allow him sunshine at all. The orange jumpsuit is appropos, but in the bowels of a Supermax. No 'yard' time. Not for this guy.
Obviously assuming we are speaking strictly abstractly rather than literally, it's a fitting phrase, considering the extreme prejudice with which the MAGAts view most Americans.
Glad to see you back, Will, missed you for a few days. TC isn't here daily so I don't worry too much if I don't see him.
Will, i read the long post above, but seeing as you are one of the younger people on here, we need to hear your ideas on how to reach the young voters.
yes, we're speaking abstractly. But given that he's calling for Goober World to protest his arrest that he says will come on Tuesday, perhaps that will change.
I've been to the Supermax prison in Florence, CO. I worked for a medical company and did the installation and training for the pharmacy department equipment. It was a job unlike any other. I went through an FBI background check, as obviously, not just anyone wanders in. I went through several double doors, briefly pausing in the middle section before moving on. I did see one prisoner they brought into the clinic. Watching the guards walk him through as he was shackled and tightly controlled was surreal. I was sitting in the common area, and as he shuffled by, he looked at me, and it's hard to describe the look in his eyes. It left me with an eerie feeling. He had an empty, soullessness behind his eyes. I'm very sorry for this tangent. Whenever someone mentions the Supermax, I have a flashback. The thought of TFG and many others ending up there pleases me greatly. Though realistically, they would be in other places first. It is a fact that Supermax is for the absolute worst of humanity in this country, from the Unabomber, McVeigh, and others similar. It is where they send prisoners from various state prisons that cause significant problems and need a more controlled level of incarceration. It was a strange week, not a place I ever wanted to revisit. And yes, it is underground, a tightly controlled place.
Kathy, when I started working for the Sheriff's Office that was my 35 year employer (28 years full time and 7 years part time) I worked in our local jail for 18 months before being transferred to the patrol division, where I worked the rest of my career, either in road patrol (26.5 years, or court security 8.5 years). In that time in working corrections in a local jail (nothing at all like a prison, but we sent a lot of inmates to prison after their sentencing), I had the opportunity to observe lots of "inmate behavior". In that opportunity, I met more people that were "circumstantial criminals" than were not. I did meet 3 people that I believe were well and truly evil; one of them had that "empty, soulless" look to his eyes. Scary as hell.
Yes, I know McVeigh was executed. I followed that closely as my brother was working downtown OKC when the explosion happened. He was unharmed, but he worked on the 14th floor of a bank building a couple of city blocks away, and it shook him from his chair. I could only pull forth a couple of prominent names I thought most people might know of to indicate the type of prisoners Supermax houses.
I agree. When they executed MacVeigh who had admitted he hadn’t been aware of the children killed by his bomb, I thought he was being relieved from decades of being reminded of the innocent lives he destroyed.
Supermax would have been punishment instead of relief.
I agree with this, Art. It is a very cold, sterile environment. As plain and stark as can be. Of course, I was only in the medical services area so who knows what the rest of the place looked like. I had no interest in finding out.
I don't think so, but if he is released either on bail or OR, I am sure they will make him forfeit his passport and they might make him deactivate Trump Force One, his private airliner. Just in case, since that airplane has the capability to fly intercontinental.
TC, I really think Trump will see himself out the door soon. So much of his behavior is being ignored, now. He is old, unhealthy, and unhinged, too. But please be careful when you imply what you are implying, because some of those nut cases on his side just might get "up in arms." If you know what I mean.
if that happens, the spin by the cult, Christian Nationalism ,he will become a martyr & enshrined. It will be better if the cult turns on him & disavow him. Evan when & if he is convicted, it will only raise him up in their eyes, "see, we were right about the corruption". I have read that even after WW2, soldiers were still loyal to hitler, so will cult followers
Send in the Navy to the Mar a lago compound. Dump him at sea. Be spectacular. Make America great again. Carry it live on Fox Nudes. Don’t forget to chum the sharks with his cronies first. Please pardon my outburst it is just that upon occasion TC rouses my patriotism with his extreme common sense.
I’ve seen recent discussions that the Trump. Investigations if diluted enough by the defense counsels would be judged to be misdemeanors rather than felonies and not worth a trial by jury. Bullsh*t.
Get the jerk into every courtroom possible and piece by piece surgically delineate his criminal antics.
Let the sunshine destroy this scourge. I am sick and tired of the bloated bag of puss strutting freely. Develop his infamy by court action.
Ian, IF we get to see his mug in that race. I just refuse to believe our “system” can allow such a lifelong criminal, thug, mob boss, racist, and now insurrectionist bloviator to actually stand for office. Tell me if I am wrong…..
Our fate appears to be in the hands of a couple of district attorneys and the DOJ. May they have more courage than those 74 million votors! If a criminal indictment drops this coming week, I will finally believe that justice might actually be served in the case of this revolting caricature of an American.
Yes, a conviction on one or more criminal charges in one or more judicial districts would go a long way to alieving frustration for people who think highly of fairness and democracy. It would certainly make me feel a lot better. However, convicting Trump of crimes would do nothing to solve the real problem, which is upwards of 74 million American voters who are not decent human beings. We still have to outvote the 74 million. Soundly. And then pass and enforce laws that make the US a good place to live for people outside the white majority.
News organizations are reporting that the Orange Asscactus (apologies for the semi-profanity) expects to be arrested Tuesday. He is already "calling for protests". It all went SO WELL on January 6, 2021. Why, what could possibly go wrong? That $*#&$# is going to get MORE people killed (which is just fine with him, I suspect).
Why hasn’t the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Trump and his Homeland Security chief for kidnapping migrant children?
EXCEPTIONALISM AS ORIGINAL SIN
American power, hard and soft, gives rise to imitation.
Would-be rivals have always been inspired by American exceptionalism.
The racist policies of Hitler and Nazism drew on American ideas and realities. Everywhere, tyrants and would-be tyrants have claimed that Might is Right and, like America, the States they lead are too big to be subject to any Law other than their leader's will.
This comes uncomfortably close to how millions of armed-to-the-teeth individual Americans view what they call "Liberty".
Putin, for one, has always cited America's imperial example in defense of his every action.
"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL. BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS"
Orwell's derisive slogan says it all.
Every view, every policy that is grounded in exceptionalism, notions of intrinsic inequality, races of masters, races of servants, races unworthy to exist, races above Law, races subject to the power that comes out from the barrel of a gun, is adding many miles to the wrong road. The road that leads to hell on earth.
Such views undermine not only our humanity but the survival of humanity. Not only the survival of humanity, but that of life on the surface of our planet.
By Ishaan Tharoor, with Sammy Westfall, in Today's World View, Washington Post, newsletter
'The U.S. invasion of Iraq, which occurred 20 years ago this week, was seen at the time by critics as both “wholly unjustified” and potentially “brutal” — views that have only become more widespread in the years that followed.'
'The Bush administration sold a false bill of goods to justify its “preemptive” intervention against the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Its hunt for Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction proved futile and built on bad intelligence. Its insistence that regime change would bring greater stability to the Middle East proved exactly the opposite, sowing a legacy of instability that would lead to the rise of extremist organizations like the Islamic State and the growing regional influence of Washington nemesis Iran. Its vision for stamping liberal democracy on Iraq proved illusory, with the country consumed by years of political upheaval, parliamentary paralysis and corruption.'
'Iraqis have their own diverse views on the legacy of the U.S. invasion, but some baseline realities are inescapable: Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed in the wake of Saddam’s ouster, their deaths at least indirectly linked to the chaos unleased by the United States. The American conduct of the war also has numerous grim chapters, from the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib to the near destruction of the city of Fallujah.'
'The Iraqi author Sinan Antoon told me this in 2021: “No matter what — and I say this as someone who was opposed to Saddam’s regime since childhood and wrote his first novel about life under dictatorship — had the regime remained in power, tens of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive today, and children in Fallujah would not be born with congenital defects every day.”
'What does this have to do with Ukraine? For months, U.S. and European officials have cast the conflict in Ukraine in stark moral terms. If Putin can succeed with a war of aggression across his borders, the argument has gone, then a dark agenda of territorial conquest and might making right wins out. President Biden has framed the contest as a clash between “all democracies” and Putin’s authoritarian project. Last November, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described the collective efforts of Ukraine’s Western allies as a reflection of “how much countries around the world value and respect the rules-based international order.”
'The legacy of Iraq undermines this rhetoric. For many people in the Middle East and elsewhere in the global South, the U.S. invasion is the most glaring recent episode in a long history of Western meddling and U.S. hypocrisy on the world stage. For officials in China and Russia, de facto adversaries of the United States, the Iraq War is an easy precedent to put forward to shoot down Washington’s talking points, no matter how self-serving and cynical that may be.'
“U.S. officials frequently invoke [the rules-based order] when criticizing or making demands of China,” noted Paul Pillar, a veteran former U.S. intelligence officer. “In no way can the offensive war against Iraq be seen as consistent with respect for a rules-based international order, or else the rules involved are strange rules.” (Sorry that gifted link is not available)
Does not all this -- both crime and punishment -- prove that rules are not enough?
Rules are only proof of failure, mere compensations for inadequacy... a fleshless skeleton; scaffolding for the work of first salvaging, then rebuilding better. If we can...
If we can?
We human beings have no choice but to do better. No choice but to achieve the impossible.
Does this not mean aiming beyond what is now seen as impossible?
Only one force can achieve that. A force neither material nor mechanical.
A force beyond naming, therefore I leave this space blank.
[We do have names for this. Only we must reach out beyond names, reach out beyond thinking and saying "the right thing", reach out towards living it.]
Peter, rules are crucial but without upholding them through monitoring and educated populace, they are as you wrote or I would say 'ghosts' that haunt our failure.
Yes, structure is crucial, order is crucial, foundations are crucial. But, as you make clear, all depends on how we bring life to them.
Thank you for the deeper insight in your last sentence.
Peter “The right thing” in war is determined by the winners. In private life, frequently it is cloaked in religiosity, which, unfortunately, has not been especially pure historically.
Thank you, but has HCR not been showing us how close the losing side has come to conclusively winning the Civil War?
Have we not all seen the resurrection of Nazism and Fascism, which those of us who are old enough to remember WW2 believed to be defeated, dead and buried?
Do we not know how China's skilled Mandarinate transformed the defeat and humiliation of the Empire by barbarians from the borderlands into the means of vast territorial expansion?
There's that Spanish saying, "The defeated are defeated, the victor is lost".
As I write this, I see that the loser in 2020 is at this very moment rallying his troops for yet another attempt to transform his defeat into victory.
Those who burrow into history may now remember such episodes as the Nike riots that came close to overthrowing the Roman Empire or the Taiping rebellion that cost tens of millions of Chinese lives.
Peter I vividly recall the Nuremberg War Crime Trials and the Japanese War Crimes Trials in Tokyo and elsewhere. I have no memory of trials of Allies who violated ‘rules of humanity.’
I recall someone saying “The victors write history.” Of course many years later other might add post scripts. I was a student of both sides’ accounts of the American war in the Philippines 1898-early 1900s. The American military behavior often was despicable. Several of the most despicable officers were decorated and promoted.
Peter, magnificent
Thank you, but no.
Magnificent will be when Americans, having exhausted the entire range of possible errors, learn from them and do the right thing.
And when the world does likewise.
But it is hard enough for individuals to learn from their errors.
We shouldn’t need rules. We break them all the time anyway. We shouldn’t need rules. In the kingdom of old king Cole there would not be enough rules. We could write until the end of time and not have enough rules. We shouldn’t need rules to be who we need to be.
Peter Burnett, the force is love, right? Reach out toward loving and the right actions will come from this. People who love don't lie, don't hurt others, and are energized by chasing after the truth.
I followed the Bush administrations hollow justification of invading Iraq closely and was amazed that Bush was allowed to perpetrate the crime. The aftermath with every aspect of the occupation and destruction of any forms of Governance by Paul Bremer ensured the chaos of a divided religious society.
But trying to use Iraq as a comparison to Ukraine is unfair to both episodes.
Especially telling is the Wests abandonment of the Bush/ Cheney crimes compared to Joe Biden’s reforming of the NATO decision to fully support the elected Government of Ukraine.
I think each war effort is separate and any comparison weakens the obvious justification of defending Democracy against Totalitarian expansion. If there is any viable comparison it is that of Hitler quietly daring the Allies with the occupation of Rhineland and so encouraged began his Eastward expansion.
Art, I think that it is absolutely appropriate to compare the US’s invasion of Iraq with Putin’s war on Ukraine. The US attacked with a false premise for self-interest and greed. The invasion was based on a lie. This country’s moral superiority over Russia looks rather quaint to me on this basis.
PS To compare the US with Russia on this basis does not minimize the culpability of both nor in any way mitigate Putin’s genocidal actions against Ukraine.
I totally didn't agree with how we particiapted in the Iraq conflict (not a declared war). However, the US didn't try to annex Iraq into our country and take over their government (as putin is doing in Ukraine). The plan was to free the people to run themselves. However, that certainly didn't happen. I blame it mostly on the greedy corporations who were managing Bush and getting rich off the whole fiasco.
I don't think the American Public ever got a sensible reason for Iraq, and indications at the time were that -- and I don't think there's been any real clarification since -- it was a "crime of opportunity." The NeoCons were looking for a new Pearl Harbor (i.e. an outrageous attack on the US, which they got with 9/11), to justify a major war somewhere, anywhere. The Pentagon was looking for a reason to exist post-USSR. Peak oil was projected for 2005. Bush was looking for a "legacy." Cheney was looking for power, and God-alone-knows what else.
So it's hard to compare it to anything, without comparing it to everything.
Joyce, the degree to which the US would control Iraq with a win … cannot be thought to be minor.
Dear Joyce —
”the US didn’t try to “annex Iraq into our country and take over the government”
Huge difference — Iraq was “never” part of the USA. I hope we can agree that’s not an accurate comparison. Ukraine and Russia’s history are completely different than the USA & Iraq.
Curious if The International Criminal Court has figured out who destroyed the Nord-Stream Pipeline? And just like Putin’s charges, we should all assume whomever was responsible for the pipeline’s destruction would also receive an arrest warrant…yes/no?
Maybe we could start here…. https://rumble.com/v2c4twd-biden-promising-to-end-the-nord-stream-pipeline.html
My view is that in Iraq the nation was sold the notion that sinister weapons of mass destruction had been developed by Hussein. This translated to nuclear and chemical weapons.
In the wake of 9/11 the plausibility of a threat to America was implicit with delivery not necessarily through military might but terrorist subterfuge.
This is far removed from agreeing to support the pleas of the Democratically elected leader for support of his efforts to stop Russia.
I think remaining silent in the Russian invasion of Crimea was Obama’s biggest error. But aiding a nation from being eradicated by another nation is not the same as invading a nation, destroying its culture and walking away.
Art, Please don’t conflate the comparison of the US invasion of Iraq and Putin’s War on Ukraine with questioning the US’ and NATO’s support for Ukraine. Total support for Ukraine was never in question.
Setting aside Democracy and Totalitarianism, the issue is whether to allow an ally to suffer at the hands of a bully, or to give assistance to that ally to fight off the bully, especially when the bully has additional victims in mind.
Putin wants everyone to agree that someone else’s crime justifies his crime. As everyone’s mother has said, two wrongs don’t make a right. Right (meaning correct), or Right (a moral entitlement.)
Putin and his defenders want the issue to be our hypocrisy, not his actions. Pure distraction technique, Other Things Are Worse (Whataboutism). OK, we are hypocrites. So what?
“In no way can the offensive war against Iraq be seen as consistent with respect for a rules-based international order, or else the rules involved are strange rules.”
Yes. We can definitely, in part, blame ourselves/the USA, for the war of aggression currently being waged by Putin on Ukraine.
After all: George W. Bush role modeled ignoring international law, human rights, the ICC rules, as he invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq.
If we, the USA, are going to role model behavior, well, we, the USA should expect others to emulate that behavior.
Like Putin. Who is emulating George W. Bush at the moment.
It is impossible to "like" this fact unless we hate ourselves and hate America, yet we must accept the truth. Only by accepting the reality of our errors can we learn from them. Only by learning from our errors can we overcome them.
"The truth shall make you free."
As I have heard in hallowed rooms many times over 28 years: If I am not the problem, there is not solution.
Realizing I am accountable is an act of self love and strength! I can hold two thoughts about the USA at the same time: I love it and we have done and continue to take horrible, cruel actions. I love it enough to want to help prevent our soul-searing mistakes. As we hurt others, we hurt ourselves.
Shamefully, at the present time, the Repubs refuse to accept "the reality of our errors" AND refuse to learn from them. CRT? Woke? Nothing more than pretense that US is completely and absolutely "exceptional"! Perfect!
No need to teach any kind of history.
The metaphor that has always come to me for the far-Right's war against woke is a horrible one: trying to stuff back into an abscess the pus that has oozed forth from it.
Considering how dreadful the almost unending nightmare of oppression has been, one might have expected "woke" reactions to be more extreme.
And thus our attention to the history that teaches us, that these letters sparkle with.
What’s not to “like” about the truth?
The truth is sans jingoism, false patriotism or love of “country”.
😊😊
Say amen Brother.
Robert🙏👍
I was among the millions who marched in an attempt to stop GWB from committing the atrocity we call the Iraq War.
I was listening to the radio (Thom Hartmann on Air America radio) when Shock and Awe hit Baghdad. Just sound because radio, but it was so horrendous that I was on my knees and crying as the bombs rained down on so many innocent people.
SinceTrump is so horrible, we tend to forget the war crimes committed by GW Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, etc., but they ruined Iraq and led to so much unnecessary death and destruction!
I did the same! I couldn't believe that the crowds of us ythat marched in Washington and all over the country couldn't force them to stop this travesty, though I been part of the Anti War movement in Vietnam..."when will we ever learn..."
Thank you, Cheryl, for the painful reminder.
The most awful thing is how many generations may suffer the damage inflicted by actions like these, in Iraq, throughout the region and far beyond it. Without forgetting the effects on those who took part in the assault.
U.S. foreign policy exists in a hall of mirrors of hypocrisy.
Biden has begun sending political refugees back to Russia.
“Immigration advocates were taken by surprise when a young Russian man, who came to the US fleeing Vladimir Putin’s efforts to mobilize citizens to fight in Ukraine, was abruptly deported at the weekend from the US back to Russia.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/18/biden-administration-russia-deportations
This is horrible! I read the article and am stunned! It makes no sense!
Our immigration policies are a mess! And a lethal mess for all too many people.
What?
Yes - WHAT??
FIRST—How do we get this KAFKA IN AMERICA lunacy out into the open from our hole-in-a-corner discussion here and shine bright arc lights on it? How do we make it a national issue—as VOLTAIRE would have done?
Maybe the Guardian's use of the words “BIDEN” and “BIDEN ADMINISTRATION” do just that. The first is manifestly unfair yet points to where the buck ultimately stops; the second is a statement of fact, outrageous fact, showing how the reality of malign bureaucratic idiocy can and does hide in any and every administration, public or private, that is trying to do its job.
Not only in America, in Ukraine and in many European countries too, the horror unleashed by one criminal madman at the head of a vast bureaucratic cobweb has brought hell to ordinary human beings—branded “Russians”—doing their damnedest to escape from the demons and their poisoned trap.
Revulsion at what Russians are doing and have done infects both victims and witnesses with the vile racist plague Putin has unleashed on the world.
Germans and German Jews trying to escape Hitler had to face this—read Auden's Refugee Blues now. Yes. Read it TODAY. https://allpoetry.com/refugee-blues
“Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.”
*
One significant cavil about both the Guardian article AND the crazed bumblings of America's immigration services:
Even if you want to send all Russian refugees back to Putin in a big package tied with a red bow, HOW THE HELL DO YOU PROPOSE TO DO IT?
Russia is sealed off from the rest of the world both on the inside and on the outside. Do you send them to Erdogan's Turkey or to Xi's China—maybe to Tblissi, Georgia—for “Return to Sender”?
Sounds more like labeling them “Stateless” and delivering them to bureaucratic limbos—like the kids escaping with or without parents from their Central American hells, grabbed on Drumpf's orders... then lost in the Ice's labyrinth...
*
Even further down in these cellars far under the main discussions of the day, JL Graham draws attention to KAFKA IN TENNESSEE:
Mar 18
This "hidden in plain sight major crime against humanity has attracted far, far, too little attention and redress. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/
Mar 19
More of the same: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/18/police-stopped-a-couple-in-tennessee-then-they-took-their-children-away
Excuse me, Sir, for repeating your references to ordinary everyday American-as-apple-pie oppression here—but the sorry tale raises one and the same issue: How do we get these gross scandals out into the open?
HOW?
How do we educate the seemingly uneducable, seemingly unreformable officials in our midst and prevent them from committing crimes even greater than those they themselves are paid to prevent?
HOW?
Noting, all the time, that in drawing attention to the endemic diseases of bureaucracy, we shall be feeding the evil propaganda of so-called libertarians, happy to damn all government activity save that which they themselves have instigated for their own nefarious purposes.
"The racist policies of Hitler and Nazism drew on American ideas and realities."
Correct. In particular, the Nazis carefully studied the U.S. Jim Crow laws as part of defining who was a Jew during the building the racist Nazi empire.
However, for the Nazi's, Jim Crow was too harsh. Instead of "one drop of blood" in a relative, like the Jim Crow definition of "Black", Jews were defined as Jews if they had one grandparent that was Jewish.
reference: The 1619 Book Project.
"The racist policies of Hitler and Nazism drew on American ideas and realities." Before laying all this on the USA, we should remember that the rising and brutal anti semitism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in eastern and central Europe had nothing to do with American ideas. Eugenics as an ethnically and racially biased concept was widespread across modern nations - Europeans and Americans widely believed in their "inherent superiority" over the races they had either conquered and/or enslaved. What kicked antisemitism into high gear in Germany and elsewhere was the 19th century mass migrations of Jews from Ukraine / Russia thanks to the expansion of the Russian imperial state. Small wonder the Nazis focussed on Poland in the "final solution"... cruel as Jim Crow was, hardly a match for the 12 million murdered or incinerated in the German crematoria. (6 million Jews, and 6 million others)
Without downplaying the horror of the holocaust, it is necessary also to consider that Soviet Russia starved or murdered perhaps twice the number of humans the Nazis murdered; and slavery, Jim Crow and continuing systemic racism in the US has cost many millions of lives as well. None of this grim history means that the US and its allies are wrong to support Ukraine as Putin imitates Stalin.
Let us focus on the world as it is now.
Any retracing of the roots of evil must be too simplistic, must ultimately be vain. We can only fail in our responsibility, in our duty, if we dwell on attributing blame.
We must do better or die.
*
Thank you for the reminder.
Peter,
Our best possible look into the past is, at least from my perspective, often very important. In fact, that is why I am reading Dr. Richardson's page every day.
She connects the past to the present to help us better understand the world as it is today.
If we take a pass on condemning that which, in the past, certainly needs to be condemned, then, we might be taking a pass on letting it all happen again.
I am in truth very much with you on this, or we would not be sharing the same reading or engaging in this conversation.
Insistence on NOW does not mean denial of the vast root system of our Now.
I once said to a friend that we need sometimes to go down into our roots, but we cannot live there, without air or light.
Besides, we cannot indulge in killing the tree by uprooting it to examine and analyse all that's hidden from plain sight...
My emphasis on America is entirely an effect of American power now, but when I write of American deeds, misdeeds, ideas and policies, I am never forgetting those of my own or other countries, other people. That should go without saying.
Peter, Mike; your thoughts here are some of the best of the best I’ve read in these letters. Great conversation
Understood and thank you for the amplification.
Thoughtfilled discussion for me. Our nation's leaders and policies have not ever been pure ... or consistently right. Impulsive, adhering to the beliefs and grudges of some portion of our people, too often. Yet, some how, despite our impure and too often policies with horrifying loses in live of our nation's sons and daughters, where on the arc do we continue to pursue the good on behalf of humanity or democracy as we propose it? Fern, Peter, Mike, Keith ... your questioning and experiences remind me (us?) of the importance of being critical of tents in light of our history. I think we can do right things, sometimes for the wrong reasons, but can never claim the high ground as defense for trying to do so or as shade for hypocrisy. Thanks to all of you at HCR LFAA. By the way, IMHO, I do see our helping coalesce nation's in defense of Ukraine as one of those right things to do in defense of liberal Western democracy as we know it. Perhaps because I forsee lessons from those democracies as pertinent to our struggles to achieve our aspirations and as a leader (model?) nation among them.
I like your analogy of root systems and trees. Makes me think.
Frank, we ARE "Bad to the bone!"
No, Emily, that won’t do.
We’ve fallen, we’re KO.
Then we wake up and find ourselves lying there in the filth.
The answer’s dead simple.
STAND UP!
Stand up, look for water, wash, then get on with living.
Yesterday, I used the term “Original Sin” in another context. But there’s no such thing as Original Sin, that’s just a brand for our backsides. A Scarlet Letter to keep us feeling guilty, the better to oppress and control us. When I’ve fallen, the choice is simple: lie there and grovel or rise to my feet as soon as I’m able to.
Great kickass tune
This "hidden in plain sight major crime against humanity has attracted far, far, too little attention and redress. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/
More of the same: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/18/police-stopped-a-couple-in-tennessee-then-they-took-their-children-away
When the ICC was formed the president was W, who himself could have been indicted for war crimes for attack on Iraq, which of course had neither nukes nor viable biological weapons, was president. Of course the “greatest democracy “ wouldn’t submit its dear leader to an international court.
America’s greatness has passed. We have outrageous inequality, half the wealth owned by less than 1% of the population while children sleep in cars, and the wealthy pay virtually nothing in taxes but buy congress and seats on the Supreme Court, which says of course it’s perfectly legal.
Maybe my cynicism will be ameliorated a bit if Old Teety does a peep walk. On Fifth Avenue would be appropriate.
It's looking like Trump will actually be indicted and arrested this coming Tuesday, so I hope your cynicism will be so ehwt ameliorate.
I do disagree that America's greatness has passed. It seems to me that we have not yet achieved the greatness so many like to claim. I hope to see us move toward it during my lifetime though, admittedly, these times are pretty dark. 😪
Dumpty claims he’ll be arrested. Far from something to bet on, and he won’t be arrested but asked to come in. You might assume he’ll refuse in favor of making a big drama out of it. That is probably a safe bet.
I hope your optimism is warranted. I don’t think humanity has the time for any more glory. I expect more wars, more squabbling over resources and population displacement. 8 billion is far too many humans.
It looks like most, if not all, of the charges against tr... will be misdemeanors, but it might start the cascading effect of all the other cases in line, which can eventually bring that crook down. We can only hope!
Campaign finance violations are misdemeanors. When a crime is committed in furtherance of another crime, it’s a felony. That’s the Bragg case, and the fact that he waited so long to bring it (if indeed he does, as dumpty is braying this morning) seems auspicious. I’m more hopeful about the RICO case in Georgia , which might get Meadows, Giuliani and graham along with others and the fat orange Cheeto himself.
And then there what Jack Smith is pursuing. As a former ICC corruption dragon, I’m optimistic about at the least the documents case, but also the coup case.
Am so disappointed in Garland. He would have made a far better Supreme Court justice, with his careful weighing of matters, than a knight fighting corruption and crime. Imo the worst crime ever committed on American soil.
Not sure, but those children entered our borders on their own volition or with family, rather than being dragged into our country and then "placed for adoption." That doesn't excuse the atrocity, but it is not the same thing. Having said that, our own aggressive history of wars and incursions brings shame to the US, too. It is hard to reconcile that with our own love of country.
Hope, your comment is the first I have read today, and I wish I hadn't. Your "of their own volition" characterization implies that the children of any age are responsible for the consequences of their actions, that these babies should have been aware of the risks they took and cognizant of the unsettled political climate on our side of our border with them.. It smacks of the charge that poor folks are responsible for their condition; worse, that a 10-or-12 year old girl should have known she might be impregnated during rape and should have acted accordingly.
Thank you Ed. Sometimes you have to point out the obvious. Thank you for doing so in this case.
Please see my comment directly below.
Some children hopped "The Beast" the slow freight train that meanders through Mexico. Usually they are pre-teens or older. I should have said "by their own means." Migration is a problem that is immense, world wide. 100 million people are migrating. Their home countries are corrupt, in war, destitute, and ravaged by climate issues.
As someone who lived in Central America I understand the causes of migration. I am also someone who lived among the very poor and continue to do all in my power to illuminate the causes of poverty. They are horrific. However, once again, unlike the issues of Putin's indictment, no one in this nation entered another country and abducted children to be raised here. I am responding to the original question far above, "Why wasn't Trump also singled out by the ICC?"
The assumption that I am blaming the children who entered the United States is very far off base. Frankly, I hope Trump is indicted right here in this country for his many conscienceless actions.
This country repeatedly entered other nations and abducted children from their families and communities, either to be reared by white families (or used as servants), or placed in schools deliberately located to be difficult or impossible for parents to find. This continued until just a few decades ago. I'm not blaming you: overlooking these events is a convenience imployed throughout America to preserve our sense of privilege. It's easier to admit the wrongs done overseas, it seems.
I really appreciate your reminder, Annie. After 400+ years, the large majority of Americans still want to act like the extermination of millions of Native people and the assimilation efforts and oppression of millions more wasn't an enormous atrocity.
Living as an Anglo in New Mexico the last 20+ yrs., with multiple Pueblo and Hispanic communities nearby, I've slowly learned how blind, brainwashed, and mythologized I was before re: the US's "Westward Expansion". Northern Europeans, and especially English-speakers (my ancestors), had an awesome arrogance and willingness to treat other cultures ruthlessly - for centuries.
These terrible injustices should be taught straight out in our schools. The periodic brutality of tribes to one another should not be skipped either. The depravity of Jim Crow can not be downplayed. But neither should thousands of acts of bravery, kindness, and wisdom by Americans from dozens of backgrounds. It's complicated!!
Most of human history carries tons of cruel baggage. My highest hope is that people - starting right here and right now - will start getting steadily better at squarely facing the evil, remembering those who did very moral and/or inspiring things, and holding all of that at one time.
If that becomes the rule rather than the exception say 50 yrs from now (assuming we've survived), Americans will be repulsed by the idea of repeating things like our Iraq invasion and putting immigrant children in cages.
But there will still be tyrants in the world who want to steal territory for wealth and power, crushing communities in the process. Many nations, working together, will still need to violently stop them. Just without the self-righteousness of "our people have never done such a thing".
I certainly agree, Annie. I hope you realize that I am only referring to the current moment in time; the equivalency of Putin's scheme and genocide with Trump's immigration policy, not this nation's horrific history of slavery, assimilation, and it's own form of genocide.
IMO, Putin deserves every illumination upon his craven criminality. I think I will keep that focus for the time being, while hoping next week sees indictments of Trump, too. Like Putin, the charges may be small potatoes in comparison with a lifetime of depravity, but it's the outcome that matters.
Your point is much clearer with this post, and I adjust my reply in consideration of that. Sometimes what is intended and what is read are misaligned, as in this case. As far as your second part, "no one in this nation" , I hope you are referring to recent history so I don't react as I did previously. History shows us repeatedly that the Overclass, some of whom were formerly Underclass, controls the policies, the financial strength, the direction and the narrative, and as a result place those not in their camp in the Underclass to be dismissed, maligned, treated poorly, and stomped on at every opportunity. We are approaching Dictatorship status in our country, and soon what is left of our middle class will be seriously depleted, to increase the population of lower socio-economic levels. Best if I stop here. Thank you for reiterating your earlier comment.
And thank you for your compassionate response.
Well, infants, toddlers, children and adolescents were torn from their family and tossed to the wind. Perhaps go back to WSJ archives and see how many full page ads were ran by various adoption resources. Your last point is well taken. Wars and incursions to support and preserve corporate profits.
Hello? How did you conclude I was blaming the kids? Please note I used the word "atrocity" when referring to Trump's policy. I was saying that unlike Putin, our "dear leader" did not go to another country and devise a scheme for repatriating its children.
Hope, it was simple to come to that conclusion because that is exactly the language you used. Perhaps it would be helpful to admit that you need to be more careful with how you express your thoughts rather than blaming others for "misunderstanding" you.
I think that my response was so far down the line from the opening question, why wasn't Trump indicted by the ICC, that it truly was misunderstood. I also acknowledged that "own volition" should have been "by their own means," i.e. older children.
I strongly reacted to the impression others had that I disregarded the children themselves. I would never do that, Annie. Yes, taken out of context, I can see the misunderstanding that I also had.
I've spent a life-time reaching out to the world's disadvantaged people and I am of the mind that the issue of immigration (far different form Putin's actions) is an immense problem which I hope will see the influx of funding and attention to causes that it needs, desperately.
No. He's simply saying the children entering the United States entered under their own or their parents volition. They came for opportunities not incarceration. The Ukrainian children have literally been kidnapped. They and their parents had no interest in becoming Russian. Many of these children are too young to understand what's happening to them. When they do, they'll be angry.
Some children hopped "The Beast" the slow freight train that meanders through Mexico. Usually they are pre-teens or older. I should have said "by their own means." Zella, you really need to get this, because it is a problem that is immense. World wide, 100 million people are migrating. Their home countries are corrupt, in war, destitute, and or ravaged by climate issues.
As someone who lived in Central America I understand the causes of migration. They are horrific. However, once again, unlike the issues of Putin's indictment, no one in this nation entered another country and abducted children to be raised here. I am responding to the original question far above, "Why wasn't Trump also singled out by the ICC?"
The assumption that I am blaming the children who entered the United States is very far off base. Frankly, I hope Trump is indicted right here in this country for his many conscienceless actions.
I was wondering exactly the same!
It seems that the US is not a member of the ICC ..."the US does not recognize the court". https://apnews.com/article/icc-putin-war-crimes-ukraine-9857eb68d827340394960eccf0589253
Our government, whichever party is in power, has never wanted to be held liable for all of the war crimes that we have committed over the years, so the U.S. has always refused to join the ICC.
Correct,
The US is not a member of the ICC. Exactly why George W. Bush has not been in jail for the last 20 years after the huge number of war crimes he committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. At least Trump did not machine gun the migrant children like George W. Bush did.
https://www.aba-icc.org/about-the-icc/the-us-icc-relationship/#:~:text=At%20present%20123%20nations%20have,is%20not%20a%20State%20Party.
"KABUL - Troops in attack helicopters that belong to the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan mistakenly killed nine boys Tuesday with machine-gun and rocket fire as they collected firewood, the international forces acknowledged Wednesday.
U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, ordered all field commanders and helicopter crew members to study their orders again on when coalition aircraft can open fire on people on the ground.
The coalition said it was "deeply sorry" for the error."
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?unlocked_article_code=2uOxq3Vjk5kEq8PYilLS7qBcuVhJneWc-8UL067B8wC_UdtERY46JNohjNIJ-fktEkb2pWZvhUjMU39_s1F1nfL5R5nUrWdOkvV5dbohElzvw82jo8kNDNEKYx6pCpyyic3OfckSnBe6Z0ZqLcFbg9ZIGiPKdZauMZX4oNN0lRTbEBMMbWeI6oEr5En-rTq2vPO6CLROTPwM5FcoV4W5VHc-WILNqQapiu8AlAOBTioQKILyZir5FzktIQonari8x0eloQaGWnV7m_2-aoadw8lyoen8MSQlEHoyzOA0VhkxPQbTUmg37R6d-EkAxnUQQz9GaOg&smid=share-url
Or, torture the kids parents like George W. Bush did:
"Documents popularly known as the Torture Memos came to light a few years later. These documents, prepared in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States Department of Justice, authorized certain "enhanced interrogation techniques" (generally held to involve torture) of foreign detainees. The memoranda also argued that international humanitarian laws, such as the Geneva Conventions, did not apply to American interrogators overseas. Several subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), have overturned Bush administration policy, ruling that the Geneva Conventions do apply."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
Thank you Betsy. I never knew this.
which is why they can never forgive Assange.
Huh…
Betsy, that's the truth of it! We are blind in many ways, but conscious enough of our own guilt to fear submitting many of our leaders to that jurisdiction
That sounds right.
I, too, am very disappointed in HCR for failing to mention that the US does not recognize the ICC, and in fact sanctioned its members for their attempt to hold us accountable for the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo. The issue of the Putin indictment seems an excellent source of insight into war crimes committed by ANY nation.
There's only so much room in these letters. Bush and Guantamo aren't current events. But it probably does explain Bush staying in Texas and painting. He'd be vulnerable to arrest in countries that are signees of the ICC.
Yes there are countries who found members of the George W Bush administration guilty of war crimes in abstentia and there are active arrest warrants to serve if those found guilty travel outside the US to certain areas.
but not the ICC itself, right? I did find Kuala Lampur for one, and it's been considered a mock trial.
did the ICC ever indict Bush? Never heard of it myself.
United States participation in the ICC treaty regime would also be unconstitutional because it would allow the trial of U.S. citizens for crimes committed on U.S. soil, which are otherwise entirely within the judicial power of the United States. Actually, dozens of countries are not ICC members, including China, India, Russia, and the United States.
The U.S. did not sign the Rome Statute.
Well, she *did* mention it: "the U.S. is not a signatory to the Rome Statute."
You’re right, Mike. On my first cup of coffee—missed it.
We are also one of a handful of nations who did not join the ban on the use of land mines. These devices are notorious for injuring civilians long after the military combat has ended.
That still strikes me as one of our greatest humanitarian failures. 😡😓
“That the warrant focuses on children is also significant. Of the 123 countries that are parties to the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court, 33 are African, 19 are in the Asia-Pacific region, 18 are in Eastern Europe, 28 are in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 25 are in Western Europe and elsewhere.”
“The international assessment that Putin has engaged in war crimes is significant in the United States as well, even though the U.S. is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. “
Jack, she did mention it.
" ...even though the U.S. is not a signatory to the Rome Statute." She does. Russia does not recognize it.
That’s correct.
Russia doesn’t, either.
HCR wrote “ The international assessment that Putin has engaged in war crimes is significant in the United States as well, even though the U.S. is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.”
It was part of the next section.
The U.S. is not part of the ICC. Frankly, I'd be happy if Russia kidnapped Trump, Miller, Meadow, Stone and a dozen others. Relocate them to Siberia, keep them in cages like they kept the little ones at the border.
Why would they? Trump has been Putin's most successful project.
Thank you. I just subscribed. "Free" is more doable for me, as I am retired on fixed income. I was fascinated at one time by and with Greco-Roman history. Perhaps this has rekindled that interest!
Caveat Emptor.
Buyer beware. Something I should know?
They realise that it's probably pointless. The US is not a member of the ICC, and in a more general sense, is more or less untouchable by the outside world where its internal affairs and policies are concerned.
. . . and Governors Abbot (TX) & DeSantis (FL) for kidnapping migrant adults & children!
We get all shame-scaping about the Russian children's relocation program (which I consider an horrific crime) while the Trump Admin farmed out children to "parents" who were not their biological parents. In fairness, for the most part those children have been paired back with their biological parents. Yet, we do not get a "pass".
When did you have your traitorous epiphany
Very heavy news day. Thanks HRC for organizing it for us. So much corruption and spin and helpful to find clarity here.
I must say the conscription of Ukrainian children certainly pulls at the heart and the future of Ukrainian culture. As any history lover will know it is an old playbook used to crush a culture. One that was used with Native Americans here in our own history. So sad to see these terrorizing acts against culture continued
'There is little prospect of Mr. Putin standing trial in a courtroom anytime soon. The International Criminal Court cannot try defendants in absentia and Russia, which is not a party to the court, dismissed the warrants as “meaningless.”
'Yet the court’s move carried indisputable moral weight, putting Mr. Putin in the same ranks as Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the deposed president of Sudan, accused of atrocities in Darfur; Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader imprisoned for abuses during the Balkans war; and the Nazis tried at Nuremberg after World War II.'
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility,” said the court, which was created two decades ago to investigate war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.'
'Both Russians, the court said, bore “responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
'As a practical matter, the warrant could restrict Mr. Putin’s travels, since he could face arrest in any of the 123 countries that have signed on to the International Criminal Court — a list that includes virtually all European countries and several in Africa and Latin America, but not China or the United States.' (NYTimes)
Thanks for this info Fern.
Wonderful to see you, MaryPat, makes me imagine that it is Sunday. 💓
We must continue to put action with our words.....well thought out actions for the wellbeing of our earthly neighbors from the youngest to the oldest.
Democracy is not free. We have a responsibility to care for children and women in our country and throughout the world.
When we devalue another human being on this earth and use them for personal profit, a part of our humanity dies and with it our planet home.
When we choose love and respect, we will see the evidence of good growth that gives everyone a chance for life, success and respect.
Bro, you iz looper than a cat's cradle caught in pile carpeting.
Will, “inter-looper”?
Got this.
Are you a better liar than Rupert
YOUR CORDIAL PUBLIC SERVICE REMINDER that the end of gerrymandering, limiting dark money, ending voter suppression, codifying reproductive rights, codifying LGBT rights, commonsense gun regulations, police reform, a Civilian Climate Corps, drug price caps, universal childcare and elder care, free preschool and community college, paid family and medical leave, a $15 minimum wage, federal union and worker protections, the child tax credit, 2 new senators from the new state of D.C., a general respite to the nonsense, and so much more... can be all yours in just a little over 600 days if the following things happen with regards to the federal government, which MAKE NO MISTAKE, we still control the composition of. (Call now and tell a friend! Limited time only with a set of steak knives!)
1) Joe Biden needs to stay President. Obviously. And since he is a) doing a good job by b) enacting very popular policies, and c) the US has never elected back-to-back one-term Presidents of different parties, I'd say we are looking good.
2) We need one more anti-filibuster vote in the Senate. To make this happen:
John Tester and Sherrod Brown will need to outperform the rest of the party in their red states of Montana and Ohio, respectively. Both of them have in fact previously outperformed Kerry, Obama, and Clinton by very large margins. They clearly think they can do so again, and we shouldn't doubt them. (If Joe Manchin does so as well, then yay, because an extra seat is helpful. If not, then I can't be bothered, because f#ck that jagweed.)
Elissa Slotkin needs to hold Debbie Stabenow's current seat in Michigan. Slotkin is a fantastic candidate who has won multiple times now in a swingy/conservative area. The Repubs have not won statewide since the early 90s, and have yet to begin finding a viable candidate.
Ruben Gallego needs to replace Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona. He is one of the most popular, vibrant, and hardworking politicians in the blue-ing state, and early polling shows that even in a potential three-way race, he runs neck-and-neck to win. (It will very likely not be a three-way, as our favorite "independent" hasn't even said if she will run again. Anyone want to make bets on which corporate boards she is deciding between? Or maybe she'll just go work at The Gap. Or Gymboree.)
Are you in one of these states? THEIR CAMPAIGNS HAVE ALREADY STARTED! Donate, volunteer, write letters to the editor in support, start talking them up to neighbors. The works!
3) We need to win the House back. Where to look?
The following 23 Repub-held districts were won (or would have been won) by Biden and/or had a margin of ~3% or under in 2022:
Arizona 1st (Schweikert)
Arizona 6th (Ciscomani)
California 13th (Duarte)
California 22nd (Valadao)
California 27th (Garcia)
California 40th (Kim)
California 45th (Steel)
Colorado 3rd (Boebert)
Iowa 3rd (Nunn)
Michigan 10th (James)
Montana 1st (Zinke)
Nebraska 2nd (Bacon)
New Jersey 7th (Kean)
New York 1st (LaLota)
New York 3rd (Santos)
New York 4th (D'Esposito)
New York 17th (Lawler)
New York 19th (Molinaro)
New York 22nd (Williams)
Oregon 5th (Chavez-DeRemer)
Pennsylvania 1st (Fitzpatrick)
Virginia 2nd (Kiggans)
...and the following are the mirror-image Dem-held districts (* means they already won in 2020 with Biden):
Alaska (Peltola)
Colorado 8th (Caraveo)
Connecticut 5th (Hayes)*
Maine 2nd (Golden)*
New Mexico 2nd (Vasquez)
New York 18th (Ryan)
North Carolina 13th (Nickel)
Ohio 9th (Kaptur)*
Oregon 6th (Salinas)*
Pennsylvania 7th (Wild)*
Pennsylvania 8th (Cartwright)*
Washington 3rd (Gluesenkamp-Perez)
If all the Democrats win (and that's plausible - no incumbent Repub was beaten in 2020 after their down midterm), then we only need to flip FIVE of 23 races to take back the trifecta. That's not even all our options in New York ALONE! (Seriously, WTF went on in New York last time? I need it to make sense.) Statistically, a winning presidential ticket should see at least that coattails effect naturally through increased turnout.
Are you in one of these states or districts? Are you anywhere near one of these districts? START GETTING FREAKING READY. We can do this, y'all. Don't let the fact the dreams of glory got another delay distract you. We are so, so close.
IN THE MEANTIME, use the this world wide web of ours to find ways to support Janet Protasiewicz for Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Her winning in a few weeks would flip the court, pretty much guaranteeing gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the chance of election subversion stops in the ultimate tipping-point state.
Will is BACK.
I was looking for him!
Me, too! Someone mentioned on this forum that Sandy Lewis has been absent for awhile. I was forwarded a blog by Michael
Moore and noticed he commented on that.
Don’t forget to support Ohio’s remapping of congressional and state districts that are currently considered unconstitutional under state law. That alone would add three Dems to Congress.
Ohio is only a red state because Democrats quit voting. It is so heavily gerrymandered, they don’t bother to participate.
Oh, we have voter suppression to go along with our gerrymandering too. But to be fair, Ohio is very red outside of our blue cities. Getting out the vote in our urban and suburban areas is key. I live in an affluent suburb of Columbus. When we moved here in 1994, it was solidly, mainstream Republican. It’s now pretty solidly liberal, and that gives me hope. We have, of course, been chopped off from our old half rural, half suburban congressional district and added to Columbus’s, because that blue shift was beginning to threaten a previously safe Republican congressional seat. At least l like my representative now, for the first time in a long time.
My daughter lives in the Columbus district that’s shared with Zanesville, and has a rep who proudly pronounces that he only represents the voters of Zanesville. Ugh.
God forbid he might represent those liberals in Athens! At least she doesn’t have Jim Jordan, it could be worse. It’s obscene that we’re using unconstitutional maps.
Cannot hit enough likes for this! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Every day between the local news and the national news there is an ad against Biden and then it tells people to call Gluesenkamp-Perez. I have taken to actually shutting off the TV for a couple minutes. I have not seen anything yet against Salinas whose district I am in. We will also donate to whomever takes on Chavez-DeRemer who barely won even after that jerk Schroeder refused to help the D who was running. Here in Salem, not too far away from us we had the Flynn show aided and abetted by the Keizer Police. In some good news a school district near Portland refused to take some books off the shelves that were under attack. Here in Salem the wing nuts have been busy dissing the new school superintendent who starts in the summer. She is too woke. Gosh, she believes in inclusion of all students....comes from the Tulsa Oklahoma school district, so has had practice dealing with people like this. And i agree that Bush should have been held accountable for Iraq. I thought the Bush crime family was bad until death star came along.
I was hoping that Oregon was a safe haven. I have a friend that moved back from MT bc MT was too radical
Depends on where you go in Oregon. We still have our MAGAts, but Michele has far more of them in her area than I do here in Eugene, although ours are getting more vocal and outlandish.
Ally, are you saying that the state capital is full of wing nuts???
Who, me?😇
LOL.
Montana used to be a bipartisan state but there's been a concerted effort for years to radicalize toward the extreme far right.
Will, the two Oregon districts you mention are interesting. The 5th district (southern and eastern Oregon) is the heart of conservative thought; rural and disconnected from the Willamette Valley, and most demonstrative of the current US rural/urban divide. The 6th district was a brand new one created for Oregon after the results of the 2020 census. It is oddly small, nestled west of Salem and east of the Coast Range with a finger extending to the west end of the Portland metro area and is, I suspect, the smallest district in both size and population. Great effort was taken by the legislature to avoid a gerrymandering situation where (with a supermajority in the state legislature) Democrats could have insured a democratic outcome.
I think the 6th is a realistic target; the 5th wants to be Greater Idaho.
Ally, the eastern/southern Oregon district is the second represented by Cliff Benz. The fifth is the one here in the valley, parts of Schroeder's old district, but stretching to Bend, represented by DeRemer. We are in the 6th district represented by Salinas. Our state legislators are worthless Rs.
Darn it! That is what I get for not looking it up and going with my memory.
Thank you Will!
l live in MT & can tell you that the MAGA Christian Nationalist are alive & flourishing. The super majority in the MT legislature have been turning out bills reflecting their "Christian Values". The 3 R(RINOs) in US Congress post mis leading statements, usually with faux news as their source or feel good photo opts. Tranel ran for Zinke's seat. I dont know how much the DNC spent on her campaign but Z out spent her & won. I hope she runs again! & gets more support $$$$
For sure I am sending money to Tester. MT folks like him so he might have a good chance at reelection. My daughter lives in Helena and is aghast at the bills the Legislature there is trying to pass.
Me too and I live in England.
I hope she is taking up oxygen
Actually she works for the state of Montana and is frequently asked to testify for/against bills. She will be so glad when this legislative term is over.
As always, thank you, Will!!
So helpful to have all this info in one place! Thanks, Will!
How can I share your whole comment? Have tried copy and paste, but can't get my phone to capture the whole thing.
Will, thanks for the Instruction Manual!
Thank you Will!
It’s past time to recognize that The United States is under attack by domestic Christo-Fascists willing to use violence to achieve the goals they are unable to achieve in fair elections. These efforts are funded by a cabal of Wealthy White Male “Christian” oligarchs and authoritarian foreign governments. Letting this assault continue under the guise of Free Speech is suicidal.
Watch The Family on Netflix to see this unfold for over 80 years.
So the Federalist Society claims that “democracy… would result… in the tyranny of the majority.” Perhaps they need to be reminded the etymology of the term: “The word democracy comes from the Greek words "demos", meaning people, and "kratos" meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as "power of the people": a way of governing which depends on the will of the people.” https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/democracy
The F.S. and the right wing are much like Putin and his Russian dolls. Spin and gaslight, spin and gaslight. Whatever you do, spin the truth and tell others they are wrong. It's maddening, but it's beginning to seem like the jig is up.
My fervent hope.
Fundamental to our form of government is majority rule, minority rights. But a segment of the population wants to have it both ways when it suits them.
They want whatever they want and cook up whatever superficially plausible lie seems to justify their taking it.
Republicans don’t want democracy. They state that common voters will want to have “goodies” for themselves. (Think health care, etc.)
I concluded a while back that right-wingers simply view people as inherently greedy and selfish, and therefore see staunch withholding and denial as necessary to keep society from collapse. They just don't trust people is the long and short of it. But really it's because not-so-deep-down THEY are greedy, they know they are, and they do not possess the imagination to realize that other people may possibly have different base desires than they do.
Well said Will. Their kindness is restricted to its exchange value, with little to no compassion or empathy.
Yes, Will, I agree with you. But their lack of imagination could be understood as a lack of evolving to a state where empathy for others beyond their own group, however they might define it, is possible. I'm reading Ken Wilber's book, Trump and a Post-Truth World, which looks at stages of human evolution, which we all must traverse, and how people's thoughts and actions reflect where they are or are not in this evolution. It is worthwhile reading and opened me up to some new ways of appreciating the various states of consciousness being reflected in our world and how best to move forward. It's intense reading, but thankfully, as Wilber is known to do, he repeats what he is trying to say in many different ways to drive his point home.
My goodies !!! You don't get any !!!
My tax money to buy those goodies, they would claim.
The Federalist Society thinks that Democracy doesn't know the difference between it's €£¥hole and a hole in the ground. They are the turd that made the journey.
Power to the People. Yes. But right now the people of France are running amok because Macron wants to increase the retirement age to 64 in order to balance the national budget. France has the most cushy employee regulations one can imagine, with breathtaking social security benefits.
And they want more - lots more.
Had this conversation last night with my significant other. Yes, worker benefits for French workers are higher than most Americans can imagine, but that is not the issue. The French people support this, the right and the left, and Macron has used extraordinary measures to deny them. There are factors we might not have considered—opportunities for younger French workers, the distribution of wealth, the need for child care provided by older people, for example. I don't know, but it's a dangerous assumption that Macron is wiser than the people who put him in power.
It might be a mistake he is making........wonder why.
I think we can assume he, like most Republicans here, doesn't want to antagonize the wealthiest French people.
Huh. Funny, the very definition of the word "Democracy" is "majority rule" ( oversimplified by me, best described by Rose). I think they misplaced their label of "tyranny" there, since that is what minority rule would be, especially as they want to define it.
Also, thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole investigating the difference between etymology and etiology.
Yes kudos to Rose and you for pointing out both the meaning and the disease that resulted from such pathological thinking.
You’re welcome, Ally!
We already have the tyranny of the MAGAts…
I wonder why the DOD hasn't punished Flynn for his behavior? I thought they could recall and court martial him, or at least deny his benefits and pension due to his being involved in attempts to undermine our government. Is he being protected by his brother and other officers who agree with his right-wing rhetoric?
https://www.justsecurity.org/76874/what-to-do-about-lt-general-retired-flynn-military-justice-and-civil-military-relations-considerations/
A very long and detailed and informative discussion of the issues surrounding a court martial of Michael Flynn. The answer appears to be yes without needing to recalled to active duty first. But I am not a lawyer and this a heavy read for this early in the morning. It may be that his statements in his new speaking tour are explicit enough to pass the test.
Thank you for this link! It does appear the answer is yes. And with good reason.
He is retired military - the most they could do - and I'm not even sure of that, is withhold his pension.
I believe he can be recalled to active duty and be court martialed.
Leavenworth is lovely this time of year.
I suspect your opinion is erroneous given the thoughtful consideration of the issue in the link provided below by Georgia. The article is well worth reading/consideration.
Fay, so let that be so
According to Nelson DeMille, they could.
I'd like to see the R's try to define "deep state". They would probably have as much success as they have had with "woke".
I'd like to see them really pin down what they mean by a lot of things, including the specifics of MAGA. Without Newspeak, they wouldn't have words at all.
Start with democracy.
That would be mean.
ICYMI: https://twitter.com/vanguard_pod/status/1635749284355211264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1635749284355211264%7Ctwgr%5E8c23d91150f03dfbd6fa962bca66e6408844abb9%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fiframe.nbcnews.com%2FYZD4rGb%3F_showcaption%3Dtrueapp%3D1
Stupefied Speaker McCarthy and his Animal House renegades are playing Russian roulette. A stray bullet could splatter the American economy, trigger millions of job losses, and sully the ‘full faith and credit’ of the United States.
These would-be suicide bombers are seeking to hold the once-routine raising of the national debt limit hostage to their demands of no new taxes and draconian slashes in ‘social spending.’ (Such has never occurred under Republican presidents.)
The recent Fed/Treasury emergency measures to prevent a cascade of regional bank bankruptcies following the Silicon Valley Bank depositor debacle is a fire bell of the fragility of our financial system.
Default on America’s national debt would spark a roaring financial fire that would push the United States into recession, shatter our vulnerable credit network, and spread flames throughout the global financial world.
THIS CAN NOT BE PERMITTED TO HAPPEN!
House arsonists may, with their warped minds, believe that triggering a recession would be blamed on President Biden and would assure a White House Republican in 2024. They are woefully mistaken.
President Biden displayed steely boldness in spearheading America’s leadership of an unprecedented Western, NATO, Eastern European, and global riposte to Putin’s brutal assault on Ukrainian sovereignty.
He must be equally bold in assuring that our national debt limit is increased this summer. This is not a matter for fatuous ‘negotiation.’ Rather, it is an imperative for the United States.
President Biden should confront these naysayers with an ultimatum: approve a national debt increase with no supercilious strings.
Were this not to occur, then Biden can accomplish this unilaterally under a legal interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
Good old fashioned American common sense is the appropriate response to Russian roulette.
Keith, I certainly hope that you are accurate in your assessment. I would love to see the scenario play out where the Klown Kar Kaucus rants, raves, and refuses to raise the debt ceiling, provoking that application of the 14th Amendment. Once that matter is settled, there is another section of the 14th Amendment that could (and should) be applied following that rigamarole: Section 3.
AH The Stench Court would be faced with either approving Biden’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment or plunging America and other countries into economic chaos. I doubt that the six black robes would wish to Court disaster.
Tuba mama Klown Kar Kaucus (KKK) joins our dictionary of despicables that includes Repulsive Racist Republicans (RRR). 24 more letters in the alphabet.
Keith, Biden says, the 14th Shall Not be infringed on my watch. Its my stick, and Mr McCarthy can suck eggs; Roberts and the Gang of 6 as well”
Dave So McCarthy, Roberts, and the rest of the motley crew would be hoisted on a Constitutional petard. ‘Let the rockets red glare…and our flag was still there!’
I am still in shock that these clowns were elected !!! Should we not have strict screenings required by those who want to run to govern/lead in any office within our country? They are making up their own rules as they destroy our nation for short term selfish gain that will lead to destruction!!
We have elected complete liars....I would even say enemies of democracy..... to serve in the Congress of The United States of America and nothing can be done about it. ( I am not naive as to believe members of our congress, men or women are innocent....or that our government is "pure" but this is beyond my imagination!)
I do pray that Biden and others who are wise and trained by experience and the knowledge of how to govern this country we love and that is our home, will overcome.
They will still twist Putin's war crimes against Ukraine's children as virtues and not authoritarianism. As fascists they will fall into Putin's propaganda that someone else (Russia) can raise the children better. It's the same in the U.S. when conservatives have the idea they can raise kidnapped South American children, or poverty level U.S. children their "proper" way. They just can't seem to grasp the concept of it's kidnapping someone else's child. They think their cult will "save" the children. 🙄
Or the children of Indigenous Americans.
Yes soldiers arm up to fight and die in war. woman and children die in often greater numbers as collateral damage, or suffer with life long trauma as survivors.
Of course, we have kidnapped American Indians and “re-educated” them.
Sociopathic thinking.
I would think that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would sanction Michael Flynn and take away all of his pension and court martial him for going against the constitution. The democrats must be louder than the republicans. The don't understand that the only message getting across is the GOP rewrite
General Milley is no fan of the MAGA bunch.
I don’t understand why Flynn has not been recalled and court martialed.
Christopher, I really hope Flynn will be punished. Dump is the highest on the list for justice to be done. We may have to give up on the lesser miscreants involved with Dump.
Flynn is SO DANGEROUS.
He was a red flag for me from the start. Pompouspeo is also a red flag. I agree, 100%, MaryPat.
Only if they rat.
What I find surprising is that US pols (including the President) are not linking Putin to the atrocities committed by Hitler: Violating borders, killing civilians, destroying cities. This man is "Hitler revisited." He needs to be correctly identified as the international pariah that he has become.
He is certainly of similar character.
…and one of our most recent crimes against children here in the US!
'When a fourth-grader in Florida was frustrated about having to sit out his afternoon recess, he penciled a word on an outdoor bench: kill. A teacher asked him about it, and he said it was what he wanted God to do to him.'
'His mother, Marah Marino, guessed he was hurt and angry. “He’s not a mature 10-year-old,” she said.'
'But soon, a sheriff’s deputy who was working in the school stepped in, using a controversial state law to order an involuntary psychiatric evaluation and confinement for up three days in a mental health facility. Marino, who rushed to the school after getting a call about the incident, was stunned, pleading with the officer and asking to be with her son.'
'The deputy drove away with the terrified boy, and Marino followed closely behind them in her car, watching her son stare out the back window, sobbing, his hand on the glass.'
'Every day in Florida, children and adolescents are involuntarily committed for psychiatric assessments under the Baker Act, a 1971 law. In fiscal year 2020-21, involuntary exams happened more than 38,000 times to children under 18 — an average of more than 100 a day and a nearly 80 percent increase in the past decade, according to the most recent data. The law is so deeply enmeshed into the state’s culture that it is widely used as a verb, as in: The 6-year-old was “Baker Acted.”
'Some children have been taken away in handcuffs.'
'In Florida, showing mental health struggles could get a child detained'
'Advocates say the Baker Act, designed as a measure of last resort, is not used that way. The result: Kindergarteners can be forcibly committed to psych centers for exams.' (WAPO) Sorry no gifted links available to me.
I am sickened by the inhumanity of this 10 year old being treated this way. Professionally trained mental health professions are the only people qualified to intervene in situations like this. It is extremely abusive to a child with life long implications of ptsd. Shame on the laws that treat children this way. As a social worker who worked with families in head start and schools I can not imagine working in an environment that you describe. These are children and we treat them as criminals. Shame on Florida and supporting a law like this. We are in big trouble if DeSantis is wins president.
This story disgusts me. One more day and one more reason to be glad I and my family escaped from Florida. Second best decision I ever made.
Fern McBride, thank you for sharing this policy; it’s important for Florida parents, all parents, to know. I read about this before. “Some children have been taken away in handcuffs.'” There is a great measure of insanity going on in this country. It’s not new, but it’s spreading just like tfg and his lies spread.
This is so tragic although not surprising as FL is one of worst states for mental health services.Also, all those boomers moving here discover the “freedom” state is severely lacking in funding/services for aging seniors.
Kathy, yes, and there is too much tragedy. It may seem to some that the word 'tragedy' is overused. Our sorrow is that 'tragedy' is now a major aspect of life in the USA today.
I do wonder, the claim Fla./Tx getting such influx of pop. True? Because it’s warm there? No children in tow nor concerns of the Ed quality? No serious health issues mental or physical, yet. No income tax on SS? Just those ? Tx much the same ? They’re all relatively unscathed for a goodly period, their anticipated longevity?
Curious.
😳🤦♀️
Let me get this straight — the folks upset that hospitals are refusing to use ivermectin, horse deworming medicine that is not approved for human use, to treat Covid are the same folks who are upset that mifepristone, a drug that been FDA approved and used safely for 20 years, claiming it was approved improperly. Oh, I get it. Logical inconsistencies and hypocrisy are not flaws in right wing thinking, they are features.
Some talking points on ivermectin:
Ivermectin is the dewormer of choice not only for horses but for most mammalian pets: what stands between a beloved dog or cat and a nasty death by heartworm is a regular dose of ivermectin. Excessive demand for veterinary ivermectin for use by humans can mean there's not enough to treat other people's animals on schedule. I know at least one veterinarian who is scathing on this point.
Ivermectin is approved in humans - for issues the worst of which most Americans don't normally face: diseases caused by roundworms. External parasites are treated externally, with a topical ivermectin cream. Internal parasites can be treated by injection or pill. River blindness is caused by a worm that lives and reproduces in the human body for ten to 15 years; nothing kills the adult worm without making the human host much sicker, but an annual dose of ivermectin slows down the adult while killing the year's crop of larvae, and it follows that missing a year because the supply has been bought up is not a good idea. Jimmy Carter had hoped that river blindness would be eradicated in his lifetime, and as of 2019 that was looking achievable - but the disease is on the upswing again.
Thank you! I wanted to comment to someone else's post, in which a claim was made that "profits" were the reason that Ivermectin was not approved against Covid, despite it's success against river blindness. Uhm ...or it could be because a corona virus is not a worm, unlike the parasite that causes river blindness. Your comment comes from a much deeper level of expertise than I have on the subject. Again, thank you!
Ivermectin has a surprising range of uses, but combating mild to moderate COVID appears not to be one of them.
Glad to be of service!
Thank you for this
“It was a stroke of genius really, to hide the micro chips in the horse dewormer.”
My poor horses! Extra microchips!
As a strange and funny anecdote, in some areas of the country, horse owners had to actually prove they owned horses before stores would sell them ivermectin. Showing your phone’s photo roll full of pictures of your horse was sufficient, because we’re all so horse crazy that our phones are, indeed, full of pictures of our horses. For a while, the ivermectin was in a locked cabinet at Tractor Supply and one had to get an employee to open it up and give you a tube. Insanity. Plus that stuff tastes nasty. I only know that because my horse doesn’t like it either, flings his head, and sprays my face with it as he spits it out. It’s just out on a shelf now, I think that craze has run its stupid course.
Full disclosure here.. I 'so' envy that you have horses KR ! Incredible creatures once we 'know and want to know' them ! How different would our history and reality today 'look' if our ancestors from all the places they came from approached natives with any similar humble, caring 'intent' ? Not viewing them as 'pets', but as uniquely, mutually beneficial beings, and human beings at that ? But no, they saw 'difference', through the basest lens with intent for dominion, conquest, and profit. You would certainly know that you can never teach, much less communicate good and trustworthy intents with a differently intelligent creature - like a horse, with only a whip - nearly never in the facts of practice. Cheers KR ! I'm ashamed today to tell you that Ohio, 'the commodified and brainwashed' is my adopted piteous home - for now anyway. I'm tempted to cut and run, denying them anymore of my pitiful income and care. I have zero representation here anymore. Feeling so denied fills me with a rage I can't quench.
lol ted ! Yes, a master stroke ! egads...
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I've finally arrived at the point I'd be just fine if Trump was "terminated...with extreme prejudice... "
The sad thing about this sentiment, which many including me have privately shared, is that speaking publicly in this fashion brings us right down to the level of the radical extremists, who would just as soon eliminate their detractors as debate with them. The only acceptable means of silencing tfg is by use of the law by law enforcement, which has been maddeningly slow to act. The lack of precedent for prosecuting a former US president and the fear of what setting that precedent means is an existential barrier to taking such a step, no matter how egregious the behavior. One of the fundamental principles of our nation and way of life is that no one is above the law, so we absolutely MUST take that step against the grifter extraordinaire. And, we must examine ourselves collectively in a fundamental sense to understand how we were so fooled as to allow such a petty criminal to slip into the White House in the first place. Law enforcement had literally decades to sideline this guy before he stole the keys to the executive branch. I'm in favor of an orange jumpsuit to match his spray-on tan, a ball and chain, out in the hot southern sun for everyone to see, working a hoe on a chain gang along the highway. As in, "I think what we have here is a failure to communicate"...
You are generous: I would not allow him sunshine at all. The orange jumpsuit is appropos, but in the bowels of a Supermax. No 'yard' time. Not for this guy.
Obviously assuming we are speaking strictly abstractly rather than literally, it's a fitting phrase, considering the extreme prejudice with which the MAGAts view most Americans.
Glad to see you back, Will, missed you for a few days. TC isn't here daily so I don't worry too much if I don't see him.
Will, i read the long post above, but seeing as you are one of the younger people on here, we need to hear your ideas on how to reach the young voters.
yes, we're speaking abstractly. But given that he's calling for Goober World to protest his arrest that he says will come on Tuesday, perhaps that will change.
Naw, they would make him a martyr. Supermax subbasement, OK.
I've been to the Supermax prison in Florence, CO. I worked for a medical company and did the installation and training for the pharmacy department equipment. It was a job unlike any other. I went through an FBI background check, as obviously, not just anyone wanders in. I went through several double doors, briefly pausing in the middle section before moving on. I did see one prisoner they brought into the clinic. Watching the guards walk him through as he was shackled and tightly controlled was surreal. I was sitting in the common area, and as he shuffled by, he looked at me, and it's hard to describe the look in his eyes. It left me with an eerie feeling. He had an empty, soullessness behind his eyes. I'm very sorry for this tangent. Whenever someone mentions the Supermax, I have a flashback. The thought of TFG and many others ending up there pleases me greatly. Though realistically, they would be in other places first. It is a fact that Supermax is for the absolute worst of humanity in this country, from the Unabomber, McVeigh, and others similar. It is where they send prisoners from various state prisons that cause significant problems and need a more controlled level of incarceration. It was a strange week, not a place I ever wanted to revisit. And yes, it is underground, a tightly controlled place.
"He had an empty, soullessness behind his eyes."
So Trump will fit right in.
Sounds like the stuff of nightmares to have experienced, Kathy.
Kathy, when I started working for the Sheriff's Office that was my 35 year employer (28 years full time and 7 years part time) I worked in our local jail for 18 months before being transferred to the patrol division, where I worked the rest of my career, either in road patrol (26.5 years, or court security 8.5 years). In that time in working corrections in a local jail (nothing at all like a prison, but we sent a lot of inmates to prison after their sentencing), I had the opportunity to observe lots of "inmate behavior". In that opportunity, I met more people that were "circumstantial criminals" than were not. I did meet 3 people that I believe were well and truly evil; one of them had that "empty, soulless" look to his eyes. Scary as hell.
Perfect place for fascists (BTW, McVeigh was executed)
Yes, I know McVeigh was executed. I followed that closely as my brother was working downtown OKC when the explosion happened. He was unharmed, but he worked on the 14th floor of a bank building a couple of city blocks away, and it shook him from his chair. I could only pull forth a couple of prominent names I thought most people might know of to indicate the type of prisoners Supermax houses.
I agree. When they executed MacVeigh who had admitted he hadn’t been aware of the children killed by his bomb, I thought he was being relieved from decades of being reminded of the innocent lives he destroyed.
Supermax would have been punishment instead of relief.
I agree with this, Art. It is a very cold, sterile environment. As plain and stark as can be. Of course, I was only in the medical services area so who knows what the rest of the place looked like. I had no interest in finding out.
That would be "termination" under my definition of the word.
TC, do you think it likely or even possible that Trump would flee the country?
I don't think so, but if he is released either on bail or OR, I am sure they will make him forfeit his passport and they might make him deactivate Trump Force One, his private airliner. Just in case, since that airplane has the capability to fly intercontinental.
I'd just as soon see him go. I would not be surprised if he left his kids behind to take the fall of whatever the Trump Corp could be held for.
Thanks, TC. I value your opinions.
TC, I really think Trump will see himself out the door soon. So much of his behavior is being ignored, now. He is old, unhealthy, and unhinged, too. But please be careful when you imply what you are implying, because some of those nut cases on his side just might get "up in arms." If you know what I mean.
if that happens, the spin by the cult, Christian Nationalism ,he will become a martyr & enshrined. It will be better if the cult turns on him & disavow him. Evan when & if he is convicted, it will only raise him up in their eyes, "see, we were right about the corruption". I have read that even after WW2, soldiers were still loyal to hitler, so will cult followers
Send in the Navy to the Mar a lago compound. Dump him at sea. Be spectacular. Make America great again. Carry it live on Fox Nudes. Don’t forget to chum the sharks with his cronies first. Please pardon my outburst it is just that upon occasion TC rouses my patriotism with his extreme common sense.
Huzzah! What a great idea. :-)
TC, “terminated” as in.....”terminated”????
As in "no longer in a position to be a threat." Whatever that might be.
I’ve seen recent discussions that the Trump. Investigations if diluted enough by the defense counsels would be judged to be misdemeanors rather than felonies and not worth a trial by jury. Bullsh*t.
Get the jerk into every courtroom possible and piece by piece surgically delineate his criminal antics.
Let the sunshine destroy this scourge. I am sick and tired of the bloated bag of puss strutting freely. Develop his infamy by court action.
If Trump is re-elected in 2024, this country is finished. Period.
Ian, IF we get to see his mug in that race. I just refuse to believe our “system” can allow such a lifelong criminal, thug, mob boss, racist, and now insurrectionist bloviator to actually stand for office. Tell me if I am wrong…..
Unfortunately, 74 million Americans say you’re wrong.
Excuse me, 81 million voters say Elisabeth is right.
Our fate appears to be in the hands of a couple of district attorneys and the DOJ. May they have more courage than those 74 million votors! If a criminal indictment drops this coming week, I will finally believe that justice might actually be served in the case of this revolting caricature of an American.
Yes, a conviction on one or more criminal charges in one or more judicial districts would go a long way to alieving frustration for people who think highly of fairness and democracy. It would certainly make me feel a lot better. However, convicting Trump of crimes would do nothing to solve the real problem, which is upwards of 74 million American voters who are not decent human beings. We still have to outvote the 74 million. Soundly. And then pass and enforce laws that make the US a good place to live for people outside the white majority.
News organizations are reporting that the Orange Asscactus (apologies for the semi-profanity) expects to be arrested Tuesday. He is already "calling for protests". It all went SO WELL on January 6, 2021. Why, what could possibly go wrong? That $*#&$# is going to get MORE people killed (which is just fine with him, I suspect).
No need to apologize--the nomenclature is apt
Asscactus! 🤣🤣🤣
I've called him the Orange Asscactus for years now! :-D
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