Category Archives: immigration

The Sayings of Charlie

Posted on by
2

One side lionizes him. Another side vilifies him.  It should not be hard for both sides to agree that Charlie Kirk was a divisive figure, which is not altogether bad at times because properly-presented division should trigger properly presented discussion.

—In  an ideal world anyway.

n an ideal world anyway.Some speakers are provocative for the purposes of dividing people. Others speakers are provocative as a way to bring people together. Will the passage of time and the softening of partisan passions that time-borne perspective brings produce more productive understandings than these times now allow?

We present to you today a lengthy series of quotes from Charlie Kirk whose recent assassination is a national tragedy regardless of the spectrum with which we observe our political world. We have found some comments that we think apply to his side of the aisle as much as he applied them to the other side. We have found a few that almost sound a little liberal.

Put together from brainyquote.com and msn.com, these quotations, and a couple of others from Snopes, we think, gives us a peek at the character of the man. Some who read these entries will enthusiastically agree with everything he said. Some will enthusiastically disagree with everything he said.

Was he playing the game of divide and conquer?  Was he trying to encourage the other side to cross over into unity?

In the emotion that comes with tragedy, acknowledging greatness or acknowledging something far less is easy. The sharpness of the differences is a reflection on him as well as a reflection of us.

Perhaps the healthiest thing to do with Charlie Kirk’s verbal legacy is to ask ourselves why we react to his words as we did when he spoke them—-and how we can get beyond those differences, if we have the courage to look within ourselves to do so.

Five years from now, ten years from now, when the emotional response to tragedy had passed, how do you suppose we as individuals as well as we as a nation will think about the things he said—if we remember them at all?

When you reach the end, you might rightfully ask, “Did he really say all these things?”

Factcheck.org put out a lengthy piece asking the same question and answering it. We suggest it will be helpful if you read the article regardless of which Kirk side you are.

Viral Claims About Charlie Kirk’s Words – FactCheck.org

There also are other fact checking sites on the internet you might want to look at.

At the end of this long list, we will present some compelling thoughts of former Vice President Mike Pence who put the focus on these days after the assassination more on where it should be.

0-0

If you believe in something, you need to have the courage to fight for those ideas – not run away from them or try and silence them.

We have to tell our babies to stop crying.

As government imposes the will of a few upon the many, the many begin to resist. Ultimately, it becomes necessary for the government to use force to make the people conform.

When you deliberately distort and selectively present the truth, you lie.

I’m urging all my millennial peers and the young people coming up behind us to look for signs and symptoms of them being in a Democrat-induced delusion. Don’t confuse the dream state of the socialists with any sort of reality. If you spot any signs of this politically terminal affliction within yourself, please seek help.

One of the most horrifying and surprising evolutions we have witnessed among our widespread campus network is the rapid movement away from tolerating opposing ideas and respectful debate to the deployment of obscene bully tactics from the left.

The truth is that while those on the left – particularly the far left – claim to be tolerant and welcoming of diversity, in reality many are quite intolerant of anyone not embracing their radical views.

Many textbooks fail to present students with both sides of an issue. Students are being pushed toward an education that demonizes free enterprise while advocating top-down government, deficit spending and class warfare.

I started a college campus-based nonprofit in June 2012 called Turning Point U.S.A. to target millennials in college. Our mission was to create a powerful conservative grassroots activist network on campuses and identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets and limited government.

Political correctness is the deadliest of political weaponry.

Liberal-socialist women generalize about women as if they are some sort of monolithic voting block of disenfranchised, victimized citizens.

For anyone who can only handle about 12-minutes-per-day of anything news related before needing to retreat into isolation, allow me to recommend spending those 12 minutes listening to the opening monologue of ‘The Rush Limbaugh Show.’

The Democrats want a pathway to citizenship for the illegal immigrants so they can become Democratic voters in a few years – and some Democrats even argue that non-citizens ought to be able to vote in U.S. elections.

You can’t watch Fox News without seeing five or six segments a day about the nuttiness on college campuses.

Liberals like to say there aren’t any limitations on speech, and it’s true that they can say or do just about anything. But conservatives apparently can’t even stand still while wearing a MAGA hat without crossing a line.

Say what you will about President Trump’s tone, tactics or tweeting, but even his most strident critics admit he’s at his best when on the offensive.

Conservatives are branded bigots and we are falsely accused of hate speech when we express traditional values and ideas that have made America the greatest country on Earth.

This silent majority are the Americans who love God, their family, and our amazing country. They don’t want their morals, their job, or their lifestyle threatened by the government or any candidates.

Cultural Marxism that has permeated all of Europe and has been the driving force that has brought France – the nation of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality – to the brink.

President Trump identifies the hatred and intolerance expressed by his radical opponents and names it for what it is.

I believe we’re broken by sin upon birth.

If there’s one thing Democrats are good at, it’s killing American jobs.

The perverse gift of the Chinese coronavirus is that it has given Americans an up close and personal look at the horrors of big government – and, by extension, socialism.

When students have access to low-interest loans and government aid, colleges have no incentive to cut costs. Why should a college lower tuition if more students are able to pay with subsidized loans from the government?

If you take away what a person owns, you control what that person can do.

It is part of our human nature to want to be liked. It is part of our human nature to worry about what others think of us. It is an attribute of greatness and of American exceptionalism to not surrender to our nature, but to be guided by an inner calling to persevere and to prevail, no matter the personal cost.

Democrats have long been the party of voter fraud.

Nothing in socialist doctrine argues for the abuse of power, from Thomas More, to Karl Marx, to Chavez, to Ocasio-Cortez. Historically, however, it has been the case that socialist countries often end up violently suppressing their citizens.

How can it possibly be that so many Americans are rallying to support Ocasio-Cortez, when all they need to do is look at Venezuela to see where she is leading them?

We have been indoctrinated to see the world through a politically correct lens.

There are young conservatives out there, and there have been for decades.

Many migrants awaiting asylum hearings in the U.S. never show up for their court dates. And the longer they stay in the U.S., the more sympathy they draw in the media and from many compassionate Americans.

Too often, teachers and professors misrepresent conservative viewpoints, and intentionally muddle what it means to be a conservative.

Whenever there has been a debate on the national stage, nobody has had to go looking to find me. I’ve been there. Always making the argument for free markets, first principles, and limited government.

It is extremely difficult to stand up for principles when many of your friends are automatically liberal or just do not care.

Trump is the first president in a generation who is willing to take political risks to secure our border.

In addition to making sense and serving the needs of justice, rehabilitating prisoners and releasing them when they are ready can save taxpayers money.

Tiger Woods experienced perhaps the greatest fall from grace of any celebrity in American history.

Entrepreneurs take measured risks, not hopeless gambles.

America’s young people deserve more than a mediocre future – and we now have demonstrated proof that President Trump is building a path for our success.

The United States has been turned into a mindless true-false test, instead of the complex essay exam, it should be. You are either for open borders, or you are racist and anti-immigration. It just doesn’t work that way.

There is no question that automation is – and has been since the start of the Industrial Revolution – displacing workers and creating disruption within the economy and labor market.

Young people in college – many living away from their parents for the first time in their lives – are particularly vulnerable to the leftist propaganda campaign designed to turn them away from supporting President Trump and turning them away from believing in American exceptionalism.

In politics as in sports, the best defense is a good offense.

Since the end of WWII, France’s steady movement away from Western ideas of individual liberty and self-determination – and toward collectivist action and conformance – has created a people overly dependent on government, hobbled by crippling taxes and lacking in individual initiative.

We’ve been conditioned to see a video of white people in MAGA hats standing in front of a Native American and assume that the white people are racists.

For years, elites in both political parties have ignored the illegal immigration crisis growing on America’s southern border.

The left has viewed the coronavirus pandemic as a political ‘opportunity’ from the start.

I know many young conservatives all across the country that are isolated and ostracized due to their beliefs. They are portrayed as bigots, misogynists and ignorant just because they are conservative.

A healthy economy is a foundation for a healthy future.

Yes, America is a nation of immigrants – but the immigrants have to enter legally.

Yes, college tuition is a problem for many young Americans, but it is a problem exacerbated by government subsidies and an overwhelming demand to get a college degree, despite high dropout rates.

I have been advocating in favor of free markets and against socialism since I was a teenager.

The case for socialism is always made based on an ideal and a promise. The ideal is that humans can lovingly coexist in a sharing and peaceful way. The promise is that this time, unlike failed attempts elsewhere, socialism will be implemented properly, and no citizen will suffer as a result.

The real reason Democrats are pushing for universal mail-in balloting has nothing to do with the global pandemic which originated in China; they simply believe it will help them win elections.

We have to teach goodness to our infants.

We live in a welfare state society – one that is already bloated and overburdened. We cannot continue to absorb and support an endless stream of people who will inevitably need legal residents to subsidize their lives.

Conservatives by and large believe in the corrective power of the free market above all. If we don’t like how private companies are doing business, we should just start our own to compete, right?

Once we lose our border protection, the road to citizenship, voting and welfare benefits for a flood of new immigrants will be all but paved.

I founded Turning Point U.S.A. to take the fight for ideological diversity directly to a progressive stronghold: the nation’s leading colleges and universities.

We must also be real. We must be honest with the population. Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty… We need to be very clear that you’re not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. But I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment,

I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage.

Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.

This is something that I hope will make Taylor Swift more conservative: Engage in reality more… Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.

Gun control, like vaccines and masks, is focused on making people feel ‘safe’ by taking freedoms away from others. Don’t fall for it.

Now, I will say that for future retirees, people under the age of 45, we should absolutely raise the retirement age. I’m going to say something very provocative. I’m not a fan of retirement. I don’t think retirement is biblical. You say, ‘Charlie, I’m just gonna retire and I’m just gonna go golf.’ I think, what a waste of the gifts that God has given you.

I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it. We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.

MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.

00-00

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who had watched some of the angry words spoken in the wake of Kirk’s death, suggested we develop or keep a proper perspective on what had happened and what we should do and be next:

“I truly do pray for his family, commend law enforcement in the community. But you understand the anger in this moment? It’s understandable, but I think we’ve got to be careful about putting America on trial whenever we see evil overtake the hearts of any individual, and in this case, absent additional facts, it was one person responsible for Charlie Kirk’s assassination. He needs to be brought to justice, swift and certain.

“Can people in public life do better in the way that we speak with one another and about the issues facing the country? Of course, and democracy depends on heavy doses of civility. But Charlie Kirk was a champion of the First Amendment, a champion of free and open debate. He ultimately died defending it, and I think on that principle we should stand and ensure that it’s part of his legacy beyond one.”

—Regardless of whether we agree with what Charlie Kirk said, we must remember that he had a right to say what he said, just as critics have a right to express themselves. And all of us should oppose any efforts to end or limit that freedom.

A death might still the voice of one person but we cannot allow it to mute the voices of all of us.

Need Your Trash Hauled?

Posted on by
Reply

Maybe the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois should not object so much to the President’s plan to  deploy National Guard troops to the Windy City.  Ditto folks in Memphis, the next American city in line to be invaded by the United Stats Army.

Based on the experience in Washington, D. C., the National Guard is making streets safer by picking up trash and doing gardening duties at national monument sites. One doesn’t want a tourist to trip over something or to be horrified by a wind-blown hot dog wrapper.

The National Guard reported during the Labor Day Weekend that its 2,000 troops had collected more than 500 bags of trash and cleaned more than 3.2 miles of roadways.

They’ve been doing a lot of the work that National Park Service workers would be doing if the Trump administration hadn’t fired thousands of them. One-fourth of the NPS workers were axed by enthusiastic DOGE-oriented actions. National Guard members, trained to fight on foreign battlefields and to serve in domestic disaster areas have instead helped with forty “beautification projects” in D.C.

Those National Guard troops also have disposed of three truckloads of plant waste.

It’s costing one-million dollars a day for the National Guard to serve as gardeners and garbage men in our nation’s capital.

As for fighting crime in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world, there are a lot of places in the world, and even in red states with far higher crime rates than D.C.  Or Chicago. Or Los Angeles.

The Guard reports it made 1,369 arrests in the first three weeks including one guy who threw a sandwich at a member of the Guard. But Trump’s choice for the district’s prosecutor, former FOX news host Jeanne Priro, reportedly hasn’t been able to get a grand jury indictment in a couple of high-profile cases, not even against the deadly sandwich thrower.

Numerous studies indicate many more cities are more “entitled’ to National Guard protection (or                                       trash collection and gardening) than D. C., LA, or Chicago, based on crime. Many of them do not have Democrats as mayors so they apparently will just have to let the garbage pile up and let the weeds grow in their parks and around their monuments.

There’s a lesson here.  If you don’t want the president to order the National Guard to invade your town and pick up your trash or spread mulch in your beautified public places, elect a Republican mayor.

Too bad, though. Your high murder rate will stay high and your city will not be cleaner and more beautiful.

If you want your low murder rate to stay down, but you don’t want to hire extra people to clean up your streets and your parks so that the President will send inexperienced trash-hauling soldiers to do that, elect a Democrat, especially a black one.

It’s not about crime. It’s about cleanliness.

-0–0-

The Repetition of History

Posted on by
Reply

Philosopher George Santayana’s most famous quotation, taken from his Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress came to mind the other day while I was doing some research about former Jefferson City Mayor C.W. Thomas, who suggested 100 years ago this year that Jefferson City build a convention center.

But he died before that could happen. A few months later the stock market collapsed and the Great Depression gripped our country until World War II created the economy that got us out of it. By he time the Greatest Generation had led us to a country that was a positive example to the rest of the world, Cecil Thomas and his vision had been forgotten.

Our mayor badly wants to see a convention center built. And many of us are watching with dismay as our greatness is being destroyed, not returned.

Santayana wrote more than a century ago:

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I came across this editorial published March 19, 1920 in The Central Missourian, a Democrat newspaper published in the nearby town of Russellville that raises important questions that seem quite contemporary.

A Party Without Conviction

The Republican party has always been a party of expediency, for all its great claim to consequential policies and principles. Its affairs have usually been governed by men of rather lax convictions, who would trade anything for power. In former years, when the tariff fetish was set in the central altar of all apostles of political buncombe, nothing counted save an opportunity to promote the tariff policies demanded by the masters of Republicanism, Men and measures went by the board in the continuous and unremitting fight for prohibitive schedules and restrictive customs laws. Various bugaboos were used at different times to frighten the people, but there was always the tariff behind the whole Republican program.

Anything served to win with, if the manufacturers might control the tariff. But there came a time when the tariff schedules, mounting higher with every revision, fell of their own weight, and the progressive movement in the Republican party began, with great promise, at first, under sincere leadership. Then arose the greatest opportunist of them all, with all due respect, Colonel Roosevelt. He was more flexible of mind than the stand-pat leaders. He believed in the tariff, but he wanted four years more in the Presidency, and was willing to turn free trader, if need be, to win.

He capitalized the dissatisfaction of the Republican masses, and espoused the progressive tendencies of the times, sweeping aside the men whose earnest fights in Congress had built up the movement against the reactionaries. The Colonel could not rule, so he wrecked. For the first time in history the stand-pat forces had refused to compromise, in order that the party might win. In 1916, the Republican party had no issue, it had no leader save Roosevelt, and he was both feared and hated by the inner circle. So it invaded the United States Supreme Court and drafted Justice Hughes, concerning whom neither the country nor the leaders knew overly much.

The West deserted the camp, for the West had taken seriously the progressive movement, and, with native shrewdness, the West discerned the wolves of stand-pattism behind the Hughes mask., The expedientists lost their most important battle. The same situation is developing in 1920. The Republican party has no program. no policy, no leadership. And there are even disputes among the chief manipulators as to what considerations of expediency may dictate.

Meanwhile, candidacies of no special distinction, and without a particle of evidence of popular enthusiasm in any direction. are developing and delegates are being chosen. What will the Republican party stand for? No man can tell. What will the candidate represent? Nothing, except the desire of the Republican party to get into power and run the government, which it regards as its vested right. The candidate is likely to be merely a stuffed shirt, the platform a set of innocuous and meaningless phrases.

The Republican party must think the American people are a lot of weak-minded children, petulant, irritable and altogether foolish.

*****

“A tariff as a weapon for defense is wanted,” declared General Wood in his St. Louis speech. There is something too vague about this declaration to warrant much discussion, like nearly all of the utterances of the General, when he gets away from military matters. Does the General know that almost all of our commercial treaties with foreign countries forbid discriminatory duties, and provide that our tariffs shall be levied equally against the products of all nations? How then, could the tariff be used as a weapon of defense, or offense, either, so far as that goes? Then the General says we should have a tariff to “protect American industries that are essential to America, not a tariff to protect industries which are artificial and whose protection adds to the living cost of our people.” The General is on dangerous ground and might give away the whole Republican argument if this suggestion should be carried to its logical conclusion.

Will George be proven correct more than a century after this observation?  Perhaps the answer is whether, in 2025, WE are the weak-minded children, petulant, irritable and altogether foolish or whether we recognize that we are led by someone who is.

The Pious Silence

Posted on by
Reply

“With gratitude and humility, we pray for President Trump. You assigned him, you appointed him, you anointed him for such a time as this. We ask You to cover him with the blood of Jesus, empowering him to advance an agenda of righteousness and justice, truth and love.

Protect him from all evil as he undergirds our nation with the firewall of our Judeo-Christian value system. Fulfill Your purpose in his life.”

—Prayer given in the oval office, March 23, 2025, by Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, one of several evangelical pastors who laid hands on President Trump, a repeat of a ceremony at the start of his first term. The President appeared to be earnestly participating.

Shortly after, podcaster Todd Starnes attacked those who question Trump’s Christianity and the motives of those who regard him as a national savior: “The ‘Christians’ complaining about Christians praying over President Trump in the Oval Office are not Christians.”

Last year, just before the Iowa caucuses, a television add proclaimed: “And on 14 June 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump,

“God said I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state. So God made Trump,”

When the similar group of Christian Nationalist preachers held a laying-on of hands ceremony in 2017, the Reverend Robert Jeffress, a Texas Southern Baptist preacher, told Trump, “Mr. President, we’re going to be your most loyal friends.”

Among all the voices protesting Medicaid Cuts, using government agencies to punish opponents, indiscriminate roundups of immigrants, the dismantling of government agencies and programs helping the poor with food and medicines, and—most recently—the burning of hundreds of thousands of pounds of food that could have kept thousands of African children alive, where are these preachers?

The silence of these pious ministers is thunderous.

Is THIS a President whose words and actions show he wants “to advance an agenda of righteousness and justice, truth and love?”

Is this President—who has jerked everybody around on the Epstein matter, who has deported people to nations far away from their own, who reportedly is jamming people into Florida cages, and who has cut Medicaid payments—undergirding the nation “with the firewall of our Judeo-Christian value system?”

Is he fulfilling God’s purpose?

Let’s hear it, preachers.  Tell us, God, that what we are seeing and getting—of which we have only scratched the surface in the lists above—fulfilling your purpose?

Tell us, most loyal friends, why you aren’t saying anything about all of this?  Do you believe a loving God is rooting for Trump to do all of the mean, cruel, unfeeling, un-loving things to others?

Can you watch what has happened since you prayed for him and still believe God “assigned him…appointed him (and) anointed him for such a time as this?”

Do you really believe his acts and statements truly represent our Judeo-Christian value system? Was Jesus a lying bully?

Is not Donald Trump exposing the falseness of the proclamations of pious faith leaders such as yourselves?

And what is it you have faith in?

Who’s not a Christian, Mr. Starnes—those who seek to serve others or those who seek power to serve themselves?

A lot of us are praying these days but not for Trump; for our country.

I lost a good friend this week, a gentle man who celebrated sixty years in the ministry just a few weeks ago with what became his last sermon. The Reverend John Bennett dedicated his life to social justice and told an interviewer a few years ago, “My guideposts as I move forward in my life and ministry are Micah, Chapter 6, verse 8.  ‘Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God,’ which is to walk in solidarity with all who hurt.”

And how did he hope others would remember him?

“He was a gentle and passionate man, on fire for social justice, rooted in his deep faith.”

I will take one John Bennett for 500 of those who would lay hands on Donald Trump.

(photo credit–Facebook)

They’re Disappearing Our People

Posted on by
1

It is rare that we post something on Fridays and even more rare that we do it well into the day.  But over breakfast this morning the morning, I read the number one article in the local newspaper headlined, “Local immigration detainees likely held in Phelps County.”

LIKELY held.

Nobody knows where they are.  Nobody knows who they are.  Nobody knows which of Trump’s “heinous crimes” any of these folks committed before coming here, supposedly, illegally.  And ICE won’t say what the charges are that brought their arrests or whether they had committed any crimes, serious or otherwise, in Holts Summit.

Nobody knows whether others like them in our immediate area might be disappeared by nameless ICE agents in the near future.  Nobody knows if any of these four had families including children who suddenly are lost in their loss. Nobody knows who employed them and what their disappearance means to the employers or the people who benefitted from their work, whatever it was.

They lived in Holts Summit, a community just across the river from Jefferson City.  The newspaper tells us that the Callaway County Sheriff’s staff and officers from the Holts Summit Police Department were included in the arrests carried out by ICE agents in unmarked vehicles.

Phelps County jail officials have told the newspaper that six people with Latino names were booked into their jail yesterday but those officials would not say which of those six were from Holts Summit, if any of them were.

And here is a chilling paragraph from the News-Tribune account:

“The Callaway County Sheriff’s Office would not confirm if the individuals were transported to Phelps County out of concern of repisals from the federal agency.”

The newspaper says it has made “repeated requests” for information about the arrests but there has been only silence.

Supposedly, ICE is seeking out criminals from south of the border who came here illegally, with those who commit crimes on this side of the border getting special attention.

Why were these four singled out?  Trump’s ICE isn’t talking.

It’s just snatching people from our midst and carting them off to who knows where—-maybe Rolla, sixty miles away from possible families, sixty miles away from local legal help, sixty miles away from any communication with employers, friends, pastors or priests—from US.

For those who voted for the creature behind this kind of inhumane treatment of some of our neighbors, I hope you’re celebrating. Maybe you should treat yourself to dinner.

At a Mexican restaurant—

—where you can play a game of guessing if your waiter will disappear before you come back.

Thy Liberty in Law 

Posted on by
Reply

One of the things we should do on July 4, other than to read the Declaration of Independence in a way that is more than a thoughtless flow of words, is to ponder a song written many years later for the occasion, and reflect on whether the current administration gives a damn about any of it.

Let’s go back to a Wellesley College English professor who took a train trip to Colorado Springs. The year was 1893 and the things she experienced during her trip were more than sights she had seen. They became impressions.  The white buildings of the World’s Fair in Chicago, the World’s Columbian Exposition that celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in this hemisphere, the horizon-reaching wheat fields under the wide sky as the train crossed Kansas, and at the end the breathtaking view from the top of Pike’s Peak.

Professor Katherine Lee Bates started to think of a poem as she stood on top of that mountain and when she went back to her hotel she started to write. Two years later The Congregationalist published her poem, “Pikes Peak,” to commemorate July 4.  Through the years, the poem has been revised, with the version that we know best done in 1911.  The last line is especially meaningful in our times when thousands of people are not granted due process.

O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness, and every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!

Several composers found the poem would make a good song. There were at least 75 different melodies attached to it by 1900. One of them was the treatment of the poem as a hymn by the organist and choir director at Grace Church in Newark, NJ. Samuel A. Ward, who was inspired during a ferryboat ride back home to New York from Coney Island to adapt the words to a hymn he had composed in 1882, “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem.”  Her words and music were first published together in 1910, seven years after his death.  By the time Bates died in 1929, the hymn was in the hymn books of many denominations.

From time to time, someone suggests it should replace “The Star Spangled Banner” as our national anthem or be considered the national hymn.

What started as a poem called “Pikes Peak” is now “America the Beautiful.”

This July 4th in a good time to ask ourselves if America is still “America the beautiful.”

It seems to become harder by the day to see it.

POLITICO last year published fifty instances in which President Trump used the word “beautiful” to describe, among other things, beautiful Christians, his beautiful phones, a beautiful note from President Xi, a beautiful (and perfect) phone call with Vladymir Zelenskyy, the Supreme court that he once described as “a beautiful thing to watch,” and—of course—himself: “If I took this shirt off, you’d see a beautiful, beautiful person.”

There was a time when he out “beautifuled” himself and actually lavished the word on somebody else—Taylor Swift.  “I think she’s beautiful — very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually — unusually beautiful!” |

Trump’s ‘Beautiful’ World – POLITICO

But Trump’s America is no longer beautiful. The ugliness of the ICE deportation teams, the ugliness of unfeeling meat-axe budget cuts, the ugliness of constant name calling when intelligent conversation is beyond capability, the ugliness of……

The list is endless.

But let’s focus on two things today. Actually, four.

On his birthday, Trump celebrated the creation of the U.S. Army with a $45 million parade for himself after his DOGE cut thousands of people from the Veterans Affairs Department a move that, among other things, ended a program that is helping about 80,000 veterans make their house payments. Other cutbacks threaten services at Veterans’ Hospitals.

O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life!

Trump undoubtedly never pondered that thought from that great hymn.

Then there’s the holiday business.

A few months ago, Trump proudly told Americans that he wans Christopher Columbus to have a “major comeback,” and have Columbus Day be a major holiday. He issued one of his executive orders “reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations as it has hand for all the many decades before!” as he put it on his internet page. Many government workers get the day off each year now and he sees no problem with that.

What we suspect really gets his goat about that day is that it’s also Indigenous People’s Day, celebrated by those whose culture is not Trump’s.

We suspect that because of his reaction to Juneteenth.  On his social media page he complained, “ Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all these businesses closed. The workers don’t want it either…It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The Associated Press has found several instances in which Trump praised the African-American contribution to “enrich every facet of American Life.”

But he sees a holiday marking the freeing of American slaves as less important than honoring an explorer who never reached the American mainland who offered to provide Ferdinand and Isabella with “slaves as many they shall order to be shipped” if the royal couple gave him resources for a second trip to the New World.

God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!

Recognizing “brotherhood from sea to shining sea” is what will make America great again, not budget cuts that damage our veterans or saying Juneteenth is one holiday too many, or ICE raids that trash

But don’t expect Donald Trump to ever think deeply enough, or even think at all, of Making America Beautiful Again. Don’t ever expect him to understand that ugliness and greatness will never go hand-in-hand.

America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!
                                                             -0-

 

 

 

 

 

Import/Export   

Posted on by
Reply

Why is it that our president will send jets to South Africa to rescue whites who supposedly are threatened with violence and bring them here as special immigrants while brown people who are so desperate to escape the same fate are turned back or sent back to their home country or some other country?

The white people are all upstanding (and probably wealthy) folks.  The brown folks are upstanding but are at the far opposite end of the economic spectrum.

A lot of the white folks see no reason to flee their home country.  A lot of the brown folks see reasons why they MUST flee their home counties

Jets for the white rich.  The back of the hand for the brown poor.

That’s how we make America great again. Isn’t it?

-0-

I Don’t Know 

Posted on by
Reply

ne of these days a reporter who has some rare time on his or her hands will compile a list of all of the times a president who has claimed “only I can fix it” doesn’t know anything.

He has said, “I don’t know….” so many times that one has to question, “What DOES he know?”

In 2019, USA Today counted eleven people Trump claimed he never met or didn’t know “despite evidence to the contrary.”

One was Jeffrey Epstein, whose sex trafficking of young girls sent him to prison where he committed suicide. Trump called him a “terrific guy” and someone  he had known for fifteen years who was “a lot of fun to be with. It is even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side” in a 2002 magazine article.

But when the fertilized hit the ventilation system it was a form of “I don’t know” when he said, “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him…I was not a fan.”

Sooooo….Trump didn’t know him after all?

There have been assorted other people, some who have been close to him, that he suddenly didn’t know after they wrote or spoke about him critically.

The latest “I don’t know” moment came last weekend when he was interviewed on NBC’s Face the Nation and was asked on NBC’s Meet the Press if throwing thousands of immigrants out of the country without recognizing their rights to due process is Constitutional, he indicated that his power is greater than the Constitution.

“I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” he said.

A little more than 100 days ago, he took the oath for the second time that includes “”I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Given his recent actions, it appears preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution is beyond his ability, a strange attitude for someone who has had previous experience in the office.

We know he doesn’t read so he must not have read the Fifth Amendment that pretty clearly says nobody will be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

It does not say “citizen.”  It says “person.” The Supreme Court has ruled that people who are not citizens remain people and have basic rights.

But Trump complained that following the constitution would be a nuisance. “I don’t know,” he said again. “It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.  We have thousands of people that are—some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth. I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it.

But “some” is unlikely to be as many as three million protected “people.”

He was asked, “Even given those numbers…don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?”

You don’t have to guess at his answer.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

He must not have talked to his brilliant lawyers or his brilliant lawyers lack the ability to read at least three recent decisions that protect due process rights for immigrants.

As far as one to three million trials—-

There would be far fewer “trials” if Trump and his minions obeyed court rulings and acted Constitutionally.  And if they actually did focus on immigrants with serious criminal records. Many of them have fled from countries where it is a criminal offense to try to exercise OUR constitutional rights—that their country does not recognize.

And there would not be full-blown trials. These folks would go before an immigration judge, such judges being employees of the Justice Department, not part of the constitutional judicial branch.

That would not require full trials, as Trump suggested. What it would require is the chance to appear before an immigration judge. Such judges are not part of the judicial branch; they are employees of the Justice Department. Regardless, Trump’s brilliant lawyers would have to prove that these bad people are in fact members of Venezuelan gangs, a legal nicety Trump chooses to ignore.

That might bring about a definition of “invasion,” which Trump too casually claims to justify round up people under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.  It would be inconvenient to have to prove that the chicken plucker, pork processor, roofer, and operator of a restaurant with an international cuisine.

The Supreme Court already has ruled twice that men facing terrorist charges cannot be shipped off to the friendly El Salvador prison without due process, namely a hearing. There has been at least one “administrative error,” but that’s too bad. The victim of it has to say in the Salvadorian lockup.  When asked if anybody in his administration is in touch with the Salvadorian government to secure the mistake’s release, Trump said,

“I don’t know.”

“You’d have to ask the attorney general that question.” He said.  “I’m relying on the attorney general of the United States, Pam Bondi, who’s very capable, doing a great job.”  He then claimed that he is not involved in the legality or illegality of such things.

In other words, we have a president who thinks he is personally above the Constitution and he has no responsibility for illegal acts of his administration.

Moving right along.

He has threatened to take the tax-exempt status away from Harvard University because it refuses to bow to his demands to eliminate DEI on campus. That, he was reminded, flies in the face of federal law that says a resident cannot direct the IRS to rescind the tax-exempt stature of an organization.

This time he did not directly say, “I don’t know.”  He’s just following what his lawyers, hired on the basis of loyalty, say.  The he blundered through, “They say that we’re allowed to do that, and I’m all for it. But everything I say is subject to the laws being 100% adhered to.”

Uh….what?

If being ignorant on so many things or about so many people makes him a “stable genius,” then by comparison the rest of us should be able to go into the kitchen and mix up a brew of cold fusion.

-0-

 

Notes from a Quiet Hill (Annexing Columbia Edition)

Posted on by
Reply

—-the latest version of a series of ponderings that began with “Notes from a Battered Royal” that we used to write in the Missourinet newsroom that became “Notes from the Front Lines,” and then “Notes from a Quiet Street.”  The changes denote changes of the writer’s primary location.

Why shouldn’t Jefferson City annex Columbia?  Or why shouldn’t Missouri unilaterally declare Iowa part of our state?

They’re our version of Canada. They’re north.

If the standard for annexation is coldness, maybe Iowa would be the better choice.  And once we have Iowa, nothing can stop us from annexing Minnesota so we can have something REALLY cold in winter, but a nice place to go to in the steaming and humid days of summer.

The Greatest, or at least the silliest, Geopolitician of our time wants Canada to become our 51st state. If he read a geography book, he no doubt would be stunned to know that Canada is not one big geographic blob but has ten provinces and three territories.*** That might please him because we could go from fifty states to 60, and add two territories to our worldwide collection.

Think of the electoral votes involved.

Here’s a map so you will know more than your President does about Canada.

We would like to be in the same room when he suggests or demands that King Charles allow the United States to annex a country that is 41 times larger than the United Kingdom, of which it is a part, seven times larger than our present largest state—Alaska, and 15 times larger than our second-largest state, Texas.

But if he’s thinking of a one-state addition, he might try currying the favor of those in Quebec who have long advocated independence from Canada.

0-0

King Charles did not attend the inauguration in January and there are no plans for a state visit by the new/old President to the UK so there appears to be little immediate possibility that Mr. Trump will have a chance to try to bully the King about Canada. He DOES know, doesn’t he, that he can’t primary a king?

The Great Geopolitician did meet with Prince William, the heir to the throne, at the reopening of Notre Dame. Cathedral a few months ago. The report from the GP illustrates the depth of their discussion: “He’s a good-looking guy. He looked really, very handsome last night. Some people look better in person? He looked great. He looked really nice, and I told him that.”

We wonder what William told his dad about what an uplifting talk he had with he presumed leader of the free world. We wonder how much they laughed.

-0-

Canada appears not to know what is good for it. Doug Ford, who is the premier of Ontario—the most populous province of the GG’s proposed annexation, has a counteroffer.  He suggests Canada should buy Alaska and Minnesota. As far as the USA taking over Canada: “Under my watch, that will never, ever happen.”

Canada’s Green Party leader Elizabth May, has another offer. Cascadia. She suggests British Columbia join with Oregon and Washington to form an independent nation.  She had suggested California join Canada, too, If not a sister independent nation bit as 11th province. She thinks it’s a great idea for another reason—the United States would be rid of three states that vote for Democrats.

And it would be rid of territory with annual potentials for major wildfires (more on that later).

Before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quit, he put it more bluntly: “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.” And Canadians know a lot more about snowballs than the Baron of Mar-a-Lago knows. Trudeau’s successor has been equally uncooperative.

-0-

Speaking of Texas, here’s something the GG might consider in re-shaping the world.  Split Texas into five states.  That would mean ten more Senators, most of which are likely to be Republicans under present circumstances.  And it would mean a lot more electoral college votes.  Congress approved a joint resolution allowing the split in 1845:

New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas and having sufficient population, may, hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution.

Opponents say that resolution has been rendered moot by later legislation. But from time to time in Texas, there is talk.

Wonder if he’s thought about how that might help fight the thundering hordes storming his wall.

Here’s another bonus: Five new states, each with its own state university that can be threatened with loss of funds if they reject DEI.  How do you suppose the SEC and the Big 12 would split them up.

-0-

We also wonder what the GG’s reaction would be if his good friend Vlad were to decide Russia got a raw deal when it sold Alaska to the United States and demanded a renegotiation at the least and a return of the area at the worst.

Why not sell it back to the Russians?  The money received could be used to buy Greenland. What use is it anyway? It’s not connected to any of the other states. Only a few people want to live there year-around. And why send all of those American workers up there to drill, baby, drill when there is still a lot of undrilled national parks and historic sites in the lower 49 to keep the oil companies busy for decades. And the Great State of Canada has a lot of drillable area.

Let the Russians have the Elk and the Permafrost.

How about drilling, baby drilling at Mar-a-Lago?  Probably not worth it. There already are eighteen dry holes there.

-0-

And finally, this addendum to our earlier meditation on the geopolitician’s plan to export people;

It’s either them or the homeless crowd,.  One or the other group should be forced to stay here and rake California’s forests. You recall that the nation’s leading forest expert, or so he claims to be,  theorized four years ago that California wildfires were caused by all of the dead leaves that had fallen from the soon-to-be scorched trees. The President could even get a gold-painted ceremonial rake to take the first stroke. Probably, somebody would have to show him how to do it. Raking leaves when you live on the 56th through 58th floor of your own New York skyscraper is not a talent you have much opportunity to develop.

And if neither the homeless nor the deportees want to do it, he has an entirely new talent pool made up of former federal employees, a veritable 21st century Civilian Conservation Corps—-watched over by all the Generals and Admirals he has fired who might still be good for something.

***Wonder how many provinces and territories he could name.  How about you? I confess, I had forgotten some until I looked at the map. But I could be excused because I have no interest in annexing all of those provinces.

Should he read this entry (which is doubtful given reports that his attention span is so short that he would have quit reading it after “why not”) and for our own edification, here is the list: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador (considered one).  Territories?  Yukon, Nunavut, Northwest Territories.

 

The Immigrants 

Posted on by
1

I had planned on a more frivolous entry for today, but Monday I read Barbara Shelley’s commentary on The Missouri Independent website and I think it is far more important than anything I could offer.  She was an respected reporter with the Kansas City Star in my reporting days and remains a respected observer of our times. In this entry, she puts human faces onto the victims of President Trump’s vicious immigration policies that show no concern for who is hurt by them—people or our nation.

Once in America, immigration was a sign of our greatness, of our country’s promise, and our ancestors (yours and mine) came here to seek it. Now those people are villainized with lies from our President.

It is heart-breaking for one who memorized in his school days Thomas Wolfe’s Promise of America to read Barbara’s description of what President Trump has brutally cancelled in our national character. Perhaps you memorized it, too:

” So, then, to every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity—to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him — this, seeker, is the promise of America.”

Here’s her commentary about the crushing of that promise:

Friends and family arrived bearing flowers. Smiling volunteers pointed the way to seats.

Everyone loves a naturalization ceremony. I attended one recently at a branch of the Kansas City Public Library and watched 71 new American citizens swear allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. Even more immigrants had taken the oath earlier in the day.

“This room is full of the most brilliant minds that the world knows,” Wasim Khan, a cultural leader, told the group. “You guys are the teachers. You know what it takes to be here.”

After the ceremony, as League of Women Voters volunteers swooped in to invite the new citizens to register, I asked a few people how long they have been in America.

Eight years, 12 years, too many years to count.

Naturalized citizenship is a long, expensive process and everyone who achieves it does so through a combination of grit and good fortune.

I’ve attended several of these ceremonies over the years to cheer on people I’ve had the privilege to know.

One was a piano teacher who came here from Kyrgyzstan to study at American universities. Several others arrived as refugees. They overcame language barriers and all the hardships of poverty to arrive at their naturalization ceremonies as educated, hardworking contributors to their communities.

The recent ceremony was no different from others I’ve witnessed, but I couldn’t summon the usual measure of joy.

Rather, I kept wondering what a naturalization ceremony will look like once the xenophobic policies of the Trump administration have been fully brought to bear.

Last year, I signed up to participate on a team that would sponsor a refugee family, in cooperation with a resettlement agency. I told myself that it would be a satisfying act of resistance in case Donald J. Trump won the presidency.

Along with others, I welcomed a family of eight at Kansas City’s airport on a snowy evening 12 days before Trump’s inauguration. They were exhausted and one person was ill but they were here and we were ready to introduce them to America.

We had no idea how difficult that was going to be.

Within a week of taking office, Trump had slammed the door to new refugee admissions and cut off funding for the families who had recently arrived.

The resettlement community had anticipated the first move. It was gobsmacked by the second. With an executive order, Trump wiped out money that was supposed to pay for rent and utilities, medical screenings and other services for hundreds of people who had entered the United States legally in the last 90 days.

Agencies went into emergency fundraising mode, but Trump’s action was crippling. The agency I volunteer for lost nearly $1 million of federal money it had counted on. Part of that amount was already spent in rent deposits and other costs.

It’s nearly impossible to cover a gap like that through donations. Within weeks two agencies in Kansas City laid off close to half their staffs. A smaller nonprofit laid off its entire refugee services staff. A mid-Missouri agency shut down its resettlement program.

My role in the resistance now includes scanning job ads for something that might work for adults who speak only a little English and will have to ride to work on the bus. I’ve become familiar with the difficulties of booking an appointment at the local Social Security office — and good luck once Elon Musk gets through with that program.

The family that my team works with was routed from their ancestral home and spent years in limbo in a neighboring country. The adults are fully aware that the leader of the United States does not want them here.

Their status is legal, but they are afraid. They grieve family members left behind in a refugee camp, clinging to hopes of a reunion that may not happen in this lifetime.

In my head, I construct sentences that begin with “at least.”

At least they aren’t here on humanitarian parole status — a category of immigrants more endangered than refugees.

At least they have a place to stay, a small rental house in a hollowed-out part of Kansas City. A recent New York Times story reported on newly arrived refugees in St. Louis languishing in motels on highway interchanges because the resettlement agency there was unable to pay apartment leases.

At least members of my family have friends. Immigrants from their home country have sought them out and embraced them.

The situation could always be worse. But it is bad enough.

Refugee resettlement is a way of participating in the global good. Therefore, it is not a priority in Trump’s “America First” agenda.

The immigrants whom I witnessed as they became naturalized citizens last month represented 36 nations, including some of the most troubled, like Haiti, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

They had cleared a high bar to get to the ceremony. All of them passed a civics test that most Americans would find daunting. They were deemed to be of “good moral character,” a standard that we don’t necessarily demand from our nation’s leaders.

Congratulations to the new Americans. May we always find a path for them.

-0-

Or, may we rediscover the greatness that provided a path for them and have the courage to admit the disgrace we have allowed our President to bring to the Promise of America.