What's a kitchen table issue, anyway?

From Isaiah Thomas, Editor
On Special Assignment in Brooklin, Maine

While you're sheltering in place today to avoid being taken apart by high-powered AR-15 rifle fire, perhaps you have time to ponder one of the great clichés of election punditry: to win the Democrats must focus on “kitchen-table issues”

Which begs the question: what is a kitchen-table issue?  And shouldn't you define it before you advocate that Democrats focus on them instead of dining-room-table issues, reclining-chair issues, basement-pool-table-issues, or other furniture-related items of concern.

 Let's round up the usual gasbags and find out!

Here's that Trevi Fountain of conventional wisdom, Politico:

And a few states away in Virginia, freshman Rep. Abigail Spanberger — who represents a swing district — is trying to stay above the impeachment fray and stick to the kitchen table issues that got her elected. "I reject all of the drama because the reality of it is that people who are trying to pay their bills, people who are trying to feed their kids, and people who are working two jobs and retirees who are worried about how they are going to live off of Social Security, they don't care about this flashy personality," Spanberger told CNN.

And here's an old chestnut from Real Clear Politics:

Thus emerging into the race are the "kitchen table issues," best defined as the sort of everyday concerns that confront ordinary folks on a daily basis. Traditional economic issues tend to the abstract: inflation rates, unemployment numbers, GDP growth, and the fluctuations of the stock market. But kitchen table issues comprise the concrete: bill paying, food purchases, tuition bills, vacation plans, and family heath care coverage.

Just last week Vice Principal John Delaney told Democrats to give up on crap like Medicare for all and focus on kitchen-table issues:

Delaney stuck to a centrist line, promoting the old line of “kitchen table, pocketbook issues.” “Democrats win when we run on real solutions, not impossible promises,” he said. “When we run on things that are workable, not fairytale economics”—seemingly a reference to Warren’s expansive financial reform proposals.

We're pretty slow on the uptake but we get it: kitchen-table issues are the kinds families discuss at their kitchen table and relate directly to their financial status.

What are they talking about at their kitchen table?

But wait a minute!  Didn't the Conventional Wisdom just tell us that medical bills are a model kitchen table issue?  Wouldn't a proposal to relieve families permanently of medical bills and deductibles be a big winner at the kitchen table Olympics?

And now that we are thinking about this, whose kitchen table do these white moderate gasbags have in mind?

If you're sitting at the kitchen table of for example a family of color, aren't they also going to be concerned about issues important to them, like whether their teenage son can go out for a bag of Skittles without being lynched like Trayvon Martin?  I'm going to take a wild guess here and surmise that they might be concerned about nullification and suppression of their vote. That came up at Stacy Abrams's kitchen table!

Or like USA Today, you could ask them:

Young black voters who spoke to USA TODAY said they want candidates to address issues such as increasing the minimum wage, overhauling the criminal justice system, and pushing for more money to help struggling HBCUs expand research projects and fix crumbling buildings.

Kitchen table issues all, but not ones mentioned by John Delaney for some reason.

Or let's say that you're Latinx.  Might you express concern at your kitchen table that you can't go to Wal-Mart without some white supremacist mowing you down with machine-gun fire?  Maybe you wait until you get into the living room to discuss that?  Or maybe you might be concerned about friends or family that are enmeshed somehow in our dysfunctional immigration system and subject to being rounded up and incarcerated at the whim of the ICE body snatchers?  You might even express concern about children who look like you being locked up and neglected in unspeakably cruel CBP not-concentration-camps to please the sadistic lust of the Bigot-in-Chief.

So many kitchen tables, so little time.  At the kitchen table of a family with a trans member, maybe they're worried about whether that person will lose their job or even their custody over their children. Women at the kitchen table might be worried about, in addition to their economic woes exacerbated by pervasive sexism, being sexually harassed or assaulted or the loss of their right to safely terminate their pregnancies, even if that pregnancy was the result of rape.

And anyone sitting at their kitchen table might be worried about the blatantly unlawful and corrupt acts of the current occupant of the White House and whether anything will be done to preserve our constitutional system.

They also might worry that their children will suffer unfathomable harm, economic and otherwise, as the Greenland icecap melts into the Atlantic Ocean.  Why the jobs of a few coal miners are regarded as a critical kitchen table concern while the lives of millions in the path of sea level rise are somehow an abstraction unworthy of attention is known only to white male campaign consultants and pundits who in their next breath advise us that we must cut Social Security.  That's a kitchen-table winner!

John Delaney tried to pull the plug on progressive policies

The gasbags will cite polls that consistently rank economic issues as important to minority voters.  Well, duh.  But that doesn't mean that those are the only issues that are important to them or that their concerns and favored policies line up with the gasbags'.  When was the last time you heard white consultants talk about the important of remediating historic discrimination against people of color in buying homes and obtaining mortgages?  Take as long as you want.  Show your work.

We're beginning to think that this whole ragtime of “kitchen-table issues” is shorthand for abandoning a progressive agenda and running on incremental change supposedly appealing to white Midwesterners.  Of course, the Democrats nominated a candidate running on just that in 2016.  How did that turn out?  Well, actually, she won, but somewhere beyond the kitchen table, the election was stolen from her.

Even more ridiculous is the effort to drive a wedge between progressive policies and the kitchen table.  We have more than one candidate, notably Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who make it clear to even the dullest mind sitting at the old groaner the connection between the Republican-plutocrat machine (cause) and the stagnation of middle class incomes (effect).  So the distance from the ramparts to the table is – no distance at all.

Maybe the next time some insufferable white man tells you to stop worrying about the corruption-infested Presidency and Republican Party or imminent climate catastrophe and instead focus on – what exactly, just tell him what's important to you and your kitchen table and suggest that he take his patronizing misjudgments about what millions of voters care about into another room and flush it down another important piece of household furniture.

From the Archives: 270 years of bad optics

Editors' Note:  Last week a distinguished American prosecutor, former FBI director, and war hero confirmed to Congress that the President had fulfilled each of the elements required for conviction on obstruction of justice charges multiple times and that said President's campaign had had multiple unexplained contacts with agents of a hostile foreign power and reported none of them to law enforcement.   We were then told by media wise heads with stupid haircuts that the testimony failed to make an impact because of “optics.”  We wondered if our 276-year archives contained any previous examples of speechifying that passed unnoticed for reasons related to the refraction of light through glass.  Guess what?  They did!

The Massachusetts Spy, August 18, 1776:

In a ho-hum ceremony, some men signed a letter in Philadelphia

INDEPENDENCE DECLARATION FALLS FLAT
OLD WHITE MEN RELEASE LIST OF GRIEVANCES
BUT LACK OF NEW CONTENT FAILS TO INSPIRE

By Charles Todd
By Packet Boat to The Massachusetts Spy

After sedulous deliberations in the fetid malarial swamp that is Philadelphia, representatives of the various colonies listed their complaints against King George III in an effort to win popular support for their uprising against British imperial rule.

The lengthy document, ordered to be printed on July 4, and then distributed over time in the several colonies, recapitulated the colonists' various grievances and complaints against the British King and His Majesty's Government but added nothing to what we already knew about the injustices the colonies have suffered at the hands of the House of Hanover.

Also blunting the hoped-for impact of the document, it was released in a tedious ceremony in which multiple men signed it laboriously with a quill pen.  Some speculated that it would have had more impact had it been read out during, for example, a cockfight.

“It's hard to see anyone's mind being changed just because some merchants and slaveholders signed a long list of complaints,” said Thomas Hutchinson, formerly of Boston, who described himself as a undecided voter.  “There's really no news here.”

Others suggested the so-called Declaration of Independence should have been released during a clambake at the Atlantic City, rather than in the depths of another fetid Pennsylvania summer.  “Imagine how much more attention it would have gotten if it were read out by hot colonial girls in their bathing costumes, ” said Fred C. Drumpf, who described his profession as relaxation adviser.

The Massachusetts Spy, November 20, 1863:

LINCOLN, LOOKING TIRED AND DRAWN
DEDICATES CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG;
FEW IN CROWD HEARD HIS REMARKS

From Todd Charles
By Telegraph  to The Massachusetts Spy

Looking shockingly haggard and struggling to make himself heard, a weary Abraham Lincoln dedicated a new cemetery at the site of the late Battle of Gettysburg with a few remarks that even he admitted would be soon forgotten.

The optics were terrible at Gettysburg

Against the backdrop of an apparently endless effusion of blood that has thus far failed to quench the Confederate rebellion, Lincoln, in a high, quavering voice that failed to reach most of the large crowd, utterly failed to build on the excitement and enthusiasm generated by Edward Everett's memorable retelling of the Battle.

By contrast, Lincoln's remarks were a bloodless recapitulation of abstract principles of government and did not include even a single exciting detail of the great encounter.  Former Army Chief of Staff George McClellan described it as “an incredible wasted opportunity.  As for whether Lincoln is able to lead the United States to victory, I say: case closed.”

Privately, some aides close to Secretary of State William Seward said it had been a mistake to rely on a tired, old Abraham Lincoln to rally his citizens to the Union cause.  “I can't believe how much the war has aged him.  Had we known that, we probably wouldn't have even let him take the stage,” one insider told the Spy.

The audience reaction was generally downbeat.  “If this is how the Union intends to inspire its Army to victory, the war is as good as lost,” said Nate Forrest, an area farmer and traveler.

“It's time for old Abe to admit he can't beat the South on the battlefield and to negotiate a peace that would end the bloodshed and restore slavery to the Territories,” said Braxton Bragg.

A draft-age young man in the audience was similarly unimpressed.  “Fight for this old weird guy?   It's a good thing I had $300 to pay a substitute so I could make my fortune in New York,” said the man, who gave his name as Donald J. Drumpf, Queens, New York.

The Massachusetts Spy, December 9, 1941:

 

Congress hears Roosevelt in drab session

HAGGARD PRESIDENT CALLS FOR WAR WITH JAPAN

By Charles Todson
Special to The Massachusetts Spy

WASHINGTON, D.C. – His withered body propped up by steel braces, a rapidly aging President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that he would try to lead his country to victory in Japan, in the aftermath of its attack on U.S. military facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

In his characteristic aristocratic orotund voice, Roosevelt urged the Congress to declare war on the Empire of Japan.  The Congress did so, notwithstanding the lack of exciting optics such as newsreel footage from Pearl Harbor or eyewitness reports from U.S. forces who were attacked on December 7.

Sticking to his just-the-facts style, Roosevelt argued that the Pearl Harbor attack was an adequate justification for war.  In his only rhetorical flourish, Roosevelt described December 7 as a “day that will live in infamy.”

Many observers thought the rhetoric fell flat.  “Who even knows what the word infamy means?  He should try to use non-technical language,” said Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio.

Although the tableaux in Washington was dull, the declaration was passed against a backdrop of exciting developments in Hawaii and the Philippine Islands, where additional Japanese attacks were reported by the charismatic Commander-in-Chief there, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Important media figures criticized the President for failing to rally the nation in a time of war.  “Why didn't Roosevelt call for all Japs in the U.S. to be locked up?” asked Chicago Tribune Publisher Col. Robert McCormick.

Leading politicians echoed concerns about Roosevelt's failure to advocate for homeland protection.  “We have tens of thousands of disloyal Japs in California ready to strike.  Why didn't Roosevelt promise to lock them up or send them back?” asked California Gov. Earl Warren.

Observers reported that the President's remarks had failed to spark a rush to military recruiting stations.  In Jamaica, Queens, one man of military age said he was unable to serve due to crippling bone spurs.  “I'll tell you one thing this war is good for: the real estate business,” commented the man, who gave his name as Fred C. Trumpf.

The Massachusetts Spy, June 17, 2015:

Donald J. Trump and his Brains Trust

IS HE IN? 
DONALD:
YOU BET!

By Chuck Todd
NBC News 
with witty repartee from Maureen Dowd
New York Times News Service


NEW YORK, N.Y. – In a masterfully planned and executed piece of made-for-TV magic, failed reality talk show host Donald J. Trump today announced his hilarious bid for President of the United States, in a strategy that appeared to be directed at gaining a lucrative cable TV contract for his irresistible blend of bluster and bravado.

From the descent down the golden escalator at his marble palace, to the shills he hired to cheer for him, the whole event showed why Trump is regarded as a master showman.  All the stagecraft was there, down to the beautiful girls strategically positioned around the Trump Tower lobby.  “No one stages an event like the Donald, unless it's me,” said an admiring friend, who gave his name as Jeff Epstein.

His speech featured plenty of the tough he-man talk that he is so famous for, and the crowd loved it, especially the bit about how Mexico is sending rapists and assassins across the border.  Of course, no one took it seriously, because when it's the Donald, he's always selling the sizzle and not the steak, vodka, water, airline, casino, game, magazine, or education.

Fortunately with experienced Republicans like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio already in the race, no one has to worry about Trump accepting the nomination at the 2016 Republican Convention, but it sure does spice up what otherwise might be a somewhat staid debate among Republicans about tax cuts for the rich and cutting benefits for the poor.  Thank you Donald for saving us from that snoozefest!

Maureen Dowd wrote:  It would take even more imagination than Trump himself possesses to see the failed casino magnate share a debate stage with likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but this brilliant, famous columnist with a fabulous Georgetown salon would look forward to the Donald asking the Hillary why she wouldn't divorce her horndog husband.

But just think – if the Donald and Hillary faced off on Election Day 2016, it would truly be the year of voting dangerously.  Hey, wait a minute, that's genius. Genius!  Gotta call my publisher.

Back to you, Chuck.

Chuck Todd: One thing's for sure: the optics are compelling. [Stop staring at Melania's cans, Chuck – M.D.]

Only in the Spy: Questions (and Answers!) from the Bigot-in-Chief's New Citizenship Test

Editors' Note:  Many media outlets have reported that President U Bum's henchmen have decided to frustrate even lawful immigration by rewriting the citizenship test administered to Legal Permanent Residents seeking naturalization.  But only the Spy has obtained advanced copies of the new test so that you the reader can judge for yourself how fair it really is!

2020 CITIZENSHIP EXAMINATION 

YOU MUST ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS CORRECTLY TO EVEN BE CONSIDERED FOR CITIZENSHIP, YOU UNGRATEFUL WRETCHES.  GOOD LUCK!


1.  Which of the following are not part of the President's powers under Article II of the Constitution?

a.  pardoning political allies
b.  ordering a beautiful military parade whenever you want
c.  charging your Secret Service detail for golf cart rentals at your resorts
d.  appointing your relatives to all key policy-making positions

ANSWER: They are all part of the President's Article II powers

2.  Match the great President with the quote

a.  President Joe Washington
b.  President A. Lincoln
c.  President Phil Roosevelt
d.  President Donald J. Trump

i.   "I should have named my house after me.  Then maybe someone would have remembered me."
ii.   "With malice toward all, with charity toward none."
iii.   "The only thing we have to fear is haters and losers."
iv.   "When you're famous, you can grab women by the pussy."

ANSWERS: a - iv; b - i; c - ii; d - iii  [Is this right - USCIS?]

EXTRA CREDIT: What forgotten President lived in this dump
with no a/c, pool, or marble floors?

3.  Which of the following is not a requirement for serving as a Supreme Court justice?

a.  white male
b.  sex offender
c.  believer in unlimited Presidential power
d.  commitment to justice.

ANSWER: d

4.  When did America stop being great and why?

a.  1865 - freeing of all slaves
b.  1920 - women get the vote, even when they have blood coming out of their whatever
c.  1965  - revised immigration law allows persons from shithole countries to enter
d.  2009 - Kenyan President inaugurated 

ANSWER: All of the above


5.  Which of the following is not a First Amendment right?

a.  right of a pharmacist to refuse to fill a valid prescription
b.  right of a baker not to bake a cake
c.  right of candidate to urge his opponent to be locked up
d.  right to say nasty things about great President

ANSWER: d


6.  When is a golfer allowed to kick his ball out of the rough and onto the fairway?

a.  when he owns the course
b.  when the golfer is a rich white man
c.  when no one is looking
d.  when he is the club champion 43 years running


ANSWER: All of the above


7.  MATHEMATICS.  

NORWEGIANS AND OTHER EUROPEANS:

T borrows $1,000,000,000 at 14%.  T trousers $100,000,000 and squanders the remainder in busto casinos.  How much must T pay back?

a.  nada
b.  what do you mean pay back?
c.  whatever the bankruptcy court says
d.  all if it if the same bank lends it to him again

ANSWER: b

APPLICANTS FROM SHITHOLE COUNTRIES:

 Solve.  Show your work (30 sec.)

8.  Match the office with its responsibilities

a.  National Security Adviser
b.  Vice President
c.  Secretary of the Interior
d.  Attorney General

i.   execute cover up of obstruction of justice
ii.  drill for oil in Grand Canyon
iii.  negotiate in Mongolia while President meets with Korean dictator
iv.  shameless bootlicking

Answer:  a - iv; b - iv; c - iv; d - iv 

9.  Who was Fred Douglass?

a.  Someone a lot of people are saying good things about
b.  Former slave who fought tirelessly to liberate slaves and thereafter for the rights of Americans of color in 19th Century America
c.  Guy who runs the caddyshack at Trump National Golf Resort Washington (formerly Fort Myer)
d.  Loser who paid Fred Trump $10,000 key money to keep dry cleaners at Trump Towers Forest Hills Adjacent

Answer: a.

10  SCIENCE.  Which of the following is the strongest evidence that global warming is a fake news Chinese hoax? 

a.  Snow in winter
b.  Ice floats in water
c.  Coal is beautiful when washed
d.  President says so and he is an extremely stable genius with good genes

Answer:  d.

11.  What is the Electoral College?

a.  the method by which the President chosen based on the winner in the several states and District of Columbia
b.  another way the Framers decided to reward the slave states by allowing them to count 3/5 of each slave in its population
c.  an obviously undemocratic nightmare that given citizens of Wyoming 20x more weight in Presidential elections than citizens of California.
d.  the last defense against Socialism

Answer: d.

12.  Which of the following is a crime?

a.  Ordering an underling to fire a prosecutor investigating you for wrongdoing
b.  Making undisclosed campaign contributions to pay hush money to a porn star whom the candidate banged for 2 minutes
c.  Attempted rape of an underaged girl
d.  Running against the President

Answer:  d.

13.  What is the remedy provided by the American system of government if you disagree with a decision of your favorite President?

a.  Petition peacefully for redress of grievances
b.  Write your Representatives
c.  Vote for candidates who share your views
d.  Get the fuck out of this country

Answer: d.


[That's enough citizenship questions – Ed.]

Broken News: White racist elected by appealing to the racism of white racists is a . . .

By A.J. Liebling
Meta-Content Editor

His much-hyped remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers opened last weekend to terrible reviews and stinko box office.  The sizzle reel promised squads of helmeted truncheon-wielding ICE goons breaking down doors and rounding up scary brown men (or women and children, if that's who was at home) and locking them up in non-concentration camps.  Instead we got footage of deserted parks and streets as all sorts of folks, including documented immigrants and citizens, cowered behind closed doors, absorbing the advice not to open doors to ICE.

The show bombed, so it was back to the old drawing noose

As entertainment for white stooges, it was even more boring than The Apprentice.  The world's greatest producer had to come up with something that would generate big ratings.

So he turned to the only page in his one-page playbook and said incredibly racist things about four duly-elected Representatives who by amazing coincidence were women of color.  He told them to go back where the came from (Michigan, Minnesota, Boston, and the Bronx), which of course is what they do most weekends anyway like any Representative who wants to be re-elected or at least get out of the summer Washington schvitz.

Racist statements from the Bigot-in-Chief?  The media treated the news as a revelation, as if the President had emerged from the locker room at one of his busto golf courses in a hood and white robe.  The shock at what had been apparent to anyone watching President U Bum over the last forty years (check out eyewitness testimony from The Atlantic) was marvelous to behold.


Sure we got some of the usual circumlocutions:

• “viewed as racist” (NY Times)(presumably in the sense that most of us view the Earth as round)
• “widely denounced as racist” (AP) (just as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was widely denounced as an act of war)
• “fiery attacks” (Fox 'News')

But this time CNN, CBS News, and NBC News dropped the charade and termed the revolting Tweets “racist” even as they withheld judgment about whether an old white man who wallows in racist statements and whose every bit of observed behavior is consistent with bigotry is in fact a racist.

The whole debate about whether the Racist-in-Chief is in fact as racist was treated by the media as shocking news.  Who could have foreseen it?  Other than anyone paying attention to U Bum's rise.

He announced his campaign with a torrent of racist false attacks on Mexicans.  The New York Times, in a jokey account, summarized his performance:

Christopher Ruddy, a friend of Mr. Trump’s. . . . who is chief executive of Newsmax, the conservative magazine and website, said Mr. Trump would bring an unaccustomed level of glamour to the Republican field.

Because nothing is more glamorous than racism, amirite?  Bull Connor, Jesse Helms, Jim Clark – icons of glamour all. 

L to R: People that don't have a racist bone in their bodies.

It must have been all that glamour that mesmerized the not at all racist Maureen Dowd during one of her many flirty interviews with the Bigot-in-Chief, before the election.  Here she is, boldly confronting U Bum with the mass of evidence of his racism:

I note that many people still think his bid is more runaway Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon than a run on meaningful issues. (Aug. 15, 2015)

By the following June, with U Bum the presumptive Republican nominee, she, um, changed her mind:
 
He won’t pivot. So I have to.
Having seen Donald Trump as a braggadocious but benign celebrity in New York for decades, I did not regard him as the apotheosis of evil. He seemed more like a toon, a cocky huckster swanning around Gotham with a statuesque woman on his arm and skyscrapers stamped with his brand. I certainly never would have predicted that the Trump name would be uttered in the same breath as Hitler, Mussolini and scary menace, even on such pop culture staples as “The Bachelorette.” Trump jumped into the race with an eruption of bigotry, ranting about Mexican rapists and a Muslim ban. But privately, he assured people that these were merely opening bids in the negotiation; that he was really the same pragmatic New Yorker he had always been; that he would be a flexible, wheeling-and-dealing president, not a crazy nihilist like Ted Cruz or a mean racist like George Wallace. 

And that's why she enthusiastically supported Hillary Clinton.  Just kidding!

Here's her fellow clueless white Op-Ed columnist Ross Douthat back in summer of 2015:

But as the long list of theories above suggests, we’re all still a little ways away from fully understanding the Trump phenomenon, and that means that it’s unwise to bet too heavily on any specific endgame here. He won’t be in the White House in 2017, but exactly how and when he finishes the race seems a greater mystery than I expected when he joined.

Could it be the racism?  Ross's crystal ball was clouded.  We won't even check what ol' Perfesser David Brooks missed back then because it's too damn hot out.

Here's CNN reporting a focus group of U Bum supporters that summer.  They loved the Mexican rapist bit:

And none of the six Trump supporters were bothered by his comments that Mexican immigrants are "rapists" and drug dealers. "He didn't say Mexicans, he said Mexico," Jerry DeLemus said, which is also a distinction that Trump has repeatedly made. "His point was that Mexico is outmaneuvering America and they are out maneuvering us. What other country in the world would allow that type of illegal immigration to come across the border?"  

Sure, the defense is that U Bum was accusing a whole (Hispanic) nation of shipping its rapists and assassins to us deliberately.  That's not racist! 

But wait there's more!

Those Were the Days, My Friends

[CNN anchor Alyson] Camerota points out that while CNN made an effort to gather a racially diverse group of Trump supporters, they were unable to find African-Americans or Latinos to participate in the panel discussion.

Why was CNN unable to find any people of color who supported the Tangerine-Faced Bigot?  Uninquiring minds, like the those of the media in 2015, didn't want to know.

But you catch the drift, or rather you don't – the great white [Surely, wise? – Ed.] pundits regarded the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief as a joke and a showman.  They didn't bother to read his script or wonder why the show was drawing such a crowd.

Now they are shocked, shocked to discover that the Tangerine-Faced Grifter is a racist who promotes racist ideology.  If only they could have told us sooner.

But of course nothing changes on Planet Media.  Just tonight superannuated gasbag Chris Matthews convened his panel to ponder why virtually every Republican Representative refused to condemn U Bum's racist statements.  Maybe two years after the next election, he'll tell us that – gadzooks, they're racists, too!

The whole edifice of thought excusing and minimizing the million-watt racism reactor powering the radioactive Republican racism machine is making it difficult for some of us to catch our breath.

Like Eric Garner,  who was choked to death by the New York Police Department for the capital offense of selling cigarettes while black.

Today we learned that that the officers who executed him in public on the sidewalks of Staten Island will not face federal civil rights charges.  We also learned that the decision was made by U Bum's loyal mouthpiece Attorney General William Barr.

We can't wait to be told why he made that decision.  Until then we can only guess.

The View from Brattle Street: We'll fix immigration while you rot in jail

By Scott V. Sandford
Justice Correspondent

We're not eight years old anymore, so on the Fourth of July we were less interested in the spectacle of the Abrams tanks that won The Battle of Baggage Claim C than in the Declaration signed that on the date in Philadelphia a thousand years ago.

Every time we read the Declaration of Independence, we find something new in it.  Deep inside the list of the Colonies' grievances against King George III lurks this:

“He [King George] has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither"

Wait a minute – the white men who founded our country realized that immigration was a good thing?  Flash forward a mere 243 years and surprise – white men have f*cked up immigration law!

As a result, some people who aren't white men are running for President and they have some ideas about how to fix it.  One idea, proposed by Congressman Julian Castro, is to “decriminalize” immigration enforcement by repealing an obscure statute, codified at 8 USC §1325.

From the teeth-gnashing that followed, you would have thought he had proposed hiring Elon Musk to build a hyperloop tunnel from Guatemala to Mar-a-Lago.

Spoiler alert: he didn't.  But to understand why, you need to, unlike President U Bum and a surprising number of people who should know better (more on that later), understand a bit about American immigration law.

Here goes.

Relax – Even without Sec. 1325, she wouldn't have been let in

You know I can tell when you leave this page, right?

Now that we're alone, we would point out that the American immigration system is a civil system.  It isn't based on indictments and jail.  Every important aspect of it, from inspection at the border, through interrogation, decisions on admission, and judgments of removal and deportation, is derived from civil immigration provisions.

If you repealed every single criminal provision in the statute book, US immigration officials would still have the power to admit aliens at the border (or not), detain them pending adjudications of their claims for entry, and remove them, by force, if necessary, if they are adjudged to have no basis to remain in the US.

In fact, those helpless women and children immured in non-concentration camps and denied basic human rights, not to mention food, water, soap, and medical care, have been neither charged with or convicted of any crime.  They are civil detainees, kept in misery by the intentional cruelty of President U Bum and his Republican enablers.

So what's the point of Section 1325, which makes entering the United States without inspection and admission a misdemeanor?  One answer can be found in its history.  If you had white supremacy, you won:

The provision of federal law criminalizing unlawful entry into the United States — which some Democratic presidential candidates now want to undo — was crafted by an avowed white supremacist who opposed the education of black Americans and favored lynching, which he justified by saying, “to hell with the Constitution.”

And indeed he would have been so proud of how it had been used.  The original U Bum program of ripping babies away from their mother's breasts at the border was based on a disingenuous use of Section 1325 known as “zero tolerance.”

The legal theory, originally concocted by Stephen Miller when his classmates were all at the prom,  was designed to get around legal decisions that required detained mothers and children to be housed together.  But the U Bum regime contended that if everyone crossing the border without showing up for a Customs inspection were charged with Section 1325, then, like others charged with crimes, they could be held in pretrial criminal detention.  And as you may have noticed, Paul Manafort was not allowed to stay with his children when he was chucked into the slam prior to his conviction.

Of course it was bogus – misdemeanants aren't held without bail prior to trial.  You couldn't build enough jails for that.  They're released on their promise to show up because misdemeanors aren't serious crimes.

Section 1325 is also abused to coerce aliens into waiving their legal rights.  Those of us remember that George W. Bush's body snatchers used to raid factories, round up those without valid visas, and then immediately charge them with a Section 1325 crime.  They could avoid criminal charges by waiving whatever rights they might have had to immigration hearings and agree to immediate deportation.  And it worked: the club of criminal charges led the unfortunate detainees to sign away their rights.  How those Assistant United States Attorneys, who under canons of ethics applicable to all lawyers are not permitted to threaten criminal action to resolve a civil matter, kept their law licenses is a matter for another day, perhaps on a very special episode of Nicolle Wallace's daily TV show.

It's no surprise then that relatively few aliens are charged under Section 1325: 7,326 last year, according to the body snatchers' official records.  In the same period, ICE made 158,581 civil arrests.  So 95.4% of their civil arrests don't result in criminal charges.  And without Section 1325, ICE would have had the legal authority to make every single one of those 158,581 arrests.

So if Section 1325 is used rarely and then either to snatch babies or bludgeon aliens into signing away their rights, doesn't Julian Castro have a point?

No, says Juliette Kayyem.

Who she?
 
Juliette Kayyem is a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, says The Washington Post.

You might think then that her views have a great deal of validity.  And often they do.  Today, though, we're going to have to drag Marshall McLuhan out from behind the pillar.

She graced the Op-Ed page of the Post earlier this week with a column arguing that Julian Castro had somehow missed the point:

The 1325 debate, then, allows Democrats to avoid what can’t be avoided: that a nation based on laws must have deportation, enforcement and removal standards to protect its borders. It is too easy to say Trump is ruthless in this regard, though he is. But regardless of whether repeal of 1325 is good or bad politics for the party, the reality is that the next president will need to govern the United States. And that requires laws that allow a commander in chief to protect the borders, deport individuals and keep some people out.

Does it though?  Can she name a single Democrat who believes that our immigration problems would be solved simply by repealing Section 1325?  We haven't heard anyone say that and neither has she.  Since, as we just explained, repealing Section 1325 would leave the entire civil immigration apparatus untouched, it's at best wrong to allege that repealing that section would leave us without deportation, enforcement, and removal standards, because those are all civil laws, standards, and procedures.

(And by the way the basis for those standards is not, thank God, the Commander-in-Chief clause in Article II, but Article I, Sec. 8, cl. 4:  “The Congress shall have Power To  . . . establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, . . .”)

We wonder if her real concern is not the substance of repeal, but the politics: “Repeal is an understandable reaction to President Trump and is quickly becoming party boilerplate. But that path is not a good one for the party or the country.” (emphasis added).

Who better to tell you how to appeal to the common folk
than Harvard Professors?

Now we have been listening to Harvard gasbags telling us what the great democratic masses, some of whom didn't even go to Harvard, want and will vote for ever since they promoted the 1962 Senate candidacy of H. Stuart Hughes.  Their batting average was only slightly below Carl Crawford's.

Perhaps the view from Brattle Street isn't the best perspective on what will motivate the electorate.  Perhaps Julian Castro, who's actually won an election (unlike Juliette Kayyem), may have a point when he advocates repealing a pointless and cruel criminal law not only because repeal is the right course, but because it may inspire Latino voters to turn out more than they did in 2016 in unimportant states like Florida, Arizona, and Texas.

Perhaps Kennedy School Faculty Chair Kayyem should spend more time figuring out who's going to teach Rick Snyder's course on depriving poor people of color of clean and safe water and leave the politics of immigration to people who understand the fears and concerns of communities that contain, respect, and love immigrants regardless of their legal status.

We'd drink to that, although not with the water that Rick Snyder provided to Flint, Michigan.

White man's lament: Why won't those mean Democrats reach out to me?

By David Bloviator
Political Editor 
with A.J. Liebling, Meta-Content Generator

So 20 Democratic contenders for the 2020 Presidential nomination debated sort of on TV this week, and some of them did well for themselves.  We're much too busy to crown winners and losers (besides what else would Chuck Todd think about at Supercuts?), but we did note a divergence of views as to whom the Democrats should target in their appeal.

Should it be for example voters of color (29,000,000 voters or 13% of the 2016 electorate)?  Should it be young voters 18-34 (65,000,000 or 29%)?  Should it be Hispanic voters (26,700,000 voters or 12%)?

Those masses of voters must have seemed like pretty tempting targets, which might explain why most of the contenders stressed issues likely to appeal to those large and somewhat overlapping groups, like racial justice, climate change, protecting the rights of immigrants, and forgiving student loans.

But what do a bunch of Senators, Congresspersons, Governors, and others with experience in running and winning (or at least in the case of Marianne Williamson sitting under crystals) know?  If you want to know whom the Democrats should be appealing to, the answer is no further away than the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, where a squad of entitled clueless white men will tell you whom Democrats should be reaching out to.

Any guesses?

The key to the White House? You're looking at him!

Wait for it . . .

It's them.  If you could climb up David Brooks's moral mountain you could see that the Democrats miserably failed in their duty to appeal to the key voting bloc for 2020:  David Brooks.

Lest you think that he's just being a tad solipsistic, he provides rock-solid evidence that he's the key demographic to the 2020 election in the form of a Gallup Poll in which 35% of voters describe themselves as moderate.  Since he describes himself as a moderate (why?), he concludes that he speaks for over a third of the electorate.  (This is the kind of syllogistic reasoning that leads him to conclude that all men are Socrates.)

But does he?  He rubbishes Democrats for supporting Medicare for All and attacking Republican plutocracy, although polling other than the two surveys he cherry picks show rather strong majorities for the sorts of policies that Democrats articulated during the debates (other than outsourcing domestic policy to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, which, to be fair, is not such a terrible idea):

• 82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington. . .
• 59 percent of Americans—and 43 percent of Republicans—think corporations make “too much profit.”

Inequality

• 82 percent of Americans think economic inequality is a “very big” (48 percent) or “moderately big” (34 percent) problem. Even 69 percent of Republicans share this view.
• 66 percent of Americans think money and wealth should be distributed more evenly.
• 72 percent of Americans say it is “extremely” or “very” important,  . .  to reduce poverty. . .

Money in Politics

• 96 percent of Americans—including 96 percent of Republicans—believe money in politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the U.S. political system.

Taxes

• 80 percent of Americans think some corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes. . . .
• 76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes. . . .
• 87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans.
• 67 percent of Americans support lifting the cap to require higher-income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages.

Workers’ Rights

• 61 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—approve of labor unions.
• 74 percent of registered voters—including 71 percent of Republicans—support requiring employers to offer paid parental and medical leave.
• 78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.

Health Care

• 60 percent of Americans believe “it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all

  

  The Never U Bum Republicans meet to decide
  whom they can stand to vote for.

  Americans have healthcare coverage.”
• 60 percent of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.”
• 58 percent of the public favors replacing Obamacare with “a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans.”
• 64 percent of registered+ voters favor their state accepting the Obamacare plan for expanding Medicaid in their state.

Education

• 63 percent of registered voters—including 47 percent of Republicans—of Americans favor making four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free.
• 59 percent of Americans favor free early-childhood education.

Climate Change and the Environment

• 76 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change. . .
• 59 percent of voters say more needs to be done to address climate change.

Immigration

• 65 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—say immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents.” Just 26 percent say immigrants are a burden “because they take our jobs, housing and health care.”
• 64 percent of Americans think an increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities makes the country a better place to live. . . .
• 76 percent of registered voters—including 69 percent of Republicans—support allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children (Dreamers) to stay in the country. 58 percent think Dreamers should be allowed to stay and become citizens if they meet certain requirements. Another 18 percent think they should be allowed to stay and become legal residents, but not citizens . . . .

Abortion and Women’s Health

• 58 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

(Source: The American Prospect.)

Now former Harvard Salient writer Ross Douthat attempts to refute these numbers by noting only a minority said yes to every progressive position put to them, from which he concludes, insanely, that a candidate supporting all these positions will lose, because a voter who agrees with the Democratic nominee on only 5 out of 6 positions would rather vote for a crooked lying bigoted rapey Russian stooge who agrees with none of them.  Obviously.

His solution is for Democrats to retreat on some issues (like climate change or protecting vulnerable groups from persecution by religious bigots) to win on others.  There's a great way to inspire the base!  But really nobody gave a toss what Ross said in college and he doesn't seem to be breaking his streak.

Let's revert back to the happily-remarried Perfesser.  In fact he can point to no significant group (off the Op-Ed page) that shares his aversion to social welfare legislation, his lack of interest in remedying America's shameful legacy of racial and sex-based discrimination, his utter indifference to the coming climate catastrophe, and his tendentious belief that the problem of inequality is not the plutocratic 1% but the upper 20% who pay to keep deep thinkers like him in sopprassata, (This of course isn't true, but we can't follow him up and down every f***in' mountain when we have other white men to deal with) while still objecting to the Rapist-in-Chief. 

Turning now to third horse in this Op-Ed troika of overpaid white men whining, let's see what Bret Stephens had to say.  Surprise – he agrees with Dave and Ross!  In fact, he knows that the Democratic Party will be viewed thusly by the great masses who agree him, although in his case he at least identifies those stalwart voters as “Republicans” and not “moderates:”

 . . . a party that makes too many Americans feel like strangers in their own country. A party that puts more of its faith, and invests most of its efforts, in them instead of us.

They speak Spanish. We don’t. They are not U.S. citizens or legal residents. We are. They broke the rules to get into this country. We didn’t. They pay few or no taxes. We already pay most of those taxes. They willingly got themselves into debt. We’re asked to write it off. They don’t pay the premiums for private health insurance. We’re supposed to give up ours in exchange for some V.A.-type nightmare. They didn’t start enterprises that create employment and drive innovation. We’re expected to join the candidates in demonizing the job-creators, breaking up their businesses and taxing them to the hilt.

So the Democrats will rightly lose because they do not understand the pain of white men tormented by hearing a language other than Spanish as they wait for their latte.  We work in Coolidge Corner and in addition to Spanish we hear from four to six other languages on the street every day yet we soldier on, unaware that such speech constitutes an unforgivable imposition.  In fact we think it makes dreary old Boston seem rather cosmopolitan, like world-class cities where you can hear many languages in the Metro and the Underground.

As the formidable Parker Malloy has pointed out, once you get past the racism, you confront Bret's other fallacy: that his xenophobia and contempt for those who are not white males is broadly popular in the absence of Russian election interference:

In fact, you can find scarcely a soul who believes in the truth and beauty of the Republican platform but nonetheless contemns its beloved exponent, President Tiny Toadstool.  The positions expounded by the three white cowboys of the Op-Ed Range appeal to maybe 0.001% of the electorate.  It's no wonder that the Democratic contenders spent more time trying to appeal to groups representing tens of millions, not just tens, of votes.

They know this, which is why they start to huff and puff and hold their breath, threatening that the right-thinking folks like themselves won't vote for a Democrat who lets immigrants speak their native language on the streetcar.  As Complete National Disgrace David Brooks says: “I could never in a million years vote for Donald Trump. So my question to Democrats is: Will there be a candidate I can vote for?”

The correct responses to this plea are:

1.  We don't give a f***; and

2.  Anyone who votes for anyone other than the Democratic Presidential nominee on Election Day 2020 is acting in a manner that results in the re-election of a Russian-controlled corrupt sex criminal and has therefore permanently forfeited his right to be taken seriously as an ethical, or indeed any other kind of, thinker.

The only good news is that despite such a fate he will still be able to cash his paychecks from The New York Times.

Unity: What is it Good For?

By Nellie Bly
Spy Washington Bureau

A specter is haunting the political discourse of politicians, gasbags, and other favored professions of otherwise unemployable white men: unity.

Unity.

What is it?  What is good for?

To borrow a few bars from Edwin Starr:  Absolutely nothing.

Uh-huh.

The public's supposed yearning for unity has propelled the candidacy of the amazingly-lifelike Joe Biden 3.2.72834 to the top of quite a heap.  His campaign kickoff speech stressed that he could and would unify a bitterly divided country.  The contrast with the incumbent, who loves stigmatizing and dividing people almost as much as raping women in department store dressing rooms, could not be starker.

But in a pitch to rich Democratic Wall Street finaglers for pelf, Biden invoked the spirit of unity, entering the Waybac machine to return the time when the Senate was ruled by a oligarchy of white racist Southern Democrats (later to be replaced by Southern Republicans holding better-modulated racist views):

"I’ve been around so long, I worked with James Eastland,” Biden said when he was stumping for Jones two years ago. “Even in the days when I got there, the Democratic Party still had seven or eight old-fashioned Democratic segregationists. You’d get up and you’d argue like the devil with them. Then you’d go down and have lunch or dinner together. The political system worked. We were divided on issues, but the political system worked.”

Those were the days.  It later turned out that Biden had collaborated with loathsome racists like Eastland of Mississippi and Talmadge of Georgia on unifying legislation designed to undercut the use of busing to remedy intentional racial school segregation in violation of Brown v. Board of Education.

The enduring value of collaborating with Senators who “ thought black Americans belonged to an “inferior race” and warned that integration would cause “mongrelization”” has been subject to heated debate then as now.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. thought that choosing unity over justice was nothing but a heartbreaker.  Actually he said it a little more elegantly in his Letter from Birmingham Jail:

Black people, shown here being divisive

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." 

Indeed the entire Civil Rights Movement was an attack on the unity that had frozen into place an unspeakably cruel and unjust system of white racism and segregation since Rutherford B. Hayes stole the Election of 1876.

And if you look back a little further,  consider what happened when unity was prized over . . . pretty much everything else.

When the literal and spiritual ancestors of white Southern bigots so beloved by Joe Biden threatened to destroy the Union rather than permit free territories to become states that banned slavery, they named their price for unity: enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act and extension of slavery to all territories.  In other words, according to James McPherson,  tells us: “Republicans would have to make all the concessions.  Republicans refused to succumb to what they considered blackmail.”  J. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom at 251.

How did that turn out?  600,000 dead later, Abraham Lincoln summed up:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.  . . .

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

At least they were unified

You don't have to hit the history books to understand that there are things more important than unity.  In our lifetime, in addition to fighting for civil rights despite its supposedly corrosive effect on unity, we marched to end the futile effusion of blood and treasure that was Vietnam.  Yesterday we finally got something resembling health care for all despite Republican whining about how divisive curing the sick was.

Today, our Republic is threatened more severely than at any time since the Civil War by felonious Russian agent President U Bum and his craven Republican lackeys.  We are told that employing the Constitutional remedy of impeachment to remove the criminal President is alas “too divisive.”

But as President Lincoln warned us, the destruction of our Republic is too high a price to pay for “unity.”  And despite Joe Biden's pretty stories of happy times with Strom Thurmond, we're not inclined to wait for a “more convenient season.”

You might even say that in the current crisis, unity is an enemy to all mankind.
 
As for us, the point of unity blows our mind.