Notes on Intolerance and Conformity from a Shining City on the Hill

by Nomad

A Turkish/Canadian friend of mine- we can call him Metin- told me that he was sitting on the grass in a seaside park recently. He was speaking English to a friend. It was another fine day in Izmir.
However, much to Metin's dismay, a woman he had never met before interrupted his chat and told him "You are in Turkey. Speak Turkish!"

It literally took his breath away, he later said. It was especially shocking that such a thing would happen in a comparatively liberal, laid-back city like Izmir.

Four Political Cartoonists Weigh In on the Migrant Children Fiasco

by Nomad

This month, the editors of the New York Times' decided to close down all political cartoons from its newspaper. That decision came as a result of a controversial cartoon critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and which some considered anti-Semitic. Here's the item in question. Judge for yourself.

The elimination of this feature sparked widespread protests with one cartoonist calling it “chickenshit and cowardly.”

This move by the NYT actually follows a long term trend. As one source notes:

A 2012 report by The Herb Block Foundation found that there were fewer than 40 editorial cartoonists with newspaper-staff jobs in America, a steep decline from more than 2,000 such positions in the beginning of the 20th century. 

What It's Like To Be An "Other" in Trump's America

by Nomad

Meet Libya-born Mohanad Elshieky‏, a stand-up comedian based in Portland. With his unique perspective, Elshieky‏ is a rising star in the comedy scene. The laid-back performer has won accolades for his ability to find humor in dire circumstances. 

Film: America, Also my Home

by Nomad

Things we all take for granted are, for the undocumented immigrant, filled with risk. This short film depicts a situation most of us cannot begin to imagine. The intro explains:

After arriving in the US against her will, a young woman's children are caught in the 35W bridge collapse. As an undocumented immigrant, she is forced to choose between driving without a license, and caring for her kids.

America: Also My Home from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo.

The Slow Death and Unexpected Rebirth of Civic Duty

by Nomad

What is a "civic duty" and why has the idea become so important in recent days?

A Quaint Old Fashioned Phrase

When Professor Christine Ford sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she must have anticipated that her motives for reporting her accusations against Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh would be treated with suspicion.

Some on the Republican side were very interested in who might have paid for her travel expenses and polygraph, implying she was being supported by enemies of the administration. Others -perhaps those who have spent decades wallowing in the Washington swamp- were simply unable to imagine anybody without sinister ulterior motives.

Sanity Sunday - Weekly Review (August 6-12) and Nomadic Playlist 5

by Nomad

Paleobiologist, J. William Schopf, once pointed out that "for four-fifths of our history, our planet was populated by pond scum." Looking back over the last week, it's hard to see much sign that things- at least in the noxious world of politics-  have evolved all that much. Despite Trump's campaign promise to drain the swamp, the week proved that the levels of scum are not receding in the slightest. 
So it's time to put on our hip waders and take our weekly march into the muck. 


Trump Tweets about Secret Meeting
On Monday, President Trump admitted in a tweet something which will, legal experts said, be extraordinarily problematic for his defense against the charge of Russian collusion.

Why A Court Victory for DACA Dreamers Won't Stop Trump's Zero Tolerance Policy

by Nomad

Although federal judges have ordered the administration to re-instate DACA in recent decisions, there is still plenty of dread and distrust amongst the Dreamers for this administration. 
And for good reason.


You might not have noticed what with all the usual insanity going on in the Trump administration but, on Friday, a federal judge delivered another serious blow to one of the president's most controversial decrees. This marks- perhaps- the death blow to Trump's fondest anti-immigration dreams.

Toddlers in Court: The Cruel Absurdity of Trump's Child Separation Policy

by Nomad

According to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C., children as young as three have been ordered to appear in court (without legal representation) for their own deportation proceedings.

You might be surprised to learn that requiring unaccompanied minors to go through deportation alone is not a new practice. However under Trump's zero-tolerance policy, More children - and some much younger- are now being ordered to appear before a judge.

Families Torn Apart and Kids in Cages: Moral Outrage in the Comment Section

by Nomad

Today, the AP featured a story about the living conditions of the hundreds of immigrant children currently being warehoused in South Texas.

Nearly 2,000 children have been taken from their parents since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the policy, which directs Homeland Security officials to refer all cases of illegal entry into the United States for prosecution. Church groups and human rights advocates have sharply criticized the policy, calling it inhumane.

How America's Inflexible Immigration Policy is Tearing Families Apart

by Nomad

Whatever your views on immigration, the story of the Pukri family is a tale of what happens when broad policy trickles down to a human level. 

Having left their home country for the US nearly two decades ago, the goals of the Vitor and Neta were to obtain their legal status to remain in the country they loved. At the time, with the civil order broken down, Albania was a dangerous place to raise a family.
Take a listen to this short podcast.

The Wealthy Russians Who Call the United Kingdom Home

by Nomad

In a time when war-torn refugees coming to Europe and the UK are looked upon with skepticism, fear, and dread, there's been very little discussion of the economic migration of the wealthy class from Russia.

The Good Life and the Illusion of Safety

It's not what you'd call new news. In 2012, CNBC reported

Wealthy Russians are moving to London is such large numbers that local commentators have coined the term “Londongrad.” Roman Abramovich, the Russian multi-billionaire who owns the Chelsea Football Club is the highest-profile rich Russian in Britain, but he is only one of ten Russian billionaires living there, while an estimated 1,000 Russian millionaires now call London home.

The reasons for this exodus, according to attorneys and real-estate agents in London who deal with the Russian rich, is the attraction of the stability and the refined culture of London life.

But something else: the relative safety of not being poached by the mob or arrested by the police. As Reuters reported that same year.

Leaked secret diplomatic cables from the U.S. embassy in Moscow once described Russia as a "virtual mafia state", and London has long been the chosen destination for Russians seeking refuge from trouble at home.

The Wall-to-Wall Absurdity of Trump's Folly

by Nomad

If President-elect Trump has his way, he will leave as his legacy one of the most embarrassing and expensive monuments to one man's vanity in American history. The Wall, otherwise known as "Trump's Folly."

The Folly of Donald Trump

In the 19th century, when some self-important character became transfixed by a foolish notion, the public would name it after him by calling it his "folly." It was a way of bringing home the public shame to a personal level. To use modern parlance, the fool would be made to "own" his act of stupidity.

President-elect Donald Trump has, for quite some time, been obsessed with his own particular folly- the building of a monumental wall between Mexico and the US, as a means of stopping the flow of illegal immigrants.   

"This will be a wall with a big, very beautiful door because we want the legals to come back into the country."

The idea was to first deport the millions of illegal immigrants in the US and then seal them out with a wall. Later, we could let them filter back in an orderly fashion.
(Now, even the mass deportation aspect seems to be undergoing a drastic re-think.)

"I will build a great wall -- and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me --and I'll build them very inexpensively.

However, the man who thinks going bankrupt is a clever business strategy has, according to the numbers crunchers, underestimated the costs of construction by perhaps a full half.

Is Trump Already Flip-Flopping on His Campaign Vow to Mass Deport Illegal Workers?

by Nomad

For those who supported the Donald Trump's tough-guy approach on illegal immigration and his vow to begin mass deportation, it's starting to look more and more like Trump was all talk. 

Trump Re-Tooled by Ryan 

On Sunday, the president-elect and House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that, contrary to what Trump had said ad infinitum, there was no plan to begin mass deportations. 

With Trump and Pence sitting beside him, Speaker Ryan explained:

We’re not focused on, we are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump’s not planning on that.”

Ryan stressed:

“We should put people’s minds at ease, that is not what our focus is. We’re focused on securing the border.”

Instead, they would be looking for "a solution that doesn’t include mass deportations, that involves getting people to earn a legal status while we fix the rest of illegal immigration.”

Earning legal status? Isn't that another way of saying those taboo words- conditional amnesty?  It all sounds suspiciously like what JEB! was proposing back in August  2016. 

His solution was described as

a rigorous path that requires individuals to pass a thorough criminal background check, pay fines, pay taxes, learn English, obtain a provisional work permit and work, not receive federal government assistance, and over an extended period of time earn legal status."

However, JEB! said, "any plan to address the status of illegal immigrants must be accompanied by a robust strategy to improve border security."

Post-election, Mr. Trump isn't looking so radical. Take away the mass deportation part and there's really not much difference between JEB! and Trump or Trump and Clinton. And make no mistake, mass deportation was the key variable of his campaign.

For all his bluster, Trump is turning out to be a run of the mill politician who makes a lot of promises but promptly breaks them the moment his jet touches down in Washington.
Compare what he was saying exactly one year ago.

Scapegoat: How Trump Misleads Angry American Workers on Immigration and Wage Stagnation

by Nomad

Economic experts for both sides of the political spectrum tell us that Donald Trump is dead wrong to blame wage stagnation on flawed immigration policies. That hasn't stopped him searching for scapegoats and misleading the angry American Workers.

During his lengthy acceptance speech at the Republican convention, the Republican nominee Donald Trump blamed lower wages for American workers on immigration.

He said:

Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers. We are going to have an immigration system that works, but one that works for the American people.

The speech was filled with an eighteen-wheeler full of balderdash so a statement like that probably went unnoticed. However, stirring up middle-class resentment like that is exactly how Trump managed to rise to his precarious place in American politics. 

Wage Stagnation and the Plight of the American Worker  

It is true, wage stagnation is not something that Trump just made up to win votes. It is real and it is causing widespread hardship due to income inequality. Wages have simply not kept up with the cost of living. Add to that the general expansion of non-wage benefits, fall in the price of consumer goods and rise in the price of services, such as education and healthcare and you have a lot of home-grown misery out there.

Lawrence Mishel, one of the authors of a series of recent reports from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI)

"Since the late 1970s, wages for the bottom 70 percent of earners have been essentially stagnant, and between 2009 and 2013, real wages fell for the entire bottom 90 percent of the wage distribution."

The report also pointed out that the Great Recession of 2008 didn't create this problem. It only compounded and exacerbated an economic effect that stretched back some 30 or more years.

Most importantly, the report finds that wage stagnation is not an accidental thing. Policy makers have created (or at least, allowed) the problem of wage stagnation.  A very wealthy minority with undue influence in Washington were allowed to rake in enormous profits based on frozen wages and increased productivity. 

Trump casually blames immigrants for the problem and yet cannot supply any evidence for this idea. And in turn, his working class fans seem oblivious to the peculiar fact that they are listening to a billionaire acting like an authority on low wages. For some reason, they believe that this man can actually sympathize with the plight of the American worker. There's a lot of suspension of disbelief going on, it seems.

So perhaps it is not all that extraordinary that Trump can get away with blaming undocumented workers. That's something that President Obama attempted to make clear in his State of the Union: 

Immigrants aren’t the principal reason wages haven’t gone up enough; those decisions are made in the boardrooms that too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns.

Experts argued that Obama was too forgiving when he used the phrase "the principle reason." That was wrong. There was no relationship at all between wages and immigrants, Obama's critics said.
If one wishes to find the real reasons for wage stagnation, there are plenty out there.

United We Stand: The Tragic Story of Marine Jose Gutierrez vs. Trump's Hate-filled Rhetoric

by Nomad

Let us take a moment to remember a fallen hero, Marine Jose Gutierrez. His story is more than enough to balance all of the hateful rhetoric we have heard about illegal immigrants from Donald Trump.

For many who watched the Democratic National Convention this week, the moment that Khizr and Ghazala Khan told the story of their son – a fallen Muslim U.S. soldier - was the ultimate takedown of the Republican nominee Donald Trump. 

Their son was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

Khan said:

“Hillary Clinton was right when she called my son the best of America. If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America. Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims. He disrespects other minorities, women, judges, and even his own party leadership. Donald Trump loves to build walls and ban us from this country.”

As most of us know, Trump has vowed to construct a wall along the US Southern border because Mexico (and presumably all of the countries south of that border) is allowing "people that have lots of problems" including rapists, drug runners, and other criminals to come to America. 

He compared this mass migration as "a tremendous infectious disease..pouring across the border." 

Many of his supporters have accepted this attempt at dehumanization as an undeniable truth, which pits "us" (native -born Americans) against "them," (the immigrant class.) As bombastic as it might seem, Trump's opinion, in fact, represents (more or less) the accepted position of the Republican party. 

An Orphan, A Street Child, and a Survivor

Standing with his wife on stage, Khizr Khan looked into the camera and asked Mr. Trump directly:

"Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America — you will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities."

Like the story of Humayun S.M. Khan, the tragic story of Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez also deserves our attention. Twenty-two year old Gutierrez earned the distinction of being one of the first US soldiers to die in the Iraq war.

That distinction is, however, only half of the story. 

In fact, the Guatemala-born Gutierrez was not yet an American citizen at the time of his death. And so, you will not find his grave in Arlington Cemetary. 

A Poem for Donald: Mending Wall by Robert Frost

by Nomad

Donald Trump's answer to America's immigration problem is to build a wall at the Sothern border. It may not be quite as easy or effective solution.
Trump's grand plan to cure immigration woes calls to mind a poem by Robert Frost.

The Great Wall of Trump

Republican candidate Donald Trump doesn't like to go into too many of the mundane details of his future policies as president.

Rather surprisingly, his supporters don't seem to mind too much. They just like to hear him speak and it appears the more unrealistic and offensive he is, the more they fawn over him.

One of the ideas he has proposed is the building of a wall on the Southern border to stem the flow of illegal migrants, from Mexico, Central, and South America.

Mark my words, Mr. Trump told his cheering crowds:

"I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border.  

These are the same types that actually believed Reagan would cut government spending, that read George H.W. Bush's lips about no new taxes, and roared when George W. promised to hunt Bin Laden down, come hell or high water.
Until he lost interest. 

The Radical Republican: When the GOP Championed the 14th Amendment

by Nomad

One idea that many people have a hard time wrapping their heads around is how the platforms of the two major political parties in America have dramatically shifted over the last 150 years. 

This historical fact is brought into sharper focus with the recent talk by Republican Donald Trump about the possibility of repealing the 14th Amendment and citizen birth rights provisions.

Tea Party Accuses Catholic Charities of Conspiracy with Obama over Immigrant Children Issue

  by Nomad

With ignorance on full display, a Tea Party Leader in Texas has accused Catholic Charities for conspiring with the Obama Administration. How? By sheltering and caring for the flood of immigrant children.

What does this say about our self-image as a nation, as a "City on the Hill"? What does the reaction by some in the Tea Party about their Christian credentials ?

Bud Kennedy, columnist for the Ft.Worth Star-Telegram, has recently called out an East Texas Tea Party leader for jumping on the  bandwagon and promoting nationwide yet another baseless conspiracy.  Their suspicions have targeted  Catholic Charities for trying to help with the influx of immigrant children.

Misguided Suspicions

One right-wing website, LibertyNews.com, broke the story that the Obama administration had advanced knowledge of, as its writer put it, the planned invasion. This conspiracy, it seems, was based solely on what Kennedy calls, one East Texas Republican’s "misguided suspicions."

So what is she basing this allegation on? The Longview Republican Terri Harris Hill points to federal records that show that the local Catholic Charities received $350,000 last year for immigration services.

LibertyNews also noted that:

Between Dec 2010 and Nov 2013, the Catholic Charities Diocese of Galveston received $15,549,078 in federal grants from Health & Human Services for “Unaccompanied Alien Children Project” with a program description of “Refugee and Entry Assistance.

Based solely on this information, LibertyNews has accused Catholic Charities in Texas of conspiring in “the invasion currently underway.”

Kennedy quotes Hill telling a phone interviewer:

“I think there is something suspicious because the government started awarding grants before the surge. I mean, how did they know?”

How indeed? 

The answer is remarkably easy to explain, according to the columnist.

Tens of thousands of foreign children each year come to the United States without a parent or legal permission. Under a quirk in a 2008 law, children from Mexico are returned, but Central American children stay in shelters or with families until a court rules if they are refugees or trafficking victims. 

Remember in November- Hispanic Americans

Here's some information about why the Hispanic vote could play a crucial role in this years election. In an op/ed piece at Politico, Martin Frost asks: Can GOP ever win Latino vote?

Romney captured the Cuban vote in the Florida primary, this doesn’t mean the GOP can win Latino votes this fall. Unlike other Latino voters, Cuban-Americans are reliably Republican.

The vast majority of Latinos in other states, however, are not from Cuba. Many are from Mexico, as well as Central America and Puerto Rico. Even in Florida, there is now a significant number of non-Cuban Latinos, who tend to vote Democratic.

Second, assuming Romney is the Republican nominee, he has a lot of ground to make up with Latinos after being pushed far to the right on the immigration issue during the early primaries and caucuses.

Many Latinos are culturally conservative, patriotic and remarkably entrepreneurial. On paper, this sounds like fertile territory for the GOP. But once Latinos have heard the GOP’s strong anti-immigrant rhetoric, they may well stop listening to anything else Republicans have to say.