“When billionaires talk about freedom, watch your wallets. Behind Elon Musk’s blather about free markets, free speech, and free choice is his goal to be free from accountability.”
Reich went on to say: “The “free market” increasingly reflects the demands of big money. Unfriendly takeovers, such as Musk threatens to mount at Twitter, weren’t part of the “free market” until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Before then, laws and regulations constrained them. Then came corporate raiders like Carl Icahn and Michael Milken. Their MO was to find corporations whose assets were worth more than their stock value, borrow against them, acquire enough shares to force them to cut costs (such as laying off workers, abandoning their communities, busting unions, and taking on crushing debt), and cash in. But the raiders’ antics often imposed huge social costs. They pushed America from stakeholder capitalism (where workers and communities had a say in what corporations did) to shareholder capitalism (where the sole corporate goal is to maximize shareholder value). Inequality skyrocketed, insecurity soared, vast swaths of America were abandoned, and millions of good jobs vanished.”
“In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons.”
He took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide and proceeded to question whether the Bible is age-appropriate, pointing to its “casual” references to murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication. “Do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?”
Twitter actually showed some backbone this week when it placed a warning label on a tweet from Donald Trump in which he warned if protesters tried to set up an “autonomous zone” in Washington D.C. they would be “met with serious force!”
We’ve placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group.https://t.co/AcmW6O6d4t
“Much as he might wish otherwise, Donald Trump is not the president of Twitter. This order, if issued, would be a blatant and unconstitutional threat to punish social media companies that displease the president.”
“The president has no authority to rewrite a congressional statute with an executive order imposing a flawed interpretation of Section 230,” the ACLU continued, referring to the section of the Communications Decency Act that shields platforms from being held liable for what users publish on them.
Trump had issued the order in a toddler-esque tirade against Twitter for having the audacity to fact-check two of his posts; one claiming that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud (a long-standing conservative mantra used to thwart voting rights) and the other that the state of California will send mail-in ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.”
Twitter is based in San Francisco, a city with a notorious reputation for having a leftist political and social bent. California Governor Gavin Newsom, an arch foe of Trump, recently issued an order to protect public health in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic while casting their votes in this year’s presidential election.
“I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”
– William Barr, U.S. Attorney General, in an interview with ABC News’ Pierre Thomas.
I feel it’s odd that Barr, a known Trump loyalist, suddenly seems to have turned on his boss – the borderline psychotic with a mob mentality who has been masquerading as president of the United States for 3 years. I also don’t understand why Trump is allowed to maintain his Twitter account. After Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 – without any question, I have to add – the Secret Service confiscated his Blackberry, as a matter of national cybersecurity. And, in the current state of affairs, one of the biggest threats to our national security is Trump.
“Don’t worry, Mr. President. I’ll see you at your trial.”
– Sen. Kamala Harris, responding to Donald Trump’s tweet wishing her well after ending her presidential bid and referencing the U.S. House’s impeachment investigation into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
I keep having to look at the slew of calendars I have scattered throughout the house – the National Geographic, ASPCA, military veterans and one displaying houses I get every year from my real estate friend. They all assure me of the same thing: it’s 2019 – not 1919. Or 1969. Or even 1999. Nope! It’s 2019, my friends. We’re at the end of the second decade of the 21st century. Oh wait! Yes. I had to check again: 2019 – the two and the zero being the key factors here.
I have to do this because of the recent series of tirades Donald Trump has lavished upon certain members of Congress. Would somebody get the damn phone away from him?!
As if anyone should be surprised, our Dear Leader hasn’t quieted down verbal attacks against non-Whites who dare to speak their minds against him. Via his Twitter feed while safely ensconced in the White House, he created quite a stir recently, when he assailed four alphamore U.S. congresswomen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. Denouncing them as “The Squad”, he became enraged, after they criticized him for his response to the growing migrant crisis along the southern border – among other issues.
Ocasio-Cortez had already
identified herself as a socialist when she won New York’s 14th Congressional
District, which includes parts of the Bronx and Queens boroughs – both of which
have large non-White populations. In fact,
I think non-Hispanic Whites are so scarce in the Bronx they might qualify for
endangered species status.
Trump didn’t hold anything back when he assailed the four congresswomen (an attribute his devotees love) that, if the lawmakers “hate our country,” they can “go back” to the “broken and crime-infested” countries “from which they came”. For the record, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley and Tlaib were all born and raised here in the United States; thus making them, well, natural-born Americans. Omar emigrated to the U.S. with her family as a child; the clan fleeing their Somali homeland, as it sunk further into political and social chaos. But she is now an American citizen. Omar has been openly critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, which garners the usual cries of anti-Semitism from all sides. But a statement about the 09/11 terrorist attacks as “some people did something” makes me think suspiciously of her. Yet, one has to look at that verbiage within the context of her entire speech. To her credit, she’s also said: “I do not blame every single white person when we have a white man who massacres children at a school, or moviegoers in a movie theatre. And I think this really horrendous narrative that says, as a Muslim, I’m supposed to explain, apologize, for the actions of someone who’s also terrorizing me, is absurd.”
Now Trump has gone after Congressman Elijah Cummings who represents Maryland’s 7th District, which includes Baltimore. Describing the majority-Black area as a “rodent-infested mess” where “no human being would want to live”, he drew widespread condemnation from Democrats and independents. I don’t know what incited that particular discourse, but it’s obvious Trump likes to play the proverbial race card when things get rough in the political arena, which is something like, oh…100% of the time. And I’ve found that, if you go for the jugular by mentioning race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality, you’ve essentially lost the debate. You’ve run out of legitimate things to say; you’ve exhausted your gallery of facts and logical points, but you want to keep arguing because you just absolutely have to have the last word.
As I’ve stated before, not everything wrong with America is the fault of White males. But again, I have to look at one of my calendars. Seriously?! We’re still dealing with this shit in 2019?! I heard that “go back” crap when I was in high school! It was a similar comment from a fellow student that propelled me into my first and only fight in high school – towards the end of my senior year. During my alphamore year a substitute teacher said my last name is un-Christian. I took that up with the school principal before I told my parents about it. I was concerned my proud father would go to the school and want to kick some old White ass.
I heard a little less racist language while in college. Key words – “a little less”. Occasionally, some idiot would throw a “you
people” in my face, and I was just as quick to slur right back at them. By the 1990s, ironically, the people slinging
racist vitriol at me the most were Black or other Hispanics.
So, how is it that this kind of talk has worked its way
back into the mainstream? Retro may be
cool in some nightclub situations, such as retro-70s. (I try to ignore “Retro 90s” nights!) But it’s not necessarily cool with a spoken
language. Never mind that Trump’s “go
back” comment might be illegal in a workplace setting. I’m still perplexed that we’ve gone from No-Drama-Obama
to Czar Trump in a virtual blink of our collective eyes.
But, after 200 or so years of civil rights progress, it seems we’ve now started rolling backwards. To we Trump detractors, this is not news. Trump had pumped fuel into the “Birther” movement: the band of morons who questioned the birthright of President Obama. He never acknowledged he’d been wrong when he said his “researchers” had learned some odd things about Obama. Yet, he sat in the Oval Office next to Obama and called him a great man. Amazing how brave some people get when they’re behind a phone or a computer, isn’t it? It’s so different in person.
Thinking back to my high school tenure doesn’t bring back
many good memories. I was so shy and
introverted I often fell prey to bullies.
So I try NOT to think about that period.
It was so long ago anyway. Yet,
that “go back” shit slammed into my conscious harder than seeing a Windows 3
screen.
My mother used to recount the
number of times people had called her “half-breed” because her father was German-American
and her mother was Mexican. My father
told me of the day an older White woman at the printing shop where he worked
said she saw “a bunch of Mexicans” working on a lawn and thought of him. He responded by saying something like, “Well,
I saw a herd of cows in a field on my way to work and thought of you.”
A friend of mine once asked how is
it that, in such a large city as Dallas, our fathers happened to know each
other.
“All those old Mexicans knew each
other!” I replied. “They were all crammed
into the same neighborhoods and went to the same schools. They had to stick together. It was a matter of survival.”
She’s only a few years younger
than me, and my answer seemed to surprise her.
But she understood what I was saying.
In high school – and to some
extent, even in college – I often felt isolated because I was one of the few Hispanic
kids. But I was as much American as I was
then and still am now. Some of my Spanish
ancestors were here in Texas long before the Mayflower pilgrims; my Indian ancestors
long before them. So I always pulled
that from the depths of my mind whenever some fool threw a “go back” at me.
I suspect Donald Trump’s presidency is the final battle cry of the “Angry White Male” – the withering group of individuals who still feel they should run everything and should be allowed to say what they want. But, as a mostly White male myself, I know Trump gives all White men a bad name. I’ll never criticize people who voted for him in 2016. They had that right, and it’s not up to anyone else to decide what their selection should be. I definitely disagree with a recent essay by Pastor John Pavlovitz about Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment three years ago.
But still…“go back”? I’m hearing that again? From the president of the United States? Pardon me just a moment. Yes…still 2019. Time just won’t stop or roll backwards, no
matter how much we beg.
The 45th President of the United States has achieved a previously unimaginable goal: reduce the size of the federal government. In this case, it’s the presidency, which has been downgraded to 140 characters. He has left people disoriented and unsettled; rattled and dismayed; flummoxed and constipated. Many of his most devout followers have embraced the lemming ideology of life and started following their magical penis-pied piper to the precipice of a faux utopia. And we thought George W. Bush was mentally-challenged! Well…he was. Yet Trump has taken messianic mendacity to supersonic levels. I keep thinking that someone on his staff should advise him to keep his pre-dawn twittering in the bathroom. But that would be like telling Abraham Lincoln, ‘Don’t go to the theatre! You’ll catch a cold.’ It’s virtually impossible to demand this bombastic, bull-headed businessman behave presidential.
It may be hard to imagine, but there are some logical comparisons to such a feat. But there are plenty. Therefore, telling Donald Trump NOT to Tweet is like…
…telling the Kardashian girls not to take selfies.
…telling Bill Clinton to honor his marriage vows.
…telling Matthew McConaughey to keep on his shirt.
…telling Ann Coulter to stop being such a bitch.
…telling Justin Bieber to act like an adult.
…telling Michael Moore to lay off the doughnuts and eclairs.
…telling Elton John to tone down his wardrobe.
…telling Kanye West to stop interrupting people.
…telling Paris Hilton to get a job.
…telling Rush Limbaugh to take a deep breath.
…telling Caitlyn Jenner to grow a pair.
…telling Willie Nelson to shave and get a trim.
…telling Barbara Walters to retire once and for all.
…telling Eminem to act White.
…telling Pope Francis to stop wearing those designer gowns.
…telling Bill Maher to shut the hell up.
…telling Oprah Winfrey no one misses her.
…telling Brittney Spears she can’t sing worth a shit.
…telling Snoop Dogg to learn proper English.
…telling Alec Baldwin to stop making fun of Trump.
Telling Donald Trump Not to Tweet is like… [Readers, please feel free to provide your own response]. The more fun we can have with this, the more likely Trump will get pissed off and Tweet and subsequently provide us all with more joke material. And the more we can all laugh at and ridicule our mentally-unhinged elected officials will bring us closer to that highly-coveted state of national nirvana.
I can see it now: thousands of years into the future our descendants will unearth our electronic devices and try to decipher the hard drives. Then, they’ll realize our own ancestors were actually more ingenious than us.
Chief Writing Wolf 