The Invisible Wall

Recently Trump claimed to have begun building his big beautiful wall and even had a plaque dedicating this section to himself as the first section of his border wall.

Now, as a point of fact, this section of the wall was built in place of an older barrier that was dilapidated and in need of replacement and was ordered to be rebuilt by then President Obama, who also authorized the funds.

This is not a new wall.

This was not his victory.

Since we cannot trust what Trump says, let’s look at what he’s actually done.

Trump has taken money from the military budget, against the objections of the Pentagon, and is trying to repurpose those funds to build the border wall. My mother taught me that when you take something that doesn’t belong to you, without being asked, It’s called “stealing.” It also makes you wonder how much of the new and highly expanded military budget, money the Pentagon didn’t even ask for, might also be “taken” to build his wall in the future.  I thought the whole big idea of building the wall was that Mexico was going to pay for it. That’s where he got his big applause. Apparently, that line was just a ruse. We are going to pay for this wall, and we aren’t going to have a say about it.

I guess we’ll just send Mexico an invoice or something.

Without a doubt, the Trump administration cannot be trusted.

Trump has put up some pretty impressive invisible barriers, though, while at the same time built a big beautiful door to which he invites conflicts on the world stage, including the possibility of wars on various fronts.

He has reduced funding to the United Nations, tried to leverage our allies, you know the ones we worked with to keep fascism from taking over the free world for 70 years or so, into contributing more toward the UN based on his vast and highly unsuccessful Real Estate experience. The United Nations is what you would call an invisible barrier, stopping would-be dictators and fascists from invading and taking over other nations. Russia, obviously, isn’t a member.

Trump also withdrew the US from the Human Rights Council, an organization that America used to pride themselves as being a part of to make the world a better place to live. This actually paved the way for America to befriend dictators and despots who live outside the law.

Which brings us to the fact that Trump has insulted and infuriated our allies, while at the same time tried to build relationships with the world’s most notorious dictators.

Talk about a destabilizing influence.

Another invisible wall Trump has recently torn down is his threat to withdraw Hundreds of Millions of dollars of aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, with the expressed purpose of trying to get them to stop the asylum caravans coming to our southern border.

Trump, if there was a fire in your kitchen, would you turn up the heat to the stove? Grab a can of gasoline, perhaps?

People are fleeing these countries because of poverty and crime. Taking money away from these governments will NOT make this problem go away–it will make it WORSE!

What we should be doing is giving more money or support to these countries. If we could help train their police departments and help them reduce crime, while also increasing investment in these countries to fight poverty and promote a happy and thriving middle class, then fewer citizens of these countries will want to walk for months to get here. Let’s face it, walking for thousands of miles is not anyone’s Plan A–it’s a last-ditch effort to stay alive.

The money we send to these countries is an invisible wall, keeping other nations out of our back yard. Right now, without our support, these countries are open for business to any other country that wishes to help support them in their effort to create a better economy.

Now that this invisible wall is collapsing, we are going to have Chinese and Russian influences and whoever else wants to encroach upon our sovereignty at our southern border, and our former allies are going to watch from the sidelines because you told them our “Patriotism” was all we needed and they could just go jump off a bridge.

Nice Trump. What are you going to do for an encore, play the fiddle as our nation burns to the ground?

AS you can see, international relations, or a lack thereof, form an invisible barrier to threats from foreign nations. We had some pretty good ones, but Trump doesn’t like those. He likes the ones he can touch and put his name on. The problem is, those kinds of walls don’t work like you think they will. Just ask Rome, China, or Germany, and all the other countries that tried to build physical barriers to keep threats out. Invisible barriers work better than physical ones. They also make more friends, and that’s one thing we could sure use more of these days.

 

The Real National Border Emergency: Brought to you by Trump & GOP

There is a real national emergency at our southern border with Mexico, but it’s not the one Trump is promoting—it’s the one he is creating himself. The fact that the GOP is backing him up on his wild lies makes them complicit.

Many news reporting agencies have documented that in 2018 the Trump administration introduced a “zero-tolerance” policy calling for the prosecution of all individuals who illegally enter the United States. The devastating effect has been the following:

  • Parents have been separated from their children.
  • There was no plan to reunite children with their parents until after a major backlash from the public.
  • Minor children were locked up far longer than legally allowed.
  • More than 4,500 incidents of child abuse against minors in immigration custody have been reported.
  • Twenty-two immigrant deaths in US immigration custody in the past two years has also been documented.
  • The emotional effects of this separation and abuse on these children will be revealing itself for decades to come. Traumatized children tend to exhibit mental and emotional problems as adults. This horrific abuse will likely affect their entire lives.

As if these tragedies weren’t bad enough, the Trump administration continues to persecute immigrants and asylum seekers by:

  • Reducing the number of courts and judges that hear asylum cases which increased incarceration periods and reduced asylum approvals to hereto unheard of numbers.
  • Denying an overwhelming majority of asylum seekers cases making it almost impossible for asylum seekers to achieve protection against threats back home.
  • Sending asylum seekers to a foreign country that we have no control over housing, feeding, medical care or even communications to await their status hearings.

The thinking of the Trump administration with this policy shift was that by destroying families, the will of people to come here would be reduced. Breaking this logic down, it reads—if you are afraid for life as well as that of your children, don’t come here.

The big question is; since when did women & children become a threat to national security? 

Well, they aren’t, which is why Trump makes up lies about MS13, drugs and human trafficking adding into the mix. To gain more support for his border wall, he tries to frighten us with the bogeyman. 

No one cannot trust a pathological liar for a President. But he is much more than that. He is also a Hypocrite, just like all the other sons of immigrants who call for an end to “Chain Migration.” 

If Chain migration is so bad for America, as Donald Trump states, then as our elected leader he should be willing to send his wife Melania’s parents back to their home country. That is what great leaders do; lead by example. The fact that he won’t ever do this proves that either he is not the great leader he thinks he is, or Trump does believe in uniting and protecting families. Instead of promoting an immigration policy that is in conflict with his personal history and making him look untrustworthy, Trump should embrace family-based immigration policies. 

Trump also employed many undocumented workers at his golf courses, and probably in his construction crews as well, so his stand against illegal immigration falls flat. If it’s okay for him to do it, why should it be illegal for others? The fact that he fired these immigrants recently is only for damage control. He has never even apologized to the American people for the “oversight”. Let’s forget it ever happened, right Donald?

Donald Trump has stated on many occasions that our immigration laws are highly broken. Focusing on a wall instead of immigration reform is just a political ruse. 

Walls don’t work. Ask China or the Romans, two famous examples of militarizing borders. Walls didn’t stop the Huns from invading China or the Barbarians from invading Rome. We could also ask the Germans why they tore down their wall, the most fortified and guarded wall in recent history. Thousands of people escaped East Germany in spite of those efforts. All walls are breach-able. Building a wall won’t stop immigration by itself. Walls are tools, not solutions.

In truth; a set of fair and just immigration laws in conjunction with support for our neighbors to combat gangs and crime would go a lot further to slowing down immigration from our neighbors into our country. 

Improved investment in jobs and a stable economy would further reduce strain at our southern border. Families and a rich history with the geography that gave them birth are a huge reason most people love the countries they already live in. Why would anyone want to make a long and treacherous journey to live somewhere else if they could live free and happy lives at home?

America has spent Billions of dollars and thousands of American lives defending citizens of foreign nations from oppression and death around the world. We should be able to do better for our neighbors here at home for less money and with far less human casualty. 

We are the great United States of America. Shouldn’t we expect more from ourselves than just a simple wall?  

Even US military Generals agree there is no military threat at our southern border. On the insistence of Trump and with the full support of the GOP, the only military at the border is ours—we are literally at war with ourselves. 

Trump and the Republicans should be ashamed of themselves. Real people are dying, families are being destroyed, and young lives are being permanently damaged while Trump tells us that fictional bad guys are storming our borders and a wall will fix everything. Only an idiot would think that solving all of our immigration problems were really as simple as building a wall.

The national emergency at the border is real; Trump created it, the Republicans support it—only we can end it. 

An American Crisis of the Soul

For years now the far right has waged a war on American values in the name of American values in order to confuse their ideological goals with the very definition of what it means to be American. By now it is obvious to most of the people on earth that they have annexed the Republican party and are having their way with our nation.

The far right have used the GOP to beat Bill Clinton over the head with his affair with Monica Lewinsky and a supposed Whitewater real estate investment scandal that never produced any real evidence. They continue to impose a poor image on Hilary Clinton over these same issues, even though our current president gets a huge pass on hard evidence of worse offenses on the same issues.(Stormy Daniels & Trump Tower Washington & Moscow for just a few examples.)

The GOP rode Barrack Obama so hard during his 8 years in office that I was embarrassed for our nation. Donald Trump and his racist far-right “birther” movement tried to cast doubt about his citizenship and therefore authority to govern. Far-right racist cartoons casting President Obama and his wife in humiliating ways, Republican senators professing to seek to limit his term to 4 years almost immediately after inauguration. The GOP in Congress was so anti-Obama they were the least productive in history during his term in office, openly vowing to reduce his influence on America to as little as possible while at the same time blaming him for not getting much done in office. To this day Trump is erasing what little he did get done. (Blame Obama is a recurring GOP theme.)

Now we have a President who never gave us a look at his tax returns, keeping his past international and investment ties a secret unlike all presidents before him since 1976 except one. He has had multiple marriages, which would have been a non-starter before 2016, but somehow was forgiven, just like his infidelities and self-admitted sexual assaults. Trump’s verbal abuse of American Heros who “didn’t get captured” didn’t get him cut from the list of GOP hopefuls, although if Obama had said it, I’m sure someone else would have become president. There are so many verbal abuses and insults Trump has issued that I’m sure everyone else in America is aware of and is a shame to our national reputation. Also the fact that in his first months in office he has redefined our allies as delinquent bill payers and promoted autocrats and demi-gods as supposed well-respected members of society worthy of admitting into international organizations. Now, Trump is telling us that all the women and children fleeing death and destruction in their central American countries are a national crisis that needs our military and a huge wall to protect us from. Machine guns, tear gas, and barbed wire vs diaper wielding moms. Let’s not talk about our broken immigration system and how to fix it, though. A wall will do it all if you believe Trump.

Thanks, GOP. You’ve ruined my country. I won’t support you any longer until you start treating Americans as the people you are supposed to represent, not the people you can lie to and steal from. I would rather vote for a goat in a tree than a member of your shameful organization.

You’ve given this nation’s reputation a bruising, worse than a black eye, with all you’ve done to restructure the world’s relationships to your own liking, as well as lie to your country on a daily basis about everything that means anything to your people and use foreign nations to help you win your seat at the table. The fact that you keep bragging about “your base” really tells us everything we need to know about you.

We’re ALL supposed to be your base.

You are the President of the United States of America, but you are governing like the Divided States of Trump. You’ve given our nation social syphilis. Luckily there’s a cure if you catch it in time.

America is uniting for immigrants

Labor unions, women’s movements, muslims and more are marching together to stand with their immigrant friends and relatives to show support against an antagonistic President who has recently enacted an unjust travel ban, ended Michelle Obama’s “Let Girls Learn” program and has just begun a push to build his oppressive and highly un-neighborly Wall.

The president seems to be trying very hard to disassociate America from so many of the people that make up this country one has to imagine what country he thinks he is the president of.

And the people of this nation are rising up against his idea of what makes America Great.

If you look at the makeup of people who are uniting against him, one thing is going to be certain; making America great will mean getting a new president.

The Problem with Travel Bans

I read an article on Forbes about Trump’s travel ban and what struck me most is how people are looking at this issue. These lawyers are arguing about how it can be legal or what the legal problems are. Unfortunately, if you’ve ever had to deal with the courts you will understand that lawyers can remove all the humanity of an issue in short order.

Why is nobody looking at the usefulness of the order or how it affects people?

By broadly discriminating against a religious group the effect is obvious. If we are to believe most terrorists are Muslims, why are we not also telling Catholic priests they cannot work with children? I know to Christians that sounds like a horrendous proposition. The Muslim travel ban would sound equally as despicable if you were Muslim. We know not all Catholic priests are pedophiles, so we don’t even talk about such an idea, yet how can we so easily talk about Muslims like we are with this travel ban? I personally know many, many muslims and I know they are not terrorists. Many are some of the nicest, most generous people I know. A travel ban based on a religious basis is most incredibly insulting, insensitive and ultimately non-productive.

Many people are also discussing how it is NOT a discriminatory edict by reflecting on many Muslim nations that are not on the ban list, yet within all of the countries on the ban list we are clearly targeting Muslims. Saying we are not targeting Muslims from Pakistan so therefore we are not targeting Muslims is senseless. Why are Pakistan and Iraq NOT on the list? We know many terrorists train or are funded by some Pakistanis and ISIS is based mainly in Iraq and Syria. This makes no sense at all. We are targeting Muslim majority countries in conflict, yet we are not including Pakistan and Iraq, two of the most violent and troubled nations on earth? Clearly we are making this stuff up as we go along and trying to justify our actions based on not including a few very controversial nations. If we are just trying to make America safe, shouldn’t we also have a ban against white supremacists in public schools and movie theaters?

And since most people on earth are not terrorists, because if they were there would be terrorist events happening in every country every day, how is this affecting people and families who are not terrorists trying to come to this country, or especially those trying to flee the conflicts in their own home nations? It could be devastating for many very innocent people.

Then there are those who say people with citizenship, dual citizenship, visas, green cards, etc in the countries on the list are not affected. Why not? The people who flew into the twin towers had American visas. In England, many of the terrorists were citizens or had visas too. In the most recent attack in England, Khalid Masood was an English citizen. Why is England not on the no fly list? He could have flown here and committed his crimes. Look at France, Belgium and Germany. Citizens, visas all.

This brings up the usefulness of such a ban. We know that religion is not the perpetrator of terrorism. Christians and Muslims are listed in atrocities all over the globe, yet because we are a “Christian” nation, we are focusing only on the Muslims. This is blatantly discriminatory. You cannot argue otherwise without omitting many obvious and convenient facts.

Terrorists are Zealots. They are willing to go to extremes to get their message across. They use whatever facts they wish to use to carry their anger and hate to a broader audience. If we truly want to make the world safer, we need to work with all communities to disarm the hate, and disarm the individuals who would harm innocent people.

A real war on terrorism would put a ban on installing dictators and government that persecute their citizens in other countries just because they would work favorably with us. This would go far in removing hate against a nation because of how they are being treated by us. We also need to persecute organizations, companies and the very laws that make it easy for them to acquire weapons and the tools to carry out their crimes.

We need to reduce  the access to weapons as well as the ammunition of hate. This would be more effective than a travel ban. Unfortunately we love our easy access to weapons, and our greed keeps us producing hate around the world. We should stop blaming others for our problems and start taking the blame ourselves. Only then can we work towards making our nation and the world safer.

Stars and stripes on gun

Clinton wants to pass immigration reform in first 100 days in office

Vice Presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine said Hilary Clinton wants to push for immigration reform in her first hundred days in office, should she get elected president. While this sounds good, President Obama has been trying to pass the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (S. 744) for 3 years and has failed. The bill, co-authored by 4 democrats and 4 republicans, has met stiff resistance in the Republican dominated House of Representatives. Unless we vote out the stubborn Republican Senators who are against immigration reform, Hilary Clinton does not stand any more of a chance than Barrack Obama.

 

The Immigration Force

FWD.US gives us a peek into what would it look like to have an immigration force rounding up people and disrupting businesses, familes and society in general.

 

The battle for the 14th Amendment

For as long as our constitution has been around, certain members of our community and their hired guns in Washington have tried to change our immigration laws in an effort to “keep our country white.” The 14th amendment has been under attack since it’s inception during the civil war.

This infographic helps to demonstrate the effects on such an attack.

14th Amendment2

Is Obama like Lincoln?

Is Obama similar to Abe Lincoln?

lincoln-obama

If Obama comes out with an executive order to help a marginalized and highly oppressed portion of our society gain legal status to live in the US, then, yes, he will be.

On January 1, 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order to free Slaves in Confederate held lands. It did not free all the slaves.  This executive order was issued without Congress voting on it, and gave slaves the right to create their own destinies, free from the fear that they could be captured and returned to previous owners.

The people who wanted the white man to always have dominion over the inferior black man, were very hateful and vocal about their anger over this issue. So much so that Lincoln would later be killed by one such person.

This is very similar to what Obama will be introducing in the next few days. His executive order is expected to give some 5 million undocumented immigrants (not all of them) permission to live within our borders without fear of being captured and sent back to their former country.

Let us also not forget that Abe Lincoln was a Republican, which should make the loud, hateful Republicans pause, but of course, it does not. Anything that Barack Obama wants, these guys want the opposite–even if it’s in their own best interest. Their hate can  be read in every immigration article’s comment section online.

So let’s hope our  Conservative lawmakers and their supporters don’t get their panties in a bunch over what will inevitably be another step in our country’s racial evolution. History truly does repeat itself. This has already happened, and it is happening again.

Get over it.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez- the Children’s Champion

Thank God for Senators like Luis Gutierrez.

Not many people have come to champion the needs of children, as they do not vote, so the political capital one would spend on such an endeavor could be seen to weaken their standing among peers. But that matters not for people like Rep. Gutierrez. He came to the Senate with love in his heart and a gleam in his eye that says, “I will stand for those who cannot defend themselves, and anyone who picks on children, especially an hour before going on recess when no defense could even be fielded, is a coward.”

The Republican base has spoken on how it intends to deal with DREAMers, the children caught between their illegal status and their desire to do the right thing; they choose to vilify them.

This is like calling a rape victim the criminal, or a robbery victim an outlaw. These things do not make sense to a logical person, but hate, the real kind of hate, the kind that knows not how to discriminate between right and wrong because of a preconceived  idea of what type of person is allowed to be right or wrong, this kind of hate has no logic and therefore cannot be reasoned with.

So it should go without saying this type of hater needs to be removed from places of influence.

When the Catholic priests began getting complaints that certain ministers were using their position of influence to victimize children, at first the church pretended not to hear the call, after all, children cannot be reliable witnesses and can therefore be ignored. It was only years later, when the few victims turned into seas of angry young men and women who had been victimized, not just by the priests, but by the church itself for turning a blind eye on their plight, they could not avoid responding in the way they should have so many years before.

This is the way it is today, as millions of children are being victimized by the society that should be looking out for them, protecting them, and giving them every opportunity to make their circumstances right. This, unfortunately, is not happening, and we continue to elect those who will demonize the children who where brought here in their youth, and many, who know only this country. The responsibility for the victimization can now only fall onto us, the American voter, for we are not only keeping those high priests of our legal system in power, but actually electing even more of them.

So when we hear from heros like Rep. Gutierrez, we need to stand up and say, “we are with you.” and heed his call, back up his position and give him the political capitol it takes to protect those child victims. Without men like Gutierrez,  I fear for all children the of the world.