Our government continues to justify its "right" to detain folks -- even American citizens! -- indefinitely without charge. Our Supreme Court has lately refused to hear an appeal from one Moath al-Alwi, one of the first 20 men Tha Bush Mobb brought to Guantánamo Bay, meaning he's been there for 17 years, without being charged with a damn thing. Open-ended detainment is bad enough when it's folks who can't pay bail for public drunkenness, but 17 years! Without a charge! That disgraces us, and injures our democracy. If we're the greatest nation on Earth, we shouldn't pull the kind of tricks dictators pull.
Speaking of things that disgrace us and injure our democracy, our Administration tells our Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that our laws don't actually require them to provide detained immigrant children with such things as soap or toothbrushes, even though our laws actually do require them to keep detainees in "safe and sanitary" conditions. It may be true that our laws do not always spell out how you must act like a human being, but that's often because we should all know how to do that by now. May God have mercy on the immortal souls of those who serve, such as they do, in our government.
I'm glad to see others saying, as Steve Wamhoff from the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy does, that "Calling Progressive Tax Proposals 'Extreme' Are Taunts Meant to Distract." And what do they distract you from? Why, their popularity among good Americans, of course! Whenever folks like Mob Boss Mitch call Sen. Warren's wealth tax proposal "extreme," they're actually calling over 60 percent of Americans "extreme"! How are majorities "extreme" again?
Ho hum, a hedge fund manager and his wife have contributed more than $3 million to the anti-vaccine movement over the last few years. In particular, they enable yet another snake-oil salesman to tell reporters that kids "should be allowed to have the measles if they want the measles." After all, who doesn't want the measles? Hedge fund managers! They're so useful!
Upon hearing that our President's new pro-coal climate change plan could "hurt the same workers he claims to be helping" -- mainly by depriving them of the renewable energy jobs that will get them out of a dying industry -- you may be reminded that people like our President only need you for your pain, and they need it so badly they'll create more and more of it. And then they'll tell you your pain is all black people's fault! I'd call it clever, if I didn't insist that cleverness, you know, not be evil.
I'm pleased to see that more than half of Americans say our President has "changed the tone and nature of political discussion for the worse," but I'm annoyed that 54% of Americans find themselves "at least sometimes entertained" by his antics, which are considerably less entertaining than a boy belching loudly over and over again. If we can persuade those people to feel ashamed at being "entertained" by an obnoxious jerk who lives only to create drama, we'll have a chance at building a sane, moral, and reasonable society again.
Finally, speaking of drama, Fox and Friends created quite the drama for our President after he didn't bomb Iran last week, with one talking head repeatedly intoning that he-must-have-a-secret-plan and another saying the Middle East will look at his "non-action" as "weakness." And then Steve Doocy, the man who gives effeminacy a bad name, got to act like the adult in the room! The sad thing is that goading this President works -- recall that he'd all but conceded defeat over vanity border wall funding late last December, and then shut down part of our government for over a month after Ann Coulter gave him an earful -- which means, as usual, that drama only foments more drama. We should want more from our government, and from our civilization, than drama.
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