#NoMuslimBan

Earlier today, I saw some random comment from someone which effectively boils down to 'It's better to let thousands of strangers be inconvenienced, suffer, or possibly even die than to risk letting one terrorist into the country.'  While this sort of attitude is born of both fear and selfishness, it is on some level understandable.  No one wants terrorists (of any race or religion) to come to our country and do us harm, and since the people affected by the #MuslimBan are 'others' who we will never know personally, well then, tough on them.

It is also, however, profoundly un-American, at least by the definition I have learned of what it means to be American.

"Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."  These words are famously inscribed on the Statue of Liberty near Ellis Island, and for over a century have been a point of American pride, standing for America's promise of freedom and a better life for those who come here from other countries.  When we turn people away out of selfishness and fear, we renege on that promise.

Ironically, many of the same people who support the #MuslimBan also cite their incorrect belief that America was founded as a 'Christian nation' as a reason to discriminate against Muslims.  Even if that were true, there is nothing remotely Christian about denying critically ill children access to medical care which could save their lives.  The Pope agrees, having announced that "It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help, someone who is hungry or thirsty, toss out someone who is in need of my help."

But don't take the Pope's word for it.  I'm no Christian theologian, but even I have studied the Bible well enough to know Jesus' admonition to love God and love thy neighbor.  And I'm pretty sure Jesus wasn't just talking about your next door neighbor, or your neighbors who look like you do and believe what you do.  He meant that Christians love everyone, without exception.  And while America was not founded as a Christian nation, the vast majority of religious Americans are Christians.  So turning back refugees is also un-American in this respect.

Of course, many Americans aren't Christian, or even people of faith, including your humble host here at Things Everyone Knows.  But I am an American, and I speak from my cultural identity as an American when I say this: hate breeds hate, and love breeds love.  The people who support the #MuslimBan do so because some people have done harm to us out of what they say is a defense of Islam.  The people who attacked us on September 11, 2001 did so out of hate.  And that hate has taken root, and incubated, and grown for 15 years, and is manifesting itself now in hate speech, hate crimes, and the #MuslimBan.

Hate cannot conquer hate --- it can only breed more.  The way to defeat terror is to reject hate, and focus on what is best in us.  America, the land of opportunity.  America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.  A place where all men (and women, and trans folk) are created equal, and receive equal treatment under the law.  We've all heard these phrases so many times they're trite, because until recently, we took them for granted.  But they actually do mean something.

Or at least they can, if we choose to live up to them.  These are the principles which make America great, not some clueless blowhard in a red hat playing to our basest instincts.

Working-Class Whites watch: Day 51

It seems there are really only two people who enthusiastically support the Republican alternative to Obamacare: The Stain and Paul Ryan:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was "proud to endorse" a plan to replace Obamacare backed by Republican leaders in Congress, and called for its quick passage even as opposition to the bill hardened among conservatives.

Obviously Democrats oppose this plan, but what do Democrats know, amirite?  What's important here is how the bill affects the rust belt, working-class white voters who are The Stain's most important constituency; the REAL Americans who fear God, country, and don't mind a lot of Russian meddling in our elections or our White House.  How do they make out under this wonderful new plan?

Um, not so well.  This should not come as a shock to anyone who's been paying attention for the past 9 years.

And let's not forget that the 'real' Americans, supposedly, are the ones who live in rural areas of the country, not the snobby elite cities and coastal areas.  How will those down-to-earth rural folks make out under this new plan?

The result of all these provisions would almost certainly be a system that benefits people who already have wealth and health and penalizes others, but there would also be very strong geographic effects. For one, pegging Medicaid spending to a base year would reduce states’ ability to ramp up health-care spending because of disasters or emerging health problems, and these problems already exert the most pressures on states and areas with infrastructure that is ill-equipped to combat them. Rural residents already rely much more heavily on public insurance than do city-dwellers, so any reductions of funding and funding flexibility will have a larger effect on the health issues they face.

Those health issues are serious, and contribute to much of the climbing mortality among middle and lower class white Americans today. The opioid epidemic is ravaging rural America, as are the creeping effects of environmental degradation and climate change. People like coal miners in Trump country in Kentucky and West Virginia are on the frontiers of several developing health crises, and per-capita spending caps on Medicaid would only further limit their states’ ability to respond.

Sounds pretty bad.  But take heart, rural working-class whites!  At least the folks making over $250,000 per year will get themselves a nice tax cut, which they will surely use to create more jobs!  That's what they always do with any extra money they have lying around, right?  So there's a silver lining for you!

Resign, Sessions

I couldn't have said it better myself:

Today the Washington Post revealed that racist Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III perjured himself during his confirmation hearings for Attorney General.  This is a fairly open and shut case.  Session admits that the meetings took place, yet when my favorite candidate for president for 2020, Al Franken, asked him about meetings between Trump campaign surrogates and Russian officials, Sessions replied:

“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush administration (not an administration known for its ethics) believes that this perjury should cost Sessions his job, and I agree.  Painter points out that a similar situation occurred in the Nixon administration, when a man named Richard Kleindienst perjured himself during his confirmation testimony, and later had to step down.  Of course, Kleindienst lied about his communications with the White House involving a case against I.T.T.  Sessions lied about his involvement in Russian efforts to subvert the democratic process and effect the outcome of an election, which any sane person would argue is a much bigger deal.

This is where we are.  The Stain is struggling to meet the ethical standards set by Richard Nixon.

But hey, don't take my word for it, or even Richard Painter's.  Sessions himself said that perjury was a sufficient crime to cost a person his office.  He is on record stating that Bill Clinton's lies about his sex life were the reason he voted to have Clinton removed from the presidency.

As of this writing, Sessions has now agreed to recuse himself from any investigation into Russian tampering in the election, but this isn't close to good enough.  He wasn't qualified to be Attorney General in the first place, and he proved it before even taking the oath of office.  The Stain has no moral center, and is unlikely to fire him.  He needs to resign.

Taking National Security Seriously

Apparently, that not something The Stain does very well, according to the New York Times.  Shortly after North Korea conducted a missile test, The Stain huddled with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe --- at The Stain's Mar-a-Lago resort, in a public area.  At least one guest was so awestruck by the event that he posted to Facebook about it.

And this isn't an isolated occurrence.  Former NSA analyst John R. Schneider writes that the current administration is so lax about security matters that:

. . . out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway?

He goes on to quote an unnamed senior Pentagon intelligence official, who says that “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM,” meaning the White House Situation Room.

But it's not like he's using a private email server to conduct business --- THAT would be WRONG!

A Study in Contrasts

I'm just sayin'.

Working-Class Whites watch: Day 19

Okay, it turns out that labeling these by day of The Stain's administration was a bad idea.  Anyway, look at The Stain's latest plan to Make America Great (with the full support of Republicans in Congress):

Insurers would have more leeway to vary prices by age, so that premiums for the oldest customers could be 3.49 times as large as those for younger customers. Today, premiums for the old can be only three times as high as premiums for the young, which is what the Affordable Care Act stipulates. According to sources privy to HHS discussions with insurers, officials would argue that since 3.49 “rounds down” to three, the change would still comply with the statute.

Yes, The Stain is eager to make health care more expensive for seniors.  And since the 3:1 ratio is stipulated in law as part of the Affordable Care Act, and since changing the law is tricky, The Stain wants to just wave his hands and make the change using 'rounding'.

Fortunately, this is unlikely to go anywhere, because if the administration actually tries to make this fly, it's likely to be laughed out of court --- even by a Bush- or Reagan-appointed judge.  But still, those Working-Class Whites have to appreciate how The Stain continues to devise exciting and creative ways to take money out of their pockets.

Russians

As a special favor to an 'acquaintance' of mine on Facebook (not a 'friend'.  We're not Facebook friends, and I know nothing about this person other than she has challenged me to 'research the true facts'.  Hi Patti!), I'm going to take a close look at the report on Russian hacking into the U.S. election, released jointly by the CIA, FBI and NSA.  Their conclusion:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.  Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.  We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.  We have high confidence in these judgments.

So there you go, Patti.  I have researched the 'true facts' that the U.S. intelligence agencies reported, and just like I thought, they reported that the Russians helped elect The Stain.

But that's not all they said!

Moscow's use of disclosures during the US election was unprecedented, but its influence campaign otherwise followed a longstanding Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations --- such as cyber activity --- with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or "trolls".

The Russians paid people to repeat pro-Trump or anti-Hillary propaganda on social media.  So Patti is right to make sure I have my facts straight!  Fortunately, I do, and I can assure you that no one is paying me to write this (I wish).  And I'm so old, I can remember when Russians undermining a U.S. election was considered a BAD thing.

The report actually goes into quite a bit of depth regarding the "state-funded media" aspect of Russian involvement in the election.  Fully half of the report is devoted to a discussion of RT America TV, which the report describes as "a Kremlin-financed channel operated from within the United States".  It also contains a section titled "RT Leadership Closely Tied to, Controlled by Kremlin", in which they conclude:

The Kremlin staffs RT and closely supervises RT's coverage, recruiting people who can convey Russian strategic messaging because of their ideological beliefs.

There seem to be a lot of Americans --- on the left AND the right --- who are unaware that when they're getting information from RT America, they're drinking in Russian propaganda.

The declassified report from the intelligence community contains no discussion of the degree to which The Stain may have been complicit in the Russian subterfuge.  It seems that a responsible Congress would want to conduct an investigation to find this out.  After all, this Congress spent literally YEARS investigating the Benghazi attack which left four Americans dead.  As tragic as that was, it was nowhere near the threat to democracy that a hacked election is.

Yes, a responsible Congress would definitely initiate a no-holds-barred investigation.  I wonder what this Congress will do?