Bruce Is Angry. So Are We All!

 

He wrote the song on Saturday, the same day they shot Alex Pretti 10 times, and released it yesterday.

Operation Charlotte's Web

 

“Get the hell out of my yard, assholes.”

--Charlotte, NC, homeowner Rheba Hamilton, driving off Customs & Border Protection officers who had accosted two landscapers hanging Christmas lights on her property

Trump's goon squads descended on Charlotte's Hispanic neighborhoods on Saturday, and The Assembly has an early account of some of the confrontations and counter-demonstrations.

Also a partial political reason behind the invasion of masked, beefy men who seem to enjoy their work roughing up people, breaking car windows, and disrupting commercial life: The Sheriff of Mecklenburg County, Garry McFadden was "one of five sheriff candidates, all Black Democrats in urban North Carolina counties, who won office in 2018 after campaign pledges to end cooperation with federal immigration enforcement."

Add to that clear provocation for putting a Black sheriff in his place the grotesque, on-camera killing of Iryna Zarutska last August by a deranged Black man on the city’s light rail, and you've got the perfect set of symbols for armed racial profiling.

Stay strong, Charlotte.

Is It Necessary To Spell Out G E S T A P O?

 

Oh, it's just a dozen or more heavily armed and armored military types in masks with no visible identification, marching up the sidewalk like they owned the joint. Who you gonna call? You got no one to call, so you start yelling. You pull out your phones and start filming. And so far, troops of ICE have retreated in the face of neighborhood opposition. But what happens when one of those masked agents of the State puts his rifle butt into someone's forehead, because he thinks that someone got too close to him? Or was too insulting? Or too loud? And that someone probably was -- protesting not just ICE's presence in the neighborhood but also its very existence as an insult to human evolution and to every moral value we ever learned from our elders. 

The scene in MacArthur Park two days ago.

My Gawd, people. Trump's Big Beastly Bullshit Bill increased the funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to $170 billion, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the U.S., "with a bigger budget than most of the world's militaries" (Newsweek). You can look forward to many more, only bigger raids in public spaces, a greater show of force, who knows what theatrical intimidation and of course a higher body count of detainees. Some say that the Trump administration will have at least 750,000 detainees confined within a year -- children, parents, longtime residents, even a scattering of naturalized citizens because they were suspicious.  But never worry. They'll be elegantly "housed" in dangerous remoteness -- like that demented alligator alcatraz (where people have already died).

Not that Donald Jethro Trump had a clue of the details in that thousand-page BBB law. No. We know he doesn't read. He gets Stephen Miller to translate his meanness on immigration into action, into blah blah blah legal language. That's why I think the above dawning reality is really "Stephen Miller's Gestapo," not Trump's Secret Police.

Stephen Miller. The Miller Perplex

Stephen Miller has his mitts all over every piece of government pertaining to who gets to live here. He has a real grudge against people he considers trash. Jason Zengerle's lengthy unraveling of the Stephen Miller Perplex retells the story of when Stephen Miller ran for student body president in a rich California suburban high school -- as the son of a well to do Jewish family (parents were firm liberals. And you could write paragraphs on the ancient rebellions of sons against the values of their fathers). According to Zengerle, Stephen demonized people he considered his brown servants. Direct quotation from Miller's high school campaign speech: “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?” Yes, Stephen Miller got his start in "politics" as a walking paradox, a Jewish white supremacist and obviously a perfect fit for Trump 2.0. In Zengerle's analysis, Stephen Miller is really in charge of Trump's Homeland Security. The confirmed secretary may be ole limberlips Kristi Noem, but she does what Stephen Miller tells her, and Miller told her that ICE needed to greatly increase the round up of the browns. Miller...

paid a visit to the Washington headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he berated officials for not deporting nearly enough immigrants. He told the officials that rather than develop target lists of gang members and violent criminals, they should just go to Home Depots, where day laborers gather to be hired, or to 7-Eleven convenience stores and arrest the undocumented immigrants they find there.

Just yesterday, 90 uniformed, masked, heavily armed ICE "troops," some actually on horseback for that extra dose of intimidation, marched into and across the famous MacArthur Park in L.A., "like Pickett's Charge," someone said, and you know how that worked out for Robert E. Lee. They moved as a threatening wave into the park and scared a bunch of playing kids. These storm troops were backed up by some 17 Humvees, four military cargo trucks, and two military ambulances. However (and praise the Lord!), the neighborhood wasn't standing for it, and like other neighborhoods have begun to do, they came out in loud and handkerchief-waving opposition. They followed the ICE, filming them with their phones. Which appeared to take a lot of air out of the military show of force. ICE apparently left without a single detainee. The whole show was just a little escalation of the whole gestapo itch.

When do you reckon they'll point those guns at the protesters?

During the '24 campaign,Trump reportedly once quipped in a meeting with operatives, "If it was up to [Stephen] Miller, the population of the United States would be only 100 million people and they’d all resemble Stephen Miller." Now that same guy has his hands on the biggest and best-funded strong-arm force in the world. Highly secretive. Puts the Stasi in the shade.

What will you do when they show up in your neighborhood?

NC Republicans Don't Like It When A.G. Jeff Jackson Calls Jethro "Unlawful"

 

On January 21st, the day after Donald Jethro Trump issued an executive order supposedly changing the Constitution to deny citizenship to any person born in these United States, NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined 20 other attorneys general to file a lawsuit in DeeCee seeking to block the "flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands [of] American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage."

On Wednesday, Feb. 5, three North Carolina Senate Republicans -- Tim Moffitt, Eddie Settle, and Bobby Hanig -- filed a bill to restrict Jeff Jackson, from suing to block any flagrantly unlawful presidential executive orders and from taking legal action against any bills passed by the General Assembly.

That's how the clown-car does it: Hobble justice itself, remove the independence of our state's chief prosecutor to call a spade a goddamn spade.

Our disgust with the Republican majority in the NC General Assembly grows stronger every day. They are never hesitant in going too far. And some day, when there's a Republican Attorney General in North Carolina serving with a Democratic majority in the lege, if this piece of shit law passes, they'll regret ever putting their thumb on the administration of justice.

Jeff Jackson Joins 17 Other Attorneys General

 

ttorneys general from 18 states sued Tuesday in Federal District Court in Massachusetts to block President Donald Trump's move to end a policy known as birthright citizenship guaranteeing that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents' status. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined in the suit.

The states view Trump’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship as “extraordinary and extreme,” said New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, who led the legal effort along with the attorneys general from California and Massachusetts. “Presidents are powerful, but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.”

Doran's Crystal Ball

 

Destin Hall

Enjoyed Will Doran's forecast of what to watch most closely in Raleigh this year, with so many new characters running things, from the governor's office to the House speakership, to that pesky extra-Dem in the House who gives Josh Stein his best chance for a sustained veto (supposedly gives Stein that advantage, because there's always also Cecil Brockman to watch). 

Doran mentions a rather bold gesture of Governor Stein's -- a very public "olive branch" of bi-partisanship. The governor invited several Western Republican lawmakers on stage with him last week in Asheville when he was signing executive orders about Hurricane Helene, and he appointed Republican Sen. Kevin Corbin from Macon Co. as co-chair of a new committee Stein created to advise the governor’s office on Helene recovery needs. I hadn't picked up on that, and it looks like a good move.

Doran's background on medical marijuana legalization in North Carolina is interesting -- let alone the truly hilarious notion of "recreational marijuana." Legalizaion has been stopped cold repeatedly in the NC House, after the state Senate had passed legalization several times. "House leadership" won't countenance it, Doran says, and former Speaker Tim Moore would never let it come to a vote, apparently fearful he didn't have the majority of his caucus with him. Will the new Speaker (and comparative youngster) Destin Hall do better?

What Doran explores about a Trump immigration pogrom and its ramifications for the state's economy is also worth quoting at length:

Immigration could also require attention at the legislature. Trump has pledged a mass deportation of immigrants in the country illegally, and some conservatives are also now pushing to reduce the number of visas given for immigrants to work here legally. Either strategy would disrupt the local economy and potentially drive up inflation: Approximately 1 million immigrants live in North Carolina, many of them employed in large industries such as agriculture, construction, tech and health care.

The GOP is becoming increasingly torn between more populist voters in the party base and pro-business interests among the major party donors — and the question of how to handle immigration is just one area in which 2025 could bring clashes between those opposing factions.

 Will Doran reports regularly for WRAL in Raleigh.

Virginia Foxx Doesn't Like Being Questioned

 

They were sparring over H.R.3941, the "Schools Not Shelters Act," "To prohibit the use of the facilities of a public elementary school, a public secondary school, or an institution of higher education to provide shelter for aliens who have not been admitted into the United States." The hearing shown here was before the House Rules Committee, as Foxx, as chair of the Education Committee, was trying to move the bill forward.

Joe Neguse of Colorado grills Foxx, reveals her hypocrisy, and exposes the Virginia Foxx we've all known for decades -- the dismissive, contemptuous, high-handed, and arrogant duchess who doesn't like being questioned. The milk of human kindness dried up in her long ago.

Her continuing cruelty to immigrants, considering her own economic history was built on the labor of immigrants, is just cringe-worthy.

Provocateur and Cheer-Leader

Consciousness of Guilt

Trump Deletes Tweets Referring to Migrant ‘Invasion’

August 4, 2019 at 5:05 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 166 Comments

Samuel Robinson reports that tweets from President Trump that contain forms of the word “invasion” when referring to migrants at the Southern border are being deleted.

Vlad the Impaler

Vlad III Dracula, the real-life 14th Century Romanian potentate who became the inspiration for the fictional vampire of Bela Lugosi fame, hated immigrants too. In his case, it was Ottoman Turks, coming up from the south and threatening to overrun the kingdom. Vlad III Dracula had them impaled by the dozens, by the hundreds, if you believe contemporaneous accounts.

Habitual cruelty. A taste for blood.

Nothing is clearer than this: Twitterman's whole reelection pitch to the masses is that he's prepared to be increasingly cruel to immigrants from the south. Rachel Maddow reported last night on a new inspector general report exposing inhuman conditions at border detention facilities, "and the mounting outrage among Americans as new cruelties are revealed daily, a dynamic Donald Trump welcomes and encourages as a means of agitating his base of supporters."

Vlad thinks impaling people makes him more popular. Didn't work out that way in history. The invaders from the south ended up dismembering him.

Overcrowding of families observed by the Office of the Inspector General on June 10, 2019, at Border Patrol’s McAllen, TX, Station.

Sometimes only music can lift the gloom of national tragedy and disgrace. We can believe in the unheard lyrics even against all visual evidence in the daily news to the contrary. Isn't that what faith is?

Thom Tillis, Turn Tail

On February 25th, Sen. Thom Tillis published an op-ed in the WashPost (doubtless, someone else wrote it) in which he announced that he would be voting against Twitterman's use of emergency powers:

It is my responsibility to be a steward of the Article I branch [houses of Congress], to preserve the separation of powers and to curb the kind of executive overreach that Congress has allowed to fester for the better part of the past century. I stood by that principle during the Obama administration, and I stand by it now. 

Conservatives rightfully cried foul when President Barack Obama used executive action to completely bypass Congress and unilaterally provide deferred action to undocumented adults who had knowingly violated the nation’s immigration laws. Some prominent Republicans went so far as to proclaim that Obama was acting more like an “emperor” or “king” than a president. 

There is no intellectual honesty in now turning around and arguing that there’s an imaginary asterisk attached to executive overreach — that it’s acceptable for my party but not thy party.

That principled position became inoperative today. Tillis voted against the resolution to overturn DJT's use of emergency powers. The resolution passed anyway, with a dozen other Republican senators standing up when Tillis ran away.

Conservatives in North Carolina were vowing a primary for Tillis next year, and no doubt the White House threatened him too, perhaps by Trump's promising to appear at an anti-Tillis campaign rally next year.

Tillis's flipflop may have been facilitated by the fact that no big-name Democrat (so far) has announced a run for his seat. He has more to fear from his right flank.

Virginia Foxx: "A Foolish Consistency Is My Hobgobblin"

Rep. Virginia Foxx said on Friday she supports Trump’s ability to declare a national emergency in order to build his wall.

In 2014, when President Obama asserted his executive authority to protect "Dreamers," Foxx had a fit that he was acting like an emperor. Funny, now that Foxx is cheerleading Trump's boasting that he has the supreme authority to build his wall.

Criticizing Obama for trying to protect the Dreamers while seconding Trump's attempt to hurt others. That's a lovely irony for a woman like Foxx, who's built her fortune on the backs of immigrants and knew a Dreamer or two that she wouldn't stoop to help (according to the persistent rumors).

The Connection Between Ballot Subpoenas in North Carolina and DJT's Ego

Well, knock us over with a feather duster! A lengthy investigative piece posted last week on Salon proves that there was past substantial voting by "illegal aliens" in a North Carolina election, only it was done to benefit a Republican candidate for Fayetteville City Council.

We've written about Wesley Meredith before, because he's now an incumbent member of the NC Senate, and a powerful one, and he has a credible Democratic opponent this year in Kirk deViere.

But back more than a decade ago, according to Steven Rosenfeld, Meredith was trying awfully hard to get onto the Fayetteville City Council. He ran once and lost. Then he ran again in 2005 and won, but not without a lot of questions and evidence of illegal registrations by non-citizens who were supposedly taking a keen interest in seeing a landscape contractor elected to city council.

Marshall Tutor, who retired in March 2018 after many years as lead investigator for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, was deeply involved investigating Meredith's 2005 win. "There are a lot of problems with that case," Tutor told Rosenfeld. "I spent a lot of time on fraudulent absentee ballot requests and non-citizens requesting absentee ballots. And it was federal crimes involved because there were absentee ballot requests made for Fayetteville citizens who knew nothing about it, that were mailed over state lines into a drop box in Virginia.”

Tutor took his evidence to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina -- "evidence showing that non-citizens tried to, and did, register and vote, and vote early. We had enough [evidence] that, had it been thoroughly investigated, there would have had to have been charges on somebody” -- but “the U.S. attorney’s office told us they would get back to us after they had time to go over the documentation. About 13 months later they sent an email saying they didn’t have enough evidence to go forward with any kind of investigation. Keep in mind Meredith was a huge fundraiser for state Republican candidates during this time.”

Robert J. Higdon Jr.,
U.S. Attorney
Eastern District of N.C.

Hmmm. Who was that Federal prosecutor who said no thanks to busting illegal voting? Why, Robert J. Higdon Jr., who is now, presently, the very U.S. Attorney who engineered the recent surprise subpoena for some 20 million ballots and voting records from 44 eastern counties of North Carolina ... 44 eastern counties where the proportion of Latinos just happens to be highest. That appears to be the point of the subpoenas and more evidence that the Trump administration is still pursuing its fraudulent claim that millions of "illegals" voted in 2016.

See, when Trump's bogus commission appointed to look into illegal voting crashed and burned -- it was led by Kris Kobach of Kansas (what's the matter with Kansas?), a sloppy partisan with no qualms who's now trying to move his conspiracy theories into the Kansas governor's mansion -- when that commission disbanded in disgrace, Kobach transferred the "hunt for illegals" to the Department of Homeland Security, which runs ICE, which made the requests to Robert J. Higdon Jr. to issue those blanket subpoenas at 5 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day.

Threatening subpoenas delivered not only to the county boards of elections in 44 eastern North Carolina counties, but also to every DMV office, where many people register to vote, with the clear threat and implication that someone has broken the law and needs to be keel-hauled ... coming from a U.S. Attorney with a history of partisan decision-making ... well, ain't that just a kick in the pants?

We're thankful we have a State Board of Elections and an Attorney General willing and able to push back against the intimidation, the lingering penumbra of Kris Kobach, vampire hunter.

Such a proud time!

$9.99, Up in Smoke

Real Men Don't Eat Pelosi

But they do, apparently, eat Chinese with Pelosi.

That now-famous dinner at the White House two nights ago has caused a lot of indigestion among those not actually at the dinner. What did Trump agree to with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi? What did he give away? What did he promise? (Not that anything he ever says or promises means squat.)

Republicans have spent many years equating the name Pelosi with political evil, and here comes Trump who breaks out the chopsticks with her. And then deals on granting amnesty to the DACA kids. Not only deals, but according to principals in the meeting, strikes a deal. With Nancy Pelosi (and, oh yes, Chuck Schumer).

It's an amnesty deal, make no mistake. Enough so that Ann Coulter tweeted, "At this point, who DOESN'T want Trump impeached?"

I think we may have finally reached a crux in testing the Trump brag: "I could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue, and I wouldn't lose any supporters." He just shot the heart out of "BUILD THE WALL" chanters, didn't he?

Trump Lays a New Turd in the GOP Punchbowl

Republican leaders in the US Congress were perhaps looking forward to a September when they could get a couple of positive things done, like beginning to relieve Houston, and maybe raise the debt ceiling -- votes likely to be bi-partisan and popular -- but no, Trump has to go and drop DACA on them, saying, "Now, you've got six months to pull my bacon out of the fire."

Majority reaction -- wide and deep offense. Business leaders have risen up against Trump's move, risen up like a king cobra about to strike. Political leaders in both parties hate it, warned Trump against it, now scuff at the dirt. Qualified Hispanic voters who used to regularly vote Republican -- there are some -- are reconsidering their values. Congress will groan under the load while multiple "polls show that DACA enjoys overwhelming support among the public."

(Republicans stand to lose a substantial bloc of voters. Up to 38% percent of Hispanic voters have voted Republican, depending on the place and the candidate. Mitt Romney got 31% of the Hispanic vote. Trump, not.)

It's clear Trump didn't know what he was doing yesterday. By evening he was tweeting -- “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit the issue!”

I will revisit the issue. I bet you will.

If certain facts and human realities weren't clear to Trump, Sessions knew exactly what he was saying and what it all meant, and he gleamed like a greased pig in those television lights. Was he exulting in his heart? "Fewer brown people will be coming here, or staying. Praise Jesus!"

Why did Trump have to go and do that now? Of all the things that terrify him -- being touched by strange people, being laughed at, being put on the spot publicly and dared to tell the truth -- looking weak is strong juju for Trump men, and some eleven conservative Republican attorneys general had threatened to sue Trump by today if he didn't start to end DACA. (Plus he was on his way to a big public rally of his DACA-hating peeps in North Dakota today.)

The attorney-general-posse is led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is under indictment by a Texas grand jury for securities fraud. Paxton was joined by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia, as well as Idaho Gov. C. L. Otter, in a June 29 letter to Jeff Sessions urging the White House to start phasing out DACA by Sept. 5, or face a lawsuit.

Jeff Sessions ... the willing stooge Trump sent out yesterday to face the cameras, the man who loves what's happening -- he had reportedly told Trump that he wouldn't defend DACA in court. The Constitution is his shield, he believes says. With Sessions, the law follows the heart, and the white Anglo-Saxon race is very important to Sessions. He's on record praising the 1924 eugenics-based immigration law that enforced racial and ethnic animosity. In a Breitbart radio interview with Steve Bannon in 2015 Sessions made perfectly clear his preference for people who "assimilate" completely, and you can figger all day what that means.

And then comes Irma.

Virginia Foxx and Immigration

“Seventy-percent of the labor force in agriculture is undocumented,” Bert Lemkes, co-owner of Van Wingerden International, a greenhouse manufacturer in Western North Carolina, said at a forum in Raleigh recently. (Hattip: Rob Christensen in the Raleigh News & Observer)

That's a fact that Congresswoman Virginia Foxx knows very well. Her own landscaping business depended on immigrant labor, though, Lord knows, she herself never hired any undocumented landscapers. Heavens no! (The Foxx family went to some lengths to cover up details about an accident with serious injuries caused to a third party by one of her laborers, who later escaped the hospital and disappeared without a trace. You can read about that case here and here.)

Though Congresswoman Foxx built her empire on the backs of immigrant labor, when she was elected to Congress she immediately became one of the flamers willing to make political hay out of brown-skinned immigration. In 2005, Foxx signed on as a cosponsor to Sue Myrick's bill to punish North Carolina for granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. (Screening and testing the undocumented for driver's licenses is a public safety measure, which considering the bad car wreck one of Foxx's workers was involved in -- see the links above -- you'd think Foxx would support.)

She also co-sponsored a provision in federal law that would have made it a felony to offer any assistance whatsoever to an illegal immigrant. The law would have allowed the federal government to seize personal assets of those caught passing out meals, medical aid, or legal advice.

Probably her finest hour came in the spring of 2006 when Foxx hosted a special Congressional panel in Winston-Salem with this ominous name: "Gangs, Fraud and Sexual Predators: Struggling with the Consequences of Illegal Immigration." My links to articles at the time in the Winston-Salem Journal have rotted, but there was this coverage of Foxx's anti-immigration grandstanding which still captures the aura of unjustified self-righteousness that always puddles around Foxx's ankles.

As long as Foxx and Friends dominate the House of Representatives, and are financially propped up by U.S. businesses that actually depend now on the labor of both legal and illegal immigrants, there will be no humane progress for immigration reform.

Why Not Just Go Ahead Make 'em Wear a Pink Sombrero?

Last June, the so-called "Deferred Action Program" went into effect nationally for certain immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. The Deferred Action Program offers work permits and a two-year deferral from deportation until a more permanent immigration reform can be worked out in the U.S. Congress.

In North Carolina, some Republicans were mightily aggrieved by this. It reeked strongly to them of amnesty. Since the Deferred Action Program allowed for the now-grown-up baby-immigrant to work in the state, state driver's licenses were mandated. At first Tony Tata, appointed by Gov. McCrory to lead the state's Department of Transportation, sat on his hands. Then Attorney General Roy Cooper said to Tata, you've got to issue driver's licenses.

So what did Tata and his boys at DOT come up with? A pink stigmatizing strip on just those driver's licenses issued to people covered by the Deferred Action Program. This Pink Badge of Discrimination, DOT said, would be issued starting March 25th.

There are such echoes of the yellow Stars of David sewn on unwelcome residents' clothing in another era that some Republicans in the General Assembly have quailed at the bad publicity, now grown to international scope.

A bill has been introduced in the NC General Assembly to delay DOT's plan to June. One of the bill's sponsors, state Rep. Mark Brody, said transportation officials overstepped their authority by approving the licenses. He said that is the Legislature's prerogative.

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina condemned the proposed licenses, calling them "an unnecessary marker that could lead to harassment, confusion and racial profiling." The Latin American Coalition in Charlotte said the license would create a "class of 'inferior' citizens."

North Carolina is the only state to mark licenses in this prejudicial way. But then, North Carolina is possibly the only state in the union to be taken over by a radical brand of Republicanism that is so thirsty for absolute power that it would seriously consider branding and shaming people who have really done nothing wrong.