From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Energize an Ally Tuesday
After President Bannon and his staff assistant Donald Trump fired the first shots in their war against peaceful, law-abiding Muslim immigrants and refugees on Friday, I knew my Tuesday morning call to energize an ally would be focused on a legal service provider. I was leaning toward the ACLU, but holy cheese 'n rice they received over $24 million in donations in two days. So instead I'm highlighting a group that was working in tandem to defend the rights of the men, women and children currently being terrorized by America's executive branch: IRAP...
The International Refugee Assistance Project organizes law students and lawyers to develop and enforce a set of legal and human rights for refugees and displaced persons.
Mobilizing direct legal aid and systemic policy advocacy, IRAP serves the world’s most persecuted individuals and empowers the next generation of human rights leaders. We are nimble, collaborative, and nonpartisan. We believe in the power of individuals to change their own circumstances. And we believe in results.
Nimble is right. After catching wind last Wednesday of the imminent release of the executive order, they…
…sent out an email calling for lawyers who could volunteer immediately to go to airports where refugees were scheduled to enter the United States. “It occurred to us that there were going to be people who were traveling who would land and have their status affected while in midair,” said Betsy Fisher, the group’s policy director. And that is exactly what happened.
Across the country, people were detained on Sunday after being caught up in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s order, even though a petition filed on Saturday in federal court in Brooklyn led a judge to block part of the order. Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, the plaintiffs named in the petition, were originally clients of Ms. Fisher’s organization.
Over a thousand people offering help responded to that email. And, as we saw with our jaws on the floor last weekend, a veritable melting pot of humanity showed up at airports across the country to protest a White House that appears hellbent on making America worse again.
If you feel so inclined, you can make a tax-deductible donation that "directly supports important advocacy on behalf of society's most under-served and forgotten people" by clicking on the IRAP donation page here. Their message to you:
No, IRAP---thank YOU.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Note: This is a fascist note that doesn’t recognize the will of the people. Please don’t give it any oxygen by reading it. Thank you. ---The Resistance
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Lincoln's birthday: 12
Days 'til California Western Monarch Day at Pismo Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove: 4
Total amount of imports from Mexico in 2015, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative: $316.4 billion
Rank of vehicles, machinery and mineral fuels among top imports from Mexico: #1, #2, #3
Dollars saved for each dollar spent on family planning services such as those offered by Planned Parenthood: $7
Gross domestic product in the 4th quarter, according to the Commerce Department: 1.9%
Factor by which the value of Maine lobster shipments to China grew in the last year, according to The Portland Press Herald: 3x
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Special adoption. Or more like an oddoption…
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CHEERS and FAREWELL to one of the kiddie pool's most prolific splashers. Sorry to report this morning that rb608---aka Joe, aka "Professional structural engineer, former lifeguard, ice cream dipper, delivery truck driver, draftsman, and street juggler," aka the beloved blogger from Baltimore---died Saturday. Yeah---effing cancer. Day in and day out, he'd join us in the comments to weigh in on work, family and, yes, politics. When we finally met him in person at a Maine meetup (dang fool rode his motorcycle all the way up from Baltimore in one straight shot), our suspicions were confirmed---he was a helluva nice guy and instantly likable. In his final days, Joe was thrilled to receive the community quilt that SaraR made, filled with our best wishes written into the patches. As for the plans, per theoffspring:
[T]here will be no funeral or religious service of any kind, but there will be one hell of a party sometime in the next few weeks, details TBD. But dig out your favorite cigars, and stock up on gin, scotch, and bourbon. He couldn't drink for the past few months so we have some catching up to do for him.
If any of you would be interested in joining us in the Towson, MD area to take part, message me here and let me know and I will send you the details as they are finalized. So far: bluegrass band, scotch. ‘nuff said.
If there's a hereafter (and I hope there is), Joe will be welcomed by the group "Pearly Gates Kossacks" including Cedwyn, "pootie queen" triciawyse, jbou, exmearden, Granny Doc, Ben Masel, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse and many more. He'll be in good company. And the booze and cigars will always be free.
JEERS to our unhinged executive branch. I'm trying to pace myself when it comes to digesting how the Trump White House is employing mountaintop-removal methods to reduce the height of America's moral high ground. The stories are well-covered elsewhere here at DKos, so I pretty much just scan the headlines in the dead-tree edition of The Portland Press Herald that hits my porch every morning. This is just Saturday through yesterday:
Trump freezes refuge flow, says Christians have priority
In wake of refugee ban, chaos and anger
Officials worry terrorism defenses will be weakened
Military veterans furious at treatment of translators
Maine AG joins 16 others to protest Trump order
Executives speak out against the president's immigration order
In Portland [ME], thousands jam jetport, protest in the streets
Clergy across theological spectrum speak against Trump executive order
President doesn’t mention Jews in Holocaust statement
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) tweets criticism of Trump holocaust statement
And this one: "Trump sets speed record for majority disapproval." (8 days.) I guess that would explain why he looks more windburned than usual lately.
JEERS to previews of coming DeVos attractions. There's some question as to whether or not a vote will be taken in the Senate education committee today on Betsy DeVos. She's the Amway-scam baroness (yes, I got pitched on Amway once---it was pathetic how long I was strung along until the guy finally got up the nerve to actually say the company name, as if he knew how many people had already fled at the sound of it) who wants to kill public education in favor of turning our kids into juvenile profit centers. Here in Maine, we got a peek at what a DeVos administration would not only tolerate, but encourage. These kinds of lawsuits would probably be banned under her...
[Stephanie ] Kourembanas is one of several former nursing students who are seeking at least $5 million from a California company that closed its licensed practical nursing program in Maine following scrutiny from state regulators. […]
The class-action complaint also claims that the company failed to provide about 300 nursing students from 2011 to 2016 with quality education needed to obtain licenses and jobs. The plaintiffs, Kourembanas, Caridad Jean Baptiste, Cathy Mande and Catharine Valley, are represented by Clifford & Clifford in Kennebunk and Murray Plumb & Murray in Portland.
The company used the promise of federal financial aid to lure in “poor, relatively uneducated minority” women and then saddled them with student loan debt they couldn’t repay, according to the lawsuit.
If you haven't yet, call your senators and tell them no way on DeVos. Be nice. Swear politely.
CHEERS to safety nets. 77 years ago today, the first Social Security check (#00-000-001) was issued to Ida May Fuller---a Vermonter and childhood classmate of Calvin Coolidge---for $22.54. Or, as the Republican leadership calls it, "$22.54 too much." Despite all the despicable fearmongering coming from the right that Social Security is "flat broke," Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) reminds us via email….
Here’s the truth: Social Security is fully solvent, and will be through 2038. So why all the bluster? It’s a giveaway to Wall Street, plain and simple. Starting with Ida May Fuller in 1940, our nation has a proud history of rewarding a lifetime of hard work with the promise of financial security in one’s golden years. It’s been the most effective anti-poverty program in the history of the world.
Much obliged, FDR. (And belated happy birthday. See below.)
JEERS to Charles Krauthammer. I know you and your pundit noggin live in the beltway bubble, Chuckles, but you should know better than to give our new president the benefit of any doubt. It's a serious mistake in an otherwise astute column about our country's current brush with white supremacy that became official canon on inauguration day:
“From this day forward, it’s going to be only America First.” Imagine how this resonates abroad. “America First” was the name of the organization led by Charles Lindbergh that bitterly fought FDR before U.S. entry into World War II---right through the Battle of Britain---to keep America neutral between Churchill’s Britain and Hitler’s Reich.
Not that Trump was consciously imitating Lindbergh. I doubt he was even aware of the reference. He just liked the phrase. But I can assure you that in London and in every world capital they are aware of the antecedent and the intimations of a new American isolationism. […]
It makes America no different from all the other countries that define themselves by a particularist blood-and-soil nationalism. What made America exceptional, unique in the world, was defining its own national interest beyond its narrow economic and security needs to encompass the safety and prosperity of a vast array of allies. A free world marked by open trade and mutual defense was President Truman’s vision, shared by every president since. Until now.
Of course Trump knows what "America First" symbolizes. Being Jewish, Chuck, you should know that there's no safety in naive assumptions. Although technically he's right, because Trump didn’t---despite what he tweeted to the contrary---write his own inaugural speech. It was written by Steve Bannon. Yes---American Nazi Steve "Lindbergh's My BFF 4EVUH" Bannon. We wish it had been written by Trump. It would've been reduced to 140 characters.
CHEERS to the great uniter. On this date in 1928, Scotch tape was marketed for the first time by 3-M. It holds things together like a charm. But to shut up Sean Hannity only duct tape will do.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 31, 2007
JEERS to stealing my act. A "good student" at a Westerville, Ohio high school stripped naked, greased himself up with grapeseed oil, and ran around the cafeteria before he was stopped by a cop with a stun gun. Mark my words: that boy’s gonna be a CEO one day. We’re predicting ExxonMobil. [1/31/17 Update: If memory serves, his last name was Tillerson.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to "32." Happy birthday to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 135 years old this week. He shares his birthday, coincidentally, with internment camp survivor and immigrant-rights activist Fred Korematsu, who was the subject of yesterday’s Google doodle---as much a condemnation of FDR’s bone-headed decision to round up Japanese-Americans and turn away Jews during World War II as it was Trump’s executive order banning already-green-lighted Muslims from entering the country. But on far more counts, FDR’s legacy will shine infinitely brighter than Trump’s. William Ridings and Stuart McIver write in their book Rating the Presidents (where FDR sits at #2, just below Lincoln):
Roosevelt is praised most often for his role in preserving the American capitalist system at a time when many countries were opting for fascism.
Given the dire crises he was forced to confront, perhaps the highest praise from the poll is "the right man in the right place at the right time." [...]
Others praise him for stopping Hitler---and shudder to think what might have been if a less-effective president had been at the helm in those dangerous days.
The lunatics on the right try mightily to rewrite history by insisting that the New Deal was a failure, never mind that laws enacted in the 1930s---even though they’d been chipped away at---helped prevent our 2008 Great Recession from turning into an all-out depression. Pay your respects here. And never let anyone forget the difference between the parties, as defined by Roosevelt himself: Democrats say we have nothing to fear but fear itself, Republicans say we have nothing to fear but everything but fear itself.
P.S. Yesterday was also Dick Cheney's birthday. He turned 666. Again.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. See ya next month! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“I would like to go against the grain this evening and thank President Trump for making Bill in Portland Maine look normal.”
---William H. Macy
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