Who Was That Old Lady, Anyway?

When I was little we had an old lady living with us. We called her “Busia” (boo-shah). She had been born in Poland and came to the USA in 1913 by boat, two small kids in tow. In steerage. She was meeting her husband, who was already in the USA working in the mines.

When I knew her she was already pretty old. She didn’t speak English because she had had a stroke. It also left her right arm partially paralyzed so the time I accidentally slammed the car door on her she didn’t feel a thing. Small favors.

Her husband, who I never met, was long dead. Her only son went to war against the Nazis. He was shot down and killed over Germany. She had a flag. The US government had sent her a flag.

She cheated at cards. And when you tried to call her on it she could not (or pretended she could not) understand what you were saying. Hopeless. But she made the best potato pancakes I ever have had. Been trying to duplicate them for 50 years. Haven’t succeeded.

Who was this old lady? For a long time I thought she was a close family member with a “bone fide” relationship. For a long time I treated as though she was a member of the family.

The other day I found out I was wrong. The USA’s new, improved “travel ban ” from a number of countries has gone into effect. No longer can anyone emigrate to the USA. The only exceptions are people from these countries who are close family members. Who have a “bona fide” relationship to a citizen or legal immigrant. I think that is not such a bad idea.

So, who is included as a “close family member”? Parents, spouses, siblings, fiances and children.

And who is specifically EXCLUDED from the category of “close family member”? Who cannot claim a close family relationship. Who is, for purposes of sponsoring immigration, a “stranger”.

This may surprise some of you whose children have had children. Among those not in the category of “close family member” are  “grandparents”. Grandma and grandpa are not “close family members” Fiances are. But not Gramps.

Which brings me back to Busia. Busia was my mother’s mother. Who lived with us off and on for many years. She was my grandmother. Who , at the time, I THOUGHT was a fairly close relative of mine. Not so. My mother’s mother was something else. What was she?

Who was that old lady, anyway?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-ruling-idUSKBN19S08N

Desperately Seeking Muslims

Donald Trump continues to be a real treasure trove of ignorance.  I know, I know. What am I talking about ? So much to choose from.

Well, I am referring to his latest..wait, what time is it…his latest comments about banning Muslims.  All Muslims. That will make America safe. Again. Or great again. Or whatever. You know.

So, the next obvious step in the Trump Plan is the HOW to do it? The Donald is always a little close-to-the-vest when it comes to details. (Remember Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War. Ooops) His latest escapade into the unknown is no exception.

So, let’s get practical. How do we identify a “Muslim”. Especially a “Muslim terrorist” which is, after all, the reason for the ban. To keep “Muslim terrorists” out of the US. Now that, in itself, is not a bad idea. After all, we have plenty of “Christian terrorists” already. Who needs the competition? The fewer terrorists the better , I always say.

The problem is simple: What does a “Muslim” look like? In order to ban them, we need to see them first. Seek them out. So, what do we look for?

Well, we know that he could look like a Pakistani or a Turk or a Nigerian or a Russian or an Egyptian or a Chinese (23,000,000 Chinese Muslims) or a Saudi or an Englishmen or an Uzbeki or an Indonesian or an American or a Brazilian…well, you get the idea. Muslims are from every ethnic group and live in every nation on earth. Every one! Nope. I lied. There is one nation that has no Muslim citizens. Vatican City. So, Pope Francis can glide through customs without a body cavity search.

So, I guess just looking won’t work too well. So, let’s ask!

Everyone who enters the US should be asked a simple question: Are you now or do you ever intend to be a Muslim terrorist. If they answer “Yes”. GOT EM. Another victory for The Donald. Unless, of course, a Muslim “terrorist” is smart enough to figure out that he should answer :”No, sir, I am not. And by the way. god bless America !”

So, Donald. We need a few more details. Keeping terrorists out of the US is a unique and fascinating idea. Something no one ever thought of before. But now we need to see the details.

How do you identify a Muslim? How do you identify a”Muslim terrorist”?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country

 

Trump’s Loaves and Fishes

News (?) item: Donald Trump insists that “thousands ” of Muslims in New Jersey were celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11. He insists and although there is no visual or written evidence of this…well…he insists.

A long time ago  a Jewish guy named Jesus Son of Joseph was making a big campaign speech on a hill. He had ’em in the palm of his hands. They were enthralled. He was beatituding the hell out of them. But then he realized that he forgot to call the caterer. The crowd was hungry.

One of his producers had some fish and loaves of bread. So, Jesus Son of Joseph took a couple fish and a couple loaves and did some magic. He blessed them and passed them out and told the crowd there was plenty to eat.

And they crowd ate it up. Jesus Son of Joseph, Jewish carpenter and magician, turned the tiny loaves and fish into enough food to feed the multitude. He transformed a few bits of food  into an enormous feast. His followers were satisfied.

Last week another Jewish magician, Donald Trump, did essentially the same thing.

A couple days after 9/11 it was reported that 5 people of “middle eastern” ancestry were taking pictures of the Twin Towers and shouting in a foreign language. In New Jersey.

The police investigated. They found 5 Israeli immigrants. (Jews look a lot like Arabs!) They had been taking pictures. No one really knows what they were saying. They were not dancing in the street. They were gaping at the site of the tallest buildings in the world come tumbling down. As we all did.

Donald Trump, the magician, has transformed these 5 Jewish loaves and fish into “thousands and thousands ” of Muslims. He transformed a handful of curious onlookers into a crowd of joyous haters. A mass conversion of Jews into Muslims. He multiplied  the 5 into thousands.

Trump  gave his crowd another serving of bigotry to eat. And his multitude was satisfied. They had seen a miracle.

It’s Not Funny Anymore

Barack Obama was born in Kenya. His birth certificate says Hawaii. Two newspapers in Hawaii announced his birth at the time. But, according to the birther movement, he was born in Kenya. Thereby making him an illegal president. A few conspiracy nuts at work ? Pretty funny stuff. We laughed.

Barack Obama is a radical Muslim who went to a madrassa as a child. A school where he learned to hate America and worship the Koran. Fox News carried the story. Over and over. And he did go to school. And the school had a lot of kids from Muslim families. But it was a public school. And in a Muslim country, believe it or not, most students come from Muslim families. Laughable. Silly. Debunked. Pretty funny stuff. We laughed.

Barack Obama is a radical black Christian who hates the white race. Wants to kill whitey. Plays the hate game. He did, after all, attend a church run by the firebrand black preacher, the Reverend Wright. And the good reverend is known for his hyperbole and angry  sermons. So, if Obama sat in a church and listened to sermons by this guy, he must be a white-hating racist. Except Obama left that church. He denounced the ideas of Reverend Wright. Publicly. And since Obama’s  mother and grandparents who raised him were white it is pretty hard to imagine that he hates “white people”. Silly. Right wing conspirators at work. Funny stuff. Silly. We laughed.

John McCain, in a frenzy of panic and disregard for all reason, manages to choose as his running mate one of the most unqualified people on the planet. Not just the US. The entire planet. And Sarah Palin becomes the darling of the emerging far, far, far right. When she can’t name a newspaper or magazine she reads her defenders blame it on Katie Couric. Couric “set her up” with a surprise “gotcha” question. Who could be expected to know the answer? It was a clever trap. And this same VP candidate then pronounces that her foreign policy credentials include the fact that Alaska is adjacent to Russia. (To be fair to Sarah she never said she could see Russia from her porch).She declares that  global warming was a fraud. 99% of the scientists are wrong! Drill, Baby, Drill.  She thought she had the intelligence, thoughtfulness and gravitas to be the most powerful person on Earth. She was to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. Absurd.  Unqualified. Ridiculous. What was McCain thinking? Pretty funny. We laughed.

And then there were the “make him fail” pronouncements from elected members of the Congress.. And a Congressman screaming “you lie” at the State of the Union message. Over the top. Wanting to make the POTUS fail ? The man just elected by the majority of Americans? Rudely interrupting a constitutionally mandated speech by the POTUS. Shouting out like a heckler at a baseball game.  Childish. Vindictive. Certainly this kind of vitriol would be rejected by the voters. They had gone too far. They will self-destruct. Pretty funny? We laughed.

And here is where the “liberals” have problems. The smug liberals. The elitist liberals. The “know-it-all” liberals . The “we are superior intellect” liberals.The “I am smart and they are stupid” liberals.  Like me. We just did not believe that so many people would tolerate this nonsense. How could folks fall for these frauds. In our cocoon of certainty, sanity and logic we assumed that just about everybody else would think, consider and then  laugh at these guys. They would see these shenanigans as silly and obnoxious and anti-American. And potentially dangerous. And punish the right-wing radicals  at the ballot box. They had gone way too far. We laughed.

Boy were we wrong.

The extremists gained popularity. We could not believe it. They won key seats in Congress and took back the House of Representatives. Astounding. And the nonsense continued. Intensified. Remember the “death panels” Where are they ? Remember Obama “taking away your guns”? Mine is still in the closet. Remember the “redistribution of wealth”? Today the top 1% of Americans still possess 40 % of the wealth.  Remember the “failure of Obamacare” and how businesses were going to close and unemployment soar? Unemployment is down to almost 6 %.

And then, in a temper tantrum befitting a three-year old,  the right-wing of Ted Cruz shut down the government, costing billions. Fiscal conservatives ? Now, seeing that Obamacare has become a reality and that people actually like it, they have a new shout.  Benghazi.  Benghazi.  Benghazi.  A “do nothing” GOP with a two-pronged  plan:  Shout loudly and do nothing for the American people.

We laughed at the birthers. We laughed at Sarah Palin. We laughed at the death panels and the ACA freak out. We laughed at the gun nuts. We laughed at the global warming deniers. But now they have power and influence beyond their numbers and seem to have a stranglehold on the democratic process.

Time to stop laughing. It’s Not Funny Anymore.