It depends on WHICH law, now, doesn't it?

Just when you think the Trump Administration surely can sink no lower, some kakistocrat in the executive branch looks at you, smirks and says "Hold my Zyklon B."

Today in Berlin-am-Potomac, there was the daily White House press briefing with Obergruppenlügner Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the subject of children being forcibly wrested from their asylum-seeking parents at the Mexican border came up.

It went something like this.

During one exchange, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said to CNN reporter Jim Acosta, a frequent sparring partner, “I know it's hard for you to understand even short sentences.”

Acosta had asked Sanders about Attorney General Jeff Sessions's attempt, earlier in the day, to use the Bible to justify the Trump administration's immigration policies, which include splitting up families that arrive at U.S. borders seeking asylum.

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said in Fort Wayne, Ind.

Other biblical passages, including some written by Paul, have been cited by advocates of softer immigration policies. In Romans 12, for example, Paul wrote: “Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. ... Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.”

“Where in the Bible does it say that it's moral to take children away from their mothers?” Acosta asked.

“I'm not aware of the attorney general's comments or what he would be referencing,” Sanders replied. “I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law.”

Sanders and Acosta went back and forth until Sanders insulted Acosta's comprehension skills. On a telecast of the briefing, another reporter could be heard scolding Sanders for a “cheap shot.”

Sanders then falsely asserted that the Trump administration is separating children from their parents “because it's the law, and that's what the law states.” In fact, separation is not required by law but is a Trump administration practice that White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly calls a “tough deterrent.”

Sanders gave the next question to CBS's Paula Reid, who performed an on-the-spot fact-check.

Unmoved, Sanders continued to insist, falsely, that the Trump administration is simply doing what the law mandates. When Reid asked whether the administration will “take responsibility for its policy change,” Sanders replied, “It's not a policy change to enforce the law.”

OH . . . and this is what the United States' Catholic bishops think of the Trump Administration's "biblical" immigration policies:

Leading U.S. Catholic bishops on Wednesday escalated their criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, calling new asylum-limiting rules “immoral” and rhetorically comparing the crackdown to abortion by saying it is a “a right-to-life” issue.

One bishop from the U.S.-Mexico border region reportedly suggested “canonical penalties” — which could refer to withholding the sacrament of Communion — for Catholics involved in implementing the Trump policies.

The comments came as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — the organizing body of bishops — gathered for a biannual meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The topics of migration and asylum have long been a focus for the U.S. church; more than 50 percent of U.S. Catholics under the age of 30 are Latinos.

The statements, including by the conference’s president, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, came two days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that fear of domestic violence or gang violence aren’t clear grounds for seeking asylum in the United States. Sessions said asylum claims have expanded too broadly.

But the bishops said the ruling this week came on top of other Trump White House moves that they oppose. Those include ending a program that protected from deportation the “dreamers,” young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, and reducing significantly the number of refugees allowed into the United States.

“At its core, asylum is an instrument to preserve the right to life. The Attorney General’s recent decision elicits deep concern because it potentially strips asylum from many women who lack adequate protection. These vulnerable women will now face return to the extreme dangers of domestic violence in their home country. This decision negates decades of precedents that have provided protection to women fleeing domestic violence,” said a statement Wednesday by DiNardo in his capacity as USCCB president. 

(snip)

According to the Religion News Service, Tucson Bishop Edward Weisenburger raised the possibility of implementing canonical penalties for Catholics “who are involved in this,” referring to children being separated from their families at the border. Canonical penalties can range from denial of sacraments to excommunication, though Weisenburger did not specify what he intended beyond referring to sanctions that already exist for “life issues,” RNS reported.

“Canonical penalties are there in place to heal,” Weisenburger said. “And therefore, for the salvation of these people’s souls, maybe it’s time for us to look at canonical penalties.”

Efforts to reach Weisenburger for details were not immediately successful late Wednesday.

Some activists noted that it was rare for bishops to even talk about spiritual penalties in a political context, aside from warnings from some bishops to politicians who support abortion rights. John Gehring, a former USCCB staffer who is now a progressive faith advocate at Faith in Public Life, tweeted that “it’s hard to overstate” the significance of Weisenburger’s remarks.

'Top of the world, Ma!' Or . . . spare us your white bleat

Steve King, the Nazi-lovin’ Iowa congressman. Again.

Donald Trump’s Amerika. Still.

Identity politics, culture warriors and vilification of those unlike ourselves. Always.
 
Much has been said over the last year and a half about the need to understand the beleaguered, alienated Americans demeaned by arrogant progressives, poor souls who have lashed out electorally, using the only weapon available to them. Thus, President Donald Trump.

Blow up a skyscraper with a jetliner, you’re the most notorious terrorist in history. Blow up a country with a fascistic orange imbecile, and we’re supposed to understand your goddamned pain. Gotcha.
 
Listen. I have pain. Oftentimes, I feel beleaguered, alienated and demeaned by arrogant virtue signalers who think I’m a “hater” by mere virtue of my religion. Identity politics is not just a knuckle-dragging, right-wing phenomenon mostly experienced in trailer parks, King's congressional district in Iowa and at Nuremberg for Dummies events featuring the president of the United States of Amerika . . . er, America.

Despite my beleaguered, alienated distress, I made the conscious choice not to take it out on the rest of the country. Neither did I take it out on minorities, refugees, gays, the poor or undocumented immigrants. That would have been profoundly wrong.

By November 2016, anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knew exactly who and what Donald Trump was. He wasn’t shy about letting us know, and the press wasn’t exactly, shall we say . . . reticent.

We knew. We knew.

We knew that Trump acted like a nut and talked like a fascist. We knew he was reckless in word and in deed. We knew he was a liar. We knew he was a cheat. We knew he was a cad, a philanderer, a vulgarian and a misogynist. We knew he was a raging narcissist.



We knew he didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

We also knew that, for all her myriad faults as a public servant and a politician, Hillary Clinton wasn’t an idiot, wasn’t a racist, wasn’t a fascist, wasn’t certifiable — and wasn’t in Vladimir Putin’s hip pocket.



A majority of voters held their noses and voted for Not the Fascist Buffoon, a.k.a., Hillary Clinton. They voted for not blowing up the United States, despite everything. They voted for not making things worse. They eschewed the hissy fit.



I was among that popular-vote majority. I don’t know a lot of things, but I knew President Donald John Trump would be an existential threat. Events thus far are proving me right.

Others, however, wanted to “shake things up.” Consider them shook.

Trump gets owned by Little Rocket Man

THOSE ENABLERS of that unfortunate electoral-vote majority shook up the lives of people who could just use a little affordable health care right now.

They shook up the lives of desperate migrants fleeing to a Trump-addled Amerika . . . er, America . . . because almost anything was better than being killed by Salvadoran or Honduran gangs, or being staggeringly poor for one day more, or looking at the future of one’s children and seeing nothing.

Now many get to look on as la Migra tear the little ones out of their arms at a detention center, and they get a glimpse of hell.

The Trumpkins shook up their own manufacturing jobs, too. Full-scale trade war with the entire world ought to work wonders for their economic prospects.



And, hey! Amazing how a just 80,000 or so proud “deplorables” in just the right spots on the electoral map could — Dare we dream? — shake up the entire global order. Well, it’s all shook up.

The Iranians perhaps are going to build the Bomb now, Little Rocket Man in North Korea is our best buddy (Yeah, right) just a few months after Trump was threatening to nuke him and his . . . and, oh, by the way, the Western alliance is in tatters, Canada is our enemy, and pretty much the whole rest of the world hates our guts. This all happened in the past month or so.

Cue Jerry Lee Lewis. There’s a whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.

Yeah, you have a shitty job, the pencil-neck geeks are makin’ fun of you, and Barack Hussein Obama and the liberal establishment have capped your ass a couple of times with a long gun.



What to do . . . what to do?



“Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”


 
FASCIST AUTHORITARIANISM and racist identity politics: They’re the gifts that keep on taking. Taking your freedom, taking your dignity, taking a country’s prosperity, taking your idealism, taking your hope . . . taking your soul. And all you got was that stupid Make America Great Again trucker cap.



Well, Trump voter, if you had any sense right now, you’d be feeling like a Trump Organization contractor after the bankruptcy hearing.

So, let’s talk about “identity politics” for a second.

What’s your “identity”? White? Christian? Conservative? ‘Merkun?
 
Not “one of them”?

None of us, you know, are just any one thing. For me, being American is somewhere down the line of my identities -- somewhere behind human, child of God, husband, Catholic and smartass. "My country, right or wrong" doesn't cut it with me.

Just like "Mein reich, richtig oder falsch" was less than persuasive among the Allies when Germans used it as a justification for doing Adolf Hitler's bidding. There are consequences when your country is wrong, and you are not immune when you acquiesce to evil — because "my country.”

Do not, Brother Trumpkin, ask me to understand you or sympathize with your plight as you stand proudly with your evil boy in the White House, telling me it’s all good and justified just because you were pissed off at the world. America’s prisons are filled with misunderstood, pissed-off souls who got psychic relief by robbing a Quickie Mart or blowing somebody’s brains out.

I’m with Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce — I don’t effing want to hear it. Because two wrongs, etc., and so on.

It might be important to understand why half of Americans initially supported Donald Trump, but we have no need to understand why people support this administration now, as it inflicts evil upon evil both here and abroad, upon both nations and vulnerable individuals.

We didn't need, in the heat of battle, to understand the Nazis' desire to be Nazi. We needed to understand how best to stop the damned Nazis.

We didn't need to understand the complex dynamics of racism and white supremacy to unleash all legal and societal hell against Jim Crow.

In the 1940s, denazification could begin only after we kicked the Nazis' asses and turned Germany into ruins.

The only thing Trumpkins need to hear from the world now, as the horrors of their boy Trump mount, is "You must have had your reasons for voting abject evil into the White House, and we can talk about that. Later. But there is no justification in heaven or on earth for supporting what Trump is turning America into. None. And you will be stopped."

Some 'very fine people' in Charlottesville, Va.

 
LIKE I SAID, I’m a Catholic. Not a liberal Catholic, not a conservative Catholic . . . a Catholic. Period. Paragraph.

As a Catholic, I believe in the concept of divine judgment. For that matter, so did non-Catholic Abraham Lincoln, who thought the Civil War was God’s divine judgment against slavery and the country that tolerated it for so long.



Me, I think we have it coming today for any number of reasons. The continuing scourge of racial injustice would be just one. My particular concept of divine judgment, however, is that God gives sinful people, countries and societies just enough rope to hang themselves.

I figure about now, America is swinging like the pendulum on a cuckoo clock. It won’t get better from here. Not for a good while.

We, in our blind arrogance, just can’t see that yet. But we will soon enough, and “the least of these” whom we abuse — in the name of Trump and “Well, we were pissed off” — will be avenged. Alas, Trump will not save our sorry selves.

Place not your faith in golden calves . . . or orange asses. For "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

6/5/68

Bobby Kennedy died 50 years ago. It still hurts.

Actually, the assassinations of 1968 -- first Martin Luther King and then, two months later, Robert Kennedy -- hurt all the more as time goes by. Why is that? Why are these the wounds that never heal?

Some say it's because what we lost in that terrible spring of '68 was hope itself. Maybe some did -- I can't say for sure; I was just 7 at the time. But I remember the sadness, and I remember some of the fear. Still, 7-year-olds don't lose hope . . . not really. It takes longer for a body to really and truly lose hope.

I wasn't there yet.

Now, a half century on? I still don't know. My hope is battered and bruised -- besieged, actually, in this hateful and diseased Age of Trump -- but it's not lost. Not entirely, anyway.

But every insult to it -- every body blow, every instance when the unthinkable becomes not only thinkable, but reality -- adds, for me, to the grief over something that happened when I was but a child.



THE PAIN grows exponentially as Americans see what we've become, as we grow ever more acutely aware of what we lost that awful early Wednesday morning as gunshots rang out in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. As hope drained away along with the life of the senator from New York over the next 26 hours.

You know what I think about? I think about how different we might have turned out had we gotten a president who endeavored to heal a divided America, sought to end a deeply stupid and wasteful war, and reminded us that The Other was our brother.

I wonder what the story of the last half century would have read like without Richard Nixon's race-baiting "Southern strategy," the fulfillment of which sits today in a soiled Oval Office . . . and in every act of racial or ethnic hatred across this still-divided land . . . and on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria . . . and in the detention facilities filled with Mexican and Central American children torn away from their undocumented parents somewhere along our southern border.

I wonder about that. And then I grieve -- still -- over a murder from when I was just out of first grade in Baton Rouge.

We're off on the Road to Caracas

This is frickin' Haiti. If only someone had thrown a chair -- maybe shot a hole in the ceiling -- for the full effect.

Where this all is heading is frickin' Venezuela, which as I type is completely emptying out because it, like Louisiana, is completely incapable of self-governance. It's amazing all the existential, quite-fatal flaws $100-a-barrel oil can cover up.

Until it's $50-a-barrel oil.

IF I WERE Gov. John Bel Edwards, I'd make sure Rep. Lance Harris (R-Alexandria) discovered -- by Wednesday morning, at the latest -- that state health inspectors had documented severe rat-and-cockroach infestations at every single one of his convenience stores up there in Bumf*ckistan. Out of an abundance of caution, Harris' nasty, filthy stores then would have to be shut down.

In the name of public safety. And good government.

Especially good government.

When you're gub'na of a banana republic, you damn well better act like you're the top banana.

It's dangerous to have courage in an age of cowards

Click to enlarge

 
Trumpism is an apocalypse, an unveiling and a revelation in the original Greek sense of the word.

What previously was hidden from many now is visible to all -- and the choice we face as Americans is crystal clear.

"Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?"

One of the vanishingly few pluses to this apocalypse is the revelation of true backbone, conviction and integrity among some Republicans and conservatives who previously were just seen as partisan warriors in the right-wing tribe. Michael Gerson is among this number.
 

'When the king is a liar, truth becomes treason.'

HE'S BEEN anti-Trump from the start, has been clear about why he's opposed Donald Trump and has, on principled grounds, cast himself out of his tribe because his tribe has shown itself to be massively intellectually and morally corrupt. And in this age where tribalism is all -- and you don't have to look far to see this; you're on social media, after all -- it is no small thing to stand alone, reviled to some extent by all sides.

If this all goes even more sideways than it already has, folks like Gerson will be among the first to be rounded up and thrown into the gulag. Remember that as you read this.

No, there is no bottom for right-wingers to hit

Let's just call this staggeringly odious and misleading Internet ad what it is.

It's the right-wing crazy machine's "Where the white women at!?" moment. There's no other explanation for using that artwork of Barack Obama, and using it in the manner of Cleavon Little meets Snidely Whiplash.

Particularly when Obama hasn't been president for a year and a half now.

Boris Badenov . . . president's FSB handler

It's something worthy of Boris Badenov . . .  or a Washington dark-money advocacy group with ties to the Koch brothers.

The spectacle of Republicans resorting to Obama-baiting -- still -- to thwart an effort to continue regulating a utility like, well, a utility just beggars belief. Or it would have beggared belief a decade ago. You know, before the Great "The President's a What???" Freakout.

And now that Donald Trump is president, I'll believe anything. Except, of course, a single word that comes out of his mouth.

IN AN AMERICA lost somewhere on the wrong side of a pee-colored looking glass, the old Jim Crow political tactic of n***** baiting has become the postmodern coin of the realm for Republicans. That's fair enough. After all, they've been looking more like Klansmen every God-forsaken day in this deviant and dysfunctional Age of Trump.

Thus, we have the right resorting to this "Where the white women at!?" demonizing of a man who's no longer running things -- all in the name of letting Corporate America screw consumers and potential economic rivals as much as possible.

No doubt, this is another GOP "freedom" moment.

And, as Janis Joplin told us all 47 years ago, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."

Your precious-feet pin won't get you into heaven anymore

Here's what it means to be a "pro-life" Republican politician these days in a most Republican state like . . . say . . . Nebraska.

(And, yes, I'm looking at you, Gov. Pete Ricketts, and especially you, Attorney General Doug Peterson.)

First, you make a lot of noise about "the sanctity of life." Then you advocate laws you damn well know will be shot down about 3.2 seconds after they land before a federal judge. This is fine with you, because then you can keep flogging the same ol' same ol' and keep raking in knee-jerk votes from knee-jerk voters. (Secretly, though, you worry that folks might realize someday that you and yours have accomplished absolutely nothing substantive on abortion since it became law of the land in 1973.)
 
After talking a good pro-life game about mamas, babies and the evil lib'ruls, you gut all the social programs that might make it easier for women to have and raise their children. Because pro-life.

Pro-life?

Forget it, they're rolling.

Then, you make sure Nebraska's gun laws are loose enough so folks can kill one another as easily as possible. After all, you're pro-life, and assault weapons are, too. Because God, constitutional rights and freedom.

Freedom!

After pro-life criminal elements commit pro-life homicides, pro-life law-enforcement officers catch the perpetrators. Then pro-life judges impose pro-life death sentences, all to demonstrate the sacredness of the sanctity of life. Because thou shalt not kill.

FINALLY, you have your corrections department try to buy lethal injection drugs on the black(ish) market because drug companies don't want your money -- or blood on their corporate hands. This is because they, no doubt, are anti-life pussies.

On your first foray into "Psst . . . you got the stuff?" you waste almost $28,000. Alas, the FDA was against you. So was UPS -- it sent your stash back to India for lack of proper paperwork.

Several years later, when you finally come up with the ingredients for a toxic cocktail, you find a legislative committee is wary enough to subpoena the corrections director to a hearing.
 
So, in the name of the rule of law and the sanctity of human life, you sue the legislative committee to keep the corrections director from appearing . . . or answering any questions about where he got the drugs. Or even what drugs the state bought.

Pro-life means never having to say you're sorry -- or anything at all, actually.

This all makes complete sense to me. Then again, I've been dropping a lot of the brown acid lately, man.

Pay no attention to the Mexican gorilla bench-pressing a cow. The socialist baby-killers sent them here to distract you. And the air tastes like Jesus. Squirrel!

God Bless America.

Louisiana swamp gas . . . or weapons of ass destruction

The Louisiana Legislature's latest round of budget negotiations has prompted the return of what is becoming an annual tug-of-war match between funding TOPS and funding state health care services.

The House Appropriations Committee on Monday advanced its version of a $27 billion state budget to begin July 1 featuring full funding for the popular Taylor Opportunity Program for Students scholarships and deep cuts to safety-net hospitals and other programs that serve the poor and disabled.

"This is a process," House Appropriations Vice Chair Franklin Foil, R-Baton Rouge, said during the committee's hearing on House Bill 1. "There are other steps we'll be going through."

HB1 is scheduled to hit the House floor on Thursday, where it is certain to generate additional debate over where the brunt of nearly $650 million in cuts should land. Lawmakers haven't ruled out the idea of holding yet another special session to try to close all or part of the remaining "fiscal cliff" the state faces when temporary tax measures expire June 30, but they can't take up most revenue-raising measures during the regular session and current budgeting process. . . . 

"In rushing to pass amendments out, the House Appropriations Committee proved what we’ve been saying all along – there simply isn’t a way to fashion a budget that adequately funds our state’s pressing needs," Edwards said in a statement. "TOPS is absolutely a priority and should be fully funded, but so should higher education institutions, health care for our seniors and those with disabilities, funding for medical schools in Shreveport and New Orleans, and our partner hospitals. Now we can see that it’s not possible to do that without replacing more of the revenue that is expiring."

The move to prioritize funding for TOPS, which is wildly popular among middle class and more affluent families, mirrors recent actions from the Appropriations Committee, which gets the first bite at the state budget under state law.

Rep. Gary Carter, D-New Orleans, said he worried about the ripple effect cuts to the state's safety-net hospital partners would have. Several of those operators have already said they will walk away from the agreements, threatening the shuttering of hospitals across the state, if their funding is drastically reduced to the levels that have been proposed.

"We have health care providers in the state of Louisiana making tough decisions," Carter said. "I'm a big believer in both education and health care, but I certainly don't want to risk closing any hospital."

Several Democrats also questioned the plan to fund TOPS while cutting general funding for college and university campuses.

The (Baton Rouge) Advocate 

Monday, April 16

It didn't take jetliners flying into New York skyscrapers.

It certainly didn't take any declaration of war.

All it took was Bashar al-Assad dropping a chlorine (and perhaps sarin) gas bomb onto a Damascus neighborhood and killing 40-odd people in the latest outrageous act of Syria's long and bloody civil war. For that, the combined forces of the United States, France and Great Britain launched 100-something missiles into a country with which we weren't at war, at least not legally.

What, then, shall we do with Louisiana?

I doubt it could be argued that Louisiana politicians have not killed -- and will not kill -- any fewer than a Syrian gas attack every few weeks, if not days, by starving every social safety-net program on the books, all because their constituents have no more interest than Cain in being their brother's keeper. As we know from Genesis, Cain had no interest in being Abel's keeper because he had already killed him.

Artistic tradition pictures the jealous Cain slaying with the jawbone of an ass, as Samson later in scripture did away with the Philistines. In Louisiana, it's asses jawboning who mow down the poor, the disabled and the sick with their votes and their callous neglect. If the House committee's will becomes budgetary law, what little cash the state has on hand will fully fund a popular welfare program that overwhelmingly benefits the adult children of middle-class white people.

The poor and the ill, then, will be left to be their own damned keeper. Should be interesting to see how well Grandma shifts for herself when she's wheeled to the curb after the Medicaid money stops but her nursing-home tab doesn't.

The white children of white parents with ample green will have their tuition to crumbling state universities (which aren't being funded) paid in full with taxpayers' dollars.  The state Department of Health would be starved to the point where virtually every public-private "safety net" hospital closes its doors.

Meantime, medical education virtually would end in Louisiana.

“So of $346-million available, you want to spend $246-million of it for this, leaving $100-million for everything else?” [Rep. Walt] Leger [D-New Orleans] asked. “You believe $246-million is best spent in these ways?”

“I do,” [Rep. Franklin] Foil [R-Baton Rouge] replied. “We had a lot of ground to make up, since the executive budget had zero dollars spent on TOPS.”

“Isn’t this message giving students false hope, because the full body isn’t likely to maintain this in lieu of funding other programs?” Leger pressed. “You’re okay getting a positive news story today, even if it ultimately will prove to be fake news?”

“My commitment is to students,” Foil answered.

“What about the Department of Health?” Leger asked.

“What about it?” Foil fired back.

“You’re aware that department is taking biggest cuts? And you still believe it is more valuable to fund TOPS?” Leger asked, incredulously.

“Your district includes a substantial constituency that is on Medicaid, doesn’t it, Rep. Foil?” Rep. Pat Smith [D-Baton Rouge] asked. “But you’re willing to fully fund TOPS to benefit a different socio-economic group in your district, instead?”

“I think this helps everyone, in every district,” Foil replied. “We are clearly short on revenue, and even if we were to take all of the money available and give it to the Department of Health, they would still have a shortfall.”

“Yet your amendment fully funds TOPS to the detriment of all the other programs in the state: disabilities waivers, nursing homes, public-private partner hospitals, graduate medical education,” Leger said. “It’s a trap, forcing us Democrats to say we either support TOPS or we don’t. That’s a false choice, and it will really end up being nothing more than a comment about what we would like to do.”

“We are already on notice that the public-private partner hospitals will be closing,” Rep. Gary Carter (D-New Orleans) chimed in. “We say ‘we fund our priorities.’ Your amendment makes TOPS a greater priority than health care.”

“I believe we will find funding as we go through this process,” Foil insisted.

“That’s pie in the sky,” Pat Smith told him, bluntly. “You’re perfectly aware there is no guarantee to raise additional revenue. Some 20 members of this body won’t vote for any new revenue under any circumstances. What this ends up saying is that we only want to fund a program for kids doing well in school, but not the schools they go to, and not the hospitals.”

BREAKING NEWS . . . Louisiana to poor, sick and higher ed: Drop dead.

Breaking news? That's old news. It's also today's news, tomorrow's news, next year's news and your grandkids' news.

In this era of concussive enforcement of the Geneva Conventions and international human-rights charters, here's the news I eagerly await:

As a proportional and just response to unacceptable violations of civilized norms, I await news that sea- and air-launched cruise missiles from the combined armed forces of the United States and sundry NATO allies have sent a message to America's own pariah state. And that the Louisiana Capitol Complex now looks a lot like some of the sadder parts of north Baton Rouge.

Right is right, after all, and rogue regimes must be put on notice that certain red lines must not be crossed. Even in the reddest of states.

We're all in agreement on that, am I right? Am I right?

Hello?

I've seen this movie before. It still sucks

I am a Southerner by birth. I am over 50. I've seen just about everything playing at the Trump Film Festival before . . . back when it was the White Citizens' Film Festival.

The lineup of smutty movies hasn't improved with age. For that matter, neither has America

And the posters in the lobby are still misspelled.

Show me a jackleg American fascist wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap, and what I see is a self-satisfied Southern fascist, circa 1965, whose sense of his "American" superiority vastly outstripped his facility with the king's "Engliss." Hateful bullies rained stink bombs onto the public square then, and today's thuggish postmillennial retreads do it still.

The picture above is from the July 5, 1965, edition of the Baton Rouge, La., State-Times. On Independence Day, the bowels of hell retched up a "We the People" rally of self-styled "conservatives" at the Louisiana State Capitol, about a quarter mile due south of where I came into this world 4½ years before.You'll see much the same today -- "We the (White) People" festivals of the aggrieved, just with stupider headwear.  Today's Golden Calf is an orange ass (Donald Trump), and the banner of the Civil War's second-place team flies defiantly over the proceedings.

Still.

Click on photos for large versions

The array of targets -- the breadth of humanity deemed The Other -- has grown these past 53 years. The capacity for spelling basic English words by angry and aggrieved white people still belies any pretensions of actual supremacy.

George Wallace, on the other hand, was a lot better stump speaker than Donald of Orange.

Yeah, I've seen this movie before.

THIS STORY (and these photos) from the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate that summer day-after in 1965 ought to be familiar to those who've picked up a newspaper from time to time the past couple of years.

Really familiar.

NO DOUBT about it, when a country -- or a state, or a region -- goes full fascist, The Other suffers badly. But as a white man born into a fascist system in a fascist state -- and Jim Crow was a fascist system, and Louisiana was (and still largely is) a fascist state -- I can tell you that as bad as the suffering inflicted upon the persecuted is, the persecutors' spiritual and cultural self-disfigurement may well be the greater of the horrors.

"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Jesus said that; it's in Matthew. "Good Christian people" had trouble with that one in 1965 . . . and they have trouble with it now. See "Trump, Donald -- evangelical support for."

If you don't believe me, look at these pictures from my childhood long ago and far away. Look at the faces. It's all there, and the worst speller in the world couldn't make it any less clear.

Is that kinda like whores who bellyache about prostitution?

And Mary Fallin is the shyster who'll sell 'em a 1974 Chevy Vega with sawdust in the differential and a spiel about how all cars burn a quart of oil every week.

Merle Haggard wept.

Back to the future with President Stupid

Well, ladies and germs, it would appear that President Stupid is about to get us all into a real, honest-to-God trade war of the Smoot-Hawley variety.

Those never end well.

I fear the chill'uns are about to get a lesson on what it was like when their grandparents -- folks my age -- were teenagers and college students. The cool stuff you really wanted was really expensive, and you seriously had to save up for it.

In 1980, I was working about 20 hours a week at minimum wage -- then $3 an hour. Today, that would work out to $9.22. And being a total gear head, I really wanted a cool new stereo receiver.

To get one, I had to save for months. The Yamaha receiver I bought cost just shy of $400, or around $1,100 in 2018 dollars. That was serious money then, and it's even more serious today, as wages haven't come close to keeping pace with inflation the past four decades.

Later, I decided I wanted a color TV, a nice one, for my bedroom.  So I got a "Sony of my owny," to borrow the phraseology of the era's advertisements for the brand. It was a 12-inch Trinitron color set with push-button tuning. I also could tell you the model, but that would just bore you and out me as a total anorak, which is a particularly geeky way to say "nerd."

My Sony cost a mere $369.95 ($1,086.25 today).

GOOD LUCK doing that now as a student making minimum wage at a part-time job. For one thing . . . your wages have been depressed.

For another thing, your depressed wages in 2018 go toward lots of stuff we didn't have in the late 1970s and early 1980s -- like monthly cellphone bills.

And monthly cable-TV bills to watch programs and sporting events that were on free, over-the-air TV in 1980.

And then there's Hulu and Netflix and Amazon Prime Video so you can watch the popular shows that aren't on cable.

Oh, yeah. There's your monthly broadband-Internet bill, too.

Then there's college tuition. In 1979, my old man shelled out $295 in tuition and fees for me to attend Louisiana State University full time for the fall semester ($995.29 in 2018, about a $2,000-a-semester discount over one of today's "reasonably priced" state universities). Back then, state legislatures tended to think public universities were, well . . . public.

By the standards of today's Republican Party, we all were pinko-communist, socialist radicals living in a thoroughly collectivized country . . . and we liked it. We particularly liked not being bankrupted by student-loan debt which, of course, can't be erased by bankruptcy.

And I saw Bruce Springsteen in 1980 for the princely sum of $8 a ticket ($23.30 today). The Who cost $12. I had great seats.

Sucks to be you, kids. There's a reason so many of you live with Mom and Dad till you're 30. 

SUCKS TO BE us old farts, too. When prices go through the roof, the economy craters and our 401(k) retirement accounts come to naught, we'll probably die at age 80 . . . shivering in an unheated hovel, eating cat food and wallowing in our own shit.

On the bright side, maybe Donald Trump will just get us nuked instead, and we'll never know what hit us.

A canary in the @#$&*! coal mine doth protest too much

Well, this was extraordinary . . . even for Louisiana.

You might think that was a wild overreaction by Sen. Conrad Appel, but you have to remember he's a Republican who represents Metairie, and that's what one has to do to hold on to one's job in David Dukeland.

People think Donald Trump is America's national disease. He is not.

What Trump is, is a particularly devastating symptom of an even more devastating disease (as evidenced by this display from our national canary in the coal mine, Louisiana).

Buckle up, America. The fun is just beginning.

Moonlight and magnolias . . . with a side of crystal meth

What would we Louisiana expatriates do without our hometown newspapers . . . to remind us why the hell we left in the first place?

I am from Baton Rouge. My hometown newspaper is The Advocate, which isn't the gay publication of the same name but is rather queer, come to think of it.

Anyway, The Advocate has, in the past, printed some pretty insane things. Those were a warm-up for this dog whistle.

DAN FAGAN (whatever a Dan Fagan is) accuses Mitch Landrieu of being a race-baiter and then -- somehow -- brings the whole argument about Confederate monuments to "Because abortion."

I am pro-life. And I am here to tell you this is, to quote George W. Bush, "some weird shit." It's also why I have become, as a pro-lifer, allergic to so much of the "pro-life movement," which has devolved to a bunch of pro-birth political hacks who are fine with merely delaying the execution of society's most vulnerable members to a later date.

In light of that, Fagan's argument comes down to this:

SO . . . society should be in the business of honoring things that aren't moral, ethical or right? Fagan is saying that Landrieu is a race-baiting scoundrel because he tore down New Orleans' monuments to the Confederacy and white supremacy.

And refusing future honors to Democrats, because abortion, will somehow be a cosmically just payback for tearing down monuments to those who fought for slavery? Which, of course, was somehow both horribly wrong yet worthy of honor via public monuments to the men and states dedicated to the perpetuation of institutionalized human bondage.

Actually, the non-disingenuous analogy here would be removing a statue of a Mitch Landrieu who went on to commit treason against the United States in the name of legal abortion -- and then to fight a bloody civil war against it. Because abortion.

The Democrats may be on the wrong side of history regarding abortion, but they're no traitors and, thus far, have refrained from firing upon Fort Sumter. Today's Republican Party, on the other hand, is placing itself on the wrong side of history on virtually every other issue -- some of them just as morally fraught and morally non-negotiable as abortion.

And, by the way, any number of the GOP's members in this Age of Trump are this close to being demonstrably treasonous.

Now, what does this son of the South, who now lives in the Gret White Nawth, have to say about Fagan's philosophical treatise, one he obviously penned for the benefit of Confederacy-loving mouth-breathers who can't use "treatise" in a sentence? Well, I'm thinking of a certain bumper sticker we used to see a lot in the South in the 1960s and '70s -- often affixed to pickup trucks.