January 15, 2018: Sen. Lindsey Graham Takes a Poke at Fellow Republicans

 

1/15/18: Today marks President Trump’s first Martin Luther King Jr. Day as leader of the Free World. He has no public events scheduled – probably because he doesn’t want anyone asking, “Mr. President, are you a racist? Are you ready to come out of the closet, as it were?” 

 

“My memory hasn’t evolved.” 

In the meantime, a White House source is floating a new cover line for the president. He didn’t say “shithole.” He said “shithouse.” (See: 1/11/18.)

See. Better. 

Senator Graham continues to try to keep a path open to a DACA settlement. That means avoiding throwing Trump under the bus. Graham does take a verbal poke at GOP colleagues in the room during the meeting with Trump. The Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier begins an article this way: 

After taking the weekend to reflect on a combative White House meeting in which President Donald Trump reportedly referred to African countries as “shithole countries,” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said Monday he is even more determined to reach an immigration deal with hardliners in his own party.

 

In his most extensive comments yet about Thursday’s explosive Oval Office meeting, the Seneca Republican again declined to confirm whether Trump specifically used the term “shithole” to describe the countries.

 

But, in what appeared to be a direct jab at Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue, Graham said, “My memory hasn’t evolved. I know what was said and I know what I said.” Sen. Tim Scott, R-North Charleston, said Friday that Graham told him media reports of what Trump said were “basically accurate.”

 

The president spends the morning at Mar-a-Lago. Then he heads for his golf course at West Palm Beach.

 

* 

WHILE TRUMP AND HIS FAMILY enjoy the Florida sun, in less balmy Detroit, Michigan, federal immigration agents are snatching Jorge Garcia from his family and deporting him to Mexico. 

Garcia, 40, was brought to the U.S. when he was 10. He grew up here, married, had kids – one son, one daughter – and worked as a landscaper. He paid his taxes (something we don’t yet know President Trump has done). According to Rep. Debbie Dingell, in whose congressional district the Garcia family lives, “He never got a traffic ticket. He worked hard. ... He had never done anything wrong.”

 

In MAGA land it made sense to deport a father and deny his wife and children of his support and love.

 

And that is how you “Make America Great Again.”

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Garcia is finally granted a reprieve and allowed to return to this country on Christmas Day, 2020.

April 12, 2019: As of Today, Most Transgenders Serving in the U.S. Military Will Be Banned - And Other Ways to Screw Those Who Serve

 

4/12/19: As of today, most transgender individuals are banned from serving in the military, unless they agree to serve in their “birth gender.” 

As for those already serving – who may number in the thousands – Axios explains:

 

After April 12, no one diagnosed with gender dysphoria who is taking hormones or has transitioned to another gender will be allowed to enlist…and those currently serving can be discharged for doing so.

 

Military personnel will be given “a chance to change their decision [emphasis added]” or given a chance to agree to serve in their birth gender, before being discharged.

 

Realizing that the U.S. military will be losing hundreds if not thousands of active duty servicemen and women, members of the Trump family rush down, as they always have, and enlist... 

Ha, ha! Of course not! Service to country is for suckers.

 

* 

YOU MIGHT BE one of those who believes a long, tall border wall would solve a lot of problems for this country; but no complex issue is ever so simple. Take the recent case of Jose Arturo Gonzalez Carranza. 

He first snuck into the U.S., when he was fourteen and moved to Phoenix, Arizona with an uncle. There he found work with a carpeting company. He met his future wife, Barbara Vieyra, at a nightclub for teens. They eventually moved in together, had a daughter, and married. Ms. Viera joined the Army to help support the family. She served with a military police unit in Korea and was later deployed to Kunar Province, Afghanistan. There, during an attack by Taliban forces on her unit, she was killed in action, age 22. 

Her husband learned of her death on his own 22^nd birthday, in 2010. His wife’s parents helped him raise his daughter, Evelyn, but in January 2019, he was grabbed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. He was deported to Mexico, a country he had not seen in sixteen years. 

And, somehow, this was supposed to make America safer, or a better place for his daughter, now 12, to live? 

Vieyra and their daughter.

The news media began to spread the story, Mr. Gonzalez Carranza managed to get a good lawyer, and this week he was allowed to return to the U.S. 

Ezequiel Hernandez, his lawyer, said his client was finally allowed back into the United States on Monday after a government lawyer notified him that Mr. Gonzalez Carranza should go to the legal port of entry in Nogales, Mexico, within an hour. Mr. Hernandez said he was not certain why immigration authorities reversed their decision, but believed that media reports about the deportation may have contributed to the decision.

 

On Tuesday, a day after returning to Arizona, Mr. Gonzalez Carranza said he had still not seen his daughter, who was with her grandparents, but was looking forward to seeing her.

 

…

 

Mr. Hernandez said he planned to argue that his client should be granted permanent legal status in the United States because of the extreme hardship that his daughter would face, compounded by the loss of her mother, if her father were to be deported.

 

You could certainly argue that his wife, who had given her life to serve this country, had earned that, at least.

BLOGGER’S NOTE (6/24/21): The U.S. Army officially reverses the Trump administration policy and rules that transgender individuals can serve openly, according to their gender identity. 

The Pentagon began to reverse Trump policies in March 2021. 

Department of Defense data, for example, showed that between 2015 and 2017, 393 of 994 transgender military personnel deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, proving that unlike the “Fighting Trumps,” their patriotism was more than just words spilling from lips.

July 6, 2019: The Blogger Gets One Wrong

7/6/19: The U.S. added 224,000 jobs last month. This means 5,613,000 jobs have been added in the first 29 full months of President Trump’s term. In other words, it’s a good jobs report. 

It’s just not as good as the 6,359,000 jobs added in Obama’s last 29 full months in the White House.

On jobs, Obama continues to lead.

 

* 

TODAY, the Trump administration kept us all safe from dangerous undocumented types hoping to sneak across the border, by denying a hearing to Roman Sabal, 58. Um…a Marine Corps veteran, who served for six years.  That means Sabal served more time in uniform than all the members of the Trump clan since the president’s grandfather first sank family roots on our shores in 1885. 

His story has a few twists and turns which make it more complicated than you can explain in a Trump tweet (which is how the president makes immigration policy). Sabal’s lawyer notes that his client is one of seven deported veterans with pending citizenship cases. His two children are U.S. citizens, and his partner is a U.S. citizen. 

So, how did this country benefit by deporting Sabal to begin – and then keeping him away from people who love him…who are…citizens? You might think the tweeting fool living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would take such matters seriously. If he paid any attention at all. 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (5/12/22): During a light editing of my blog, I did a quick internet search to see if I could learn Sabal’s fate. It turns out he was deported in 2008, when George W. Bush was in the Oval Office. That would be long before Donald Trump ever took charge, and started warning us all about dangerous immigrants, especially those with dark skins. The Obama administration had been no help, and Sabal languished in his home country, Belize, until 2019, when his lawyers finally won him a hearing. Sabal had been scheduled to return to San Diego for a citizenship appeal. He was denied entry, however, and unable to win his case until October 2020. 

His successful appeal for U.S. citizenship was finally advanced after Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a veteran herself, stepped in to push officials to do what was right. 

Sorry, Mr. Trump, you were innocent for a change.