Time to Defund the DHS
We have now been in isolation for 129 days while the president and the morons in Austin spin gossamer tales and fantastical fantasies ignoring the simplicity of science. As Neil deGrass Tyson famously said, “The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.” Cases of Coronavirus have exploded in not only Texas, but other red states like Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Even California continues to be threatened due to the idiocy of some of its populace.
Those of us at most risk try to protect ourselves while our leaders do nothing to actually do anything to help. I’ve never felt so exposed to risk since my draft lottery in 1971 during the horror of the war Viet Nam. I have no confidence in our state government, and certainly not in the federal government that has devolved into a fascist regime run by criminals and screwballs. And while all this is crashing down around our ears, what is Trump doing? Besides firebombing by tweet, he’s sending out federal agents in unidentified combat uniforms carrying weapons of war and driving in unmarked vehicles to attack peaceful protestors against the very violence these stormtroopers are committing. Against the orders of state and local authorities, Trump has sent these goons in for his own political purposes, trying to appear powerful in the face of his own abject ignorance and weakness. The result? Peaceful protests have become violent, turned so by the very agents Trump has declared are there to enforce the peace. Last night, the mayor of Portland was actually gassed by federal goons in unmarked uniforms while he was speaking to his own people.
This. Is. Enough. We all know the mental and moral state of the most corrupt president in US history. He doesn’t care if you live or die, and has actually become the leading cause of death in the US after his unimaginable recklessness and gross negligence as the pandemic exploded in our country during the last six months. Trump’s most recent assault on American’s constitutional rights and common decency by his unidentified goons has been exposed by Reuters and the Lawfare blog, showing documents that articulate a strategy of “protecting” monuments and federal property from “violent criminals” in America’s cities. Of course, that’s not at all what they’re actually doing. What they’re actually doing is starting violence where no violence existed in order to justify Trump expanding this to other cities to cause more violence to give Trump the excuse to expand…you get the drill.
All of this effort was organized in secret by Trumpists in the WH and “acting” officials in the DHS. It’s designed in such a way that its secrecy makes it almost impossible to exercise oversight by the Congress. This operation certainly requires funding by illegally using money appropriated for other purposes. And all this is happening with McConnell laying down and allowing Trump to do what he wants, when he wants as he destroys what’s left of our democracy.
To summarize – Trump is violating the Constitution, federal laws, and two centuries of practice in not using federal forces on its own people. DHS was founded as a knee-jerk reaction to the 911 attacks. The problem is that having DHS consolidates too much authority in too few officials with not enough oversight by the legislative and judicial branches. The DHS must be broken up post haste. I know that won’t happen any time soon, but this is just one more righting of a wrong on the list of thousands of wrongs that must be fixed after we fumigate the WH and the Senate.
Does anyone else remember Kent State?
1SPOT ON
2WA Skeptic#1 – Kent State is why this (then) college freshman Young Republican became a leftist radical in 1970….and moving further left every year of my life since then. I was shattered by the thought that students on another campus were murdered by National Guardsmen who had been given live ammunition (a failure of their commanders).
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Gassing the mayor of Portland while he spoke to his constituents. Where the f**k is Congress and when will they move to rid us of this dangerous Petit Pinochet?
3This is a lot different from Kent State which was more a matter of fools with guns than anything else. This is what the Nazis called nacht und nebel (night and fog) and it is planned.
Trump and Barr would like a massacre, only a small one perhaps, and it will be up to the liberals to protest effectively without giving any opportunity to the Nazis.
4At Kent State the gunmen wore marked uniforms – how do we know these aren’t just the usual nut jobs that like to dress up and march around with their guns in daytime. This government completely lost me when I saw children in cages – they are pure evil and I hope we last until January.
5as I posted elsewhere, if it comes to that, Trump will just sign an executive order giving himself total authority to spend tax dollars however he wishes, and dare Congress to do anything about it. he knows that SCOTUS will be ok with it, and the Senate will do nothing about it. he also knows that 60,000,000 voters will be ok with it too.
6I’m surprised that the current mayor of Portland – a Democrat – was only gassed and not shot! I think this is what DT is actually after.
7My daughter and I have agreed to meet each other on the barricades rather than submit to dictator Trump. Not a rhetorical flourish, we’re serious. And I think Trump needs to know, as a final barrier to his dreams of monarchy, that enough Americans would turn out and fight that his hired guns would shrink back, in shame if not in fear. Don’t f’ing tread on THAT sh*t, Donnie.
8When Shrub announced the creation of DHS, my mother-who lived under Hitler for 7 years-stated “That is a direct translation from the German.”
9I copied this from FB, from a friend’s thread. It’s written by Jake Tapper, CNN. It came from a FB group called Left Turn Only. I have tried to find a link.
From Jake Tapper CNN.
I have no forgiveness left for the Republican party.
10We all knew. When he first rode that golden escalator to a paid crowd to announce his candidacy, we knew. His speech tinged with racism and misogyny was only a precursor of what was to come.
He told us who he was.
The Republicans have been sucked into the black hole of Trumpism and they are pulling the nation into the abyss. Silent, passive, weak.
While I blame him, I hold most of my contempt for the Republican Party, they had the power to stop him, but didn’t.
They have the power to reign him in, but won’t.
They stand on the sidelines flush with power and watch him destroy our democratic norms. They watch him violate the Constitution they all swore an oath to defend.
Today in the United States, children are torn from their parents arms to languish in squalid conditions, caged, alone and afraid. Families remain in a semi-permanent limbo arrested and unable to seek redress.
Today in the United States at least 70,000 Americans will be diagnosed with Covid19. On July 17 it was 74,987, nearly 3 times the number diagnosed only a month ago on June 17 when it was 26,257. The death toll now tops 140,000 and projections are that a quarter of a million Americans will likely be dead by 11/1/2020. Just days before the election. We still lack adequate PPE, we still have inadequate testing, hospitals in some areas are running out of ICU beds, the data is being subverted, a document produced by the task force that shows 18 “red zones” was withheld, witnesses are not being allowed to testify, and the Republicans remain silent.
We have watched Trump abandon our allies leaving the Kurds to be slaughtered by Turkish forces. We just learned he has no interest in challenging Putin over the bounties and murder of our own Troops, and the Republicans remain silent.
An acting director of DHS, acting commissioner of CBP, and acting head of Immigration and Naturalization have unleashed an unmarked, unidentified, paramilitary force on the city of Portland. Their mission to abduct and terrorize “Violent Anarchists” who have committed the act of graffiti on federal buildings. They do this with the blessing of the DOJ under a bizarre Executive Order expanding the role of the FPS to protect “monuments”, and Republicans remain silent.
We witnessed the murder of an unarmed black man under the knee of a sadistic police officer. Protests over police brutality were met by police brutality. Police insisting that they are above the law and will not be called to account for their actions. As the list of senseless and cruel deaths at the hands of police grows, the administration has sided with the police and the Republicans have offered nothing but “incentives” to stem the genocide.
He is destroying the USPS, putting it in the hands of a wealthy donor who has already ordered service to be “slowed down”.
He has instructed the DOJ to negotiate away protections for people with pre-existing conditions making their health insurance unobtainable.
He is destroying Voice of America to create his own propaganda machine within the Federal Government.
He teargassed and shot rubber bullets at peaceful protesters, including the Priests at St. Johns to do a photo op.
Eliminating Trump is not enough every Republican that has remained silent and enabled this must be voted from office.
Their silence is criminal.
Their silence enables him.
Their silence destroys what made America great in the first place.
The list is endless, but the silence of the Republican party is deafening, and I will never forgive them.
May we all get to November 3 and vote in such overwhelming numbers we destroy Trumpism forever, before it destroys us.
When HRC called Trumpf supporters “deplorables”, she understated it. They’re dangerous and includes the entire administration and congressional repugnanticans. All of them.
11Trumpf has weaponized virtually every department in government and much of Congress to be his campaign army. There’s no work going on to help Americans, only work against them in the most partisan way. They are all frantically trying to save their jobs while not giving a shit about the health and welfare of anyone else.
This morning I briefly watched DHS “acting” secretary, Chad Wolf, until I could stand no more. He’s an unqualified puppet of Trumpf and his enablers. It’s getting worse every night around here in Portland. I can just imagine how things will escalate in Chicago.
I am truly afraid of what will happen to our democracy by election day and until January Inauguration Day passes. Then, many of these deplorables will still be around infecting all of us in addition to the pandemic. Many will not live long enough to see it.
Yes. YES. YES! DHS needs to be de-funded, abolished, broken up and the pieces burned. It was founded in fear; it consolidates power into too few hands; it is, as we have seen, too easily corrupted to favor a corrupt leader. And while we’re at it, let us abolish the Patriot Act along with it, for the same reasons.
We don’t need them. Those of their functions that actually help keep US citizens safe and free from foreign interference can be done by other agencies, with proper oversight. We, the People, should not live in fear of our own government, ever.
I doubt that this can be done unless every Democrat, Independent, and sane Republican gets out (or mails in) a vote for Trump’s opposition, since the GOP is obviously in thrall to their demented, power-hungry Glorious Leader. The GOP needs to be tossed into the dustbin of history in November. VOTE!
12I was already thinking “DHS was founded as a knee-jerk reaction to the 911 attacks” before I got to it in the post. DHS oversees about 30 agencies including immigration, FEMA, the Secret Service, Coast Guard, Transportation, the Office of the Inspector General and many others. This is way too much power for a single department, especially one headed by an “acting” director appointed by a president using it for reelection purposes. I’ve never seen any example where the DHS made things work better. And Homeland Security has always sounded so Nazi to me. Abolish the whole damn thing and send those anonymous stormtroopers back where they came from. Maybe they could even get some stinking badges like every other law enforcement agency that’s allowed to operate domestically.
13Mike @ #9: I agree with your mother. “Homeland Security” has always sounded suspect, like they were telegraphing what they were going to be doing. I have asked from the beginning, and especially as it has gotten more authoritarian, “Why didn’t we just call it “Fatherland” to begin with?
14I’m surprised no one else has linked this anonymous goon squad army to possibilities after the election.
Whenever a person with potential authority has a private army that seems willing to jump to their commands, it is a concern. Historical and fictional stories full of such concerns.
Many people have expressed concerns with Trump refusing to acknowledge the election results if he didn’t win and refusing to transfer power peacefully. If he and his cronies have established this group of goon squads that he can then order to act on his decision to not step down–I worry.
Trump had to have heard Biden’s comments about Biden’s belief that the members of the military will escort Trump out if he tries that…so is this part of his strategy to protect his interests in occupying office despite the election?
Sigh?
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