Dead Poets Society

Poetry in Action:  It turns out Ken Cuccinelli, the former Attorney General of Virginia, who was selected by Trump to serve as the Acting Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services because of their shared disdain for immigrants of color is also an aspiring poet.  Yesterday, during an interview with NPR when he was asked again about the classic Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty he offered up his own rewrite to one of the poem’s more famous lines suggesting it should say “Give me your tired, your poor ‘who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge’,” pointing out that the plaque with the poem was “put on the Statue of Liberty at almost the first time the first public charge law was passed."  Later in the day, during an interview with CNN he denied that he was “writing poetry” but doubled down on his justification of the administration’s new policy to root out poorer immigrants by saying that Lazarus’ poem was only referencing people coming from Europe, i.e. white people. In case you’re wondering Cuccinelli is of Italian descent and his great grandparents Dominic Cucciniello and Fortuna Preziosi were quite poor when they sailed to the US and though by today’s standards Italians are white, back in the day they were considered undesirable people of color.  Joyce Vance, the former US Attorney from the Northern District of Alabama tweeted out that her grandparents were survivors of the Eastern European pogroms and that her family now includes, lawyers, quite a few dentists, teachers and businessmen.  She asked others to tweet back their families’ stories.  The responses were awesome, suffice it to say that if Vance’s twitter feed is any indication, depriving  poor people from attaining citizenship would eliminate a huge pool of future scientists, doctors, inventors, and job creators.  By the way  population statisticians project that the country will become “minority white” by 2045, Trump and his cronies are hoping their policy changes will stop that from happening because the idea that the country won’t look like them tortures what remains of their souls.

Missiles and Laptops:  We now know more about what happened in Russia over the weekend, and it’s not pretty.  Apparently Putin’s nuclear weaponry wizards have been working on a new kind of missile, one that would be powered by its own nuclear reactor.  One of those new reactors went kaboom, killing seven people, irradiating many more, including the medical teams called in to help the injured, and raising the radioactivity levels at nearby villages.  At first the Russians tried to calm the fears of nearby residents by saying that nothing bigly happened, then they called for the evacuation of a nearby town.  Now it appears that they’ve called off the evacuation possibly part of an effort to minimize the bad press they’re getting for what appears to be the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl.  Trump’s response was of course a tweet with a brag “The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia, We have similar, though more advanced, technology. The Russian 'Skyfall' explosion has people worried about the air around the facility, and far beyond. Not good!"  The tweeter in chief also responded to the escalating unrest and mass demonstrations in Hong Kong first by saying “The Hong Kong thing is a very tough situation. Very tough. We’ll see what happens. But I’m sure it’ll work out.” He added: “I hope it works out for everybody, including China. I hope it works out peacefully. I hope nobody gets hurt. I hope nobody gets killed.” He later tweeted that intelligence reports indicated that China’s government “is moving troops to the Border with Hong Kong.”  In contrast, former VP Joe Biden tweeted “The brave protestors in Hong Kong are demanding the rights and freedoms promised to them.  The US should be leading the free world to rally support behind them and, with one voice, defend our shared democratic ideals and the desire for liberty that beats in every heart.  As the day wore on a number of other prominent politicians including Speaker Pelosi, Republican Minority leader Kevin McCarthy and many of the other Democratic candidates for president weighed in with tweets more similar to Biden’s than to Trump’s whose comments were criticized, by those willing to criticize, as more of that “both sides” stuff.  As to Trump he did postpone some of his planned tariffs on Chinese goods, an admission that tariffs are essentially taxes on US consumers and he doesn’t want “his” consumers paying more for the types of things they are likely to buy for Christmas.  By pushing tariffs off for a while he’s ensuring that the prices for items  like video games, laptops, toys and cell phones stay put until after the holiday season.

2020:  As of now Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar and Andrew Yang have qualified for the September presidential debates with Julian Castro, Tom Steyer, and Tulsi Gabbard getting closer to meeting the polling and money raising criteria.  Many Democrats, including most notably Montana Governor Steve Bullock, are criticizing the DNC’s debate qualification criteria, pointing out that allowing billionaire candidates to game the system by spending huge amounts of money buying the necessary small ticket donations required is preposterous.  Bullock has a point but as of now there is no indication that the DNC plans to make any changes.  As to those candidates, reports are that former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper is seriously considering dropping out of the presidential race to run for the Senate against vulnerable Colorado Republican Cory Gardner.  Additionally, though he’s still in the presidential race and has qualified for the September debate, the Houston Chronicle ran an editorial calling for Beto O’Rourke to run for John Cornyn’s Texas Senate seat saying that since he has no chance at winning the Democratic nomination the “Democratic star should end his presidential campaign and focus on running for Senate...again. The reason? Texas needs you."  They have a point, the Democrats need to loosen Mitch McConnell’s reins and the only way to do that is by winning back the Senate.  In other Democratic news, Georgia’s Stacey Abrams has finally ruled out a presidential run, instead she’s focusing her efforts on countering voter suppression, and no one knows more about voter suppression than Abrams.

Epstein Saga:  Attorney General Barr has replaced the warden overseeing the Manhattan Detention facility and has had the two guards who were sleeping while on duty instead of keeping their eyes on Jeffrey Epstein put on temporary suspension.  Nevertheless Barr who should recuse himself from the investigation has not.