ICE Is Here

 

ICE is here

In trying to understand what, if anything, the judge in Wisconsin did or didn't do to obstruct justice, I tripped over what for her may well end up being what caused her to either make a bad mistake or engage in legally protected conduct. Apparently there is a long standing issue with arrests in their courthouse as a safety policy issue. Judge Dugan, was holding court when she was told that "ICE is here". 

Judges can be quite prickly when it disrupts the flow of court. She went outside to talk to the arrest team and was told that they were there to effectuate an arrest and, when informed that they did not have a judicial warrant but an administrative warrant, directed them to the Chief Judge (who told the agent that they were working on a system to address the issue of arrests in their courthouse).

While that was happening, the judge directed the person who the agents were seeking to go out a side door. He was chased and arrested. His due process kicked in. The complaint was made against the judge, she was arrested, and due process kicked in. She may be convicted or not but she will be protected by the rule of law, the way it should be.

"ICE is here", though, that made a connection to two different episodes in my life that I link metaphorically with that statement.

The first one was in Cuba:

"NACRA," she said, her eyes now telegraphing utter fear. The word had no meaning to me. It was in response to my questioning what was happening. One minute it was just another swanky bar in Havana's Hemingway Marina. Yachts from all over the world, here to take part in two of Cuba's tourist draws, fishing and sex. There's a flurry of activities, an ambiance full of music, drinking, dancing, your typical bacchanal. I am having a nice time talking with this young lady. We had been sitting blissfully in Chan Chan, their very fancy club. And suddenly, a deathly pall came over the whole place. But I couldn't tell why. While the activities continued seemingly uninterrupted, I felt the room temperature drop and the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "NACRA," she repeated. "The secret police. They've entered the room. They've entered the room." In their jungle they are adept at spotting things dangerous. It's how you survive.

The other in Honduras, where I had gone to interview witnesses: 

I knew I had screwed up. His eyes flashed pure evil, pure hatred. He looked at the other officers in his group making some sort of calculation. They had been stationed maybe 50, 75 feet away, stopping other cars. He pondered killing me. And I thought back to all of the times that my PTSD wariness had supposedly kept me safe and wondered how the fuck I was sitting here on a road - in a convertible Mustang - in Honduras - talking shit to a cop. "You should be ashamed of yourself", I had told him. "You're a police officer". I chided him for asking me for a bribe and disgracing his country. A bribe that probably wouldn't have cost me more than $20 was now going to cost me my life. And for a few seconds I tasted my last moments. And for another excruciatingly long time, also probably just a few seconds, he calculated killing me and finally let me go, probably because I had not wounded his pride in front of his fellow officers.

Lost, unfortunately, in this the most recent kerfuffle is the fact that the Trump administration is at war with all of our institutions, most recently the judiciary. As is their practice, they seize on instances where the nuances get lost in immediate theatrics. It's still a stretch to compare our system with Cuba's or Honduras' but vigilance, especially given the jackboot parallels we see daily, is definitely called for. Don't let your middle class entitlement fool you, Ice is Here.

Main Page

That Was Not A Deportation

That Was Not A Deportation

 I kept seeing that Obrego-Garcia had been "deported" but it sounded from everything that I had read more like he was kidnapped. There is a big distinction between the government going through legal process and just Shanghaiing and disappearing someone. The file in PACER bears out that this was no deportation. (Obrego-Garcia's case is drawing most of the heat for the obvious: the "authority" the Trump administration is using doesn't apply to someone from El Salvador as opposed to Venezuela. But the Due Process issue is just as relevant to the Venezuelans accused of being tren de aragua gang members.)

The government's lawlessness can be traced to January 20. Up to that point, the legal process had been proceeding as intended: Obrego-Garcia, who had left El Salvador when he was 16 years old and had been living in this country ever since 2011 got picked up some eight years later at a Home Depot and accused of being a member of MS-13; the government moves for his removal; he appears for his first meeting, asks for bond, submits 70 pages of evidence in support;  the government objects to him being released, maintaining that he was a gang member on the basis of him having a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie as well as some unsubstantiated information tying him to another part of the country that he's never been; he files for asylum and the withholding of removal based on the protections afforded under the Convention Against Torture; the hearing, which spans over two days, results in the withholding of removal. The government does not appeal.

Obrego-Garcia eventually married, had a child, had been fully compliant with his ICE check in requirements, had never been arrested or charged with any crime in the United States (or in El Salvador). The question of his supposed gang membership off the table. 

Until March 12th, 2025. 

After completing his shift, Obrego-Garcia got picked up by agents and told that his "status had changed". No hearing. No request to bring him back to the immigration court, etc. He is whisked away by masked men, no mention of where he is going, eventually finding himself in a prison notorious for its cruelty. A solution worthy of Pontius Pilate but that is no "deportation"; that is a rendition.

Main Page

The Booze Run

The Booze Run 

"So, what did you get?" We were returning triumphant, the vanguard of a teenage booze run. We were showing our booty when Lenny chimed in. "You would not fucking believe what just happened to us. We had just gotten down to the Village when.....," he blurts out, "Did you know there are Black queers?" 

They look at me for confirmation, probably because the idea of Black men as anything but warriors in 1950s Downtown Jersey City was a foreign notion. "True," I said. "We were in front of Ducky's Pizza when this skinny little fop pops up and plants himself right in front of us. He's maybe 20, 22. We don't know what he wants. He's just standing in our way, not saying anything. He has his elbow on his hip and his hand, palm up, in a very nancy pose. He's dressed in one of those pastel and shiny ski jackets like the ones you see in Macy's commercials, nothing anyone around here wears, for sure. 'Give me some money' he says. Dipshit here gives him some of our money." 

Lenny protests. "It was just 50 cents." 

 "Anyway," I continue, "He holds out the money in his palm and just stares at us. We don't have a clue.  And then, he laughs. He says 'Be a man, fight for what's yours'. He gives Lenny back the money. He asks us what we're doing down there, we tell him that we're out looking for someone to buy us some booze. He volunteers to do it. We give him our money. Into Ducky's he goes."

"And then it gets even weirder", I continue. "So, now we're just killing time and you know how its dark over there on First Street? When our eyes get used to it, we see that there's a bunch of people at the corners of the buildings. They're couples. About eight of them, Black couples, and they're men, Black men - and they're making out." 

 "We want to leave but we're want our booze, so we wait. But they aren't just kissing and making out. They're all dressed alike, in some sort of uniform. They're not in trench coats, but capes, and they're not wearing stingy brims, they're wearing berets, black ones. And at one point, this guy, he must be their leader, he comes down the sidewalk. His beret is red and his cape is lined in red satin and it's like he is making an entrance. He stands on the sidewalk, he extends his arms straight out, he is using his cape like he's some giant bat; another guy walks up and into him. They embrace. They start kissing. The wings swallow him up." 

"I have never seen men kissing. I'm freaking out. Just about then our guy came back with our booze. So now we're centered on putting stuff into our pockets and down our pants and trying to get the hell out of there. Out of nowhere this big booming voice roars 'who the fuck are you?' 

It's Red Beret. He looks even scarier up close, huge and Black like a Mighty Joe Young, but even weirder in his cape and beret. And, we hadn't noticed it, but the four of us are now in the center of a ring and surrounded by these guys. We have no idea what the fuck is getting ready to jump off." 

"And then the twink comes to our rescue. 'Tangerine, Tangerine honey, it's okay'. He explains. 'They were looking to score some booze and I was helping them.' It seems like forever but eventually he calms down. He gives a signal. The circle parts and leaves just enough room for us to leave single file past this group of men in capes. We start running and don't stop till we get back here."

Main Page

On PTSD

 On PTSD 

In 1954 we lived in Hoboken, the same year they filmed On The Waterfront there. I was about nine years old. Mami had worked at the Tootsie Roll Factory for a brief time but mostly she stayed at home raising us. She and her sisters had learned to sew on the island; young peasant girls doing piecework as a survival skill. But, here, caste could not hide the fact that my mother was a world-class couturier. 

Mostly it was family stuff. Whenever the next victim decided that she was going to get married, she would come to my mother. They would go off in a gaggle - the girl, her mom, Mami - to New York, to scope out the finest stores and pick out the dream wedding dress. Price was no object. She would come home and duplicate it immaculately. She was a legend,

She had a flair for organization - and control. She was our family’s event planner and in complete charge of whatever event was happening. Everything, down to the little swans with the almonds and the little organza bags, the fake carnation boutonnieres, white ribbons with the couple’s names, the cake from Valencia Bakery;  all of the Puerto Rican accoutrements of weddings, that was her gig.

Not that she practiced alone. She had co-conspirators, Tias Celina and Blanca usually, sometimes Tia Viňa or some random cousin. Normally these projects would have been done at someone else’s house, but this day they had come to Hoboken and our cramped little apartment.

 Tia Celina brought along my cousin Ray. My mother's nickname for Ray was Dennis the Menace. She tried to keep us apart as he was a trouble magnet and I was often his foil. Whatever problem others might manage to miss found him. He was my hero. 

We were bored. The women, preoccupied with the project and their bochinches, either let us go out or we escaped, not sure which, but we went off to discover the neighborhood. Ray’s misdeeds were always centered on his overactive mind. He would have some project or some little thing to do, some button to push, line to cross, a query that had up to that point been unanswered. "Let's go spelunking,” he said. I didn't know what spelunking was but he told me we were just going out to discover what was out there, lack of caves be damned. 

We wandered around our decrepit  neighborhood, eventually coming up on two duplicate four-story federal townhouses. They were abandoned but in the process of repair. One of them looked like it was about to fall down. His eyes lit up and with that devilish grin said “Come on. Let’s find something to make a bow and arrow.” “I'm not going in there,” I said. I did not share his genius for trouble or his bravura. The initiative was always his. He was the gutsy one, the fearless one.  “Aw, you chicken shit.” 

He was in there for the longest time. I paced nervously, pissed that I hadn't gone in there with him, demoralized, alone, afraid, ashamed. He finally returned and wanted to go into the other building. It looked like it was just about finished with the rehab. I thought, “well, that one I'm not afraid of.” We went in. 

We were up on the third floor when the front door slammed. Looking down the banister we could see two workmen, two young guys coming up. We hid in a closet. We hid in there for five or ten minutes - it seemed like forever. “Fuck this,” Ray said, taking out a tiny one or two inch bladed Boy Scout knife. I wanted to cry. Off he went to confront them while I stayed in the closet. 

Alone, I didn’t last long. I gave myself up. They had Ray and were trying to figure out what to do with us. They terrorized us for about an hour or two; they put us up against a wall, slammed a shovel on the concrete over our heads, the rubble going down our backs and into our shirts. They cut our hair. Frightened out of our wits, we were going to jump out of this third or four-story window. They realized that and took us down to this creepy basement. They made us dig our graves. They wanted us to suck their dicks and all manner of crazy stuff.

I finally convinced them to let us go, that I wasn't going to say anything, that all I wanted to do was just to be left alone. Ray agreed. They took us  straight to our mothers and told them  that they had found us in their building. The minute the door closed, Ray ratted them out. The police came and arrested the guys. They had a court date. We didn't go.  It was a big inconvenience and, besides, “nothing had happened”. 

Hoboken had been a nightmare. Papo (and maybe Janet and I) got polio, Eggy asthma, and this. We moved to  downtown Jersey City. But it didn’t end there. We had been in our new school maybe two weeks and Eggy and I were in a nearby candy store. I had only casually noticed the guys in the back playing cards. I don't know if they saw me and started the story just to scare me or if it was just another cosmic incident. But their conversation sounded way too familiar. They were talking about how they'd scared these little Spic kids. I looked over and it was them. I was in a panic. Our family moved again. 

But only physically. Emotionally, I’m still there. I cry at the drop of a hat.  The fear that this incident implanted in me I have only recently recognized as a life template and something about which to be conscious. I am constantly forecasting disaster even in the mundane. Had I been on guard, I tell myself, had I been wary, been vigilant, that wouldn't have happened to me. I blame the victim.

It has taken me years to bring a bit of accommodation to my PTSD, to sort out my anxiety into tiers of reality - from “Don’t be ridiculous, that brick is not going to fall out of the mortar from that building and kill you” to “It’s probably not cancer that your head is throbbing”. Still, it is always a struggle to remember that it’s not real. Maybe. I am a work in progress but my insanity and I have reached a modicum of stasis. I credit being removed from that environment, of now having a pretty pleasant life, a wonderful family and friends that shower me with love and, thankfully, boatloads of understanding.

Main Page

The Driving Lesson

 The driving lesson. 

When I was about 15, my family moved back to Puerto Rico. I stayed with my sister Lydia so I could finish high school, and of course, proceeded to act out horribly and do all sorts of terrible things to her and my brother-in-law. I finally ended up leaving Jersey City early, using the excuse that Mami had gotten cancer, and that I was supposedly upset and that was a reason I was acting out. I quit high school not even a month before I was supposed to graduate.

We were living in Bayamon which is a relatively big city of mostly modest suburban cookie cutter homes. I started back with the horrible relationship I had with my stepfather, which had never been good. He and I were always at war. I was I'm sure, a giant pain in the ass and here we were in this concrete bunker of a house that was not much better than a prison cell and with not much to do. Armando was a brusque and kind of ignorant man who never missed, it seemed to me, an opportunity to show me his disdain. 

He had favorites, even amongst his own kids. Over the years we learned to manage that tendency, manipulating him to get some favorable dispensation (like getting to watch a certain TV program) by getting the favored child to ask for it. My brothers, the two next older children, were protective of me and we would conspire to get things through them, the three of us, mainly the boys. Janet was always a mama's girl and was always the one that snitched us out but we boys pretty much hung together. 

I was just coming into driving age but had no driving experience. My brother Papo, two years younger, was allowed to practice his driving. That was surprising as my stepfather was a fanatic about his cars; they were his babies, his earthly capital. This man, born in 1898, had been an orphan peasant child, a street beggar who had migrated to the states as a migrant worker and made his way as a solid postal employee. He had literally pulled himself up by the bootstraps. His prized possession always were his vehicles. He kept them immaculate. He was a kid about them. Now retired and back in the homeland, his everyday consisted of sitting on the little concrete slab of a porch and carport, shining his car and drinking beer. 

This day was of little difference. He and his cousin were drinking beer, shooting the shit, passing time. Papo jumped at the invitation to take the car for a spin and I accompanied him. Away from the house, he asked me if I wanted to drive. We switched seats. I stalled the car. Nose up. On a hill. I had no idea what to do. I panicked. My little brother tried to calm me down. "Just put it in reverse. Clutch in. Make sure the ignition is on. Pop the clutch when I tell you." The car started  a slow roll but soon we were flying down this hill with me trying to keep it in the road and my brother keeping watch for traffic behind us. 

"STOP!!!!" he yelled. 

I slammed on the breaks but it was too late. Impact. And there it was, the perfect Ferris Bueller moment; My stepdad, in what is symbolically the totem of his world achievements and now a metaphor for the state of our relationship. I had t-boned his car and he was pinned. He is cursing, fuming, his cousin laughing hysterically. We had been gone long enough for them to come looking for us and I had managed to hit the one person in the world in Puerto Rico who hated my guts and survived only because he was pinned inside. I moved in with my father soon after.

Main Page

Trump's Gunboat Diplomacy

 Trump's Gunboat Diplomacy

We got to yesterday in exactly the same way and for the same reason some folks are responding to this nightmare of "diplomacy".  Blind fealty. Wasn't the responsibility to make that deal happen in the hands of the host? Zelensky, also a head of state, was their guest. He went there willingly and apparently ready to deal. Who really bears the fault that this fell apart? This (and Greenland, Panama Canal, Canada) is just the return of (the oxymoronic) gunboat diplomacy, the big guy picking on the little one. This time for the whole world to see.

Did Trump and Vance think haranguing and gaslighting him - not coincidentally in front of a phalanx of cameras - was going to work? This guy has been knee-deep in blood. Trump staged a photo-op, a show of what he supposes is strength and it worked, but only for the already converted. A "great Job" indeed! It was a Machiavellian maneuver designed to give him cover for abandoning an ally and, as most of his apologists note, the elimination of an expense. It was a move driven by budget-balancing dirty dog(e) motives with no thought about the future costs. 

What they should be asking is what did they get, really get? At what expense? Remember, how he brought worldwide respect the last time out? Of course you do; if you are a true believer.  MAGA redux. Who is the one risking a world war? Who was the adult in the room? There is no better example of the criticisms of Trump by many of his former cabinet when they criticize Trump for being purely transactional (and dangerous, and unwell, etc). Asked about the consideration of future Russian incursions his response was "What if a bomb drops on your head?" This is a man who knows no history and has no depth to him. He is a man-baby that can't think down the road past his own needs. He needs a diaper change. Unfortunately, the stink will be with us for at least another year and a half. 

Main Page

Clowning for dollars

Clowning for dollars

As a salve for my sanity I tell myself that the country is probably in far better shape than I fear, that it's just the price I pay for my left/TDS. It's me, I've paid too much attention to the news and political commentary.

And Facebook, which I enjoy but which frequently puts me on a ledge. Apart from the election, another discomfort I have been suffering comes from a series of Facebook posts by an internet couple. The two are not necessarily unrelated.

The one thing about a lot of posts on Facebook, especially these days with AI, is that you really don't know if something is real or staged. There are people pranking or scaring others, getting pelted, do amazing athletic feats, magic and animal tricks, and all manner of wizardry (and, of course outright lies). 

Lindy and Jlo's schtick is this cat-and-mouse routine where they attempt to catch each other by surprise. It reminds me of the old Mad Magazine "Spy versus Spy" series.

In the ones I've seen the man wins; she is bushwacked as she walks into a room, bombarded by a balloon that contains some sort of white icky liquid. 

She tries to catch him at his own game but he is devilishly wiley; his traps have backups, false starts, dead ends, and fail-safes. 

His pranks are productions and when he catches her off guard he chortles and delivers a final denouement, a popgun-load of confetti. Covered with bright bits of paper and the white goo, she laughs hysterically.

This has me off balance. This isn't a one-time thing. There are many of these clips. It's amazing. They're doing this in a beautiful house. Who cleans that shit up? Just how much of this is real? 

Of course, the answer is that, like Trump, they've managed in a very McLuhanish way, to monetize what to the rest of us would be bad - or, at best ridiculous - behavior and, whether we like it or not, we're now part of the cast.

Main Page

Cats

Cats

"Who are you?" I had told our youngest something from my youth; something uncharacteristically vicious and aggressive, a violent mean streets act I had committed. 

She was aghast. 

It was only at that point - in the context of the present, and her response - that I was reminded of the positive changes my life has taken, the courses righted, the opportunities I've been given. The Why of the What I do.

When I came home from work today, I had that same feeling. The two recently adopted cats were snuggled up to each other on the front porch and looking cute. I took their picture.

They had been the source of much acrimony in our house. Their mama had been found having a litter under our house and the rest of the household adopted them over my Cat-5 storming. I threw my sucker in the dirt and it wasn't pretty. 

I've never been an animal lover, quite the opposite actually. That comes from my New Jersey days. The animals I was used to were vectors, things to be feared or hated. That included cats and dogs and anything else. They were mean because we were mean to them in ways that now shock me to the core.

It's been a long barometric process. I eventually learned to love dogs. But cats? Cats I've hated with a passion. Besides the new cats we also had two other cats. 

The first of the two showed up at my office door. I tried to chase it away but it wouldn't go. As I was leaving, I saw it hiding under a car. I tried to ignore it. "It's going to get hit by a car." "Not my problem." I made the block, stopped, and put it in my car.

I got home and the kids, who had heard my "positively no goddamn cats in this house" rule, were shocked. Somehow that was taken as permission to have cats. We soon had another.

So, today, as I came home from work, there they were. I had been shooing them away, being brusque with them, hoping that they would find another home or just go away. But these cats have known nothing but love for the last two or three months of their life. They've been sheltered and pampered and the only world they know is love. 

As it should be.

Main Page

Helene, Helene, Helene...

Helene, Helene, Helene...

"Talk to the people that are suffering and they will tell you a different story[. T]hat is the truth. Stop believing whoever u are getting your info from. TRUMP‼️🇺🇸❤️"

This culminates the nadir of responses in what passes for intelligent political discussion I was having this week - this about criticisms of the government's response to the devastating hurricane.

I started to ask him how he had been in touch with the folks that have been cut off from all contact with the outside world. 

What had they told him about their suffering? Were they really concerned about immigration at that point? Foreign aid? Ukraine? Those were issues that one thought about from the comfort of one's home, from a position of comfort and entitlement, not in the middle of a disaster. Did they reject FEMA as some sort of Democratic Party monster? (Where are the red tarps?)

Probably not. 

Even if they had the time to think about the things that they previously took for granted, that they might have criticized, the things that they now  missed, those things were now displaced with the very basic instincts of survival: water, shelter, food, loved ones. 

I don't blame this joker. I just find him ironic. These low information citizens have a tendency to be arrogant and brutish. And there's a reason for that. Look at who they follow. Look at who they listen to. Telling me to stop believing whoever I'm listening to is the perfect metaphor for what is wrong. I don't for a minute think that they will quit "believing" or that they will start reading and digesting things from more than one source. Or, for that matter, that they will stop following this idiot. 

But if there's one important takeaway from what has happened this week, something that is actually linked to immigration, it is that in the middle of a disaster, where a real statesman would have put on hold the political posturing and bickering and worked to help ease the suffering, he exacerbated it by making false claims for purely selfish reasons. We can't deal with the army of jokers but we can take out their general. Vote this asshole out.

Main Page

Owning Inflation

 Owning Inflation

I don't think you can discount criticisms about the current rate of inflation. You can rationalize that it's going back down, or, you can talk about it in historical context, longitudinally, etc. But the pain is real and, fair or not, the buck stops at the President's desk.

We need to own what is legitimately ours, explain the why and then highlight the other factors - like price gouging - and what we propose to do about it.

I was at odds with my fellow progressives about their trashing of Joe Manchin when he balked at injecting even more money into the economy. He feared it would fuel inflation. He made sense and I said so.
It's easy for some to forget, however, that Biden inherited an economy in freefall with the prospect of a depression unlike any other. His bold measures saved this country.

You can bet your bottom dollars that no Republican would have done that. The same people that are raising hell about inflation right now are the ones that were the beneficiaries of Biden's initiatives - like extended unemployment benefits, PPP, etc. In their darkest hour, our collective darkest hour, he saved us. Like it or not.

Main Page

Azalea City News (& Review)

Azalea City News (& Review)

(The Azalea City News was a newspaper I published, selling it after a few years to Jocko Potts who renamed it Azalea City News and Review.)

It was a Tuesday. We normally went to press on Wednesdays but Hurricane Frederic was bearing down on Mobile so everyone was in the battening down mode, stocking provisions and making sure things would be ready for what was promising to be a real dilly of a storm. 

At the last moment we were being warned that we were facing a monumental storm. 

I had gone  to the office to make sure everything was in order. I ran into Jocko. He was packing his car. When I asked him what he was doing. He said he and Jane were getting ready to go to Mississippi to ride out the storm. I reminded him that he had a newspaper now and had an opportunity to cover what could possibly be the biggest news event getting ready to unfold right here in front of us. "Are you crazy? You can't go anywhere." 

I had started the Azalea City News some years before Jocko purchased it from me. He had been an account exec at a local advertising agency, had come into some money and wanted to get into the newspaper publishing business. I was worn out and recognized that I had reached pretty much the apex of what I could do. 

I wanted the paper to get to its next level but didn't have the wheels to make it happen. I thought his money, business acumen and contacts were a good fit. 

I had agreed to stay around for at least a year in order to give the paper some editorial guidance and even if he didn't have a lot of newspaper experience, he was gifted with a lot of grace and common sense and immediately acknowledged that I was right. 

We agreed to ride out the storm and figure out what we were doing afterwards. 

I went home and spent quite possibly the most horrifying night of my life there on Houston Street.

We were in a small frame house and it was being shaken to its roots. The walls pulsed, bellowed and expanded to the point that I thought the roof was just going to blow away. 

The windows were pitch black, covered with debris that was so mulched and ground up that it was oozing through the glazing.

Buffeted by those winds  and scared out of our minds we eventually fell asleep from exhaustion.

We woke up the next morning to a sight the scope of which I'll never forget; The street was full of debris -  mostly our beautiful Oaks - piled 40 or 50 feet high.  It looked like a deep Amazon forest rather than a residential street.

The city had no water or power. The office was a disaster. But our equipment was essentially intact. 

We set about to put together an issue. Knowing that it was a self-contained city, I called my friend Buddy Clewis, the manager of the Mobile Auditorium. Would he, I asked, permit us to use one of the rooms in the auditorium to set up our newspaper? 

He agreed. 

We now had power and water and a place to publish. While the rest of the city was undergoing monumental hardships, we had ice machines and air-conditioning. We spent the next couple of days navigating around a city suffering primal conditions. 

We moved equipment, rewired things when they needed to be, scrounged supplies, set up a makeshift darkroom, a composition room and delegated assignments.

It was our finest hour; we had survived the storm, overcome its effects, had banded together, improvised around the obstacles, put out a "real" newspaper (I suggested to Jocko that we change the format from tabloid to broadsheet to signal that we were there to compete with the MPR mano a mano.)  and actually and beat the Press Register to publication. 

And for me it was an even sweeter revenge as I had been fired from the paper for publishing the Azalea City News. I had suggested this "soft news" format as a supplement for the paper but it was turned down by the powers that be. As they were not interested, I published it on my own, using many of the press register's staffers. They called me in and gave me the ultimatum of ceasing publication as I was now "in competition" with them. They fired me when I published the next issue.    

That's the day I credit as the real start of the Azalea City News & Review because even though it kept much of the same content, it moved into the arena of being a serious community newspaper.

Main Page

The Insidious Right

The Insidious Right

It's a mistake to center on the tax advantages that the uber rich are pushing as their driving force. Sure, there are some monetary advantages, but they already have all the money in the world. 

It's no wonder that the Right centers on people like George Soros, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffett. Imagine the damage that someone with unlimited finances can wreak if they have a radical agenda, something they ascribe to their motives. 

The flip side of that coin? The Heritage Foundation's founders, Elon Musk and, most importantly, Peter Thiel. They aren't just passive supporters of things conservative, but ideologues committed to destroying things the rest of us consider as positives, things that have nothing to do with economics. 

They are Armani-clad Proud Boys. Their agenda is as radical as anything we've ever encountered; fashion a new world view.

They aren't really Trumpers, he's just a vehicle. And now, they've managed to insert one of their own, JD Vance, a Thiel protege, into the mix. 

Main Page

About Character

About Character

My first born son had a decent enough life. His mom and I struggled but we took care of his basic needs. By the time of my second child, I was a lawyer, his mom was a lawyer, so he enjoyed the privileges of a much better lifestyle. He went to a very expensive private school, had the nicest clothes; we lived in a beautiful house, etc. We turned out a well-spoken, well mannered, courteous and an all around pleasure. 

I am probably of the second generation of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Some of my  brothers and sisters who came from the island later in life are third generation and their kids are 4th generation. We all at some point landed in rough and tumble urban centers up North. Anyway, I think what happened was that my son and I spent a Fourth of July weekend with my relatives in Sarasota. Me with my siblings and he with his cousins.

Whatever. I got a call after coming back from our holiday that our son had been suspended from school. It seems he had smacked another student. My wife and I were both in shock. She was also concerned as she sat on the board for this ritzy school. She protocolled the mother of the student, intending to apologize for our son and to fix whatever the hell was next. She rejected our proposed apology. Instead, she apologized. Her son had confessed to her that he had been picking on my son all year and that apparently my son had had enough of it. I don't know where that kid is these days but he has a lot of character. It's easy to blame others for the things you've done or that you've encouraged.

Main Page

On Contradiction

This was written before the last election but bears repeating

On Contradiction 

(With All Due Apologies To Chairman Mao) 

 I was never comfortable when people attacked everything that Trump did, not just because it stretches the bounds of political decorum and rational discourse but, face it, some things he got right (even if you want to rationalize it as "the blind hog finding an acorn now and then" or "the stopped clock being right twice a day"). 

 More to the point, though, I had to shake my head when folks get upset about picayune things or went out of their way to stretch to manufacture drama for some imaginary infraction when there was such a long laundry list of things appropriately to be pissed off about. 

Dogmatic constancy is no virtue. Both sides of the political spectrum engage in contradictory behavior. Even Chairman Mao confessed that the best he could do sometimes was eliminate as many of the contradictions as he could and do the best he could with the rest. But, come on: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, you made Obama a foreign-born Muslim and a horrible despot but you weren't willing to actually apply the same code of conduct to this truly graceless boor; he, who by the way, was the main proponent of that gambit. 

In fact, you ignored all evidence to the contrary and made Obama the hapless victim of supposedly random and unwarranted attacks. Snowflakes my ass. You characterized this urbane, gentle, gracious and intellectual man as an ogre and vicious dictator but ignored or downplayed the sort of behavior you wouldn't tolerate from a 14 year old. 

Wait. No!??! You actually admire him still. Your conservativism is retrograde and reactionary and extends beyond the things you initially hated but now love; like the Beatles, Elvis, rock and roll, We watched you fight every Progressive innovation Civil Rights, Obamacare, even minor things like handicapped parking and accessibility from people with special needs. you fought all of those because supposedly they were going to hinder Economic Development. Now you try to own it. 

Hell, you even try to own history: Yes, the Klan was born in the Democratic Party and Yes Hugo black and Harry Byrd were Klansman at one point in their lives;  deny science; attack the news; the government; the fact checkers. Obama spent two years fiddle-fucking around trying to get the other side to play nice on Obamacare. Instead, all he got was obstruction and an openly declared war. (I blame him for not ramming that through when we had the opportunity. it's one of the things I've always admired about the Republicans.) 

Yet you dare talk about divisiveness? This man that you elected specifically because he was going to "break the mold" and has managed to violate every rule of political and social decorum? 

 Hillary was in your mind a murderer, a fraud, crook, and monster bitch, but, again, you refuse to apply the same standards - and we're not talking about political things, like political posturing and agenda driven spin, reasonable people can disagree - to truly monstrous behavior. 

 Your concern for Hillary and Bill's misogyny is interesting, given your support for a man who takes great pride in it. 

 You misidentify George Soros as a Nazi, which would be a terrible thing if it were true and not more drivel but this mutt is alt-right flea-bitten and somehow that raises not even one eyebrow. 

Acorn, a community-based organization, was this supposed national threat, but the idea of someone actually tampering with election results? Nothing about which we should be concerned? 

Saul Alinsky, a pretty esoteric political figure prior to the Obama candidacy, is about as centrist a leftist as there comes. His organizing principles are fairly consistently used by both sides. However, he was characterized as somehow a communist. (Or a fascist, you really don't know the difference do you?) 

You think the president's love affair with Putin is no big deal. We sat through countless investigations of things Clinton but collusion by our sworn enemy, no big deal? You don't even see any analogous behavior in Trump's attacks on our institutions like the intelligence agencies and the media. Are you "heightening the contradictions"? Are you a fellow Traveler? Hell, you fabricated an entire conspiracy around the horrible events in Benghazi and now you think the Deep State (you know the internecine liberal organizations like the CIA and the FBI, DNC & RNC) have taken over and are trying to corrupt this wonderful presidency that we finally have. 

Emails, another manufactured crisis. it went from that to an investigation and then all sorts of umbrage when she wasn't prosecuted. Remember? but wait, the new Administration has been caught in numerous instances of the same sort of conduct. Now it seems that he's discussing sensitive confidential matters on his unprotected iPhone. Who cares, right? 

And then there's the born-again Christians. God! there is a spot reserved in the deepest parts of hell for your hypocrisy. You have fly-specked, counter-spun, and mischaracterized just about everything Obama and Clinton has ever said or done, engaging in some of the more bizarre theories and, yet, this bozo - who does not hide what he's doing - gets a pass. The best explanation I can put on that is that you are engaging in a rearguard action as a defense mechanism for not having to explain yourself. You objected on every ostensible moral, legal, libertarian, and constitutional ground to just about everything proposed by the Obama Administration but now openly talk about shooting people at the border, taking away protester rights, infringing on personal liberties, and things that openly flirt with authoritarianism. 

You reject science and pervert history. Oh yes, indeed, you are surely the party of Lincoln. If only you knew what that meant. Your political actions speak volumes otherwise. When now faced with the evidence of gerrymandering, voter repression, the internment of children, and a whole laundry list of things that go against common, if not political, decency, all we get out of you is a big power politik spin (How can anyone oppose requiring an ID to vote? The separation of children from their families was previously happening.) or, worse yet, an indifferent yawn. 

You don't discriminate because you're for everyone. All lives matter, right? Bullshit. Your concern for veterans, minorities, native Americans, children, gays or women is, more often than not, opportunistic and certainly after-the-fact. it's just spin. You don't really give a shit about Jennifer Flowers - as a woman - any more than you want to save Blacks from that horrible plantation we be keeping them down on. 

You're incensed at the DNC's treatment of Bernie; are ya now? You rely for your alternative facts on folks that have openly declared that they have an axe to grind, folks who, even at the top of their barking chain, shouldn't even be trusted to bag your groceries. Voter id is not voter suppression. Quit conflating the two. you jump to conclusions that are not only far-fetched, they're antithetical. Someone sends a bomb; the Democrats, they must have sent the bombs to themselves. It's revealed that it's some Maniac Trump supporter, he must have been paid by the Democrats. An immigrant Caravan? who is putting that together? Where are they staying? Who is feeding them? they're marching here so that they can collectively steal the election. what planet do you live on? 

Most of us already live in the ideological enclaves our communities have become, but you've managed to cloister yourself even more, cocooned in little support groups, exacerbating ignorance by layering your comfort food of misinformation and hysteria on it. Yes, infect the matrix! That's why you see conspiracies everywhere. They're like the sharks in the ice cubes to you. Yet, you don't see the turd in the punchbowl.

Main Page

We Are In Deep State

We Are In Deep State

Trump's "Deep State" complaints are no mere fantasy. There really are people who aspire to be Puppet Masters. They pull the strings of political power and economic resources to get their way.

When you talk about the Deep State what you're really talking about are the people that are manifesting political power, often in a less than transparent manner, but not necessarily so. 

There's a Deep Blue State and there's a Deep Red state and, of course, they are part of the Political Ship of State. They work in, with, under, and around it. In turn, both of these elements are controlled and manipulated by the Money Class.

How Trump has managed to paint himself as somehow outside of that picture is a wonder.

Main Page