Trump's compromise? Do it my way!

I’m sure that in the mind of President Donald J. Trump, he is the ultimate compromiser.

TRUMP: His idea of compromise is still wrong

He did, after all, sign off this week on an agreement related to people trying to enter the United States that goes contrary to the nonsense-talk he has been spewing in recent weeks.

THE RHETORIC THAT justified children being removed (by force, if necessary) from their parents, who were then being detained as federal officials pondered their circumstances to figure out if there was any reason for allowing them to remain in this country – or should they just be deported?

Since in the minds of those people who actually believe in the nonsense of the Age of Trump, all foreigners are a problem who ought to be removed, it creates chaos.

Particularly since we have to figure out what to do with all those children who now, theoretically, are in U.S. custody. We are now responsible for their well-being.

The fact that many of those children were being detained in camps that were one step up from prison conditions had many people appalled. Heck, even Trump’s wife and elder daughter, allegedly, have been giving him grief about these circumstances.

BUT TRUMP ISN’T about to do anything that manages to offend the sensibilities of the nitwits who voted for him and remain devoted to his causes. So instead of realizing the problem is that children are being detained in miserable conditions, Trump’s solution is to keep the families together.

Because he’s not about to ease up on his larger goal – which is to keep as many of those parents from being able to establish a life for themselves in this country.

It’s almost like those places that view pregnant women who are incarcerated as somehow being acceptable to care for their children. In prison!

It’s twisted and kind of sick when you think about it. But the Trumpster is just too determined to have the long-arm-of-the-law cracking down on those “foreigners” whom he is determined to think are being “criminal” just by the nature of where they were born.

  -30-

What, really?!?

There are times I learn of happenings in the news that just astound me, not so much because I have some naïve faith in the proper behavior of people but because I’m amazed that anyone could possibly believe that such tacky behavior is in any way acceptable.

So that was pretty much my gut reaction to learning of the federal lawsuit filed Tuesday against the Chicago Public Schools on account of actions at one Northwest Side school where administrators seemed to have a hang-up about their teachers who became pregnant.

IT SEEMS THAT teachers at the Scammon Elementary School who became impregnated found themselves facing harassment in terms of lower performance evaluation ratings and demotions in terms of class assignments.

It seemed as though school officials, according to the lawsuit now pending in U.S. District Court, wanted to discourage those teachers enough that they would quit. In some cases, those teachers didn’t seem to take the hint, and wound up being fired from their jobs – even some who had been around long enough to have acquired tenure.

The lawsuit contends that since 2009, eight teachers lost their jobs under such circumstances. Two of them filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which found enough evidence to support claims that the Civil Rights Act was violated.

Which resulted in the lawsuit being filed this week – one that seeks financial compensation for the teachers who lost their jobs and court-ordered measures meant to prevent pregnant women from being harassed on the job in the future.

EVEN AS I write this commentary, I shake my head in disgust and amazement that anyone capable of getting a job within educational administration could think that any such behavior could in any be acceptable.

Let alone legal!

Reading the accounts of the lawsuit filed in the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, along with the lawsuit itself made me feel like I was reading some decades-old account of actions that once might have been thought appropriate – but which we now realize are so pathetic that we wonder how we ever could have been that narrow-minded.

Then again, I’m sure there are behaviors we engage in that people 100 or so years from now will wonder, “How could they have ever been so clueless?”

SO CALL ME naïve. I’d like to think this is a lawsuit that will quickly be seen by Chicago Public Schools officials as an embarrassment, and one that they will want to work to resolve as quickly as possible.

And not just by throwing some money at the former teachers to get them to “Shut Up!” without having to admit any wrong-doing.

Particularly since it appears this is a matter that the Chicago Teachers Union had been aware of and had been trying unsuccessfully to get schools officials to address without having to get the courts involved.

Instead, it has wound up in the federal court system, where it will wind up being another blotch on our city’s reputation.

ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT there will be a few people who will want to dismiss these allegations in their minds as somehow being interference by the government in a local school’s administration. Instead of it being what it is – the courts attempting to protect people when the law is not being followed.

Acting assistant attorney General Vanita Gupta of the Civil Rights Division had to make a statement publicly about this lawsuit, saying, “No woman should have to make a choice between her job and having a family. Federal law requires employers to maintain a workplace free of discrimination on the basis of sex.”

Which is sad that it even has to be said publicly.

  -30-

"Teenaged" law will focus on girls who weren't born yet when it was enacted

I often think back to the two-year period (1995-96) when Republicans controlled everything about Illinois government.

Which is why I was amused to learn that the Supreme Court of Illinois issued an opinion Thursday that upheld one of that ideologically-inclined Legislature’s most partisan act.

IT ONLY TOOK 18 years -- which makes it a "teenaged" new law. That may sound extreme. But if one considers how long issues such as a new Chicago-area airport near Peotone and new casinos for Chicago have lingered, perhaps this isn’t all that extreme.

The issue under review on this particular bill was abortion. Specifically, requiring young girls (under 18, to be specific) to inform their parents if they have any desire to terminate a pregnancy.

There were provisions allowing for girls who could convince a judge that their home situations were too dangerous and that a legitimate reason for excluding the parents (such as a case where a father impregnates his teenage daughter) to get around the parental notification.

But it also set the standards for such waivers so high that it was apparent the purpose of the bill was to make it all the more difficult for a young woman to even consider abortion as an option – which is the admitted strategy of the anti-abortion activists.

IF IT HAS to be illegal, burden it with so much bureaucratic minutia and partisan regulation that most women wind up being able to obtain one in a timely enough manner to comply with the laws that recognize abortion as a legitimate medical procedure.

The activists who support women having access to abortion as an option fought this case all the way through the courts, where it became tangled up in the time-consuming legalese that causes delays for many issues.

In fact, the knowledge that there’d be a legal battle is why – even after passing the bill in the spring of 1995 – the state never made any effort to enforce the new law.

But that delay is now over. The Thomas More Society, which likes to get involved in legal cases related to abortion, says it expects enforcement to take place “within a matter of days.”

WHILE BOTH PLANNED Parenthood and Personal PAC (which supports elected officials who support abortion rights) were upset the fight ended negatively for them, with the latter calling Thursday “a dark day” for young women.

It may be so, since it was clear when the Republican-run Legislature of nearly two decades ago passed this particular measure, they were interested in making an ideological statement.

They weren’t interested in addressing the realities that not everyone comes from the picture-perfect family situation – always trying to claim this was a matter of parents being allowed to be involved in their children’s lives.

I personally lost track of the number of times I heard the talking point about a teenage girl needing parental permission to have an aspirin in school, but did not require it to end a pregnancy.

THE WORLD ISN’T as clear-cut a place to live in as some of the conservative ideologues would like to believe – largely because not everyone fits into the narrow vision of what people ought to be like.

As for the outcome, this particular issue is resolved – although I wonder if the Democratic-dominated Legislature we have now would try to take on a measure that repeals the new law.

Although considering this is a Democratic-dominated Legislature that got tangled up in bureaucratic nonsense when it came to gay marriage this spring, I would expect the same non-outcome on an abortion-related issue.

Although the larger point may well be to remember this issue as an example for those people who complain about Democrats running everything in Illinois government.

DEMOCRATS WHO CAN’T even “play nice” with each other can’t agree on much, while the Republican ideologues like to ram through these social issues to impose their will on us all

Your pick as to which is worse!

  -30-

Campaign ’12 truly is the race to avoid saying something stupid (and some fail)

It was an old Saturday Night Live gag – a parody of a presidential debate was introduced by famed announcer Don Pardo as “the race to avoid saying something stupid.”

AKIN: Still not sure what he meant

There is an element of truth to that in any campaign event. And by that standard, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., has failed – although I’m sure there are some people who will want to believe him and will go out of their way to cast ballots for him come Nov. 6.

AKIN, OF COURSE, is the guy who turned himself from no-name congressman to national nitwit this past weekend when, while discussing the whole issue of rape and abortion and reproductive rights, gave us the phrase “legitimate rape.”

He also gave us the pseudo-science lesson that tells us women who are forced into sexual intercourse against their will have something occur within their bodies that causes them to shut down in a way that they cannot become pregnant.

Which, I guess, means that all those women who have become pregnant following a rape weren’t really raped. He probably thinks they are just sluts who brought “it” on themselves and got what they deserved.

Which is incredibly ignorant not only to say, but to even think.

THEN AGAIN, THE people to whom Akin was trying to appeal to are ones who aren’t all that concerned with the women involved in these instances. They try to cadge their language with talk of “defending life” and protecting the life of the unborn.

But they really don’t want the “real” life (that of the mother, rather than the unborn) to have a choice about themselves.

That is what Akin was really getting at, and I think I’d have a little more respect for him if he would have just come out and said it that bluntly.

Then again, I also think I’d have more respect for him if he’d have come up with some pseudo-religious explanation along the lines of saying that Jesus comes down and blesses the women who were raped to protect them.

WHICH WOULD STILL imply that some women are sluts who brought it on themselves.

He has since (with the very same news cycle on Sunday) issued a pseudo-apology, claiming his remarks were “ill-conceived.” Although he hasn’t really clarified what he really believes, which gives the real majority of our society the impression that the only thing Akin is “sorry” about is that he’s being given grief and called on his nonsense-talk.

But it has me wondering how delusional Akin was in school on the day in biology class when he was ever taught something that he interpreted to mean that a woman’s body could shut down in ways to prevent a pregnancy from occurring.

If that were true, don’t you think many women would be taking advantage of that, rather than relying on unreliable birth control pills or other devices?

AKIN IS GETTING his national derision. Political pundits are now wondering if the Democratic Party candidate (a woman) actually has a chance to defeat him come Election Day.

President Barack Obama himself is adding on to the piling on against Akin, using it as a serious example of the harm that can come from putting these ideologues in positions of authority where they can influence public health policy.

OBAMA: Joining in the criticism



Even though I’m sure the ideologues who backed Akin before will claim that Obama is being a “bully” for defending the women they would prefer to deride. Which is nonsense on so many levels. It’s laughable!

Even Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney is going out of his way to put as much distance between himself and Akin. “Guilt by association” through the same political party. Romney has enough problems. He doesn’t need Akin adding to them.

ALTHOUGH ROMNEY HAS his own concern. He can’t put too much distance between himself and Akin, because like I wrote earlier, there are those people in our society who are going to want to believe the Congressman.

And if Romney tries to condemn Akin too much, they may turn on Romney to the degree that he loses the Nov. 6 elections by an even larger margin.

Which makes me wonder -- when the Romney camp accuses Obama of running a campaign of "division and anger and hate," what are they thinking. Nothing that has come from Obama's mouth has been as bitter as what some of these ideologues seem to want to believe about science and biology!

  -30-