EXTRA: Oh, be quiet; both of you!

Comedian/actor Roseanne Barr says her use of Ambien means she she shouldn’t be blamed for any thoughts she expressed while using Twitter – not even any nincompoop ideas about one-time Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett and a certain movie.

BARR: Claims she was overly-medicated

While President Donald J. Trump continues to insist during a rally in Nashville, Tenn., that Mexico WILL PAY the cost of erecting that physical barricade he wants built along the U.S./Mexico border – even though it wouldn’t accomplish a thing toward reducing the flow of people into the United States of the kind that the nativist element considers to be undesirable.

TRUMP: What's his excuse?

IT MAKES ME wonder which one qualifies as the Nitwit of the Week for this final week of May, 2018.

One could argue it is the president because he continues to harp on this issue and make his same rant – even though it doesn’t become any more accurate no matter how often or how loudly he shouts it out!

But I’m willing to give the “honor” to Roseanne, because she’s the woman who on Tuesday told us she was through with Twitter because of the controversy that has arisen and that may have permanently ruined her reputation (which wasn’t really all that stellar to begin with).

Yet I’ve lost count of the number of Tweets she has spewed since supposedly silencing herself – including the comment about blaming Ambien for her ignorance. It seems some people just don’t know how to just shut up, which is what the real majority of our society would prefer.

  -30-

Serves Trump-types right if gamble on sports bets cost them immigration

I’ve finally found a reason to think the notion of sports betting isn’t a completely ridiculous idea.

If sports betting winds up offering legal protections ...

For it seems some people, possibly even President Donald Trump himself, now think that the Supreme Court ruling this week giving states the right to decide for themselves of sports betting ought to be legal will actually undermine the legal argument federal officials in this Age of Trump have been making against individual states or communities declaring themselves to be “sanctuaries” that will not assist federal immigration officials in their work.

NONE OTHER THAN the deadly-dull and straight-forward Associated Press reported on this concept, finding that many legal advocates are saying there’s a direct link between the two issues and that Trump can’t very well claim to be able to force local law enforcement to cooperate with immigration if the feds can’t force states to outlaw gambling in the form of sports bets.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the court opinion that now gives states the right to decide how to regulate gambling within their boundaries, wrote, “it unequivocally dictates what a state legislature may and may not do. It’s as if federal officers were installed in state legislative chambers and were armed with the authority to stop legislators from voting on any offending proposals.”

Now I’m not about to claim this is a sure-fire victory for people with an interest in our national immigration policies who’d like to see something other than the bureaucratic mess that currently exists.

But it does sound like somewhere in the legal mindset is the concept that there are limits to law enforcement-types and that we ought not to be thinking of the various jurisdictions as one massive group that is required to think alike.

... to these activists, ...

FOR THE BASIC concept of the “sanctuary city” or the “welcoming city” or many other concepts meant to reassure all people that they’re not going to be harassed by police regardless of their immigration status is this.

It is NOT (even though many conservative ideologues try to falsely claim otherwise) that people within such communities are protected from immigration officials and can hide there.

It merely means that Immigration and Customs Enforcement ought to be required to do their own work. Send their own agents into those communities to do whatever investigation they wish and handle whatever prosecution they deem necessary.

The idea of someone being caught by a local cop in a traffic stop and having to worry that this bit of official attention will draw the attention of ICE is what is improper – if not downright absurd.

SO JUST AS the court now says states have a right to determine whether they want to permit gambling to take place out in the open within their boundaries, some are going to argue that it is now up to local officials to determine how much cooperation they ought to give with relation to immigration – which, if you think about it, is an issue so far beyond most of their comprehensions.

It only makes sense to leave immigration law enforcement to the experts and not think the local beat cop is there to “find foreigners” and have them deported from this country. Because I know full well that the local officials often complain whenever they think some higher-ranking authority is violating their concept of proper jurisdiction and overstep their bounds on some local issue. Only the ideologues can't see this, and it amounts to nothing more than selective vision when it comes to the law and its enforcement.

... will the president be the ultimate loser?

Some people may want to think this line of logic between the two issues is a stretch. There can’t possibly be a connection between placing a football bet and having a non-citizen removed from the United States.

Although considering that the appeals courts have thus far upheld the rulings of federal judges that have held back the Trump administration from withholding federal funds to communities that express sympathy for the immigrant lot in life, I’d have to wonder if placing a bet on this legal connection would be a safer one than betting on a Chicago Bears game – since you just know the moment you put money on it, the Bears will find a way to blow it for you.

  -30-

What is citizenship, really?

I have always thought we’re all residents of Planet Earth, and that the fact of individual citizenship is more an accident of birth than anything else.

Obama assimilation dream is Trump's erasure fantasy

In my own case, I am a U.S. citizen because I had two grandfathers both of whom had the tremendous ambition to want more out of life rather than just sit around on their nalgas and take what others would have handed to them.

WHICH IS WHY they both wound up living the bulk of their lives in the South Chicago neighborhood working in the steel mills that used to be nearby, why my parents were born and raised there and I was born there.

Anything about myself that makes me a more desirable human being than others in our society has little to nothing to do with the location of my birth – although don’t get me wrong, I consider myself fortunate to have been born and raised on the shores of Lake Michigan in and near the greatest city on the aforementioned Planet Earth.

Which is why I find much of the political debate over our nation’s immigration policies to be downright pathetic; it seems far too many of the nativist nitwits amongst us think their birthplace is what makes them superior.

When most of them have no right to think of themselves as superior to a gnat, let alone any other individual. If we could deport people based on what they contribute to our society, many of these folks would be the first to go – except I doubt any other country would be willing to take them off our hands.

SO I’M HEARING the rhetoric being spewed by the president in this Age of Trump about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that some people were convinced would be wiped out of existence effective Friday.

Even Speaker Ryan thinks Trump ...

For those of you who don’t pay attention to details, DACA was the initiative created by now-former President Barack Obama to offer legal protections to those people born in other countries but who were brought here by their parents without the proper papers being lined up.

Obama’s initiative was intended to give these individuals who had been raised U.S. and were fully assimilated to be able to advance in life without the bureaucratic mess of immigration and the lack of a valid visa.

But to Trump, it is merely yet another policy that must be wiped away so as to erase any trace that this nation was ever deluded enough to elect one of “those people” as president.

... goes too far with DACA talk

PLUS, THREATENING TO erase the policy helps to keep those individuals off-balance and forevermore uncertain about their status in this country, which only serves to benefit those individuals amongst us who are so insecure they want to think their U.S. birthplace is what makes them superior to others.

Heck, even some Republicans, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., think that Trump should let Congress try to revamp DACA, rather than abolish it by presidential decree.

It’s actually as sad as the case of Genoveva Ramirez, a grandmother from suburban Berwyn whose visa expired years ago. She had immigration tell her she must produce a plane ticket that shows she’ll be leaving the United States by the end of October – or else the federal government will force her onto a plane at a moment’s notice.

There’s also the fact that Ramirez could now be detained by federal immigration officials at any time, if they suddenly decided to see her as a threat.

HER CASE IS that her family is here. They have become U.S.-based. Her grandchildren definitely are assimilated. Although I’m sure the xenophobic amongst us will try arguing that her status means nobody in the family ought to be permitted to stay.

DACA another Obama relic Trump wants to erase

The debate over immigration policy truly has become a pathetic argument by people who enjoy the bureaucratic nightmare that currently exists because it harasses people who aren’t exactly like themselves. Keeping people harassed is probably more important to the nativists than actually removing them -- an act that would be costly.

Too many people who want to talk about increased deportations, rather than engaging in a serious debate over who ought to be permitted in our society and how they wind up enhancing us all.

So for those young people who registered for DACA and now wonder if all that personal data they gave to the federal government will be used against them and for the grandmother who could wind up being sent away from her family, keep in mind that this is the particularly embarrassing part of this Age of Trump we all must endure.

  -30-

Is city’s “One Chicago” initiative meant to tell Trump’s nativism to ‘drop dead?’

Both of my grandfathers were Mexican-born who came to this country while technically still teen-aged back in the 1920s.
 

Grandpa Mike shows style long before my existence

Both entered the country at Laredo, Texas, and my maternal grandfather came with the understanding that a great American company had a job for him if he could get himself into the country.

WHICH IS HOW my grandfather, Michael Vargas, wound up working at the now-defunct Wisconsin Steel plant in the South Deering neighborhood for his entire adult life.

And before anybody asks, he died just before that tragic event when the steel mill closed, all its workers were laid off, their final paychecks bounced and some retirees lost pension benefits.

Whereas my other grandfather, Ignacio Tejeda, Sr., (my father is 'Junior') came with less of a plan – other than knowing there wasn’t much opportunity back home. He came to Texas, got caught up by recruiters who brought him north, and he worked jobs in Detroit and Gary, Ind., before he finally crossed over the Illinois state line into Blue Island, then Chicago where he worked at a variety of factory-type jobs throughout his life.

As things turned out, they both wound up settling in the South Chicago neighborhood just a couple of blocks from each other – which is how my parents met as children, grew up together and ultimately begat myself.

THAT’S THE QUICKIE version of my own life story – I’m here because of life-altering acts by my grandfathers who likely had no concept of my eventual existence. They were just looking for a better life, and were more than willing to work their nalgas off (or do you prefer to call it a kiester) in order to achieve it.

And in the process, I’m most likely much better off for it. A muchos gracias to my abuelos for having more ambition in life than most men.

Now what compelled me to feel the need to share this abbreviated tale?

My grandpa Nacho, along with my father and uncles Arturo and Carlos

Part of it is the new One Chicago initiative, which is going to be a public service campaign by which it will be made clear that Chicago is a city comprised of immigrants. We all have grandfathers or great-grandfathers (or some of us may be more recent) who came from some other national place and figured things might work out better in life here, rather than there.

WE’RE GOING TO be asked to do a massive share of our families’ life stories. It’s part of an effort to let people know that they’re welcome in Chicago, regardless of where they’re from.

And also that the people who have the  tnativist hang-ups are the ones who’d be better off not setting foot in the Second City.

Now all of this debate over immigration is the product of our mental midget of a president, Donald Trump, who campaigned aggressively last year by appealing to those people who can’t handle the thought of anyone not exactly like themselves being allowed a place within our society.

Part of Emanuel's response ...

Every time Trump feels compelled to take another pot shot at Chicago, we’re likely to point to yet another of these immigrant stories that make up our fair city.

EVEN MAYOR RAHM Emanuel includes himself amongst these stories – using a weekend appearance touting the One Chicago initiative to let us know of his own grandfather, who came to Chicago at age 13 not speaking English.

... to Trump's appeal to our worst nature

It’s a part of what makes the fine character of this city, no matter how much Trump wants to play politics with the FBI’s crime statistics for Chicago to make us think Englewood and North Lawndale are typical of the whole city – while also ignoring the very serious problems that exist in those inner-city neighborhoods!

Which is the very serious point trying to be made behind what might come across as a touchy-feely initiative to share family stories.

Personally, I’m pleased to add my own grandfathers’ tales to an effort meant to extend a certain vulgar digit to those individuals for whom xenophobia is their preeminent sentiment toward life.

  -30-

“Alt-right” synonymous with “bigot?”

It is the new phrase that came out of the 2016 election cycle; “alt-right.” As in not the standard issue conservative who leans toward the Republican party, but an alternate version.
 

TRUMP: Election opened nasty can of worms

Of course, what makes them alternative is that their racial hang-ups are a little more intense. In fact, they are the base of these people having anything resembling a political philosophy.

IF WE WANTED to be purely honest, we’d simply say they’re bigots. But the “alt-right” term comes from those people who want to legitimize any sense that one’s racial sentiments ought to be permitted to be a basis for government policy.

And also don’t want anything resembling use of the term “cracker” to refer to themselves.

Now I know there are some people who are getting upset these days with the perception that the Republican Party has been overtaken by bigots. They want to think there’s some moralistic overtone to the conservative thought process by which they have become the political party for white people.

They want to argue that not every person who cast a vote for Donald Trump’s presidential bid did so for racial reasons. In short, they’re willing to talk a lot of smack to avoid the very real fact of modern-day politics.

PEOPLE WHO VOTED for Trump either really do have the ridiculous notion that white people are being discriminated against because they’re no longer permitted to discriminate against people not like themselves. Or, they’re more than willing to look the other way when it comes to being around the bigots of our society.

Perhaps to them the notion of being around non-white people with some authority is more offensive than being around white people who are willing to use physical force to maintain their sense of place in the world.

I have one person I knew back in college who, on Facebook recently, said we ought to refuse to use the term “alt-right” and replace it with “all white.” It would be more accurate, she says, if we didn’t try to make the term “alt-white” sound respectable.

How far will alt-right rewrite history?

Yet this is going to be the very focus of much of the rhetoric we’re going to hear in coming years. There are people who must take seriously notion expressed by author George Orwell (as in “1984”) that “history is written by the winners.”

THEY PROBABLY THINK this past election cycle was a “war” in which they’re trying to take back the country from all of society’s undesirables – as in the ones whom the deplorables think are truly disgusting because of their repulsive sensibilities about life!

In that context, “alt-right” is merely a part of rewriting history. And not seeing the incredibly obvious in that photograph playing big on the Internet these days with Vice President-elect Mike Pence in front and a whole slew of white people filling the room.

It is a way where we can go back to the old way of thinking of things, in which a “Martin Luther King, Jr.” was a borderline-Communist agitator for spouting out nonsense about equality and non-violence who tried falsely to portray himself as a Christian.

Let’s not forget that some people do have a twisted sense of their Christian religious faith – I still remember once covering a Ku Klux Klan rally outside the Statehouse in Springfield, Ill., where their “pastor” led everybody in a prayer for God to strike the Earth with a plague that would wipe out all the non-white people.

NOT EXACTLY IN line with any serious religious teachings I have ever heard.

Yet these are the individuals who are being given some credence. Who are being treated as though they have something essential for our society to hear. And whose hostile rhetoric somehow bears a legitimacy to what else is being said.

So how should we truly think of these people? What terms should we use to describe them with a sense of honesty?

There are times when I watch the old “All in the Family” reruns on television and think that actor Carroll O’Connor’s “Archie Bunker” character bears relevance to what is happening today. Which makes me wonder if actor Sherman Hemsley’s “George Jefferson” is who many of us will turn to for the proper retort!

  -30-

Will Latino vote be our savior and devastate Trump camp come Nov. 8?

I’m not surprised by the tidbit from this week’s vice presidential debate that had Republican running mate Mike Pence trying to dismiss his Democratic opponent Tim Kaine’s repeated criticism of GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s attitudes toward Mexico as “that Mexican thing.”
 

PENCE: Wants us to back off 'Mexican thing'

As in wanting us all to think that Trump’s comments aren’t significant, and that we should disregard what may well be the most outrageous views put forth by the New York real estate developer as he tries to become our nation’s president.

A PART OF me knows we shouldn’t take Trump too seriously with regards to his comments about Mexicans now living in this country being “rapists” and “drug dealers,” along with the idea of a federal court judge from Indiana not being fair to him in a lawsuit because the judge is of Mexican ethnic descent.

The part of me that thinks of electoral politics in a purely strategic manner knows this is something that Trump said to catch the attention of the segment of the nativists and xenophobes in our electorate who he thinks can put him over the top come Election Day.

Trump may not have as irrational a hang-up with regards to Mexicans, or Latinos in general, as his rhetoric would indicate. He may even think more highly of us than he does of fat chicks, or any other group that he has chosen to demonize. Who's to say which of Trump's nonsense-statements ought to be taken seriously?

In short, we’re the political punching bag being used so that Trump can get the support of the would-be voters whom Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has dismissed as the “basket of deplorables.”

WHICH MAKES THE significance of the 2016 electoral cycle that we determine whether such tactics can continue to work in our ever-evolving society.

 

A key factor come Nov. 8?

There once would have been a time when it would have appeared to be common-sense political science strategy to single out Latino voters – they didn’t vote in large-enough numbers enough to matter.

Which brings up the comparisons to George Wallace, the Alabama governor of old who made his own presidential bids trying to get the votes of those people who yearned to keep the segregated way of life in this country.

How else to interpret, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

 

Too many similarities between Wallace and Trump

WALLACE LATER IN life said of his own racially-charged rhetoric that it was a lesson he learned early in politics when he lost a campaign because his opponent tagged him with a label of being too friendly to black people.

As Wallace put it, his offensive rhetoric was because, “I will never be out-niggered again.” Does Trump think he won’t be “out-beaner’ed” this time around and thinks there are enough votes of people who’d encourage such thought?

The reality is that those kind of people often do live in such isolation, and really want to believe they’re the only ones that matter. Which means a Hillary Clinton presidential victory could be an earth-shattering event to their mentality; with some of them, I’m sure, still trying to recover from the shock of the past year years of having a president with too much melanin for their sensibilities.

Then again, it does mean that as much as Trump thinks he has hard-core supporters, he also has outraged enemies.

PARTICULARLY FROM THE Latino vote, which the Miami-based Latino Decisions group has said will be nearly insignificant for Trump. They said Thursday his Latino support will be somewhere between 9.5 percent and 20.5 percent, with next to no Latinos bothering with Libertarian or Green candidates.

Not just Madonna's kid breaking a piñata

Which means Hillary gains Latino votes – largely because we find the GOP opponent to be too much of un pavo to take seriously, except perhaps as part of a Thanksgiving Day dinner. Which may be the way we celebrate a Trump defeat and being spared the misery of such an egomaniac gaining electoral office.

The study says Clinton could very well take more than 72 percent of the Latino vote – which is what her husband, Bill, took in 1996. Or the 71 percent that Barack Obama received in 2012. Actually, 76 percent to 82 percent is figured most likely. Many Latino activist-types may wind up being praised for saving us from xenophobes shoving a Trump presidency down our throats – even if it means backing the woman who aroused our laughter when she absurdly tried comparing herself to a Latina grandma.

If only Trump could have kept his mouth shut about Mexicans, perhaps he might have had a chance. But then again, an ego-less, non-arrogant Trump would be about as real a concept as the 2016 World Series champion New York Mets.

  -30-

It doesn’t matter what Trump really thinks; he’s stirred up nitwits real good!

I don’t doubt that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump isn’t really as ridiculously over-the-top on immigration policy as the image that has been concocted for him during his campaign.

 

Will there be fewer Trump pinata parties?

But the fact is that Trump decided early on which segment of our electorate he wanted votes from, and those are the people to whom anything resembling immigration reform had better include increases in deportation and set restrictions against people who aren’t exactly like themselves.

IN SHORT, TRUMP sought the bigot vote. That’s what he’s going to get (and being bigots, they think their votes are the only ones that ought to count).

So what do I think of the news reports Tuesday that say Trump really doesn’t want to boost deportations? He merely wants to enforce the immigration laws as they currently exist now.

That’s probably correct. Although one should keep in mind that the current federal immigration policy is a bureaucratic mess – one in serious need of reform. The kind of reform that President Barack Obama has hinted at wanting to implement, but the Republican majority that controls Congress has repeatedly thwarted his efforts.

So is it accurate to say that Trump would merely maintain the Obama way of doing things? Yes, but only if you fail to take into account that it was the system that Obama inherited – and has been unsuccessful in his attempts to alter.

THERE’S A REASON that Latino activists with a particular interest in federal immigration policy refer to Obama negatively as the “deporter-in-chief,” acknowledging the fact that more people have been removed from this country for immigration policy violations than during any other presidency.

The idea spread amongst activists is that Obama was too weak and ineffectual to stand up to the people who were the problem. A Trump presidency likely would put those people in full control of any change that occurs in the near future.

So while Trump may think he’s going to be able to tone down his rhetoric in ways that a few more people in the Latino segment of the electorate will consider voting for him, it’s not likely to occur. Those opening campaign wisecracks about Mexicans being rapists and drug dealers will likely work their way into his eventual obituary!

OBAMA: Big difference between Barack and Trump

Because the real changes desired to make sense of our nation’s immigration policy are ones that acknowledge the fact that many of the people who are trying to come to this country do have a worthy contribution to make to our society.

IN FACT, IF we really wanted to judge a person’s right to U.S. citizenship based on what they offer to society as a whole, we’d probably find that many of these nativists and their xenophobic thought processes would be the first people in line for deportation – regardless of how many generations ago their families arrived on this continent.

Besides, my own thoughts about immigration policy are set largely based on the reality that there isn’t any difference between the newcomers of today and my own grandfathers – both of whom settled in the same neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago about 90 years ago.

A time either before there was a specific federal immigration policy or when the rules were loose enough that the restrictions of later didn’t apply to them.

Of course, I don’t doubt that the Trump-ites will dismiss any such claim. They don’t really seem to care about facts. In fact, I think the fact that Trump doesn’t burden their thought processes with “facts” is a major part of his appeal to them.

BESIDES, IF TRUMP were to go too far in softening his rhetoric on immigration policy, it probably would hurt him.

Because the kind of people who are determined to cast ballots for him come Nov. 8 are the ones who want these kind of absurd immigration policy changes to become real. They want someone who is willing to ignore sense because it fits with their own view of our society.

There’s no way he can say anything that will get him significant Latino support – heck, he’s going to do worse than the John McCain of 2008 or Mitt Romney of 2012. He’s going to create the false impression that Latinos love Hillary Clinton.

When in reality, our regard for Trump is that we Latinos think he’s lower than any soccer goaltender who faces off against the Mexico national team in a match at Mexico City’s Aztec Stadium.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: Here’s what fanaticos de Equipo Mexico think of those visiting team goaltenders.