Send Trump back? Who’d want him!

President Donald Trump is an ethnic mixture of Scottish and German – the latter of which cause some people to deride him by reminding us at every chance they get that the family name originally was ‘Drumpf.’

TRUMP: Deport Donald? Who'd want him!

Back in the days when they were the immigrants, and the name change was made to come up with something they thought sounded more “American.”

SO NOW THAT the president is on a rhetorical kick of wanting to deride members of Congress whom he thinks aren’t American-enough to belong in this country – literally saying they should “go back to the broken and crime-infested countries they came from” – perhaps we ought to give it a thought.

Should we take this sorry excuse of a U.S president, revoke his American citizenship, and ship him off to either Scotland or Germany? Send him back “home,” so to speak!

Actually, that would be a ludicrous fantasy – and not because of the fact that Trump by birth is a Noo Yawker from the borough of Queens (even though he’d like us to think he’s the ultimate in Manhattan sophistication).

More it’s ludicrous because I suspect that neither Scotland nor Germany would want anything to do with The Donald or anyone in his pompous, egotistical family. They probably think they dodged a bullet of sorts by having his family emigrate away from them all those generations ago.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Not easily silenced

EITHER THAT, OR maybe they’d concoct some sort of scheme by which they could confiscate his immense family wealth for themselves – thereby reducing the Trump family to penniless status.

Not that I expect this to happen either. I suspect our society is stuck with the Trump ego – and is going to have to live with the shame of knowing it really was possible for a vocal minority of voters to actually prevail in the 2016 election cycle.

PRESSLEY: Deport her to … Cincinnati?

A vocal minority that probably thinks it is entirely clever for Trump to go around using his Twitter account to spew nonsense like he did this past weekend – where he derided four outspoken members of the Democratic caucus of Congress for, basically, not treating their own ethnic and racial origins as something they ought to be greatly ashamed of.

TLAIB: Serving Michigan proudly

For what it’s worth, he was talking about Rep. Ilan Omar, D-Minn., who was born in Somalia and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to this country as a 12-year-old and ultimately settling in Minneapolis.

BUT THEN HE lumped in three other members of Congress – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – as others who don’t really belong here.

All are U.S.-born, and in the case of Ocasio-Cortez may be Puerto Rican-ethnic but was raised in the suburbs of New York City. Only in the mini-mind of Donald Trump would they somehow not belong here, where I suspect his real objection to them having a prominence in society is due to the fact he regards many women as being decorative objects – and nothing else.

Think about it seriously. What are we going to do – deport Pressley back to her birth city of Cincinnati? It’s nonsense-talk like this that causes many to deride him as the “twit who Tweets” and to regard his constant use of Twitter as a true social embarrassment on our society – far worse than anything that any of the Congressional women has had to say.

ALTHOUGH IF YOU really want the truth, I suspect his attack on the Congresswomen was a deliberate tactic in its’ timing – as in Sunday, the day that was supposed to see federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials conducting many raids to deport all kinds of foreigners whom he also thinks don’t really belong “here.”

OMAR: Learned English off American TV

It seems the raids fizzled out, and really didn’t amount to much of anything.

Yet instead of now wondering how full of hot air Trump is for all his immigration raid trash talk, the focus is instead going toward Trump wanting to kick Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of the continental U.S.

Although even that wouldn’t achieve much – because Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth. Meaning even if she were sent back to the Caribbean island, she’d still be within U.S. reach and more than capable of speaking out against Trump nonsense on oh so many issues. Nobody silences AOC that easily!

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: It's worth pointing out that everybody here is standing before, and serving the interests of, the very same U.S. flag.

71 years later, and yet the Woody Guthrie tune remains ever-so relevant

Good bye to my Juan/Good bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos Jesus y Maria
You won’t have a name/When you ride the big airplane
All they will call you/Will be ‘deportees’
--Plane Wreck at Los Gatos/Woody Guthrie (1948)

  -0-

It’s kind of scary to think that a song composed some 70-plus years ago remains so dead-on accurate this far into the 21^st Century. Yet that seems to be the case with the famed protest tune “Deportee.”

Composed and originally performed by Woody Guthrie, the same man who gave us “This Land is Your Land,” the tune has come to be associated with folk singer Pete Seeger and has been covered by so many differing artists – including some such as Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash whom I’m sure many would think fit the profile of the “real America” the ideologues claim they support.

THE SONG WAS motivated by Guthrie being offended by the New York Times account of the Jan. 28, 1948 plane crash near Los Gatos Canyon – not far from Fresno, Calif. Guthrie was bothered by the fact that the report clearly identified the members of the flight crew , while merely dismissed the 28 migrant farm workers on their way back to Mexico as “deportees.”

Which, I would suspect, is exactly the way that the proponents of the immigration raids that President Donald Trump has been screeching and screaming about for months would like to see happen yet again.

The raids were supposedly (or at least according to the rumor mill that Trump is openly encouraging) set to occur Sunday – possibly in the early hours. Many hundreds, if not thousands, of foreigners whom the ideologues are determined to think of as criminal just for their very existence in this country will be woken up from their sleep, hauled off by authorities, and eventually put onto an airplane taking them to Brownsville, Texas – where a bus will then transport them across the border to Mexico.

The last thing we’re supposed to think about is the fact that these individuals are human beings, with lives and individualities. Who probably are doing work in this country that make a worthwhile contribution to our society.

NOT THAT THE ideologues want to hear any of this kind of talk. It was just a week ago I encountered someone (who actually is a decent-enough human being) who tried to justify his nativist thoughts by saying he’s really only against Somalis – whom he claims are absolutely refusing to assimilate to the ways of life of our nation.

I don’t doubt that any effort to do reporting on the actual deportation process to bring humanity to these people will be regarded as somehow being un-American. Although to me, the actual “un-American” conduct is having the authorities bust down people’s doors and haul them off – possibly before anyone is truly awake and aware of what is happening. Just like in the modern-day Russia or North Korea whom Trump claims aren't really all that bad!

Now it’s always possible that the anticipated deportations won’t be as extensive as some fear – and are merely trash-talk meant to feed the mini-mentalities of those people who want to think Donald Trump is a true patriot – rather than just an egotistical buffoon with a bloated view of his self-importance. Maybe Monday will feel like a relief.

But the way in which the Trump-types keep insisting they’re targeting people with arrest records in this country (and could accidentally pick up others in the process) makes it seem like Guthrie was on to something all those years ago when he wrote: “They chase us like outlaws/Like rustlers, like thieves.”

  -30-

Is Gorsuch in the Trump dog house?

Neil Gorsuch is the man who sits on the Supreme Court of the United States because of the ideologue gamesmanship that denied former President Barack Obama a third pick to the high court; thereby allowing Donald Trump the ability to fill the vacancy in the early days of his presidency.

GORSUCH: Confounds ideologues?

Meaning I’m sure that Trump expects Gorsuch to be his reliable vote to take his stance on all issues that come before the court, and also to sway a majority of the rest of the court to do so as well.

WHICH IS WHY I’m finding some humor in the Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday that struck down a law meant to make it easier (and quicker) to deport non-citizens who are found guilty of violent crimes while in this country.

The nine-member court voted 5-4 to rule in favor of striking down the law, agreeing with a federal appeals court in San Francisco that said it was too vague to be enforceable.

Gorsuch wound up siding with the four members of the court who usually are of a more progressive leaning on issues, even though Gorsuch is supposed to be the swing vote that gives the conservative-leaning justices the numerical advantage.

When considering that Trump is trying to base his political strength from having the support of those people whose idea of immigration reform is to deport as many people as possible, I don’t doubt that Trump felt a bit of disgust when he was informed of the court’s decision.

NOT THAT IT’S a surprise to see a judge place the law above political partisanship. It’s the way things are supposed to be, even though in this Age of Trump we have people who think that their partisanship is meant to prevail over all.

SOUTER: Often offended GOP pols

Anybody who pays attention to the Supreme Court knows there have been many justices who ruled on various cases in ways that went against the political desires of the presidents who appointed them.

Although I’m not ready to put Gorsuch in the same ranks as now-retired Justice David Souter. Remember the man appointed by former President George H.W. Bush whom his chief of staff, John Sununu, initially described as a “home run” for conservatism?

Souter wound up being a justice who aligned himself in his votes with the justices who were appointed to the court by former President Bill Clinton. He also was a justice who, in a case concerning abortion, wrote that doing anything to outlaw it would be, “a surrender to political pressure” and was amongst the court minority in 2000 who wanted to continue the recount of the presidential election ballots in Florida – when the act halting it is what gave us “President George W. Bush” instead of the man who nationally got more votes, Democrat Al Gore.

KAGAN: Wrote for the Ct majority

I’M SURE GORSUCH will come up with several votes on court cases that will appease the ideologues and Trump.

But like I wrote earlier, it is somewhat humorous to see Trump’s appointee be the guy who votes in a way that won’t appease the ideologues on immigration. Which is particularly odd in that this case originally came before the high court during the year that Republicans were thwarting Obama’s attempt to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia with Merrick Garland.

This same immigration case (based off the situation of a man from the Philippines who was found guilty of burglary in California) got a 4-4 vote then, which caused officials to want to re-argue the case with a full court – figuring that now they’d get a 5-4 vote in their favor.

Instead, they got a 5-4 vote against them, on the grounds that calling burglary a “crime of violence” was a bit of a stretch and that the law didn't really specify what a "crime of violence" was.

GORSUCH WOUND UP siding with the majority that let Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan (the old University of Chicago law school professor and an Obama appointee) write the opinion that will all up in arms in the near future about “too many foreigners” in this country.

TRUMP: Temper tantrum in Oval Office?

Personally, I think we have too many ideologues in this country. I also wonder if Kagan will be another reason for Trump to go on a "hate Chicago" diatribe. But those are issues for us to ponder another day.

Because you just know the ideologues will find something else to get all hot-and-bothered about. They usually always find something to get ticked off about, no matter what happens in "real" life.

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Rauner to run to the ‘right?’

It’s one of the so-called rules of running an election for government office that in a primary, one takes on all the ideological issues they’re comfortable with so as to get the hard line voters possible.

RAUNER: Wants the 'right-wing' vote

But come the general election cycle, candidates of both major political parties veer to the “center,” so to speak – so as to try to get as many people as possible to cast ballots for them.

COULD THE RE-ELECTION campaign of Bruce Rauner for governor become an exception to that “rule?” Could his campaign for the Nov. 6 election become a test of just how conservative can Rauner make himself appear to be?

Rauner is the guy who narrowly won the Republican primary held last week, with his opponent going out of her way to tag him as some sort of liberal freak who stands against everything “real” Republicans are about.

She brought up his actions during his first term as governor related to abortion, immigration and civil rights for gay people, and her message stuck. There are people who insist they’re Republicans, but won’t consider a vote for Bruce come the general election.

It doesn’t matter that the very essence of Rauner’s term as governor were actions meant to push for policies that would undermine the influence of organized labor within government. Rauner is anti-union enough to be a hard-core Republican, but that’s not good enough.

PEREZ: Rauner's sacrificial lamb?

SO IS RAUNER going to start looking for every means possible by which he can make himself appear to be some sort of right-wing ideologue – being worthy of those people whose own image of what our society ought to be about is such that they’re totally comfortable with this Age of Trump in which we’re now in?

There was that veto the governor handed down right before the primary election – the one in which he rejected a bill the Democrat-controlled General Assembly handed down related to firearms and state regulation of gun shops.

It was the Illinois Legislature’s reaction to the violence at a school in Parkland, Fla. – which means Rauner made his own statement with regards to gun control measures.

IVES: Inflicted serious damage to Bruce

And now, there’s the deportation of Miguel Perez, Jr., who served in the Army in Afghanistan and was under the assumption that he became a U.S. citizen at that point in time. But after military service, he became involved with illegal narcotics, wound up being arrested and serving time in prison.

PEREZ CAME TO the United States from Mexico when he was 8 and had a “green card.” But that was revoked upon his conviction, and because of his lack of citizenship, upon his release from prison Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials began the process of deportation.

Which in his case took 16 months because he tried fighting it. But in the end, Perez was among a group of deportees being held in Kenosha, Wis., who recently were put on a bus and driven to the Gary/Chicago International Airport, where they were put an an airplane and flown to Brownsville, Texas, Then, they were driven over the border into Matamoros in Mexico, where they were formally turned over to Mexican authorities.

It turns out that among the moves Perez tried making to stay in this country was a request for a pardon from Rauner. If he had been granted some form of clemency for his drug conviction, it might not have been able to be used against him as far as deportation proceedings were concerned.

But Rauner went out of his way to reject such a request. While refusing to be specific on his reasons, Rauner wanted it known he said “no” to a U.S. military veteran whose problems post-military were due to post traumatic stress disorder.

“WE MADE THE decision not to grant (clemency) in that case,” Rauner told WLS-TV.

PRITZKER: Will J.B. be ultimate victor?

Rauner already was getting grief from the ideologues because he didn’t veto a measure that restricted Illinois law enforcement authorities from cooperating fully with federal immigration officials, similar to the “sanctuary city” initiatives that exist in Chicago and Cook County or the “welcoming city” measures of places like Evanston and Oak Forest – or Gary, Ind. (whose airport is used as part of the deportation process, which angers some local officials).

So is forcing Perez, who hadn’t actually been in Mexico in 31 years and whose life is oriented towards being in this country, to leave just Rauner’s gesture of support to the ideologues? If it is, it’s a cold gesture.

It makes me wonder how many more “gestures” Rauner is going to feel compelled to give to the “right” to bolster his standings, and if he’s going to wind up becoming more “Trump-like” in his political behavior. Because, after all, he needs the votes to avoid getting his clock cleaned Nov. 6 by Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker.

  -30-

DACA ‘repeal’ the kind of thing an un-American ‘police state’ would try to do

Just as President Donald Trump chose to let us know about his pardon for the Arizona sheriff who targets Latinos for harassment just as Hurricane Harvey was beginning its devastation of Texas, Trump chose a moment when it was likely few were paying attention to say he’s going to take a whack at another measure related to our nation’s flawed immigration policies.

TRUMP: Hiding behind Harvey, No. Korea?

This one is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that former President Barack Obama tried creating to allow those brought when young by parents who didn’t follow the formalities of obtaining visas to permit them to live in this country openly.

TRUMP WENT THROUGH a campaign for the presidency threatening to overturn this particular measure, which he can do because Congress never did anything to legitimize Obama’s actions. Thereby giving Trump the authority to repeal – if he so desires.

On Sunday, he said that’s what he plans to do – although he made a point of saying there will be a six-month time period before anyone starts trying to enforce this change. Which would mean scouring the nation for all these young people who have been raised in this society, only to now be told they’re “foreign” and need to “Get Out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Doing it on Sunday means it occurred when many people were at the heart of preparations for the Labor Day holiday weekend. If they were paying attention to public events and the news cycle, it was likely that the Wrath of Harvey continues to dominate their mindset, along with the reports that North Korea is stepping up its own nuclear missile activity.

OBAMA: His DACA to be no more?

Trump, as I see it, wants to smack about the Latino population, but doesn’t want to be called out on his nonsense. So he picks these inopportune times to make his statements – in hopes he won’t have to deal with backlash.

WHICH IN MY mindset makes Trump little more than a petty tyrant – if not just a twerp or a mental midget. Although perhaps I should apologize to “little people” for implying that the half-wit currently occupying the White House is in any way similar to themselves.

Anyway, Trump is now moving forward with the DACA repeal – which is what had the Democratic Party and immigration activists outrages on Monday. My own email box was loaded with the appeals from various groups and officials wanting to be sure I was aware of what the president had done.

ROMNEY: Reminiscent of 'self deportation?'

They also want my money to help pay for the lobbying efforts they plan to engage in during coming months to try to strike down the president – mostly by getting Congress to do something that would legitimize what Obama tried to do and thwart Trump’s desire to erase anything Obama did.

Why the Republican-led Congress that refused to do anything to back Obama would now suddenly want to do so is a mystery. Which may make the activist efforts a moot point.

ALTHOUGH THE TIME period being offered up by Trump is somewhat curious. Is he going to claim he’s offering up a bit of compassion? Just as he lamely tried claiming his Joe Arpaio pardon being timed to Hurricane Harvey increased the chances people were paying attention?

In this case, is Trump taking on some of that “self deportation” nonsense that former presidential hopeful Mitt Romney tried spewing back in 2012? Does he really think that hundreds of thousands of young people will suddenly return to a nation whose daily lives they’re relatively unfamiliar with?

Of course, when it comes to immigration policy, the nativist element of our society has always had a sense of delusion in their thoughts.

The idea that everybody not like themselves is suddenly going to clear out to leave all that open space across the nation to their own kind is ridiculous. Then again, the idea that it is practical to deport everybody not like themselves as equally absurd.

Will we soon see sights like these signs everywhere?

BUT LOGIC HAS never been a part of the process for those who refuse to consider the serious reform that our immigration policy does need.

When these ideologues complain about federal bureaucracy complicating their daily lives, they’re usually just whining about having to follow the rules. Although the mess that our immigration policy has evolved into is a case where we’d be better off with a thorough policy re-write.

But to the ideologues, any harassment against “foreigners” is justifiable. Harassment against others is acceptable to these people, which strikes me as being about as un-American an ideal as can be espoused.

It’s almost like the nativists and ideologues amongst us fantasize about the United States as a police state. A repulsive comment making me think that “deportation” might make most sense for those xenophobes amongst us who can’t handle living in our 21^st Century version of society.

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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.

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Trump needs new target; will it be the nation's Mexican-American population?

No matter how much President Donald J. Trump wants to say that Democrats will take the blame for the failure of his version of health care reform to pass, the masses are fully prepared to blame the Trumpster himself.

Will we soon see uptick in Trump piñatas?

And since in the world of The Donald, he is all knowing, all wise and never fails at anything, I’m sure that Trump is now scouring the scene for another issue that he can score a quick victory on.

ONE THAT WILL allow him to rebound with something resembling success. Something that he hopes will be considered more important than any mere loss with regards to health insurance access.

Which is an overly complicated issue that no one should have expected the Trumpites of the world to achieve any level of success. Even the brightest of minds have trouble with the nuances of insurance and health care. And let’s be honest, we don’t have the brightest of minds in charge of our government these days.

We have the most egomaniacal of ideologues, and ones with a nativist streak that tends to outright xenophobia.

Personally, I can’t get around the fact that the Trump presidential fantasies (nightmares for the majority of us) began with the attacks he made on Mexico and those people in this country with ethnic ties to the land down south – although in some of our cases, it was the border dropping south so that our great-great grandfathers went from being Mexican to “American.”

ALBEIT A SECOND-class status of American, because the Anglo types who settled the Southwest likely would never have done so if they had thought all those people already living there would be treated equal to them.

Will this site become common?

In my mind, the failure of Donald Trump and his pathetic band of backers to erase former President Barack Obama’s version of health care reform from the books means he’s going to try to revamp his persona with a political victory of sorts against the foreigners.

And since he has now repeatedly failed in his efforts to pass travel restrictions against people from nations where Islam is a predominant religion, he may decide that he needs to get his victory at the hands of Latinos.

Whom he’ll probably proclaim to all be Mexicans. Even the ones of Puerto Rican ancestry who have U.S. citizenship by birth, or the ones from Cuba who still get preferential treatment because of the old desire to do things that humiliate the now-deceased Fidel Castro.

I KNOW THAT in a lot of Spanish-tinged enclaves and neighborhoods in this country, including in Chicago, there is the increased sense of paranoia that immigration agents are on the verge of being unleashed for mass rounds of deportation.

Can this wall really be made to look pretty?

Which may even pick up a few U.S. citizen-types of Latino backgrounds, because the bulk of Trump backers really are clueless when it comes to distinguishing people – except to be able to say who isn’t exactly like themselves!

Could Trump’s wrath take the form of some dramatic action to try to force a confrontation about “the wall” that the president has said he wants erected along the 1,900-mile U.S./Mexico border?

The one that supposedly will be 30 feet high and beautiful to look at, from the U.S. side. Although I can already envision the graffiti marring it, along with the tunnels that will wind up underneath. Why do I suspect that any border wall will be as secure as Stalag 13 from that staple of 1960’s television “Hogan’s Heroes?”

If Trump is Klink, who's playing the part of Col. Hogan?

DOES THAT MAKE White House strategist Steve Bannon the equivalent of actor John Banner’s “Sgt. Hans ‘I know nothing’ Schultz?” With Trump himself as the immortal Col. Wilhelm Klink – making ridiculous boasts about how “No one escapes from Stalag 13” – which was about as accurate as all the “fake news” that Trump now spews on ever so many issues.

Or are we really in line for some immigration raids so we can get a few busloads of people being driven back across the border into Mexico – and in the process, probably a kid or two who gets mistaken for Mexican (and probably will wind up having parents who voted for the Trumpster)!

Winnah, and still Champeen?!?

President Trump has just shown too much incompetence, but has too big an ego to let it go and try to think the issue through rationally. Like in the 1978 film “Animal House,” when the Delta fraternity responds to their being expelled from college with “a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”

The best we, the true majority of our society, can hope for is that their streak of political incompetence continues. Although the one sad truth is that real people will wind up getting hurt – all to salvage the ego of the man who couldn’t beat Obamacare!

  -30-

Is Trump truly determined to make peoples’ worst nightmares come true?

I remember back a few years ago when then-President Barack Obama imposed his executive order that offended nativist ideologues because it tried to impose some sense on our nation’s immigration policy.

TRUMP: Determined to be absurd?

It was the order that proclaimed young people could remain in this country without fear of deportation – even if their immigration status was less-than-solid. It required those young people to register themselves, which had some people fearful that a future administration would use all that information gathered to suddenly put together a list of people to have priority status for deportation.

AT THE RATE that now-President Donald J. Trump is acting, it would seem that’s exactly the direction he’s headed in. And as for those activists who liked to tag Obama with the “deporter-in-chief” label, it won’t be long before Trump will snatch that status up all for himself.

We have a president who made some of his earliest presidential actions measures that indicate there are certain people now in this country whom he thinks have no right to be here.

Personally, I’d argue there are some people now living in the United States whom this nation would probably be better off without. But I’m aware that the notion of deporting the entire populace of Mississippi and Alabama (and maybe Arkansas, too) is something that is ridiculous to contemplate.

Of course, the idea of a mass deportation of people of Mexican ethnic origins (which I’m sure many think will include everyone with ties to any Latin American nation) is even more ridiculous.

BUT IT DOES seem to be the goal of many of the 46 percent of the populace that voted for Trump to be president, and the reason they remain pleased with Trump is that he is engaging in the absurd rhetoric that would indicate their ridiculous fantasies have a chance of coming true.

These are the thoughts running through my mind upon learning Tuesday of the Homeland Security memos that threaten to expand the number of people who get forcibly removed from this nation.

It now will be an enforcement priority to consider for deportation anybody even suspected of a crime – even if the offending act is something as little as a traffic offense.

OBAMA: Longing for days of so-called deporter-in-chief

Many of the places that have declared themselves “sanctuary” cities or counties have done so because they want to try to put people at ease when they have encounters with the police. Trump would seem to want to use law enforcement as the equivalent of local government muscle to harass!

IT IS JUST a matter of time before we start having to endure the embarrassments of the past – history is filled with incidents of U.S.-born people of certain Spanish-tinged origins who got deported because someone didn’t care to make the distinction.

And yes, I think the Trump types are just clueless enough to repeat this mistake – which is about as far removed from making America “great” again as we could possibly get.

Because the latest memorandums include provisions that say people caught by the Border Patrol of the act of entering this country through the U.S./Mexico border can merely be thrown back into Mexico.

Even if they aren’t of Mexican citizenship! Which, believe it is not, does happen quite often.

BUT BECAUSE IN the minds of the xenophobes of our society, all those brown people must be Mexican, our officials think they can just do a dump. Even though it technically means we’re pushing people into Mexico with no legal status to be there.

BAYLESS: Restaurant closures warrant praise?

Would that make the United States responsible for creating a surplus of “illegal aliens” in Mexico? Would we be the cause of the problem?

I couldn’t help but notice the reports of recent days to the business response to last week’s “A Day without Immigrants” protests and boycotts of work – a lot of those small business owners seemed determined to show who the boss really is. Many people lost their crummy jobs as a result.

Which ought to make us show a bit of respect for those Chicago area entities that chose to respect the protest act and wound up closing down, which gave their workers the excuse to take the day off. It may turn out that we are lucky enough to live in a place where sanity and common sense prevails – which is something to keep in mind the next time Trump does a Chicago rant!

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Obama should act on immigration sooner rather than later, because he’ll get dumped on no matter when he acts

Two-plus decades of following government activity makes me fully aware of the reality that there is a proper time and place to take actions on issues of controversy.

 

I realize it is possible to do something at the “wrong” time, no matter how proper an act it is, and wind up doing more harm than good to society as a whole.

 

BUT LEARNING HOW President Barack Obama is once again postponing any action on immigration reform makes me wonder if he realizes how much he’s doing himself political harm by continuing to wait to act.

 

For aides to Obama on Saturday let it be known that Obama won’t do anything on the immigration issue until after the Nov. 4 election cycle is done. He won’t be using his executive order powers to implement any kind of solution that Congress’ Republican members have blatantly refused to even consider.

 

The Reuters wire service reported that anonymous aides to Obama were saying that the president is afraid any action on his part on the issue will only anger Republican partisans and conservative ideologues to the point where they will turn out in extra strength to vote for candidates who will oppose him in the future.

 

I don’t doubt that any action on immigration policy that does not focus solely on increased deportations of those foreigners will offend the ideologues.

 

BUT IF OBAMA thinks he’s going to appease those people in any way by not acting now, he’s seriously misguided.

 

If anything is going to happen, it is going to be that he’ll drive down the number of votes from people who want to see serious reform of the nation’s immigration policy.

 

He’s going to increase the hostility of the kind of people who call Obama the “deporter-in-chief,” in reference to the fact that he has done nothing to stall policies implemented by past presidents that have boosted the number of deportations that have occurred in recent years.

 

Obama is, if this delay actually occurs, taking actions that are in opposition to the very people who voted for him in two past presidential elections. Considering that the basic campaign strategy for Democratic Party operatives in trying to maintain control of the U.S. Senate is to say that Obama needs a Democratic majority in at least one chamber of Congress if he is to avoid spending the final two years of his presidency fighting off ideologue attacks, this move is merely meant to make people think it doesn’t make one bit of difference who they vote for come Nov. 4.

 

HIS ACTIONS IN favor of immigration policy now might have encouraged sympathetic voters to turn out. I’m willing to bet now that they’re not going to care much either way what happens.

 

And you know if we do wind up with an ideologue-leaning Republican-controlled Congress, it ensures nothing will happen on the immigration issue until we get a new president – regardless of which party.

 

What Obama aides are probably trying to disguise as compromise comes across as little more than cowardice.

 

For Congress has just shown too many times, including this past spring and summer, its unwillingness to act because the Republican officials are too eager to appease the ideologues who want a government that upholds their ethnic and racial hang-ups about life.

 

SO HERE’S HOPING that Obama can somehow come up with another change of heart. Because the immigration policy we have now truly is a bureaucratic mess – particularly in the way it splits up so many families into “legal” and “illegal” members.

 

This is an issue whose time truly came quite a ways back, and for which there will never be a time when the opponents of sensible immigration policy will ever be appeased. The longer we, as a society, wait to act, the more ridiculous we come across as being.

 

Will the president – who has talked of wanting to address this issue since before the days he became president – let his political cowardice become a part of the problem?

 

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He’s in hiding because he knows too much, or so Mel Reynolds says

I don’t doubt that there’s a stink surrounding the story of Mel Reynolds, the one-time member of Congress who recently got deported from Zimbabwe after managing to offend the government of that African nation.

REYNOLDS: The man who knows too much?

Then again, being on the bad side of Robert Mugabe doesn’t take much to achieve. That man seems to have a problem with anyone who won’t kowtow to him.

NOT THAT THIS fact makes me feel much in the way of sympathy, since he seems determined to continue his current saga in life.

For it seems that when Zimbabwe officials transported him from the jail where he had spent six days to their airport to get him out of the country, he didn’t return to his native United States.

He went to nearby South Africa – a nation that decades ago wouldn’t have let him come anywhere nearby. But now, is the place where he claims to be in hiding because he fears that a “secret Zimbabwean death squad” is trying to hunt him down. He’s marked for assassination, or so he says.

Although I wonder just how deep in hiding could he be if both WLS-TV AND the Associated Press managed to track him down by telephone for interviews in which he told us his life’s latest sob story.

REYNOLDS, WHOSE CRIMINAL record in this country involves both state charges related to being sexually involved with underage girls and federal charges related to his tax returns, has turned himself into a self-described consultant who was helping U.S. business interests to make connections in African nations.

Which is why he supposedly was in Zimbabwe since back in November.

He now says that his experiences have caused him to learn of U.S. officials, including some from our very own Chicago, who are skirting their way around the law – particularly since Mugabe doesn’t have the best record on international issues.

Reynolds now wants us to believe that the reason he got hit with criminal charges of pornography possession in Zimbabwe is because he was threatening to expose those people.

WHICH COULD COST business and government officials serious money!

Hence, the “death squads” that would turn Mel into a corpse. It all sounds so far over the top – almost like something out of a James Bond film (at least one from the Sean Connery era, the rest get just a bit too lame to pay much attention to).

Or maybe it’s more like something from a “Get Smart” episode – it sounds more like a Maxwell Smart caper than anything else, on account of all its inanity.

In fact, about the only reason I give it any credence is the fact that the pornography possession charge seemed too trumped up – and officials in Zimbabwe were way too eager to dismiss it.

REYNOLDS WAS CHARGED with a visa violation (it had expired) that was the reason he ultimately got deported. The pornography charge supposedly was dismissed because police did not get the consent of higher-ranking authorities before making the arrest.

Which may sound reasonable to someone whose legal sensibilities are U.S.-oriented. Although since when Zimbabwe officials care about such sensibilities is the real question.

A pornography arrest was just the way to draw attention to a U.S. political official whose lingering reputation was of getting aroused by the 16-year-old in peach-colored panties.

Reynolds isn’t wrong when he says that they used the most effective weapon they could come up with to discredit anything he might have to say about business interests in African nations. He may even be truthful in his statement to WLS-TV that he essentially “bribed” Zimbabwe officials to deport – rather than incarcerate – him.

ALTHOUGH EVEN TAKING that into account, it just seems like Mel Reynolds has a knack for walking into gaffes. And why his threats to expose what he knows about corruption (a press conference to be done while in hiding, he says) likely won’t be taken seriously.

Which may well be why the Rhodes Scholar-turned-Congressman-turned-inmate never was able to live up to the promise he showed early in life.

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