“We’ve had a lot of Spanish-speaking workers. I say, ‘Thank Heaven for them.’ We’d be a lot further from recovering if it weren’t for them.”
As we’ve been told, Mexico and Central America are sending “not their best” across the border into the U.S. We are being overwhelmed by drug gangsters and rapists, according to the current occupant of the White House. Well, maybe not overwhelmed, exactly.
A new recovery-and-reconstruction work force has developed to keep pace with the more frequent and more severe weather events. (Nothing to do with climate change!) Like migrant agricultural workers following the crops, this emerging workforce is also mobile, following disasters: New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; Houston after Harvey; North Carolina after Florence; Florida after Irma and Michael. Much of the cleanup and rebuilding is the work of laborers and craftspeople who entered the country illegally.
Want a break from the venality of Don Jr and siblings? Had enough of hearing about Hunter Biden? Let’s take the Wayback Machine to the seventies — the nineteen seventies. William Carter, better known as “Billy,” ran for mayor of Plains Georgia in 1976. He lost by a narrow margin. That same year, his older brother James, better known as “Jimmy,” was elected president of the United States.
After attending Emory University in Atlanta for a while and four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Billy came beck home to Plains and joined brother Jimmy in the family’s peanut business. In 1972 he purchased a gasoline service station in Plains. When Jimmy began his run for president, Billy began to attract notice from the news media.
“I keep getting trouble with my wife — when we go shopping in the delicatessen, I’m the one that’s flexing the salamis to see what their tensile strength is because they’d make good wing spars!”
Unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) — aka drones — are part of the twenty-first century world. We mostly think of them as a means to drop bombs on people or a the newest way to invade our privacy. Nigel Gifford has a better idea: use drones to deliver food to besieged people.
Republicans accept as a truism that the fewer people voting, the better the outcome for the so-called Grand Old Party. So they proceed accordingly, ranting, without evidence, about rampant voter fraud, passing legislation making it more difficult to vote, devising radically partisan gerrymandering and even making those working on voter-registration drives subject to criminal penalties. (Click here for the latest from Tennessee.) And of course, doing noting to safeguard electronic voting equipment from foreign intrusion. We here in Oregon are smug, with our vote-by-mail that makes every vote verifiable with its paper ballot.
But now the GOP has a better idea. Why go to all the trouble of concocting schemes to make it harder for people to vote? Why not just do away with elections altogether? They are already doing just that in several states. Republicans have already cancelled 2020 primary elections in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas. The Republican National Committee, in collusion with the reelection campaign for the current president, decided they don’t need no stinkin’ elections. Too bad for Joe “You lie!” Walsh and Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford who have announced their intentions to challenge the current occupant of the White House for the Republican nomination.
Yes, the party can cancel primary elections. You can be assured they are hard at work on the ultimate voter suppression: how they can “postpone” the general election.
In the mid 1960s, Tom Monaghan did some informal research among customers of his three-location pizza restaurant. He concluded that enough people wanted their order delivered and wouldn’t much care whether the pizza was any good, he changed the emphasis of his operation. Domino’s Pizza promised delivery within thirty minutes of taking the order or the pizza was free. He also began franchising and in less than a decade had two-hundred locations.
“I hope his constituents are watching,” she said. “You’re more likely to get sued by your member of Congress if you live in Fresno or Tulare County than to see him at a town hall and talk to him about constituent issues.”
Trump toady and fake-Russian-news creator Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Fresno) is threatening more lawsuits against those who have said mean things about him. He already had filed suits against Twitter accounts “Devin Nunes’ Cow” and “Devin Nunes’ Mom.” The suits are asking for $250 million for the damage to his reputation. He also sued the Fresno Bee newspaper for $150 million because of its reporting of unseemly activities that took place on a yacht he is partial owner of.
The latest lawsuit is against a Central-Valley California farmer who had tried to have Nunes’s “Farmer” occupation removed from a ballot because Nunes does not actually do any farming.
Side note: The last public town hall meeting Nunes held with constituents was in 2010.
Meanwhile, in Oregon, Republican lawmakers fled the state to prevent a quorum as the legislature considered a carbon-tax bill. State Senator Brian Boquist responded to the possibility of the state police looking for them, saying they should “send bachelors and come heavily armed.” He also threatened Democratic Senate President Peter Courtney before the walk-out, that “hell is coming to visit you personally” if Courtney sent the police.
Courtney and Boquist both attend the same Catholic church. Boquist declared he “does in fact believe President Courtney’s soul is completely lost now.”
Boquist has filed suit in federal court against new security regulations requiring he give twelve hours notice when reporting to the capitol, in order to provide state troopers time to make public safety accommodations. Who is the real Boquist? Is he the posturing tough guy or is he a snowflake?
