BEAUTY: Collage--Lynn Skordal

Lynn Skordal normally creates beautiful, fantastical collage works but this painful piece of art is necessary. Art is a mirror: it reflects ourselves and our time. And gazing at this piece of art Skordal entitled Whither makes me enraged and sickened for what it is reflecting.

Artist statement:
"Whither is a unique altered book about the effect of Trump politics on America, created by Lynn Skordal in the summer and fall of 2018. The original book is a libretto of 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' which seemed oddly appropriate to the subject matter.

A few notes on images and sources: [1] The calling cards ("Civility") are reproductions of Victorian calling cards labelled with the derogatory nicknames Trump uses in public for his political opponents and critics; [2] the silhouettes ("Compassion") represent the Trump Administration's policy of seizing and separating migrant children as they and their parents attempt to cross the US/Mexico border; [3] the spiral statements ("Leadership") are actual quotes from Trump describing his unparalleled excellence as a leader; [4] headlines ("Statesmanship") are cut from the pages of The New York Times and the Seattle Times as they appeared in the summer of 2018; [5] the embroidered references to women ("Respect") all were publicly uttered by Trump before and during his term as president; [6] background lies ("Truth") are screens shots from 'President Trump's Lies, the Definitive List' as published by The New York Times on 7/29/18, and the large flag quote is what the artist imagines to be the primary canon of Trump's political philosophy; [7] the end quote ("America") is by Will Durant, eminent historian."

https://www.flickr.com/photos/paperworker/
http://regularpaper.blogspot.com/

"Trump's sustained attacks on American rights" by Joan Biskupic

Trump's sustained attacks on American rights
Analysis by Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer

Updated 2:15 PM ET, Sat May 26, 2018

(CNN)Two years ago Sunday, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump derided US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, hearing a lawsuit against Trump University, for his "Mexican" heritage and complained of being "railroaded" by the legal system.

It was shocking, Democrats and Republicans alike condemned Trump's racially intemperate criticism of the Indiana-born judge.

Turns out, it was nothing.

Over the past 24 months, Trump has scorned judges, derided the American court system, and trampled on all manner of constitutional principles. Trump has especially ridiculed due process of law, the bedrock against government's arbitrary denial of a person's life, liberty or property.

Critics warn that denunciations that once seemed so aberrational may be seeping into the American psyche and influencing how government operates.

This week, Trump suggested immigrants at the border could be summarily deported without any hearing to determine if they deserved asylum or were US citizens wrongly apprehended. In a Fox News interview that aired on Thursday, Trump flatly deemed the system of immigration judges "corrupt" and said, "Whoever heard of a system where you put people through trials? Where do these judges come from?"

The administrative system, in fact, is part of Trump's executive branch, run by the Justice Department; the attorney general appoints immigration judges.

In the same interview, Trump responded to the NFL policy prohibiting kneeling during the "Star-Spangled Banner," with a message for players who refuse to stand for the anthem: "Maybe you shouldn't be in the country."

Such an attitude inflames controversy over league rules for players protesting racial injustice to intimations of government rejection of its citizens - for speaking out.

Due Process. Citizenship. Racial Equality. Trump's targets seem to merit none of these. It is not lost on Trump's detractors that he routinely takes aim at immigrants and racial minorities.

At the same time, the President expresses outrage over what happens to the men of his world.

When his former staff secretary Rob Porter was accused by two ex-wives of domestic violence, Trump emphasized in February to the news media, "He says he's innocent." Then in a tweet, Trump wrote: "Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?"

In April, Trump referred to an FBI raid on the home and office of Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen, executing a court-approved subpoena, as "an attack on our country ... an attack on what we all stand for."

If Trump's norm-shattering derision of the courts and constitutional principles has only accelerated in the past two years, public responses appear more polarized. Opponents are overwhelmingly Democratic. Trump's approval rating among Republicans remains high.

There also may be fatigue. Trump is constant. His questioning Thursday of a legal process for people apprehended at the border drew scant public response.

Long before he was a candidate, Trump was known for complaints about the justice system and incendiary rhetoric. He railed against five black and Latino men accused (and wrongfully convicted) for a 1989 rape of a jogger in New York's Central Park. Trump bought full-page ads in New York newspapers proclaiming, "Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police." Even after the men were exonerated, he suggested they were guilty.

The difference now, of course, is that he is America's top leader. So last fall, when he tweeted that an Uzbekistan man who was charged with killing eight pedestrians and bikers in New York City "SHOULD GET THE DEATH PENALTY," some law professors and analysts wondered if the President's comments would hurt the government's legal case.

Trump sets a tone for the whole country - a reality that spurred Republican op-ed columnist Michael Gerson, a former aide to President George W. Bush, to pen a scathing assessment earlier this month.

"Whatever else Trumpism may be," Gerson wrote in The Washington Post, "it is the systematic organization of resentment against outgroups. His record is rich in dehumanization. ... This is more than a disturbing pattern; it is an organizing political principle. And it has resulted in a series of radiating consequences."

As one of many examples, Gerson pointed to West Virginia GOP Senate candidate Don Blankenship's statement that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was creating jobs for "China people." (His wife, Elaine Chao, was born in Taiwan.)

"The Trump era is a renaissance of half-witted intolerance," Gerson concluded, urging Republican leaders to challenge Trump. (The President endorsed one of Blankenship's opponents and Blankenship lost the primary.)

If such protests from the right are rare, the left has tried to remain energized.

The stream of Trump rhetoric against due process "is exhausting, yet requires us to remain vigilant," said Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Gupta said an overriding concern is that dehumanizing language and attacks on minorities influence administration policy "The daily hits to due process are real and it is dangerous for any of us to accept this as normal," she said.

Irrespective of how responses have evolved over the past two years, Trump has not deviated from his personal script.

As he declared in May 2016, when many of his comments were rallying fans and roiling critics, "You think I'm going to change? I'm not changing."

Link to original article
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/26/politics/trump-rights-due-process-curiel/index.html

"Hank" by James

Celebrated English band James are releasing a new album on August 3, 2018 called "Living In Extraordinary Times" and this track "Hank" is a knock out. It's brash, loud, pounding, urgent, like a heartfelt speech shouted out at a political rally--because that is exactly what it is.

RESIST! THIS IS NOT NORMAL! There ARE Fascists in the White House!!!

This crack head’s tiny fingers
Accusing you of what he’ll do
White fascists in the White House
More beetroot in your Russian stew

Blinds roll down in the ghetto
Power’s out all over town
Jim Crow rules in the crack down
Bend your knee, stand your ground

Our weapon is a stand up
A jester prancing like a fool
In jest digest The Monster
This President’s a dangerous tool

Blinds roll down in the ghetto
Power’s out all over town
Jim Crow rules in the crack down
Bend the knee, stand your ground

Democracy sells easy
NRA high fives
Orlando, Sandy Hook, Columbine

CCTV’s grainy
His rapture's our decline
Hookers, hotel showers, dollar signs

Suppress the vote, electoral lies
Black Lives Matter, shoot on sight
We exist in multiple denials
He just says what they would hide
Rulers rule by divide
Why put your faith in facts when you can lie
Now every possibility exists in everybody’s mind

I'm in the story business
This Tower falls without a sound
Only our carbon footprint
Suggests an empire here unwound

Blinds roll down in the ghetto
Power’s out all over town
Jim Crow rules in the crack down
Bend the knee, stand your ground

https://wearejames.com/

America WILL Triumph Over The Monster

An Anniversary Of The Absurd

"Even the humblest, most industrious citizen is expected to be an ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and triumph, regardless of his own suffering. In other words the mentality appropriate to a state of war. And being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival...

To forget any fact that has become inconvenient, tell deliberate lies, and then draw the truth back from oblivion just so long as it's needed, all this is necessary to safeguard the infallibility of the Party."
--1984 BY GEORGE ORWELL, adapted by Michael Gene Sullivan

AS OF TODAY, FREEDOM IS IN PERIL

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
--Theodore Roosevelt in an editorial written for the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

"A preening and vindictive strongman at the top, living in gilded opulence, and surrounded by generals and business cronies. Is this what a junta looks like? Or—with the Twitter-storms, the Cabinet-selection runway show, and the erratic broadsides at everything from the media and the C.I.A. to a local labor-union official—does the walk-up to a Donald J. Trump presidency seem like one long string of Onion headlines? Bit of both, actually. We’re on our way down the rabbit hole, and nothing is what it seems. Trump’s “Thank you” tour prior to being sworn into office wasn’t that at all. It was an ego-boosting victory lap. It was his “You’re welcome!” tour. Making vulture investor Wilbur Ross and Hollywood moneyman Steven Mnuchin the guardians of the nation’s economy? I mean, really? A climate-change denier at the head of the Environmental Protection Agency? An oil executive with no political experience but close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin at the head of the State Department? When the best-read member of the Cabinet is nicknamed “Mad Dog” you know we are in uncharted waters. Trump is draining the swamp of tadpoles and filling it with Gila monsters. We may look back on November 8 and January 20 as days that will live in infamy—the beginning of an era in America when the country turned a corner, and, with headlights off, drove down a very dark lane."
--Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair