But instead, I hope to gain some recognition for my established skills as a blog commenter.
Herewith, what I said to my friend, Southern Beale:
SB,
You don’t have the resources to garner the Pulitzer Prize for Investigatory Journalism, but you would have my vote for Explanatory Journalism. Sadly it will take something more than informed journalists and their somewhat more than liberal readers to save our nation today. We are in extreme danger.
Some of us just believe that we will all be okay. Well… That sounds nice. But it’s not going to happen without republican politicians playing good cop, nice cop. I don’t have the nerve to ask you what you predict for the future. But I will join with you in fighting the monster Trump, his greedy and evil cohorts and minions, and most of all, the relentlessly stupid and feckless U.S. electorate that thinks that they can just piss off the next democratic candidate, HRC, as if none of this really mattered whatsoever.
How stupid does one have to be to believe all of the lies about HRC? Don’t answer that.
Stupidity is our greatest enemy. In this way, every third world country in the world today outperforms us in every way possible and in every way imaginable. We are blessed to be the recipients and heirs of the greatest efforts to achieve a universal commonwealth as well as the greatest experiment in self-governance ever seen on earth, coupled with the greatest ever system of regulated capitalism that has rocketed us to the heights of world dominance. Yet we are stupid enough to succumb to the exact problems that were exploited by every fascist dictator the world has ever known, rather than work together in a spirit of cooperation.
God help us.
You don’t have the resources to garner the Pulitzer Prize for Investigatory Journalism, but you would have my vote for Explanatory Journalism. Sadly it will take something more than informed journalists and their somewhat more than liberal readers to save our nation today. We are in extreme danger.
Some of us just believe that we will all be okay. Well… That sounds nice. But it’s not going to happen without republican politicians playing good cop, nice cop. I don’t have the nerve to ask you what you predict for the future. But I will join with you in fighting the monster Trump, his greedy and evil cohorts and minions, and most of all, the relentlessly stupid and feckless U.S. electorate that thinks that they can just piss off the next democratic candidate, HRC, as if none of this really mattered whatsoever.
How stupid does one have to be to believe all of the lies about HRC? Don’t answer that.
Stupidity is our greatest enemy. In this way, every third world country in the world today outperforms us in every way possible and in every way imaginable. We are blessed to be the recipients and heirs of the greatest efforts to achieve a universal commonwealth as well as the greatest experiment in self-governance ever seen on earth, coupled with the greatest ever system of regulated capitalism that has rocketed us to the heights of world dominance. Yet we are stupid enough to succumb to the exact problems that were exploited by every fascist dictator the world has ever known, rather than work together in a spirit of cooperation.
God help us.
Clinton was not elected. Lets worry about Putin's relationship with Trump.
ReplyDeleteLooks like the TOM comment was deleted by the proprietor, as well as the proprietor's response. Why remove one Luke comment but leave the other? (you know, given the fact that TOM and Luke are the same person).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Clinton WAS elected but the election was stolen by Kris Kobach. That Trump is going to be "president" really is cause to worry. Big time. BTW, that ex-Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson is going to be Trump Secretary of State likely means the sanctions preventing Exxon from doing their $720 million deal with Russia will be lifted... the merger of Private business interests with those of the State... the definition of fascism. Although this might be cause for Luke the blog troll to write "ha ha ha ha ha".
Good Morning Dervish,
ReplyDeleteGetting ready for church. I was just going to say hello over at your place. So did Dave ever respond to the story about voter suppression? I first read about it over at the Field Negro. Thank you for documenting that story so well.
Luke and Tom. I mean if they stay on topic and don't say anything rude, I give them a pass. But then they always seem to go off the rails and leave something really nasty and stupid in comments awaiting.
Here's my post for today so you don't have to steal it SCUMBAG!!
ReplyDeleteWho Will Fight?
Mrs. Clinton did not attend the woman's march , but she thanked them.
Sen. Warren voted for Dr. Ben Carson. A vote that cannot be defended.
Grass roots street protests with no input from Democratic leadership are happening everyday.
Democratic leadership has decided to pick and choose their fights with president Trump and the Republican majority. As I wrote before, this is a constant fight, not a situation where we can pick and choose our fights with the president, or the Republicans.
It's obvious the only way to stop Trump's actions is in the courts. Every order, every piece of legislation, every action must be confronted in a court of law.
Republicans could care less about legality and neither does the president. Much of what the president has already signed, is unconstitutional.
Immigration officials started arresting travelers today. Without Democratic leadership protesters started showing up at airports and civil liberty attorneys brought a demand of stopping that action. Trump's ban on immigration plan has been frozen by a judge, and that is a nationwide order. Legal action stopped Trump's unconstitutional order.
That's not the end of it, it only freezes actions until the court can have a full hearing on the matter.
Democrats are not pushing back against Trump's orders, or his nominees, or his legislative plans. Two Republicans are the loudest (McCain and Graham) protesters against Trump and the most public.
Good for the protesters! Bad for the Democratic leaders, again they are missing in action. I guess they are sitting somewhere drawing pictures of Trump as Hitler and using verbal hate towards Trump, which means nothing.
Get the lawyers ready to bring these unconstitutional presidential orders into a court. We cannot count on Democratic elected officials to do anything. They, like most of their supporters are to busy crying and spreading hate.
Nice commentary Luke. Does not make a helluva lotta sense in the real world. But I do agree. Only the courts can check the insane actions of Trump. I think that democrats are just playing a waiting game right now. They don't have the numbers to punish Trump with corrective legislation.
DeleteThank you for this timely reminder of a truth which must not be forgotten. When I think of your great-grandfather, I usually remember the amazing film, The Pianist from 2002, which detailed the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto in which 400,000 Jews were confined to a district only about 3.4 km2. I thought I would look into whatever parallels I could find between what occurred in Warsaw and Prague. Similarities abounded with stark differentiation. The Jewish quarter in Prague had been called a ghetto for hundreds of years, but the Jews had lived there in relative harmony with the other citizens of Prague. The Warsaw ghetto was created in 1940 and even walled off with a crude brick wall topped with barbed wire. Sections of the wall still stand. See the Wikipedia entries about this ghetto for photographs to chill the heart. Both cities saw the same hardship, confiscation, forced emigration and mass extermination. Ultimately Jews were loaded on trains to be taken to the concentration camps. This article from the holocaust research project sheds some light on the conditions in Prague at that time. Excerpted here:
ReplyDeleteIn March 1939 Konstantin von Neurath was appointed Reichsprotektor of the Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren (Bohemia and Moravia). He instituted German laws controlling the press and abolished political parties and trade unions, ordered a harsh crack-down on protesting students in October and November 1939, but he was regarded as insufficiently rigorous in controlling Czech resistance. In September 1941 relieved from day-to-day powers and later replaced by Reinhard Heydrich.
On 21 June 1939 Neurath issued a decree excluding Jews from economic life of the Protectorate and forcing them to register their assets. Jewish companies were to be taken over by German Treuhander who would supervise their sale or “aryanisation”. The day after the publication of Neurath’s decree, the SS Jewish expert, Adolf Eichmann arrived in Prague, establishing himself in a confiscated Jewish villa in Stresovice.
Eichmann headed “The Central Office for Jewish Emigration” ( Zentralstelle fur Judische Auswanderung), an SS bureaucracy for robbing and expelling Jews which had first been established in Vienna. Eichmann’s permanent representative in Prague was SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Hans Gunther. Although a decree by the Reichsprotektor of 21 July 1939 subordinated Gunther to the Security Police Commander of the Protectorate SS- Brigadefuhrer Walter Stahlecker, he was solely answerable to Eichmann.
A central Jewish authority was promoted to facilitate the operations of the Central Emigration Office. In March 1940 the Jewish Communities of the Protectorate were subordinated to the Jewish Religious Council of Prague, headed by Dr. Emil Kafka and his deputy Jakub Edelstein, which had been created in the wake of the Nazi occupation.
This organization was now expected to register the Jewish population of Bohemia / Moravia and raise funds for emigration. At a meeting with Dr. Kafka in the summer of 1939 Eichmann demanded the expulsion of 70,000 Jews within a year. When Kafka protested there was no money for such a massive undertaking, Eichmann threatened to clear Prague street by street, sending 300 a day to the concentration camp at Dachau where “they would be very keen on emigration.”
In August 1939 Jews were segregated in Prague restaurants and prohibited from using public baths and swimming pools. The outbreak of the Second World War brought an avalanche of new decrees aimed against Jews. A dawn to dusk curfew was imposed on all Jewish households and their radios were confiscated.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of 1940 Jews were forbidden to withdraw more than 1,500 crowns a week from their bank accounts, which were not allowed to earn interest. Gold, silver platinum and jewellery were to be sold at a discount to Hadega, a special company dealing in Jewish property established at 32 Hibernergasse.
Jews were excluded from the movie and theatre industries, they were restricted to the back of the second car on Prague trams and excluded from all hotels except the Fiser and the Star. In April 1940 the Protectorate government issued a comprehensive law banning Jews from public service and all social, cultural and economic organizations, Jewish doctors could still practice but only in Jewish community.
Jews were ordered to report to the local police and have their identity papers stamped with a distinctive J. In August 1940 Jewish children were excluded from Czech schools and in October 1940 Jews were denied access to a wide range of rationed goods and banned from certain areas of Prague, including the Vltava embankment.
In January 1941 their driving licences were confiscated and Jews were forced out of their apartments in the best areas of Prague, and moved into old tenements in the First, Second and Fifth districts of the city. Their flats were taken over by Nazi officials.
Discrimination against the Jewish community culminated with the decree of 1 September 1941 ordering all Jews to wear the Yellow Star of David.
On 27 September 1941 SS- Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich the head of the Nazi security police, was named acting Reichsprotektor, replacing Neurath, and one of his first acts in Prague was to close the remaining synagogues and all other Jewish centres of worship.
On 10 October 1941 Heydrich, Karl Hermann Frank and Eichmann met to plan deportations from the Protectorate to Lodz, Minsk and Riga, and the establishment of the ghetto in Theresienstadt.
Six days later the first train containing 1,000 Jews from Prague for Lodz in Poland, between 16 October and 3 November five transports containing nearly 5,000 men, women and children were dispatched to the Lodz ghetto.
It is not in the least surprising, yet incredibly brave that your ancestor was willing to stand up for what he believed by joining with the resistance and unwilling to simply stand idly by as his countrymen who had peaceably allowed the German-speaking portion of Czechoslovakia to simply be annexed by Nazi Germany.
Is the forced deportation of undocumented Americans a baby step in the same direction? Will ICE detention centers resemble camps more and more? Will we too build a wall like the one around the Warsaw Ghetto? Or the wall that cut Berlin in half? Not if we resist with our every resource.
Nice of you to delete my post then put it back up with your ridiculous Trump is Hitler comparison. Where are Trumps concentration camps? How many people has Trump murdered? Where is Trump's Warsaw Ghetto? Is Trump forcing Muslims to wear clothes with a Muslin emblem so everyone can identify Muslims? Has Trump sent his troops to burn Muslim businesses? Has any Muslim been arrested just for being Muslim? Where are the railroad cars full of Muslims being sent to concentration camps? Your "Chicken Little" paranoia proves you to be the lying jerk you are.
ReplyDelete