Thank goodness the House of Representatives acted so quickly to make our country safe from anti-Semitism. If only now we can condemn the guy in office who thinks the KKK might be good people. He won’t know until he gets to know them, see? Maybe they don’t kick dogs and little children, how will we know until we ask?
The KKK could be like Kim Jong-un. Really trustworthy for the president. There’s no evidence that Kim has ever poisoned a dog or a child. Maybe an uncle or two. Do you think Americans don’t poison uncles?
I just saw a headline that said Finland’s entire cabinet resigned because they failed to come up with health care reforms. If Finland’s cabinet can resign en masse for their failures, why can’t ours? Trump’s cabinet is certainly a bigger failure overall than the cabinet of Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä.
Trump’s cabinet isn’t even trying to reform health care. Which is the bigger failure: trying and not succeeding or not trying at all?
There was an announcement a while back that the administration was going to find a way to rein in prescription drug prices. Is that really going to happen or was it just a feint to distract us from the Mueller probe? I haven’t heard any details yet.
They don’t have to resign for failing to reform health care. They could resign for any of all sorts of failures, such as the failure to protect the environment, or the failure to shut down the corrupt private prison system. Or the failure to even try to lower the excessive costs of higher education in this country and provide debt relief to former students.
There’s talk now of paying for the border wall by dipping into military pay and pensions. If that’s not fake news, I would count that as certainly a failure worthy of mass resignation. Cabinet members should be climbing over each other to get out of the cabinet room as fast as possible.
Instead of a cabinet resignation what we get in this country is a House oversight investigation, which the Republicans are saying takes away time from important legislating they could be doing. Just think of all the legislating House Republicans could be doing, right now, if only Democrats would stop exercising their power to investigate the administration long enough to go along with them in whatever they wanted to legislate.
Heck, they could do more than legislate, they could reorganize the whole government if given the chance.
Really, if it weren’t for those pesky Democrats wasting all that time and being so uncooperative, the Republicans could get a lot of useless amendments to the constitution repealed. Trump could be get elected for a third term, just like that scoundrel FDR. Poll taxes could be reinstituted. The First Amendment could be changed to start with, “Congress must guarantee the establishment of Pat Robertson’s version of Christianity.” The 26th Amendment, giving 18 year olds the right to vote, could be repealed and replaced with one that only allows rich people over 40 to vote.
I’m sure, in fact, Republicans would have no difficulty winning the Democrats over to change the bit about making no law abridging freedom of speech to add, “Unless it’s speech criticising the Israeli Government.”
It was almost 16 years ago I suggested that rather than bulldoze Rachel Corrie to death and shoot British activist Tom Handoll in the head (for trying to herd Palestinian children to safety), the Israeli officials could have handcuffed, arrested, and jailed both of them, and tried them for whatever their crimes were. When that column came out I got a three page handwritten letter calling me anti-Semitic.
Then, two and a half years later I had not learned my lesson yet, and I expressed my approval of an Israeli Supreme Court decision to inform the Israeli army that it was not OK to use Palestinians as human shields. I was told again by an alert reader that I was still very much anti-Semitic.
Which meant that the Israeli Supreme Court was also anti-Semitic at that time. Who knew? But that didn’t excuse me. I was every bit as chagrined as I should have been.
It is never permissible for any American to criticize the actions of the Israeli military, even if they are quoting criticism of the Israeli army by a branch of the Israeli government itself.
I finally got the message and I will never again say the Israeli army should not bulldoze or shoot activists or Palestinian children.
Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor who has experienced homelessness several times. He supplied the art for the first cover of Real Change in November of 1994 and has been involved with the organization ever since. This is his weekly column, Adventures in Irony, a dry verbal romp of the absurd.
Read the full March 13 - 19 issue.
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