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Let's Play Twenty Questions
By lindamuralidharan on 2018-06-29 06:51:45
It is certainly repetitious to say that in today's world we are bombarded with information from all sides. We may or may not
want this input. It may or may not be accurate. It may or may not be helpful...either to our personal needs or to our
political understanding. I think...and thank goodness it is the era of being politically incorrect so that I ask taboo
questions....there are questions that reporters rarely ask despite apparent information overload . I think that these questions
need to be asked and asked again whenever an analyst or official or any political operative is in front of the microphone or
otherwise being interviewed. One. It is a misdemeanor to enter the United States without the appropriate approval, usually
in the form of a visa (unless you are seeking asylum). In your community what happens to people charged with a single
misdemeanor. Are they jailed? Are they jailed until bail is paid? Are there efforts and procedures in place for people to be
released on their own recognizance? Two. Since asylum seekers are not asking for an undocumented means of entering the
US..... will you be clarifying the false impressions being given in some news reports that the people whose children are
being separated from the parents are all violating a law? [caption id="attachment_ 11383" align="alignright" width="600"]
: = Texas Army National Guard
sent by Trump to guard the US border{/caption] Three. Since some news outlets are finally explaining that the level of
charge for coming into the country without papers or asylum justification is that of a misdemeanor, will our start adding
your voice to inform the public so they don't continue to think of undocumented immigrants as "illegal" or "criminals"?
Or....if your son had a backlog of 30 unpaid parking tickets and was thus issued a warrant to appear in court, would you or
your neighbors view him as a "criminal"? a "felon", perhaps? In my lexicon, a scofflaw is one thing and a criminal another.
Four. Will you research the reality on the ground which shows immigrants of all different statuses commit crimes at lower
rates than do native born Americans.? And areas of our country with high percentages of immigrants tend to have the lowest
crimes, such as New York City where crime is way down from any number of previous decades? Five. Mass shootings and
terrorist type attacks since 9/11 have been more frequent and killed more people (post 9/11) as pepetrated by people born
here than by people coming from abroad. The specific Syrian refugee camps that had asylum seekers for the US included
for emigration here only those who had been double vetted over at least two years by reliable charities, the UN, and the US.
I don't know of any terrorist attack...or even a personal grudge attack on a large scale by persons of Syrian descent (Steve
Jobs was at least half Syrian). Given this kind of reality, can you be in favor of any Muslim ban without being bigoted....or
so uninformed you need to resign from any public office immediately? Six. The vast majority of people this current
administration has been vilifying lately are actually fleeing danger at home and trying to follow the dictates of American law
on asylum seeking? Can you want zero tolerance of such people if you are not bigoted toward brown people? Or
foreigners? (Where is the push to round up undocumented Irish, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Russian, Nigerian if you have
not bought into the fictions about the folks from Mexico?) Seven. This president has tried to circumvent justice and due
process in a number of different ways, and just this week he said there ought not to be due process....I believe he meant all
the categories of immigrants crossing the border from Mexico. Can you follow and support this president and still serve the
best interests of the American people? Eight. Did you hear of the president using words like "infestation" and "animals" to
describe human beings looking for a better life? Are you aware that this kind of objectivization of people is a precursor to
ethnic cleansing? In the Ruanda/Burundi genocide, even state media was using the word "roaches" to describe the ethnic
group that was being targeted by the ethnic group that was wielding the power. Arabs have been called vermin and worse
by some Zionist politicians of Israel as a way to make it easier for Israelis to sponsor ethnic cleansing of parts of Palestine.
Are you, yourself, keen on the denial of Palestinian rights? Have you read the history of the post WWI invasion of Palestine
by Jewish extremists with the collusion (yeah, I used the word) of European powers and America, with the UK being the
primary culprit? Nine. You have a right to your opinion and perhaps you would like more foreign nations to have a say in
American governance and policy. It would be strange for you to think that since the part you are most associated with has
traditionally been paranoid about even a smidgin of a world government. Nontheless if you think this is a good idea, is
Russia you favorite partner and why? What other countries might you like to invite into our halls of power? Brazil?
Argentina? Poland? Pakistan? Australia? Would you favor a change in our constitution to allow this if you want to
continue the lead of your president. I mean president in the sense Trump is the leader of your party, and I don't hear many
Republicans saying we need to cut ties with these brutal oligarchs from Russia and elsewhere. Ten. I want to ask you why
there is so much animus against Iran from people on the right. Many countries have nuclear weapons and we especially
worry about places like Pakistan and North Korea because they have appeared to either be unstable at times or have unstable
leaders. Iran has not attacked any other country although it has just recently been drawn into armed conflict to support Shia
leadership in some places. Of course it wants to have a presence in places where Sunnis might gain an advantage but hasn't
the Us set the standard for that with the Monroe Doctrine and our efforts at hegemony in Latin America through proxy
dictators, priests, and generals? The deal to slow Iran's nuclear program was very effective and the Iranians honored their
part about 92%. Now the US has essentially broken a treaty like we have done throughout history. See Vietnam and the
many betrayals of our word to Native Americans. Some leaders may be so petty as to bear grudges from the time Iranian
students took Americans hostage. Some leaders seem to want to go to war against somebody....whether to feather their
reputations or to aggrandize further the arms industry, I don't know. As to terrorism, I doubt they terrorize (and kill)more
people than we do with our drones and in Afghanistan. [caption id="attachment_11384" align="alignright" width="157"]
Congressperson Trey Gowdy|[/caption] Eleven. Trey Gowdy spoke out at a Congressional hearing
today and attacked our Assistant Attorney General for allowing Robert Mueller to conduct an investigation of possible
cooperation with Russia in our last election and possible obstruction of justice. The Mueller investigation has already
charged some people and sent a man to prison. However much more he has to detail, this is not a particularly long
investigation at this point. It is in the interests of the country that his search be thorough. the iron is, however, that Gowdy
himself wasted tax payer dollars on a pointless and fruitless investigation of Hilary Clinton in relations to deaths in Libya.
While he was at it....haranguing the justice department, that is....he swore at least twice. Is that the role model, the type of
character we want in a federal judge? A blatant hypocrite and poor role model for kids? It is rumored he is quitting
Congress in order to be a lady in waiting for a judge's appointment by President Trump. [caption id="attachment_ 11385"
align="alignleft" width="162"] US Supreme Court[/caption] Twelve. Citizens United. Well it is
possible you did research this decision when the Supreme Court made it or sometime thereafter. It started with more or less
a misprint in a 19th Century Santa Clara County, Ca., court case. When the Supreme Court made its decision to fictitiously
call corporations people (Yes, it is Alice Through the Looking Glass) in Citizens United, it went beyond the requirements of
the case before them...which was fairly narrow....and made a sweeping activist decision to give corporations the status of
persons and thereby giving corporations many advantages in business and political campaigning that individual people don't
have. Once upon a time, Republicans yelled bloody murder and how dare there be activist judges when a decision was not
to their liking. What is our own actual position on activist judges and whether Citizens United needs to be revisited or not.
Thirteen. Barack Obama managed an economy quite well and an overall administration that had few scandals and probably
deserved a grade of 66 next to Bill Clinton's 59 and GW Bush's 35. For the latter his administration was characterized by
name calling based on some imaginary religious imagery ...e.g. axis of evil....starting two wars one of just plain vengeance
and the other based on elaborate lies and general all round incompetence. The Republicans did say that they had a goal from
day one to prevent Obama from serving a second term so heroic efforts were made to sabotage his major programs. Now we
have a Repblican who seems bent on ripping up anything associated with Obama regar less of whether or not the program or
policy is effective or good for the American people. Do you justify an approach that says things are bad ipso facto they are
associated with approval from Barack Obama? [caption id="attachment_ 11386" align="alignright" width="84"]
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell[/caption] Fourteen. Many on your side consider women having
control of their own bodies against your principles. We also live in a time when he earth is pretty much overpopulate as is
our country. In some regards it is the distribution of numbers of people that causes the most problems, but in this country
building homes that sprawl out into productive farmland and pristine forests is of considerable concern. Do you believe we
can safeguard women's health and rights while limited the population explosion by making birth control accessible to all and
by encouraging more people to adopt and foster kids? If we need more people to pay into Social Security, give the long
term undocumented workers a path to citizenship. Many already pay into Social Security via forged documents and more
would come out of the shadows if a legal path were opened up to them. Fifteen. Ronald Reagan is still considered a guru by
many in your camp. He is oft quoted for saying government is the problem, not the solution (I paraphrases). If you still
believe this, why do we have paid (directly or indirectly) government workers guarding huge unnecessary prisons and huge
numbers of military and border guards along the Mexican border? Or have you come to the realization that for some
purposes tax dollars need to be spent....perhaps on a universal basic income, perhaps in expanded Medicaid, perhaps in new
mother training programs?L _) ! Sixteen. Voting rights. If it is not for the purpose of getting more voters
likely to vote for your side, why do we keep making up stories about voter fraud and trying to purge voter rolls? And has it
ever occurred to you that if anything is actually sacred in this country it is the right to vote. Why would anyone (who has
not been brainwashed since childhood in to foolish assumptions) think it okay to take away a citizen's right in this regard? If
a person is guilty of a serious crime, incarceration may be an useful consequence. However, seeing to it that that person
can't vote while in prison or on parole or for life (varies from state to state) is absurd when you actually think about it. Aside
from the civil rights angle, I doubt there is a criminal in the world who would pull herself up short from embezzling that
company she works for for fear that wse would lose her voting privilege if she is caught. Oh...not twenty questions after all.
I will stop the list here. I will also mention that today I spoke with the very loyal aide of one of our few Republican law
makers here in Hawaii. It was good to discuss so many issues despite much disagreement. The 20 minute conversation was
polite...though spirited...throughout. We found a few areas to agree on. I hope this post brings out good exchanges of
views.
