2017 Feb 8^th

Trump met with sheriffs and chiefs of police today and he continued his lies about the awful dangers the country faces. He claimed that the murder rate is the highest it has been in 47 years. That is a lie. The murder rate is, in fact, lower than it has been in years and continues to decline.

On Monday, Trump accused “the very, very dishonest press,” of covering up terrorist attacks around the world. His staff promised to release a list of them. What the White House came up with was full of typos and questionable examples of “under reported” terrorism. It cited 78 cases, including “two killed and one wounded in a knife attack at a hostel frequented by Westerners” in Queensland, Australia. The young woman, Mia  Ayliffe-Chung was killed by a knife wielding psychotic who also killed Tom Jackson, an Australian who tried to come to her aid. Mia’s parents have written to Trump enraged that he should use their daughter’s death at the hands of a psychotic man as part of his political agenda. Their letter will probably not be mentioned by Kellyanne Conway in her next TV appearance.

Trump continues to pound away at the awful and dangerous nature of life in America. The more awful he can convince his followers that life is here, the more they will believe they must be saved from it, and of course as he has said, only he can save them. Perhaps this tendency to paranoia is built into our genetic code; perhaps our more fearful early ancestors were more likely to survive and so this paranoia has been built into us.

Shift gears here: Last night, in an effort to publicize Jeffery Sessions past bigotry, Senator Elizabeth Warren began reading a letter sent to the Senate 30 some years ago by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King. Sessions at the time was a candidate for a federal judgeship and this letter pointed out some of Session’s racist statements. Sessions was not confirmed by the Senate and Mrs. King’s letter might have helped defeat him. Her letter is in the senate record.

Now Sessions is one of two Alabama senators, a member of the privileged club that rejected him years ago for a federal judgeship. The club’s rules do not permit any club member to say anything derogatory about another club member…at least not on the senate floor. Mrs. King’s letter had a number of derogatory things to say about Sessions and so an objection was raised to Senator Warren’s reading of that letter. The objection was not based on any falsehoods in the letter, just that the letter was derogatory…and it was derogatory. Senator Warren was not permitted to continue reading the letter, This is in spite of the fact that the letter’s contents are already in the senate record. Now she is not permitted to speak in the senate at all regarding Session’s confirmation. McConnell, the Republican leader of the senate, had effectively silenced his colleague for reading a letter about Sessions that was entirely permissible to read on the floor of the senate until Sessions became a senator, and then Sessions became immune from such criticism.

Well no, he is not entirely immune. Today four male senators took up the fight; they read from Mrs. King’s letter and Senator McConnell did not object, did not make any attempt to silence these male senators. I know that McConnell is supposed to be a very astute political operator but this kind of overt sexist behavior will be powerfully energizing to women generally and women represent at least half of all the voters. Thanks Mitch!