Almost two weeks ago, ICE Gestapo Secret Police Agents questioned children practicing little league baseball in Riverside Park in New York.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onHUulxUw0k
According to the children's coach, Yeoman Wilder, a person with a Masters Degree in Law, said six ICE agents came to the park and questioned the children, all American citizens whose parents are immigrants.
When Wilder saw the questioning begin, he instructed the kids to go in the back of the batting cages and told the ICE agents what they were doing was Unconstitutional.
Wilder commented to a reporter:
"I never in my life thought this was going to happen on the Upper West Side in New York City."
Unfortunately, a lot of people across the country, after seeing ICE in action are saying the same first part of the above sentence that Mr. Wilder did: "I never in my life thought this was going to happen."
Only two of the six children attended the next practice because the parents of the other four feared what might happen if they went.
Going down to Florida, a Congressional Delegation was finally permitted to inspect, albeit under supervision and without access to the detainees, the detention center (concentration camp) known as Alligator Alcatraz.
Still even though the federal authorities tried to control the "inspection," the delegation saw enough (cell areas with three toilets for 32 people) and heard enough (one person screaming he was an American citizen) to make people wonder if the Trump MAGA-Fascist-White Nationalist Regime was creating the modern Andersonville, the name of the Confederate Prisoner of War Camp where the people held were horribly mistreated.
Recent reporting has revealed that about three quarters of the inmates at the Alligator Alcatraz Concentration Camp have no criminal record.
Again, this is bullshit and the people need to rise up and vote out all the people that have supported these crimes against humanity.
One of the reasons Democrats like Vice President Kamala Harris did not fare as well in the 2024 elections, especially confounding given the poor, treasonous, and criminal track record of Mr. Trump both during and after his first term, was their apparent inability to connect with largely disengaged voters who felt, despite the data, the Democrats were not on their side.
Voters in this group, because many of them work many hours a week, did not have the time to hear the many instances President Biden say he recognized times were hard for some people, that the programs he helped pass like the Infrastructure, CHIPS, and Inflation Reduction Laws would eventually benefit them, and he was working on other solutions to lift them up.
They also did not hear Vice President Harris's proposals including an affordability agenda for first time homebuyers and families.
They did however, listen to and, despite the first term performance of the Liar in Chief Trump, believe his misinformation about hordes of criminal illegal immigrants in the streets, his claims that Democrats cared about transgenders more than everyone else, and his false promises about bringing prices down and end the war in Ukraine on Day One.
Unfortunately, this is a trend that has existed for decades with voters, again despite the track record, believing the Republicans, despite actual GDP and jobs data, are better on the economy, law and order (even with a convicted felon and traitor as their leader,) and, despite actual deportation numbers and proposals to solve the issue, immigration.
Getting the truth and right message through so that it registers with all voters, well informed or otherwise, is the paramount challenge Democrats face going into the 2025, 2026, and 2028 elections.
A good sign is that Democrats are faring well in special elections so far this year as discontent with Mr. Trump's policies and actions are reaching fever pitch.
That said, Democrats still need to break through the layers of Trump and MAGA mis and disinformation to pull voters that should support them back into the fold.
Over the last several weeks, New York Representative Tom Suozzi and Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego both issued similar advise to Democrats on improving their messaging game, recommending that they promote the aspirational and their commitment to helping people thrive in the Middle Class and beyond, achieving the American Dream.
They also emphasized the need for Democrats to convey a strong message on border security and immigration reform.
Shortly after writing an article on this subject for the Wall Street Journal following the Primary Victory of Zohran Mamdani, Representative Suozzi appeared on Morning Joe and conveyed that Democratic leaning voters feel the party does not hear them when it comes to their economic anxiety.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vRg7H9oVLg
Speaking on what voters feel, Suozzi said:
"If you ask the American people, what are the issues you care about the most? They'll say number one, the economy, number two, immigration number three taxes, number four crime, and number five health care. If you ask those same people, What's the Democrats agenda, they'll say choice, LGBTQ protections, health care a little bit across over there, protecting Democracy and climate change. Those are all important issues, but that's not what everybody's talking about every night when they're talking about how am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to address the economic problems facing my family. So, we need to do a better job as Democrats talking about these kitchen table issues. These bread and butter issues about the economy. What are we going to do to raise the minimum wage? What are we going to do to build unions? What are we going to do to reassure Industries in America that are going to provide jobs that people who are whether you're a right-wing conservator or a left-wing progressive? Everybody in America should believe that if I'm willing to work hard. In return for working hard, I make enough money so I can buy a house, educate my kids, pay for health insurance, and retire one day without being scared. That used to be the American Dream. That's what slipped away from us. We have to propose solutions as to how we're going to get back to that place. Hard work gets rewarded with a decent life that's America, and we have to get back to that basic, simple, fundamental message. "
Senator Gallego, the person that comfortably beat Trump's handpicked candidate Kari Lake by eight points while Harris lost Arizona to Trump, conveyed a similar message to Democrats in an interview with Dan Koh on The People's Cabinet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92s0Ace_Mmw
On some Democrats tone deafness to voters concerns, Gallego said:
"Democrats need to understand that we can't be out of the norm of where the normal voter is right, and what does that mean. Like it means a lot of things, but the most important thing is listen to what the fuck... listen to what's going on, listen to the voters, and there's some things you're going to hear that that would have given you a clue what was happening...Arizona is a very swing state and what we heard were voters that were unhappy about the cost of living and the border, and they were consistently saying it over and over again. And I think a lot of politicians trying to be pollyannish about what they were hearing, instead of actually hearing it and trying to convince them, like, 'Oh yeah, no, I'm good on this stuff. I'm going to fix it, or like, hey, you're right, we messed up. Here's how we're gonna fix it.' You know, at the end of the day, voters get to vote. And if you don't give them, at least some enough of what they want, they're going to go look for something else."
Recognizing that the Democrats and the Biden/Harris Administration passed "good bills" that helped the people, the problem, according to Gallego was the benefits of that legislation had not "reached" them yet, they were not "feeling" it, and the Democrats did not, despite Biden and Harris clearly saying it for those that paid attention, adequately connect with voters who do not have time to watch CNN and read the papers and say 'We know how you feel, this is what we have done to help so far, and this is what we still want to do for you if you trust us with your vote again.'
On the voters that went for both him and Trump, Gallego conveyed that his campaign took a two tiered approach. One aspect of his campaign was tailored to reaching out to the informed voter while another strategy emphasized connecting with what the Junior Arizona Senator called the "Vibe" voter, commenting:
"The Gallego- Trump voter is, you know, largely apolitical, They don't watch TV shows. They don't read the news. They don't actually follow politics, and we designed an early campaign for that voter, not thinking they were Gallego-Trump voters but we knew that they were these people that were worried about the economy. Worried about the border, but they're not doing research. They're not going to Google my name and vote on it. They're going to be largely listening to other people or just in general the vibes of what the hell is going on in the campaign or the election season. So we tried to essentially run a campaign that was obviously going to the educated voter and also the same time a campaign that that can break through into the kind of the the people that just vote on pure vibes."
Senator Gallego also asserted that Democrats need to do better with reaching out to men in all demographics and age groups in promoting programs that help them achieve higher education and good paying jobs.
He tied those remarks to, like Suozzi, the party's need to be "aspirational" and get back more forcefully to promoting policies and themes designed to foster an expanded middle class and upward mobility to higher wealth and security.
In Gallego's words:
"Most Americans want to get rich whether it's men or women. We don't really talk to people's aspirations anymore. Especially for me, the son of immigrants. This is why my family came in this country so they can be successful and be rich. I was trying to talk to my colleagues about this. They're, like, 'so we shouldn't attack Elon Musk.' Like, no. Here's how this works. People want to be rich, but they want it to be fair. If Elon Musk is kind of screwing the system up, they're not going to give them forgiveness because he's rich, right? But like, we have to be the party that is going to say, like, yeah, you may be starting at the bottom rung of life, but you know, we're gonna make sure that you have the opportunity to succeed to be rich to buy a house. We really can't be ashamed of of being the party of upward mobility because we have been forever. This is why we have we emphasize public schools like doing a lot of programs in public programs to help people out of poverty, but we never say what the reason is right. The reason is because we want you to have a chance to be wealthy. To be secure it. It went from that to we're the party of equity, which is great, but what's the goal of equity. What's the overall outcome of that, right? So, why do I want to provide food stamps? Well, of course. I want people to be to not go hungry. It's also because I want you to have a chance to fucking study, not worry about, foods and you take care of your children. It's all these things that we just aren't kind of like connecting the last node to."
It should be noted that Senator Gallego is taking his message across the country including an early August trip to Iowa.
Commenting on the importance and urgent relevance of the Suozzi and Gallego messages, Kate deGruyter, Senior Communications Director at Third Way, offered:
"The central challenge of the Trump era is not to turn blue seats bluer, but to turn red and purple seats blue. That makes Senator Gallego and Congressman Suozzi smart voices for Democrats to listen to on how to reconnect with voters we lost and rebuild a party that can compete everywhere. Democrats must recognize that for most voters in the middle, their top frustration and priority was prices that felt out of control and a border that felt out of control. Leaders who were willing to push back on DC-based groups minimizing those concerns and speak plainly about standing for order and opportunity were rewarded. And Democrats must focus their fights on the Trump Administration’s actions that are driving up costs and jeopardizing the safety and security of Americans, their families, and communities.
Building back trust is possible, and the model for Democrats is in a new generation of tough moderates who know how to flip seats and win in the red and purple places that make majorities."
Democrats have the policies and message to win back the voters they lost in the last election. Voters need to remember that the Democrats are the party of an expanded middle class, upward mobility quality health care for all, superior public education for all, a living wage, free community college, paid apprenticeships, good paying blue and green collar jobs, affordable housing and rent, expanded earned income and child tax credits, real and legal border security and comprehensive immigration reform without masked secret police and concentration camps, and a commitment to law and order that does not reward felons by electing them President of the United States.
They have to do a better job of reaching out and connecting with voters who are not readily engaged and well informed.
They also have to do a better job of convincing these voters that, yes, they are on their side.
Representative Suozzi and Senator Gallego have good ideas on how to get that message across.
Is this country playing out aspects of the plot of the 1962 movie The Manchurian Candidate?
In that feature, Communist Intelligence Operatives from China and North Korea kidnap and brainwash an American soldier and son of an influential political couple who espouse right wing conspiracy theories like Joe McCarthy and Donald Trump only to find that they themselves are the Communist agents who use their brainwashed son to assassinate rivals to achieve power.
Fast forward today and we have a person in the White House, with his war on science and knowledge, gutting programs in clean energy and laying off staff at NASA (while also putting the Secretary of Transportation, a person with no experience in the area in charge) that will put American Manufacturing, Leadership, and Standing in the Scientific Community, Clean Energy progress, and Space Exploration behind other advanced nations, especially China, who are making leaps in clean energy and space technologies every day.
This is in addition to the MAGA Know Nothings endless quest to gut other scientific, environmental, and health research programs which have contributed to poor response times to natural disasters and a measles outbreak not seen in decades.
This is what happens when there are loyalist political hacks and Know Nothing fanatics in charge of departments (looking at you, Kristi Noem and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) that they have no business being entrusted with.
In an editorial for the New York Times, renowned columnist and author Tom Friedman, reacting to the economically suicidal and scientifically illiterate gutting of clean energy and manufacturing tax credits in the MAGA Reverse Robin Hood economic bill, wrote in the opening paragraphs of a recent editorial:
"Can you hear it — that roar coming from the East? It’s the sound of 1.4 billion Chinese laughing at us.
The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable. They have passed a giant bill that, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America’s ability to renewably generate and store electricity — through solar, wind and batteries, in particular..."
"...In sum, this dog’s breakfast of a bill — rushed through without a single congressional hearing with independent energy experts or even one scientist — is sure to put at risk billions of dollars of investments in renewable energy, mostly in Republican states, and potentially kill the jobs of tens of thousands of U.S. workers. By the way, the bill also bans for 10 years a first-ever fee on excess methane emissions from oil and gas production, a key driver of global warming.
So, in one fell swoop, this bill will make your home hotter, your air-conditioning bill higher, your clean energy job scarcer, America’s auto industry weaker and China happier. How does that make sense?"
In an interview with Blog for Arizona published today, (July 13,) Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari commented on Trump's gutting of clean energy incentives and war on science and knowledge:
"...Arizona benefited significantly from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act because of the jobs that were created, and we're going to be created in Arizona. I received many calls from labor leaders in Phoenix over the last couple of weeks in particular and even from conservative labor unions, and labor leaders representing the electricians, for example, who could not fathom why any Republican would vote for such a job killer. As I mentioned in Arizona, 27,000 manufacturing and energy jobs will be eliminated as a result of the devastating cuts to clean energy tax credits. It's a shameless giveaway to big oil and to billionaires. It dismantles clean energy, raises electricity bills, opens public lands to polluters, and guts environmental protection.”
“The cuts to federal science spending will cost every American in some way, shape, or form. The Trump Administration's proposed federal budget for the coming year calls for deep cuts upwards of 50 percent in some cases to the federal agencies that fund the majority of science at America's universities. Just today, there was a report that over 2000 senior staff are set to leave NASA under an agency push. 2145 employees are those in GS13 to GS15 positions...And then there's other examples that we can look at. I mean, look at what is happening in Texas right now. It's horrifying and the fact that the Trump Administration earlier this year decided to cut funding from critical agencies like NOAA, FEMA, and the National Weather Service certainly undermines our abilities to prepare for and respond to disasters, just as climate catastrophes are becoming more frequent and more severe. So, there’s a lot in terms of the war on science and knowledge that is taking place, especially under the leadership of RFK Junior as well. Another alarming recent development is that measles cases in the U.S are higher than ever.”
The Arizona Representative also suggested that the "private sector states and cities fill the void, as they have done before. This is the time to double down on clean energy, create jobs, and lead where the federal government won’t."
Senator and Astronaut Mark Kelly blasted Trump for his NASA cuts, posting on social media:
"Hey folks, I don't know if you saw this in the news this week, but Trump's planning to push over 2, 000, that's 2, 000 senior staff out of NASA. Now, what do you think would have happened if we fired 2 000 NASA leaders right before we tried to land on the moon? Probably would not have been successful. We would have lost the space race to the to the Soviets, And If this happens, we could possibly lose The space race were currently in with the Chinese, You know, it's. It's sometimes feels like Donald Trump just wants to give up American leadership in space. I'm not going to stand for. I hope you won't. I'm going to do everything I can and push back against this."
It looks as though America's adversaries like China are winning the war for the Twenty First Century and their people do not have to even break a sweat in doing it.
They have their Manchurian Candidate in the Oval Office doing their bidding either because of sheer science denying stupidity, him and his family receivingsweet financial benefitson top of or under the table, or both.
Where was Donald when Minnesota had a state funeral for former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband after they were gunned down by a far right assailant posing as law enforcement?
Playing golf of course and posting rants on social media like "WHY ARE THE DEMOCRATS ALWAYS ROOTING AGAINST AMERICA???"
No way attending a funeral and tribute to the fallen after a political assassination in a show of unity can move Donald Trump to break away from his two favorite past times: playing golf and releasing insane rants on social media.
Apparently, Mr. Trump can only be spared to spend the public dime on public appearances when they appeal to his vanity with military parades on his birthday and fly overs by stealth fighters over a bill signing on legislation whose health care and food stamp cuts will result in the killing of American People.
But taking Air Force One to speak as a unifying figure after tragedies like a political assassination or a natural disaster, that is not in his being or his interpretation of the job description.
Culturally illiterate people in the Know Nothing Science and History Denying MAGA world are up in arms because James Gunn, the director of the new Superman movie that is coming out this evening, commented in an interview with The Times:
“I mean, Superman is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost...But it’s about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.”
Gunn is right on three counts:
Superman is the story about an immigrant that achieves the American Dream.
It is a story about human kindness.
There are people who, based on the first two counts, will take offense.
Of course, the MAGA commentators on Fox are taking offense, saying Gunn is trying to "lecture to them."
Guess it should not be surprising a movie about the Immigrant who preaches kindness and achieves the American Dream would be repulsive to people in MAGA world in the same way crosses drive away vampires.
What is pathetic about MAGA worlds response is, since its first comic release in 1938, Superman has always been the story of the immigrant and refugee who makes good in America by fighting against the bad guys like Lex Luthor, the KKK and Nazis.
Come to think of it, maybe that is why some in MAGA world do not like Superman, a comic book hero created by twoJewish comic book writers who fashioned a superhero adaptation of the Moses story.
Dean Cain, an actor who played Superman in the acclaimed series "Lois and Clark" acknowledges that “We know Superman is an immigrant — he’s a freaking alien.”
However, Cain, a Trump supporter, took issue with this version of Superman saying he represents "Truth, Justice, and the Human Way," not "Truth, Justice, and the American Way."
How is the American Way not the human way?
Just saying.
This is not the first time right wing nut jobs have taken issue with major motion pictures.
In 2005, they told their associates to avoid watching Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith because they claimed that it was a subtle commentary on the foreign and War on that Terror policies of George W. Bush.
Other reactionary lunes have gone after Doctor Who when they cast a female and Gay Black Man for the role.
Meanwhile what MAGA world is doing to real immigrants in this country are not examples of law enforcement pursuing "Truth, Justice, and the American Way."
In what looked like a scene from the first Planet of the Apes movie where the Apes chase the human mutants in the crop fields, ICE forces raided and chased immigrant farmers who were working on crops in Ventura, California.
Commenting on this scene, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego wrote:
"Instead of prioritizing dangerous criminals Trump is targeting families that have been here for years picking our food. The public outcry and protests are occuring because the American public knows this is wrong."
Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari has called attention to the plight of a Phoenix woman, suffering from leukemia and apparently not receiving needed treatment in the detention center she is being held in.
Representative Ansari and many of her House colleagues, have also warned that the conditions at the Alligator Alcatraz Detention Center/Concentration Camp are far from humane.
