Tragedy in Sri Lanka, Impeachment (?), Butterfly Update, Immigration Solution, Two Great Columns and a Song to Sing

Sri Lanka Massacre … Echo of Outrageous Behavior in the Name of God

There’s nothing wrong with believing in God in whatever manner one chooses.  Organized religions offer a vast menu of choices in ways to do this.  Even available is a basic belief in some sort of original “power” or “creator” of the universe in which we live, or even the denial of the existence of any deity whatsoever, which in itself can be a kind of faith. 

Muslim extremits attacked churches
in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, killing hundreds of people

But one thing is for certain. “God” … or whatever religious choice one may make … does not sanction, approve of, authorize nor welcome acts of violence by its believers against those who believe other than the way they do. Anyone’s “God” is a creator and not a destroyer!  

And going a bit further, “clergy” (if one's "faith" has such leaders) should tend to their own flocks and out of respect for what others believe (or choose not to believe), should not criticize nor attempt to convert them.  That too can lead to violence on the part of their followers!   Parts of any “holy” books which say otherwise  are to be condemned and that includes parts if the Bible and of the Koran.

Certain passages, despite any historical religious significance they might have, do not have pertinence today.  Clergy should take note of this and have the courage to say it.  If they do not, they share the guilt of perpetrators of those acts, who, whatever faith they profess to follow, represent evil, and this is doubly so when that belief is tied to or masks a secular cause.

Jack Lippman

Impeachment –   Fuhgeddaboudit! 

It is a certainty that the Democrats have enough votes in the House of Representatives to pass Articles of Impeachment regarding the President.  All that is required there is a simple majority.  In the Senate, however, a two-thirds vote is needed to convict the President, finalizing his removal from office.  That means that, assuming all 45 Democratic Senators and the two Independent Senators vote to convict, at least 20 more votes are needed. 

These 20 votes would have to come from among the 53 Republican Senators. Twenty-two of these Republican seats are up for re-election in 2020.  Therefore, it is very safe to assume that fact eliminates their 22 votes because, in their re-election races, these Senators will not give up the votes of Trump supporters in their states.

That leaves 31 Republican Senators, none of whom are up for re-election in 2020, from which to gather the 20 additional votes needed for impeachment.  Most are strong conservatives, blindly loyal to their party, and highly unlikely to support impeachment.  Therefore, any talk of impeachment by Democrats is a waste of time and energy.  A simpler road to getting rid of "Cheatin' Donald" would be his defeat at the polls in 2020, 

and his eventual criminal indictment once his cloak of Presidential immunity is removed.  Material in the Mueller Report is sufficient for that. 

(The only way that this picture might change, moving at least 20 G.O.P. Senators to join with the Democrats in voting for impeachment, is for upcoming Congressional hearings to reveal hitherto unknown behavior and acts on the part of “Cheatin’ Donald” so reprehensible and indefensible that even Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and most of all, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, will become strong advocates of impeachment.  That is extremely unlikely.  Don’t bet on it happening.) So, Fuhgeddaboudit!

Meanwhile, Democrats should concentrate on those issues which can make things better for most Americans:

1.    better health care,

2.    better educational opportunities,

3.    better job opportunities,

4.    better consumer protection,

5.    better financial oversight of money matters,

6.    tax reform to preserve Social Security and Medicare, and

7.  repairing and improving our nation’s infrastructure to provide better transportation, roads, power, water and recreational options.

As for “Cheatin’ Donald,” who is now busy figuring out how to obstruct Congress, and get the courts to go along with him (a distinct possibility), it’s best to “Fuhgeddaboud – him” and concentrate on the paragraph in blue directly above.  Attacking him is like punching a pillow.  He is insulated by his lies and those of his acolytes.

JL

Two Excellent Times Columns - Krugman and Dowd

Back on April 18, the New York Times included a column by Paul Krugman which poked at the heart of what is increasingly becoming the crux of a problem in our economy, the inequality in the distribution of our nation’s wealth.  When the owners of a company have an income far in excess of 300 times what his or her typical employee earns, it is time to start worrying.  (And what is worse, I might add, is when the business involved is one dealing in “money” such as banking or investments, rather than in the goods or non-financial services which add to the nation’s wealth. All they do is merely manipulate money.)  Although Krugman doesn’t go that far, (which I do) I believe such inequities ultimately feed revolutionary sentiments, for better or for worse, among the population. They are the fuel which drives the rise of despots.  Read this column by CLICKING HERE:

And now that you’re into “clicking” on links, take a look at Maureen Dowd’s April 20 New York Times column, in which she praises former White House Counsel Don McGahn for telling the truth about Donald Trump in the Mueller Report but also points out that he was instrumental in guaranteeing decades more of a conservative, anti-regulatory, Supreme Court by promoting Gorsuch’s and Kavanaugh’s appointments to the Court.  The moral, if any, I might add, is “be wary of Republicans, even ones that might occasionally behave honestly.”  CLICK HERE FOR THE ARTICLE.

JL

News from the Butterfly Garden

While there has been little resurgence of the beautiful Monarch butterflies, which are having trouble nation-wide, other species are now appearing occasionally in the garden.  The key is having the “host plants’ there on which they can lay their eggs, producing caterpillars which eventually molt into cocoons and finally, burst open, releasing the butterfly.  I’ve seen many Monarch caterpillars, but few if any reach the butterfly stage, even after voraciously devouring the leaves from my milkweed, their host plant.  

But otherwise, here’s the story:

Two of my Sulphur
Butterfly Caterpillars

My passionflower (passiflora suberosa and passiflora incarnata) vines have been successfully hosting gulf fritillary and broadwing zebra butterflies.  The dutchman’s pipevine is occasionally hosting the black, yellow fringed polydamas swallowtail butterfly.  Finally, the senna (cassia) bush I put in a few months ago has successfully hosted the garden’s initial appearance of the orange-barred sulphur butterfly’s caterpillar and one has actually produced a beautiful butterfly seen last week in the garden (or perhaps she was a visitor, attracted by the plant, and which laid the eggs from which the caterpillars hatched).

JL

My Southern Border Solution

Have you read about the private armed militias patrolling the Southern border and actually capturing refugees seeking asylum?   This is crazy.  It’s time to repeal the Second Amendment and arrest these apparently well-financed nut jobs who feel it justifies their taking the law into their own hands.  If you examine what their leadership says, theoretically, they are willing to militarily oppose the Government of the United States when they disagree with its policies.  They believe the Constitution allows them to do so. They are criminals.  And while on the subject of the Southern Border, here is my take on what has to be done to handle the immigrant crisis there, and it cannot be denied that there is one.

Historically, with some notable exceptions, the United States welcomes those seeking asylum from a country where their lives and existence are in danger.  Many approach our Southern border for that purpose.  Some wait in line at legal points of entry to state their case for asylum and others request asylum when captured by our Border Patrol entering elsewhere.  I believe those in the latter category should be moved to legal points of entry and instructed to wait in line behind those already there.  

Immigrants in line at Southern border entry point

Solution rests with Congress

To expedite this process, Congress must allocate the funds necessary to establish and staff many more additional facilities to promptly process those seeking asylum and appoint the many additional judges needed to hear their pleas and adjudicate their cases.  This entire process should take no more than a week; therefore, reasonable facilities (not jails nor cages) for temporarily housing these immigrants during that period need not be extensive.

Of course, families should not be separated, and immigrants should not, as is the present practice, be admitted pending a court date, which might be months if not years away.  Often, once admitted, they disappear into our population and are lost track of.   No more than a week in a comfortable holding facility is not too great of an imposition to ask of these immigrants.

At points of entry other than on our Mexican Border, this process is much quicker and does not require housing, and ultimately, that is the way it will be there too, once entry facilities are expanded.  Historically, immigrants waited for admission at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, and before that, at Castle Garden, so a week’s delay at our Southern border should not be a great imposition.  But Congress must act quickly with the funding to expand the physical, staffing and judicial aspects or our immigration process. Delay only makes the problem worse.

The cost of doing this properly would be much less than the cost of building and maintaining walls or fences along our borders, the effectiveness of which is questionable. (Claims of the successes of the walls in Israel and the cold-war wall in Berlin are not good comparisons. They were in mostly urban settings.  Our Southern border is mostly rural, desert and mountainous.)

Finally, our government should attack the reasons these immigrants are seeking asylum through humanitarian and diplomatic means in the countries from which they come, and all of the above ideas should be promoted on a bi-partisan basis in Congress.

JL

A Musical Interlude

Here are the lyrics of a song I heard the other evening.  It is reminiscent of the kind of folk music with political messages popular in the middle of the last century:

The Ballad of “Cheatin’ Donald”

Sung while strumming a guitar (or at least pretending to).  Chorus is sort of like “Davie Crockett.” Verse is something like “Sweet Betsy from Pike.”  (And in today’s musical environment, it might fit in with rap or hip hop as well.)

Oh, he cheats on his taxes,

He cheats on his wives,

But the hammer of justice never arrives,

He don’t pay his bills,

He’ll fight you in court,

When you try to collect, the amount he wuz short.

Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game

Do things his way,

Or you’re right out the door,

The rule of law, he prefers to ignore,

To Liberty’s gates,

He’ll add ste-el locks,

That’s what he learned, from watching Fox.

Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game

To keep his guys happy,

He’s got all the tools,

So long as they let him, he makes all the rules,

They buy into

His big song and dance,

Blaming their pain on those damn immigrants.

Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game

The problems of plain folks,

He’d good at ignorin’,

Like health costs which are, eternally soarin’,

But give him a despot,

With ty-rannical power,

To be his buddy and b’fore whom to cower.

Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game

He pours it on thick,

Like with real estate,

Though it involves, our nation’s fate,

But sooner or later,

Our laws he’ll obey,

Or get himself locked up at, Gwan ton a mo Bay.

Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game

Oh, he’ll cheat on his taxes,

He’ll cheat on his wives,

Till the day that hammer, of justice arrives,

I don’t give a damn, what will be his fate,

But I only hope that, it won’t come too late! 

Cheatin’, Cheatin’ Donald, a pro at the old con game

JL

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