FOR DISARRAY, LOOK TO BARRY, NOT DEMS
BLUE WAVES LOVE DIVERSITY
Democrats in disarray? Only in conservatives’ fever dreams. Do all Democrats agree? Not any more than all Republicans agree.
Headlines like “Nancy Pelosi and the Young Progressives” may sound like the newest spin-off of “The Young and the Restless,” but even the most liberal and restless among us can count.
At the moment, Democrats control only one half of one branch of our federal government, and despite the impressive gain in 2018, we still have a weakness — and will until the next election.
We are the party of ideas, from grandly visionary to compromising, while the GOP most closely resembles a party of cruelty. And under Trump, it’s a party of chaos.
Don’t let the Trumpites yelling “Dem disarray” fool you, as their only real hope is to make Democrats look as foolish and slavish to cult as the Republicans are.
Speaker Pelosi says it well: We are a diverse party. And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who with her three fellow freshmen representatives is bravely outspoken, also says it well: “I was elected here to do a job. But I also respect the fact that she has to do hers,” referring to Pelosi.
What both are saying, without saying exactly these words, is that we’re watching democracy in action.
Would many of us like to see Pelosi swing a little harder at Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell? Absolutely.
Would many of us like to see AOC pick her battles more judiciously? Absolutely.
Would — more than anything — many of us like to see another and bigger blue wave in 2020? You bet. And we’re thinking Pelosi and the Young Progressives will manage to team up to achieve exactly that.
TALK TO LAWMAKERS ABOUT BARRY
While we watched with fear as the wicked rains and winds of Hurricane Barry tore through the Gulf Coast, we could not help but recall the words of the 2018 National Climate Assessment: “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization.”
Each day — like this weekend — the growing dangers of that man-forced change becomes more apparent.
Concentrations of heat-trapping gases from the industrial age have reached levels unseen in our atmosphere for more than 3 million years. Scientists say that new and growing accumulation is driving our climate volatility and extreme weather events, and we are now living in the warmest period in the history of modern civilization.
Globally, the last five years have been the warmest in about 140 years of record-keeping. That heat — on the land, in the oceans and in the air — is stoking more and stronger storms and hurricanes, rainfall and floods, drought and wildfires. All the while, it is increasing sea level rise and polar ice melt.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey on the Texas Gulf Coast set a U.S. record for the most rain to come down in a single storm. In 2018, California suffered through its deadliest, most destructive fire season, after enduring its worst drought on record. Ice losses from Antarctica, which have tripled since 2012, are causing sea levels to rise faster today than at any time in the last quarter century. It’s no wonder America’s number of extreme weather-related events costing more than $1 billion a year has sharply risen since 1980.
How many mosts, hottests, highests, strongests do we need before we decide — collectively and individually — to insist our government stop denying not just the facts of science but the facts of pain and loss and cost?
Taking a stand and making necessary changes will create and save jobs, not snuff them. Forbes in April reported: “The renewable energy industry has become a major U.S. employer. E2’s recent Clean Jobs America report found nearly 3.3 million Americans working in clean energy — outnumbering fossil fuel workers by 3-to-1.”
That’s not what fossil fuel industry lobbyists are telling Congress. But it is a message Americans can deliver to their senators and representatives. Don’t let them think you don’t know. Make them know you do.
ON EPSTEIN, ACOSTA AND ICE
Gosh — for whom should we feel the most pity: Jeffrey Epstein, charged again with child sex crimes, or former Secretary Alexander Acosta, who thought he had Trump’s confidence on Thursday only to wake Friday and learn it was time to tell the media he would resign for giving Epstein a sweetheart deal on similar sex crimes in 2008?
We think they both are getting some — only some — of their just desserts.
Trump praised Acosta on Friday morning as the secretary announced his resignation: “He was — he’s a tremendous talent, he’s a Hispanic man. He went to Harvard, a great student. And in so many ways I just hate what he’s saying now, because we’re going to miss him.”
That Hispanic mention might have reminded America that ICE deportation raids were to start Sunday in 10 cities.
Beware. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes mistakes sometimes, according to the New York Times and data obtained by the Cato Institute and the ACLU. From 2006 to 2017 ICE wrongfully detained more than 3,500 U.S. citizens in Texas alone. Even in Rhode Island, ICE issued 462 detainers for people listed as U.S. citizens over a 10-year period. And from 2017 to 2019, ACLU data showed that law enforcement detained 420 citizens in Florida. Some, though they are citizens, remain in detention.