From Pine View Farm

“That Conversation about Race” category archive

A Tune for the Times 0

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Patriot Gamers 0

Two men in pick-up flying the Stars and Bars and a Nazi flag pass a demonstration where -immigrants are flying the flags of their home countries.  One man in pick-up says to the other,

Via Job’s Anger.

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The Privatization Scam 0

And it is a scam. You can voucher on it.

(At about the eight minute mark, Emma and the crew veer off from that subject and discuss listener comments. but the part up to that is well worth a listen.)

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Making America Grate Again 0

Title:  Anne Frank's Hiding Rebuilt in New York.  Image:  Couple looking over the hiding place.  Woman says,

Click for the original image.

Aside:

On Thursday’s episode of the Bob Cesca Show, one of the participants–I forget which one–made a remark that resonated with me: that what’s happening today seems to echo the end of Reconstruction.

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Devolution 0

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Donald Trump stands in front of the Declaration of Independence saying,

Click for the original image.

America’s original sin of chattel slavery continues to take its toll.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

Writing at the Portland Press Herald, Peter Pressman and Edward A. McCulloch tell of a rhyme they are hearing. A snippet (emphasis added); follow the link for further reverberations.

Gleichschaltung was the process of the Nazi Party taking control over all aspects of pre-WWII Germany, initiated some 92 years ago.

The Nazis started with the Civil Service . . . .

____________________

*Mark Twain.

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The Past Is Prologue 0

Frame One, captioned

Image via Job’s Anger.

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The Disappeared 0

Trumpling DEI at NASA:

Those folks are diverse. Don’t admit that they exist.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

A Texas judge who was dealing with immigration case decided to visit the Texas-Mexico border. What he found was not what we’re being told. Here’s a tiny bit from his article:

What I saw in the courtroom fueled my desire to go to see it for myself. What I found was astonishingly different from the chaos often portrayed in the media and in legal circles. I saw a border that was secure, with helicopters patrolling and law enforcement officers working in an orderly process. Migrants waited for months in Mexican border towns for their turn to legally enter, going through extensive screenings, interviews and sponsor verifications. To call them “illegals” is not only misleading but dismisses the effort and legality of their actions.

Follow the link for some of the lessons he learned.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Field decodes de code.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Clearly, if we don’t talk about America’s original sin of chattel slavery, then it must not have happened.

Because that’s the way history works.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Thom is astonished. I’m not.

All pretense is off.

The racism and misogyny of today’s Republican Party are fully out of the closet.

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Suffer the Children 0

It’s a Republican family value.

Donald,  holding a club:  I want to start this new mandaate by sending a clear message about how brave and powerful I am.  Out-of-Frame Voice:  Great.  Should we bring you Putin them?  Trump:  What?  No.  Voice:  China.  Trump:  No.  Voice:  Iran?  Trump:  No.  Any other dictatorship?  Trump:  No. . . . Bring me a few brown kids from their school.

Click for the original image.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Will Bunch heard a chilling rhyme. A snippet (emphasis added):

Just eight days into Trump’s second term, the terror is real, not just for the hundreds who’ve been handcuffed but for the many more feeling the same impulses as Anne Frank and her family once did, to disappear from view. “Almost nobody is sending their kids [to school] in case they’re taken,” a fearful Venezuelan mother named Amanda, in a New York City shelter, told a reporter for The City. In California’s Kern County, the annual citrus harvest has ground to a halt because migrant farmworkers have already stopped showing up.

The irony of all of this — good people cowering in their attics, praying to avoid getting cuffed and shipped thousands of miles away by camouflage-wearing soldiers — happening on Holocaust Remembrance Day is almost unbearable.

________________-

*Mark Twain.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

The Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher hears a rhyme in the firings this time. A snippet; follow the link for a parsing of the parallels.

Less than a week after Trump was sworn in, he fired 17 inspectors general.

Inspectors general are federal government investigators embedded in government agencies to ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse. Lofgren’s prediction came in a review of the book Watchdogs by Glenn Fine, a former inspector general fired by Trump after 20 years of exemplary service.

Last week’s pink slips violated a law enacted three years ago in response to Trump’s first-term firings, which mandated 30 days’ notice to Congress before the president could terminate an Inspector General.

Trump’s illegal assertion of executive power echoes the attempt 158 years ago by President Andrew Johnson to fire Secretary of War Edward Stanton.

________________

*Mark Twain.

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Karen, Meet Karma 0

When someone’s actions say one thing, but their words say another, believe the actions.

(Warning: Short promo about at about the two-and-a-half minute mark.)

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

At the Washington Monthly, Garrett Epps dissects the duplicity implicit in Donald Trump’s attempt to despotically single-handedly amend the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Here’s a tiny bit of his article:

For most of us on the sidelines, the outstanding feature of Trump’s order is its cruelty—its deliberate targeting of babies born after February 19, 2025, rendering them stateless and ineligible for the benefits of citizenship most native-born Americans take for granted. Think like a judge, however: from that point of view, the striking defect of the order is simply the crushing weight of legal authority that it purports to sweep aside.

Follow the link for more about a judge’s perspective.

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The Party of Flaw and Disorder 0

At the Des Moines Register, Rekha Basu looks at Donald Trump’s first actions in office and decodes de code (emphasis added):

Amnesty and pardons were given to some 1,600 people who answered his call to protest the 2020 election results — the ones he referred to as “J.6 hostages.” Some members of white nationalist groups Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, others unaffiliated, they’d stormed the Capitol illegally, in some cases violently. Trump freed them.

At the other end was Trump’s order to dispatch thousands of military troops to the southern border to keep out migrants.

The message: Breach boundaries for me and you’re fine. Do it because you’re fleeing violence or persecution, and we’ll set the troops on you.

Follow the link for the rest of her remarks.

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