This past Sunday I was at the Black Lives Matter gathering at Union and County Streets in New Bedford. The event there was peaceful.

The Mayor and Chief of Police made an appearance.

I had arrived early so I could get a good visible spot and set up my folding patio chair since I was most likely there for the duration. While the organizer as busy on one corner and I was setting up on another, a car slowed down with a person much younger than my now undeniable senior years and yelled, “Get a job!” at me. I yelled back, “I’m retired, dumbass!,” and he moved on.

Later another car slowed down yelling, “All lives matter” in response to my Black Lives Matter sign, and I yelled back the question, “If all lives do matter, why would you have a problem with my mentioning Black ones do?”.

For most of the time of the gathering there was a lot of honking in support.

An individual in an old ratty Jeep pulled up at the light when it turned red, and revved up his engine spewing exhaust fumes mostly onto the car behind him and, when the breeze shifted, onto himself before the light turned green. The Jeep made two more pass-throughs, spewing exhaust each time he went slowly through the intersection, but sadly for him, as he went through the intersection the last time, his exhaust system couldn’t handle the pressure and his muffler and exhaust pipe fell off. The crowd allowed him his shame quietly as his Jeep sputtered to a stop by no one running over to him jeering.

After a time the assembled marched to Buttonwood Park escorted by police with the marchers staying on the sidewalk.

Since I live only a block from where the rally was, and being a senior citizen, I went to my place, got my car, and drove to the park to take part in the activity there. I arrived long before the marchers and took a video of their peaceful arrival.

Two elderly women who walked by me asked what was going on and when told about the march and the reason for it expressed their support since what had happened to George Floyd was, in their words, just wrong..

When I saw the intention was to match the perimeter of the park, I returned to my car and drove to the West side of the park to hold my sign and cheer the marchers on as they passed the parking area. Other observers there gave positive signals to the marchers.

After the marchers had passed I attempted to pull out and rejoin them at the next stopping point, but I had to wait for 6 State Trooper vehicles with blaring sirens and flashing lights to speed by to catch up to the marchers. This was on a city street and the marchers were on a city owned park sidewalk. Why were they there?

Obviously, from the verbal reactions from people standing near my car, this gave the impression the peaceful marchers who these people had just seen walk by must have done something earlier, they hadn’t, or were doing something now, they weren’t.

I was able to catch up and To cure this problem people visit spe buy discount cialist and surely get the related issue solved effectively. You are advised to practice exercises like jogging, Continued on line viagra walking, swimming and stretching. buy viagra professional This enhances sexual stimulation and actually offers better results when it comes to sexual performance in the bedroom. No cialis tadalafil tablets more wasting an entire day in a classroom setting. drove slowly behind the marchers through the park’s roadway.

The marchers remained peaceful.

At one point, I had to go around the unmarked gang unit car that had been watching with binoculars from a distance when the gathering was still at the County/Union intersection and followed at a distance as the marchers headed for the park.

When looking for a side street to park my car when the marchers had arrived at a major intersection at the corner of the park, I passed the trooper vehicles parked on a number of side streets. At least one vehicle situated itself near the marchers. There was still a NBPD presence, so there was no need for state troopers.

Their presence changed the impressions of bystanders and created tension among the marchers that had not been there prior. I was wondering if there was going to be some action on the part of the troopers.

The County Sheriff even drove by in his black SUV.

Were they there to prevent any violence from a group that had been peaceful, or change the tenor of the event and the emotions of the marchers to create a problem? The flashing blue lights had an influence on the group “vibe”.

One individual who had joined the marchers as they marched, but had not been at the Union/County location, being a bit of a pest at this time, irrelevantly loud mouthed and obviously new at demonstrations, and, I might add, a little clueless,  began to direct angry words at the trooper vehicle near the marchers. People moved close enough to her to prevent any escalation without provoking her. She was seeking the spotlight.

I took pictures and videos of the marchers at different points, but if I showed just the clip of her acting up, I could totally misrepresent what was a huge gathering of peaceful people.

While I was with them, the most nominally “disruptive” thing the demonstrators did once at each intersection around the perimeter of the park was pushing the pedestrian button and running into the street to take a knee and returning to the sidewalk when the light changed.

The only disruption to traffic, which I got on video, was the gang division’s unmarked car sitting in a left turn only lane, preventing people behind from making the turn they were signaling when they got the green arrow.

I went on my way as the marchers headed down Kempton toward the Fairhaven/New Bedford Bridge. The State Troopers left at that time as well.

Among the marchers were people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, religions, and political affiliations, all unified and peaceful.

After returning to the County Street/Union Street intersection, as darkness fell, the official gathering was ended as a precaution against any misbehavior after dark, an act that was reassuring to the community who had obviously seen activities elsewhere.

One knee sent a message. One knee killed for ignoring it.

When Colin Kaepernick took a knee before football games, he made his reason clear.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

And he showed his commitment to his action by stating,

“This is not something that I am going to run by anybody. I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed. … If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”

He could not have been plainer.

A football player, who had something to say and was in a position to say it, quietly knelt during the National Anthem before NFL football games, and when he first did it he was behind his teammates and close to the Gatorade table.

He made no noise. He made no attention getting gestures. He did not bring attention to himself. He neither looted nor set anything ablaze.

He only got attention when someone published a picture of him and made the quiet loud.

After that, he knelt quietly.

His protest was peaceful.

There had been a number of unnecessary shootings of unarmed Black men by rogue police officers, and no one seemed to care. It was time to at least begin the discussion.

That discussion, however, was not going to be comfortable, or even wanted by those who could do something.

Inaction would be too obvious, so the dialogue had to be changed.

Ignoring what the man who took a knee publicly stated was his motivation , others in the While majority hijacked his action, ignored his reason, and changed it to what could help them not address the issue.

The major claim was that his action was anti-American, apparently because the unnecessary killing of Black men was an American thing.

Trump was the first to misrepresent the reason for taking a knee most obviously so he could appeal to the racist members of his base by claiming this was an act of disrespect for our flag and our troops, many who are Black and at least one who was a victim of a shooting , while unintentionally revealing his own racism, as he ignored a need to address an issue about the disparate treatment of Black men in so doing.

“Wow, NFL first game ratings are way down over an already really bad last year comparison. If the players stood proudly for our Flag and Anthem, and it is all shown on broadcast, maybe ratings could come back?”

Trump even opined,

“I think it’s personally not a good thing, I think it’s a terrible thing. And, you know, maybe he should find a country that works better for him. Let him try, it won’t happen.”

Apparently Kaepernick should have found a country that does not defend the killing of unarmed Black men or might, at least, be willing to discuss the problem and propose solutions because Trump was making it clear this country wouldn’t.

Trump made it about patriotism, money, stadium attendance, and TV ratings.

In 2017 in Alabama, Trump offered this advice to N.F.L. owners on how to handle players who take a knee during the national anthem,

 “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, he’s fired. He’s fired!”

He followed this with a tweet saying,

“If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem. If not, YOU’RE FIRED. Find something else to do!”

“NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN. Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League should back U.S.”

No discussion of the issue was taking place.

When several Philadelphia Eagles showed their displeasure with this usurpation of the reason for taking a knee by saying they would not go to the White House for an event to honor their Super Bowl win, Trump called off the event, and, continuing to refuse to address the underlying reason, kept up his misrepresentation and involving the military by saying at another event,

“We will proudly be playing the National Anthem and other wonderful music celebrating our Country today at 3 P.M. The White House, with the United States Marine Band and the United States Army Chorus. Honoring America! NFL, no escaping to Locker Rooms!”

The Anthem and the bands who played it were weaponized to keep the distraction going.

And to create a useful visual, Pence walked out of a football game in Indianapolis when about a dozen San Francisco 49ers took a knee during the anthem, and Trump captioned it by tweeting,

“I asked VP Pence to leave stadium if any players kneeled, disrespecting our country. I am proud of him and Second Lady Karen.”

They had proudly stood for racism.

He did what he could to promote the belief that any NFL player who took a knee was against the troops, while completely dismissing the It is very difficult to diagnose and can vary in the severity of the pain. order generic viagra pdxcommercial.com However, it is important to note that not all scenarios from diabetes will demonstrate being diabetic indications price tadalafil tablets unless of course typically the diabetes is the deposit of glucose in the blood. generic viagra cheap You cannot escape the aging process. Thirdly, Mast obtain at store buy cheap levitra Mood oil is very well-known herbal erection oil that can help to regain control to heighten sexual power for achieving complete satisfaction in sexual intercourse. fact that they were against deadly racial disparity.

Trump’s claim made it possible to exercise some pseudo-patriotism and in the name of the troops allow the disparity to go unaddressed.

Basically, for four years nothing was done, no discussion even held, and more Black men were killed, and now we see the chaos in the country, a chaos that could possibly have been prevented.

In the four years Since Kaepernick took a knee, and during the four years the issue was politicized mainly by those who did not experience the problem and opposed a discussion,

1.Natosha “Tony” McDade, 2. George Floyd, 3. Yassin Mohamed, 4. Finan H. Berhe, 5. Sean Reed, 6. Steven Demarco Taylor, 7. Ariane McCree, 8.  Terrance Franklin, 9. Miles Hall, 10. Darius Tarver, 11. William Green. 12. Samuel David Mallard, 13. Kwame “KK” Jones, 14. De’von Bailey, 15. Christopher Whitfield, 16. Anthony Hill, 17. De’Von Bailey, 18. Eric Logan, 19. Jamarion Robinson, 20. Gregory Hill Jr, 21. JaQuavion Slaton,  22. Ryan Twyman, 23. Brandon Webber, 24. Jimmy Atchison, 25. Willie McCoy,  26. Emantic “EJ” Fitzgerald Bradford Jr, 27. D’ettrick Griffin, 28. Jemel Roberson, 29. DeAndre Ballard, and 30. Botham Shem Jean

were killed for a yearly average of 7.5 per year.

And now with the death of George Floyd a limit has been reached intensified by its having been recorded from a number of angles and the delay in any action being taken.

The death and its aftermath could very well have been prevented if action had been taken to prevent the previous deaths, or at least something had been done no matter how weak.

Unfortunately, but predictably, as quick as he was to react to and hijack Kaepernick’s taking a knee for his own political gain, there has been very miniscule response to the death of George Floyd as Trump concentrates more on the results of it, the demonstrations, some of which have been hijacked.

Over the weekend with no events scheduled other than going to Florida to watch the rocket launch, meeting with Attorney General William Barr, a video teleconference with governors and law-enforcement officials, and lunch with Vice President Pence, Trump made an official statement about the death of George Floyd that included mention of his call to the Floyd family.

In the formal remarks this past weekend, he began with a unifying message starting with,

“I understand the pain that people are feeling.  We support the right of peaceful protesters, and we hear their pleas,”

a statement that ignored his dismissal of Kaepernick’s earlier right for peaceful protest and the pleas he should have heard, before politicizing it with,

“The memory of George Floyd is being dishonored by rioters, looters, and anarchists.  The violence and vandalism is being led by Antifa and other radical left-wing groups who are terrorizing the innocent, destroying jobs, hurting businesses, and burning down buildings.”

Ironically, blind to his earlier reaction to Kaepernick and his not addressing his own fault in ignoring what the taking a knee was bringing attention to, he indicted himself by saying,

“Those making excuses or justifications for violence are not helping the downtrodden, but delivering new anguish and new pain.”

Would that include those who distract from the real issue?

He declared, again, ironically,

“Every citizen in every community has the right to be safe in their workplace, safe in their homes, and safe in our city streets.”

And, although he had tried to defend the marchers in Charlottesville by claiming that many were good people, he put his bigotry on display by adding,

“Radical-left criminals, thugs, and others all throughout our country and throughout the world will not be allowed to set communities ablaze.  We won’t let it happen.  It harms those who have the least.  And we will be protecting those who have the least.

This is the sacred right of all Americans that I am totally determined to defend and will defend.  My administration will always stand against violence, mayhem, and disorder.”

But he will observably do whatever he can to white-wash incidences of violence, mayhem, and disorder.

Like with COVID-19, Trump ignored the problem of Black men being killed by rogue cops while demonizing those peacefully demonstrating for some action on the issue until it too exploded while he attempts, as he did with the first taking of a knee, to make it about politics and himself.

He has tweeted,

“Sleepy Joe Biden’s people are so Radical Left that they are working to get the Anarchists out of jail, and probably more. Joe doesn’t know anything about it, he is clueless, but they will be the real power, not Joe. They will be calling the shots! Big tax increases for all, Plus!”

He has quoted a segregationist governor from the Civil Rights era,

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts”

and warned demonstrators that if they got too close to the White House, they would face the “most ominous weapons”.

Over the weekend I had some pictures pop up on my Facebook feed. I understand the intent, but I wonder if anyone notices the irony.

In the picture there are police officers taking a knee in solidarity with those genuinely demonstrating against racial disparity, and this is good, especially knowing the majority of police officers are good people and that only the rogues are responsible for the unjustifiable deaths. It is a positive image in these troubling times.

Like most, I am impressed by the photos, but I wonder how things might have been different, making the police taking a knee unnecessary, if when Kaepernick did it, people didn’t make it about something it wasn’t about and had dealt with the real issue.

He deserves a big, guilt filled apology.

June is GLBT Pride Month.

It began one night in June in 1969 in New York City’s Greenwich Village at a dive bar.

It wasn’t organized and it wasn’t very pretty, and no one who was there that night knew that when their frustration at police raids boiled over it would ignite a movement that had been coming to a boil.

The Stonewall Rebellion was a spontaneous community reaction to yet another demeaning raid on a Gay bar that was routine back then, a reaction that then spread out like ripples from a pebble thrown in a pond.

In the years that followed, progress toward GLBT equality was achieved unevenly throughout the country with the gains made having to be defended from those who claim recognizing the rights of GLBT people would somehow reduce theirs, like giving a slice of pizza to the eighth person to arrive at the table where seven people already sat would somehow mean you could not eat the slice you already had.

My entry into GLBT activism was simple and quiet.

It began with accepting myself for who I am, the complete and true me, and not what even I thought I was supposed to be from the limited and filtered information I had stumbled upon or had heard from those who really did not know as their information was similarly limited and filtered.

When living in Boston I had joined the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus and, as was the tradition at the time, joined in my first Gay Pride Parade at the tail end of the organized parade where people were allowed to join in, carrying a banner I had made for those friends with whom I marched and who lived on Queensberry Street in Boston’s Fenway Gayborhood.

After the parade GLBT couples freely walked the streets of downtown Boston holding hands and engaging in public displays of affection taken for granted by straight people every day and not limited to one day a year on a weekend when the city streets were practically empty but for us.

It was a taste of what should be.

There was no shame in our normalcy.

When I got to Southern California, although further along in GLBT equality, there was still much progress to be made. I joined the Los Angeles and then the Long Beach Gay Men’s Choruses, began doing political cartoons for a local Gay newspaper, got involved in the Union’s GLBT subcommittee of which I was the chair when it became a full standing committee of the Union and marched for the first time in the Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade representing the United Teachers of Los Angeles, and enjoyed what rights and equal treatment had been won before I arrived and increased while I was there and had helped work for.

Then I went to Oklahoma that was far behind Massachusetts and further behind Los Angeles. There I joined GLBT political and Civil Rights groups, attended multiple rallies, took on politicians and a school District to get policy protections for GLBT students, continued my cartoon work in a GLBT newspaper, and marched openly as a Gay Teacher in the Oklahoma City GLBT Pride parade carrying a sign declaring that.

Progress was made, and continues to be made, by some very fine and very hard working people there.

And then, to be closer to family, I returned to Massachusetts where, while I was away, in 1989 laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in credit, employment, union practices, housing, and public accommodations had been passed, and in May 2004 Marriage Equality had come to be.

There is still progress to be made and gained rights to be defended, but we are not just getting started, and we have seen with hard work and perseverance that full equality is possible, and we will attain it.

If the sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts, Thomas Hodgson, who claims his number one priority is the safety of the people of the county, really wants to keep the people safe, he should not renew his contract with ICE that is up for renewal at the end of June.

Here is why.

For those who are not too familiar with what it actually is, a 287(g) contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), so named after section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, allows local law enforcement agencies to act as immigration enforcement agents by delegating specific immigration enforcement authority to designated officers within a local agency. Usually these contracts are signed by county sheriffs because they run the county jails and they have the required space.

Such contracts are not mandatory, but are, instead, totally at the discretion of individual county sheriffs.

There is a certain monetary advantage to entering such an agreement as the more people detained in the ICE unit, the more money the local jail gets from the federal government. This, obviously, results in doing what is necessary to detain as many people as possible. Whether or not the money received is spent totally on the detainees or for other things is at the discretion of the sheriffs who have signed on to the program.

Think of for-profit prisons.

A state contracts with a company that runs such facilities and part of that contract is the requirement that a state must maintain a certain number of prisoners or pay a fine beyond the regular fee they pay to that company. That requirement means that as many people as possible have to be sentenced, and that further means arresting as many people as possible, usually far beyond those who will actually end up in prison, in order to keep the inmate population at least at the agreed upon minimum. One of the actual objections to legalizing marijuana for recreational use is as simple as the fear that not being able to arrest people for low level marijuana offenses will threaten the ability to meet the prisoner quota and the state will have to pay that fine. So prisons are filled with non-violent, low level offenders.

These are “for profit” so the more prisoners, the more the state pays the company, and, so, the more the profit.

The same works with county jails that have 287 (g) contracts. The more detainees the more money the county sheriff gets from the feds, and by reducing things like medical care, quality of food, and the denial of basics like toilet paper and soap, the more extra money the sheriff has for other things, and in some states, that means the extra money can legally go into the pocket of the sheriff.

To fill the detainee units, sheriffs often rely on racial profiling and harassing Latinx residents because of the biased belief that that community is the greatest and easiest source of undocumented people. Trawling a huge net behind a fishing boat pulls in a lot of fish, and regardless how many are thrown back for being the wrong size or the type the boat is not authorized to bring in, there is a good chance of getting a great number of the fish you can sell.

Easier, faster, and more profitable than a rod and reel.

This often results in civil rights violations, isolation of immigrant communities, and family separations, while within the targeted community immigrants withdraw from the greater community, decline to participate in public events where law enforcement may be present, avoid businesses that require them to give their personal information, and could result in people no longer reporting crime and having eye-witnesses staying away from law enforcement who could use them to solve crimes. The latter can affect more than the targeted community.

In Massachusetts there are three county sheriffs who contract with ICE, and if carefully looked at, it is easy to see why this is helpful in profiting from the program.

It should be noted that the three Massachusetts county sheriffs who have ICE contracts entered into them during the Trump administration and are Republicans, and the sheriff of Bristol county is the honorary co-chair of Trump’s re-election campaign in the state.

Plymouth County is a rather ironic participant as it was there that the Pilgrims came to this continent and began taking over the land of the natives and profiting from the natural resources they took to send back to England reducing what could be used by the locals, the very thing that people complain that undocumented immigrants allegedly do.

Barnstable County is pretty much Cape Cod, a location whose population increases five times the size of the year round residents in the summer months as it is the state’s biggest summer resort location, and that requires workers to provide the increased services that are needed. Long gone are the days when college kids could combine working at a summer job with beach parties, and then go home with enough money to pay for the next year of college, so the person waiting on your table, cleaning your hotel room, or handing you your fried clam plate has to come from some place and live in such conditions that allow them to be paid the lowest allowable wage. During the summer the county closes an eye, but in the winter months, when the service workers become by and large expendable, the sheriff has a crop to reap.

And the third is Bristol County where the two major cities, New Bedford and Fall River, have been immigrant magnets from the days of whaling and manufacturing. They are ideal for racial profiling as just driving down the street a casual glance will show the diversity of the cities with a tendency toward the Brown. Manufacturing, fishing, and other industries employ quite a few Brown skinned people and this makes it convenient for ICE raids as they can target these places of employment, in spite of claims that those here illegally are living off the taxpayer, and have some degree of success in finding a few undocumented people while terrorizing those employees who are citizens or legal immigrants.

Sheriff Hodgson’s contract with ICE made the Bristol County House of Corrections one of the first county jails in New England to sign such a contract.

The question is, why would a sheriff, when contracts are willingly entered into, sign up.

The answers are simple.

They have a political agenda, in the case of the Bristol County sheriff that would include catching the eye of Trump, and there is money to be made with an ocean of people they can trawl and, by mere luck of the numbers, bring to their ICE detention units.

In the case of the Bristol County sheriff, Thomas Hodgson, he needs to convince the people of the county that his motivation is pure and that he is protecting the people of the county from a threat.

The first way he does that is to present the two cities as a threat to those small, mostly white, picket fence communities in the county but outside those two metro areas. Since both cities are not the epicenters of the county as they had once been now that shopping can be done at malls and roads make going elsewhere more convenient than in the past, there are options for not going into those cities making it easier to accept what people in the small towns are told by someone who claims he is telling them what those cities are actually like.

Bigotry is not based on experience, but on not having firsthand experience with people or places, and only believing what someone else you assume you can trust tells you about them through their filter whether positive or negative.

The second way to appear pure and altruistic is to totally and purposely misrepresent reality and omit information that would contradict the claim.

Sheriff Hodgson supports his actions with the claim that his number one priority is to keep the people of Bristol County safe, as opposed to it being doing his real job, and to have this claim work, he has to present a threat.

His invented threat presently is the undocumented residents of the county.

When Trump declared,

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,”

he handed the sheriff his biggest tool as that is who Sheriff Hodgson claims he is protecting the people of the county from.

And when he objected to a judge’s decision to release those in his ICE detention center who qualified for release to help slow the spread of COVID-19 in his facilities, he played up that threat by releasing his Bristol County Prisoner Release Alert System that lists the alleged criminal histories of ICE detainees. It lacks names, so nothing on the list can be verified as actual crimes committed, or just a list of generic and extreme crimes.

He also states that the released detainees would now be free to roam the streets of Bristol County threatening the good citizens.

“The law-abiding people of Bristol County and beyond have a right to know who is being released back into their communities. As of today, more than 30 illegal immigrants in ICE custody have been released from our correctional facilities, some of whom have been charged or convicted of crimes such as rape, robbery, assault, fraud, trafficking fentanyl and others. Some of them also had final removal orders from an immigration judge to be deported to their country of origin, but are instead free to roam the neighborhoods of our communities.”

He insists that his number one priority is to protect the people of Bristol County, and to release  ICE detainees would be a threat to them.

But an important piece of information that he omits is that when he signed his contract with ICE, he went far beyond detaining undocumented people from Bristol County and volunteered to establish a detention camp holding immigrants from across the country.

In other words, he is the one bringing the supposed danger into the community by bringing those he refers to as “criminal illegal aliens” into the county from other places.

While Mexico might be “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,”

the sheriff has figuratively driven a bus to go get them if you accept his characterization of who is in his detention center.

While he volunteered his inmates to help build the wall on the Southern Border to keep “those people” out, he skirts the wall and brings them to Bristol County.

So while he claims he is the one protecting us, in reality, he is the one introducing into the community those who he claims are the threat.

And, since repetition is the mother of learning, let me repeat for emphasis that those people he warns us about would not be here if they stayed in the communities and states where they live and he had not had them come here.

And, in order to introduce this “threat”, the Bristol County taxpayers pay for Bristol County Sheriff Office personnel to receive ICE training and the “overtime” pay for those personnel performing the duties of regular employees while they are away getting that training.

According to his agreement with ICE, taxpayers in Bristol County are also paying for

“all expenses at the BCSO facility regarding cabling and power upgrades…the BCSO will be responsible for covering any installation and recurring costs associated with the BCSO line…for providing all administrative supplies, such as paper, toner, pens, pencils, or other similar items necessary for normal office operations…for providing the necessary security equipment, such as handcuffs, leg restraints and flexi cuffs, etc.”

The “etc.” being important because it is open ended and could mean anything regardless of cost.

He is making money from the federal government while charging the taxpayers what it costs to allow him to do that, and while he claims releasing ICE detainees will have them roaming the local streets, he is the one who brought them here from other states in the first place while conveniently hiding that they are not being released locally, but into their home states, unless the sheriff does not insist on that.

If he doesn’t insist on that, a person has to question his claim that only he can protect us from these people who have no jobs and, so, will prey on the people of the county to meet their needs. After all, he knew they had no jobs when he brought them here.

When these detainees are released, they should not be roaming our streets threatening us, they should be sent back to the states from which they came.

Otherwise, how is the sheriff keeping the people of Bristol County safe from a threat of his own creation?

This is in no way beneficial to the community.

It is merely his way to promote himself and create his tough guy image while in the process frightening the people of the county and creating a false Us/Them atmosphere that includes suspicion of one’s neighbor by bringing what he considers a threat into the county.

He is lying to us and charging us for his lie.

His contract with ICE is up for renewal at the end of June, and if he truly wants to keep the people of Bristol County safe from his alleged threat of “criminal illegal aliens” freely roaming our streets and victimizing us, he should let the contract expire and have other localities deal with the people from them in them.

The Petulant of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was having none of it.

After he sent two tweets promoting false claims about mail-in voting, Twitter attached two warning labels to them.

One tweet said,

 “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!!”

The warning said,

“Get the facts about mail-in ballots.”

Hitting on the link brought the reader to the statement,

“On Tuesday, President Trump made a series of claims about potential voter fraud after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an effort to expand mail-in voting in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others. Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.”

In the “What to Know” section Twitter explained,

“fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud” and

“Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to ‘anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.’ In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots.”

But it also acknowledged that Trump’s tweet

“is not in violation of the Twitter Rules as it does not directly try to dissuade people from voting — it does, however, contain misleading information about the voting process, specifically mail-in ballots, and we’re offering more context to the public.”

Trump immediately objected first accusing Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election,” because, of course, as he was doing just that he knows what interference is, and then went further tweeting,

“They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post.”

But in this tweet he revealed, perhaps not knowing he was doing so, that he is not that conversant on the U.S. Constitution he took an oath of office to protect by claiming,

 “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”

Obviously, he is not aware that as a private platform of a private company and not the government, it is not bound by the first Amendment like the federal government is.

The first Amendment makes it clear that,

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

But he didn’t stop with that revelation.

The man who practically lives on Twitter and who has provably tweeted false information on many occasions, more than any ever in the history of the world, to use his phrase, went further and revealed something more that, perhaps, it would have been best to keep secret.

In threatening to regulate or shutter social media companies, he tweeted, first,

“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen,”

which seemed to imply that telling people to get facts was a violation of conservative voices that apparently are prone to lying as a matter of course, he went on to show that it was he who was interfering in the 2020 elections adding,

“Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country.”

The addition of the Twitter warning came after, as a result of Trump tweeting without evidence that Joe Scaraborough might have played a role in the death of an aide back in 2000 when he was in the House of Representatives, her widower requested that Twitter remove that hurtful tweet.

Trump later made it clear without any specificity that something big was coming when he tweeted,

“Twitter has now shown that everything we have been saying about them (and their other compatriots) is correct. Big action to follow!”

If anyone missed the claim that having their statements checked for truth violated conservatives’ free speech, Kelly Anne Conway emphasized that point.

“The president’s saying please stop suppressing conservative voices. I thought using outlets that are decisively and proudly anti-Trump to fact-check the president was maybe the richest piece of the whole thing.”

The fact that since 2015 we have seen thousands of tweets by Trump somewhat belies his claim that they try to control his voice.

“The big action to follow” was revealed the day after this tweet storm when Trump tweeted,

 “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again.”

Trump has let it be known he would sign an executive order on social media saying Thursday

“will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!”

So apparently, according to Trump anyway, conservatives have the right to lie while no one has a right to point out they may be doing that.

How does that help conservatives?

Although Vice President Mike Pence and National Economic Council Chairman Larry Kudlow are among those in the White House making the argument that it will set a bad precedent if the federal government goes after private companies to penalize them for purely political reasons, Trump, not known to take advice that doesn’t praise and support him, signed the executive order Thursday afternoon saying,

“We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers.”

The intention of the Executive order is to start the process of potentially removing protections that tech giants have under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that says they are not liable for the content posted to their platforms, and would open them up to lawsuits.

For its own protection, twitter may have to remove most of what Trump tweets.

Before Victor Frankenstein went into his lab to show that humanity could create life, unable to dig up the bodies himself, he paid grave robbers to do the work. He may have anticipated that they would follow his directions to get only the best of the deceased, but either through desperation or dishonesty those he employed violated that expectation when it came to the brain.

If you saw the movie (as opposed read the book), you know how that turned out.

He had created a monster and that had things go off into the weeds in spite of his best intentions.

In the 2016 election cycle the Republican party, hoping to get the best candidate to run for president and potentially undo the good President Obama had done, had quite a few candidates, and the best known ones went very deep in their negative opinions of Trump.

But it must be remembered, they were running for office.

Lindsey Graham was one. At the time he said

“I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office.”

 “Donald Trump is not a conservative Republican. He’s an opportunist. He’s not fit to be President of the United States.”

“You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”

He now accepts that if he is to be reelected to the senate he needs Trump’s support and that of his supporters in his home state. Graham has said,

“What concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label the guy some kind of kook not fit to be president.”

Strange as they were just passing on what he had said.

“I am the happiest dud in America right now. We have got a president and a national security team that I’ve been dreaming of for eight years.”

After he was invited to play golf with Trump, he was filled with praise even speaking directly to Trump in a TV interview,

“It was a fun day, and Trump’s the best golfer. You’re the best golfer.” 

“To every Republican, if you don’t stand behind this President, we’re not going to stand behind you,”

During impeachment he was Trump’s best defender,

 “I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here.” 

Although he had been a good friend of John McCain, and spoke against Trump going negative on him during his campaign,

“When it comes to criticizing Sen. McCain and his service, I think that’s a huge mistake,”

Graham has yet to correct the insults Trump has thrown at McCain especially after his death.

When asked about why as he faces a re-election challenge, his attitude changed, Graham got honest and explained,

“If you don’t want to get re-elected, you’re in the wrong business,”

Ah, principles.

Ted Cruz was also less than a fan of Trump before his election.

“Unlike Donald, I didn’t inherit millions of dollars. Instead, my dad cam as an immigrant from Cuba with nothing,with $100 in his underwear.”

“I thinks in terms of a commander in chief, we ought to have someone who isn’t springing out of bed to tweet in a frantic response to the latest polls. I think the American people is looking for a commander in chief who is stable and steady and a calm hand to keep this country safe.”

 “We need a commander in chief, not a Twitterer-in-chief.”  

“Donald can’t defend his own record. Whenever you point out what he’s actually said, he just screams, ‘liar.’ He insults you. He attacks you. He makes it personal, and he gets very rattled. He doesn’t like anyone pointing to his actual, substantive record. And I think that’s a sign of weakness.”

When Trump insulted Ted’s wife’s looks, he hit back with,

“It’s not easy to tick me off. I don’t get angry often, but if you mess with my wife, if you mess with my kids, that will do it every time. Donald, you’re a sniveling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone.”

He called Trump a “narcissist” and “serial philanderer” whose “morality doesn’t exist” for him.

“This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies — practically every word that comes out of his mouth.”

“I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father. … that pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi, that I’m going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say, ‘thank you very much for maligning my wife and my father.'”

Now we have had from Cruz,

“President Trump is a flash-bang grenade thrown into Washington by the forgotten men and women of America. The fact that his first year as Commander in Chief disoriented and distressed members of the media and political establishment is not a bug but a feature.”

“President Trump is doing what he was elected to do: disrupt the status quo. That scares the heck out of those who have controlled Washington for decades, but for millions of Americans, their confusion is great fun to watch.”

As his praises came out like a deck of cards in a game if 52-pick up, Cruz’s presidential nickname “Lyin Ted” became “ Beautiful Ted”.

In 2016, Mitch McConnell advised Republicans that they could run ads against Trump to create separation from the polarizing GOP frontrunner if they believe it can help their reelection efforts.

As Trump became more popular, Mitch stated,

“He needs someone [as VP] highly experienced and very knowledgeable because it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t know a lot about the issues,”

“I object to a whole series of things that he’s said — vehemently object to them. I think all of that needs to stop. Both the shots at people he defeated in the primary and these attacks on various Musli Safed is a natural tadalafil 20mg india sexual stimulant. Therefore, browse around for more now cialis 20 mg it is considered one of the leading and most effective products is Kamagra Oral Jelly. It is true that pdxcommercial.com viagra sale whenever you try to urinate. Thus, this kind of generic medicine has been in buzz and discussed levitra without prescription pdxcommercial.com by thousands of people suffering from erectile dysfunction. ethnic groups in the country.” 

And regarding his late endorsement of Trump, there was this,

“I’m not going to speculate about what he might say, or what I might do. But I think it’s pretty clear and I’ve been pretty clear publicly about how I think he ought to change direction and I hope that’s what we are going to see.”

Now whatever Trump does is perfectly okay because Mc Connell is getting his judges.

These are just examples of how the GOP went from opposing Trump, but then defending him and allowing him free rein to continue doing this.

They were allowing the monster to evolve, to grow.

But within the Republican Party, especially as a result of those odd daily appearances at press conference updates on COVID-19 which were short on information from experts, but overflowing with Trump’s opinions and speculations, as people are dying there was some degree of introspection and the reality that the monster they created had left the lab and was endangering those who made him.

Lindsey Graham suggested that instead of daily appearances he should keep it “a once-a-week show”

West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia admitted the briefings were “going off the rails a little bit” and suggested that these briefing be what the public assumed they were going to be by letting “the health professionals guide where we’re going to go”

Indiana Representative Susan Brooks simply pointed out the obvious that “they’re going on too long”

What the public was seeing in these daily reality show episodes could very well adversely affect those Republicans in the House and Senate who were up for re-election and known to be close with Trump. That whole birds as a feather thing.

The party had backed and made excuses for Trump. It reframed what he actually said to be what he actually meant to say.

They excused his name calling and promotion of conspiracy theories on twitter as its just being him.

They supported his claims about the great things he has accomplished even as it is researchable enough to show either he was taking credit for the work of predecessors or the results that he claimed just weren’t there.

The best deals that no one had ever seen before were made, but never actually materialized onto anything real.

And although they had acquitted him of impeachment, some in the GOP, claiming he had learned from the experience and would be more reserved and presidential, are beginning to see, and some to acknowledge, that the acquittal just gave him license to increase his less attractive habits.

Case in point:

Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, after Trump’s 6^th tweet about a baseless claim that Joe Scarborough might have killed an aide in 2001, tweeted his objection to them with a caution.

Trump had tweeted,

 “A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough. So a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair? What about the so-called investigator? Read story!”

There were no questions about the death as an autopsy revealed the aide had an undiagnosed heart condition, with the coroner concluding she passed out and fatally struck her head as she fell.

Scarborough was not in Florida at the time the incident happened either.

So. Kinzinger tweeted,

“Completely unfounded conspiracy. Just stop. Stop spreading it, stop creating paranoia. It will destroy us.”  

The 2020 elections are gearing up to be a tough one for Republicans, and the last thing they need is to have the president coming across as crazy which would not help those connected to him in their bid for re-election.

You see, morality and ethics aren’t important, how one’s actions affects a re-election is.

The stupidity of Trump’s tweets on the subject was so obvious, his news Outlet, FOX, even tried to slow him down.

Brit Hume of FOX  tweeted

“30K retweets for this discredited tale, based on a three-year old post from some wing-ding website. This is why even his critics should want DJT to play a lot of golf, because when he does, he’s not tweeting crap like this.”

This was also on the Memorial Day weekend.

As we approached 100,000 people dying from COVID-19, Trump golfed and tweeted against a veteran running for re-election in Pennsylvania.

He tweeted that Representative Conor Lamb, a Marine Corps veteran, is an “American fraud” and “puppet for Crazy Nancy Pelosi” because Trump favored his opponent.

Although Trump called him a Pelosi puppet, Lamb did not vote for her to become speaker in 2019.

A major reason for Trump’s childish attack on this veteran was that in 2018 he had won against the candidate endorsed by Trump.

Endorsing Lamb’s opponent Trump crowed,

“Sean Parnell is an American Hero. Connor Lamm [sic]has proven to be an American fraud, and a puppet for Crazy Nancy Pelosi. He said he would NOT vote for her for Speaker, and did. Will kill 2A. Voted to impeach (on nothing). A TOTAL & COMPLETE Sean Parnell Endorsement!”

So Trump is either uninformed or lying as can be seen by his misspelling of Lamb’s name and his claim about his having voted for Pelosi.

This is embarrassing for a president who dodged the Viet Nam War, and the anti-veteran pejoratives is an embarrassment to this pro-troops Party.

Letting him roam free has created a monster who, like Victor Frankenstein’s, may turn around and destroy them.

And it is becoming hard for the GOP to pretend everything is just fine.