The Russian bounty allegation confirmed or not, it is yet more evidence that Trump's "leadership" continues to be a betrayal of this country's interests at home and abroad

In this era of one “crisis” after another, it is difficult to ascertain the meaning of “leadership.” It used to be that in times of crisis, people in this country put aside their differences and put their faith in the president’s leadership. Presidents who didn’t show leadership in time of crisis, like Herbert Hoover, were soon out of a job. Donald Trump has so sought to divide this country that outside his base of fanatics, few trust his judgment, and unfortunately, that distrust at the top is gathering moss on its tumble down the pyramid. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey may be a Republican, but that doesn’t mean Republican voters in his state think his “leadership” is any more worth obeying than if he was a Democrat. Mark Lamb, sheriff of Pinal County, decided he wasn’t going to enforce the governor’s stay-at-home order, because he and others of like mind have the “constitutional” right to do as they damn well please, to hell with everyone else’s well-being.

That is the kind of “leadership” that appeals to Trump, which is why he invited Lamb recently to the White House. The problem is that like with many fools who think scientists and medical professionals are no more to be respected than gun restriction advocates, Lamb’s stupidity was no defense against the COVID-19; he never did get the “honor” of meeting Der Fuhrer, because he tested positive for the virus. Lamb assumes that he came into contact with an infected person at a campaign event; stupid is as stupid does. 

Of course, even in “progressive” states like Washington, there are those numbskull law enforcement types like Lewis County Sheriff Robert Snaza, who told his flock not to be “sheep,” and to ignore the governor’s mandate to wear masks in public spaces; one shouldn’t be too sorry for him if he catches the virus and passes it on to those other tough dudes standing around him. But I also wonder about all those people in Seattle who are not taking the governor very seriously either; I saw two white females walking shoulder-to-shoulder along a Seneca Street sidewalk, neither one wearing masks, and the one with short blonde hair actually breathed just inches from the other woman’s air-intake orifices. Well, as long as they don’t get too close to me I don’t care what they do to each other. 

In the face of all of this, we ought to expect leadership from the tippy-top to provide some form of “guidance,” and obviously there is very little of that coming from Trump. As I mentioned before, the “buck” always passes Trump like a freight train. Trump does not care about anyone but himself, period. He doesn’t care about the 128,000 people who have died from the COVID-19 thus far, he doesn’t care that states following his “leadership”—or lack thereof— are seeing record daily increases in virus cases. And if he doesn’t care about that, why should he care about a few U.S. service members killed by Taliban militants for bounties placed on them by Russian intelligence operatives?

“Bountygate” is obviously something that Trump wants to go away real soon. The Associated Press reported that a Navy Seal team discovered a stash of $500,000 in a Taliban hideaway after three U.S. Marines were killed when their car was ambushed; captured Taliban militants admitted under interrogation that the money came from Russian operatives paying them to kill American troops even while “peace” negotiations were going on. I don’t know how much more “corroboration” you need for this to rise above the “suspicion” level, but what is particularly disturbing about this is that this information was discovered more than a year ago, and was reportedly transmitted to Trump in writing. John Bolton supposedly spoke to Trump about these suspicious activities, although mention of them was reportedly excised from his book for being “classified” information.

Trump’s stooges both in and out of intel expressed “outrage” that this leak of “classified” information is compromising American counterintelligence operations. But who are they trying to kid?  Trump has repeatedly denied knowing of such things in the past, only to have his lies found out later. How many more service members needed to die before Trump got “mad” at his pal Vladimir Putin? Trump wouldn't want this kind of compromising information coming out, which is why he tried to hide his infamous phone call with Ukraine’s president in a classified computer system—and who knows what other such compromising information he is trying to hide because of his deep “understandings” with Putin. Putin hates the United States, and he sees Trump as the willing fool who will help him in his quest to undermine this country domestic stability and its international interests. 

Trump has betrayed this country’s principles at home and abroad for nothing more than his own personal interests and dislikes, and now it appears he has even betrayed the service members he claims to “honor” to save both his skin and that of his friend, Putin. Just because his supporters are like flies attracted to his moral and ethical dung pile doesn’t mean the rest of the country should follow suit.

Just when you think they have a "point," some racist white person has to muck things up

The Daily Mail a few days ago reported an incident that occurred at a 7-Eleven in Sacramento, involving an “outraged victim” of racial slurs; I am always curious about how the “foreign” press reports this stuff.  It is not clear what set-off the confrontation in the store, although it appears that a black woman started a screaming match with the white woman because she took offense at something the latter said. The white woman is heard shouting out that she only said “excuse me.” I noted that the white woman was wearing a facemask, and the black woman was not, which might have been the real “instigation” of the incident. The black woman is seen to be acting physically and verbally aggressive, and then the white woman, apparently trying to think of an offensive thing to call her, chose the “N-word,” and when the black woman dared her to say it again, the white woman chose to be foolish and repeated the term, upon which the black woman started punching the white woman into the ground. 

But let's get "real" here: if the white woman had called her a "rude asshole," those would have been "fighting words" too. In any case, from my perspective, the black woman was not the “victim,” but the aggressor, and yet the white woman clearly was not a victim either, choosing to respond to this black woman’s aggression in a way that was sure to play well into the politics of race, especially in the media. 

Meanwhile in Riverside, California, police released on YouTube a compilation of security camera video of various looting and acts of property destruction, asking for the public’s assistance in identifying the suspects. One video shows a group of men tearing out an ATM machine in search of money, but failed to accomplish the mission; one person nearby is holding a “BLM” sign. However, the break-in of a T-Mobile store was an “equal opportunity” free-for-all, in which a distinctly “interracial” bunch charged into the store like a herd of buffalo grabbing phones before rushing out just as quickly. Is this what Rep. Maxine Waters means when she extols BLM to “keep up the pressure”? 

Sorry, but what was the “point”? I’m going to have to think real hard on this. The only thing I can think of is that is—well, actually, I can’t think of anything that justifies this behavior. This “don’t mess with us” shtick would be a lot more convincing if some people were not committing half the violent crimes and armed robberies in this country; “don’t mess with us” goes both ways.  

And yet every time I want to cut white people some slack, there always has to be some racist asshole to muck things up for them.

Take for example an incident that occurred this past weekend when I went into a Rite Aid drug store in Kent. I normally would have gone to the cheaper-priced Big Lots store behind it, but they did not have any facial wipes, and as I had purchased adult wash cloths at the Rite Aid store before, I decided to amble on over there instead.  Picking up a hand cart I walked directly to the location I had remembered they were at before. They were located in an aisle that also included mostly baby diapers and other baby-oriented hygiene items. Since I was in the store I picked up a pack of “all-purpose labels” I needed to label jewel cases for DVD-Rs that the Big Lots also didn’t have. I then decided to see if there were any chips worth buying; I noted that there were Pringles on sale, but decided not to purchase them because they required a Rite Aid card which I didn’t have. 

After that I went to the aisle where I remembered there were DVDs and CDs and started to peruse through what was there. It was at that point when the trouble started. A white male with slightly graying hair and beard, wearing glasses and what appeared to be a hunting shirt and cap (and without the required facemask) came around the corner and asked me where the “diapers” were. For a moment I actually thought he was asking me an innocent request for information, and I pointed toward the general location of the diapers. But then he asked me again, and when I expressed befuddlement about this line of inquiry, he once again asked me where the diapers were, but this time his tone and inflection changed to a sinister, accusatory one: He was asserting as a “fact” that has surely taken a package of diapers, and since he didn’t see them on me now, I was certainly “hiding” them somewhere, and most likely in the backpack I was wearing. I told him he was crazy, and to get out of my face. It was clear that he was “assuming” that I should have those diapers on me, because that was the only thing he noticed in the aisle; if he had actually seen me take anything, he would have seen it was the pack of wipes that were in still in the basket I was carrying.

But this man refused to leave me alone; I was stunned, confused and angered at this person’s continuing false accusations and demands that I open my backpack for him. If he had an “issue” with me, he should have spoken to a store employee, because he was clearly not an employee and I wasn’t going to satisfy the demands of this jerk who apparently saw a Hispanic male, and “we” are all thieves and 99 percent of the time if “we” go into a store by ourselves it is to “steal” something, because when “we” are outdoors  it is to engage in our other favorite “pastime”—car-prowling. I called out for the manager, but no store employee intervened. I then called out louder for this man to get out of my face to get someone’s attention and get this person away from me, but again nobody came, so I decided to end my shopping then and there and walked to the counter to pay for the items I had and get the hell out of there. 

But this white male racist jerk stilled followed after me, still demanding that I show him where the “diapers” he insisted I was hiding somewhere were. I demanded someone look at the security camera video that would prove that this man was harassing me falsely, but no one did anything, let alone try to stop him. I expressed my anger to the manager—who I assumed was the woman in the dark shirt—who was saying nothing and allowing this to happen to a customer. I again told this man to get away from me, and then he started acting like the typical cowardly bully, expressing the “fear” that I was going to “hurt” him despite the fact I was clearly smaller and older than he was, and he got on his phone to call the police. 

The clerk at the counter tried to pretend it was business as usual as I completed the purchase, but that didn’t stop the man from attempting to block my way, still trying to convince a 9-1-1 dispatcher to take him seriously, since whoever was on the other end of line could hear someone in the background saying that this man was a liar and that someone should look at the security video, and then there was this guy talking in that “calm” tone of someone with evil intentions, and probably a Trump supporter. I still got past him anyways and out of store, upon which he told me I was “banned” from the premises, as if he had the right to do that. Maybe I should have waited for the police to show up so they could arrest him, but I doubted they even bothered. In any case, I got on the Internet and filed a complaint with the corporate office, and received a response that they were “sorry” about my experience and would “look into it.”

Now, if I had been someone else, I might have did to him what that black woman in Sacramento had done to that white woman. I’m sure if I was black, that bastard wouldn’t have dared approach me to make such an accusation, but would have informed an employee of his “suspicion.” But in this country Hispanics can be accused of anything and everyone will believe it, can be killed by police with hardly anyone taking note—and are not allowed to defend or even speak for themselves because harassment and discrimination isn’t racist because “ethnicity” isn’t a race, even though what most Hispanics are not “white” is the “purebred” sense, but mixed indigenous and a lesser number being African. And here I am, a “native-born,” college-educated individual who served in the military, and I still have to tolerate the ignorance of the vast majority of the people I have encountered in my daily life—white, black and “others” including Hispanics; it has come easy for me to believe that nobody is “innocent,” especially of hypocrisy.

There is one form of discrimination that remains "legal" in this country: caste discrimination

The Mercury News is reporting another H-1B visa scam, this time by a Chinese national named Weiyun Huang, who graduated with a degree in finance and accounting from the University of Mississippi, and set about using it to help “more than 2,500 Chinese nationals that she helped improperly apply to extend their stays in the U.S.” and “was a purported spy for the Chinese government, federal authorities have alleged in court documents.” For a price, of course: “Authorities alleged Huang brought in at least $1.5 million through a scam involving H-1B visas and student work permits in which she used a Mountain View address to provide fake documents claiming foreign citizens were employed by her companies so they could stay in the U.S. Her credit card records showed ‘significant’ spending at luxury retailers.” Like many of the “favored” foreign workers, Huang was not herself “working” in the country on an H-1B visa, but on an H-4 visa, which allows the spouses of H-1B visas holders to also work in the country; there is an estimated 100,000 H-4 visa holders, mostly Indian women, who are not generally counted in the “official” tallies of foreign workers in the country. 

A recent attempt to put a number on the actual number of people working on H-1B visas in the country today shows how immigration services have lost control of the program, with “at best” estimates of something around 600,000 who can be “verified” despite so-called yearly “caps.” The News reports that the Citizenship and Immigration service has no electronic data system tracking this information, and the exact number, according to Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute, is “anybody’s guess.” As pointed out, the spouses of H-1B visa holders are not part of those counts, and from one person whose comments I posted, few H-1B visa holders actually go “home” when their 6-years visas are expired (contrary to the sob-stories the H-1B supporting Forbes keeps putting out), and through various scams at least 1 million people—the majority from India—are in the country illegally on expired visas. The same individual (an Indian-American who said he has “inside” knowledge)  noted that Indian IT consulting firms have a hiring “monopoly,” almost never make a sincere effort to hire American citizens,  and don’t report to the government that they have employees whose visas have expired. 

Now, I have talked about this all before, but I think it is important to note that American ideals are being harmed by all of this. Chinese nationals come to this country not because they want to “learn” about American democratic principles, but to exploit them for the benefit of the “home” country—which appears to have surpassed Russia as the U.S.’ biggest potential foe on the world stage, and yet U.S. companies are willingly importing de facto espionage, the theft of “trade secrets” and the undermining of the U.S. economy for the sake of cutting a few costs and corners.

But Indians—not all, but certainly the majority—are bringing something into the country that most Americans are completely oblivious to: the caste system that not only affects the lives of Indians whose identities are defined by their particular “caste,” but also their interactions with the “natives.” Most white people would not notice this because it is difficult for them to accept that a distinctly foreign group could come to this country and simply “takeover”—like say, “customer service” call centers, motels and convenience stores. It is amazing how in such a relatively short time whole sectors of the U.S. economy has been taken over by a group whose single-minded devotion to its “peculiar” social system has overtaken the so-called American “ideal” of equality opportunity for all, and flaunting anti-discrimination laws. 

According to the website thelogicalindian.com, those who did even merit being in a caste were those who did “menial jobs as sweepers, gutter cleaners, scavengers, watchmen, farm laborers, rearers of unclean animals such as pigs, and curers of hides.” Unless you are a neo-Nazi, a white supremacist or Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, no American who does such work regards themselves as being an “untouchable” or even a member of a “caste.” But what are “high-caste” Indians thinking? At least in India, high-caste Indians actually demand that lower-caste Indians not walk too close behind them, because they might “pollute” their shadow. Yeah, they actually believe that. 

The Pulitzer Center website has published articles on caste prejudice that follows Indians who abide by—or are forced to abide by—its strictures right here in this country. It isn’t just Dalits—the so-called “untouchables”—who are generally shunned by other castes because they are so low that they do not even have a “caste” to identify them as having a useful purpose in Indian society are most affected by this “system,” but it is still socially unacceptable for a higher caste person to marry a member of another caste that is more than one notch beneath them, especially for a man. Whether or not this actually changes with succeeding generations born in this country is yet to be seen. White Americans, of course, would be offended if Indians in this country would regard them as being in an “inferior” caste in their own country, although that hasn’t stopped many Indian managers of companies to regard them as being of “inferior” quality, thus the proliferation of H-1B visa requests in this country. How they regard people who are not white or Indian obviously is much aided by the prevailing stereotypes and prejudices that already in place in this country 

A 2018 survey by Equality Labs, “Caste in the United States” revealed that lower caste and non-caste Indians—the Adivasis, who are the “indigenous” peoples of India, and Dalits—are no matter what their economic or educational position is in this country, essentially handcuffed within the Indian community by the social mores of the “home country” that are   defined by the Hindu religion. Dalits who attempt to escape the religion-defined social mores by converting to Buddhism or Christianity still find that their status is unchanged within the larger Indian community. Many lower caste Indians avoid using their surnames, since those names denote a person’s caste, and within social and work environments that name can limit one’s ability to achieve, even in this country where the concept of “caste” has no legal definition.  And therein lies the problem: the U.S. recognizes many forms of discrimination—race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical disability—but not caste discrimination. In 2017, a Manhattan Indian restaurant called Sahib was sued by a Dalit waiter, but his legal suit was refused standing because there was no law against caste discrimination. 

Kevin Brown, a professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, observed that “The United States doesn't recognize the concept of caste, so it's not included in any of our laws that prohibit discrimination. We in the U.S. just haven't had as much experience with problems within the Indian communities that moved to the United States. So our legal system hasn't caught up to that. Unfortunately then, there are very little protections for Dalits in the United States for the discrimination that they encounter here with caste Hindus.” 

This discrimination is often based not just on simple “caste,” but on skin color and race as well; caste discrimination isn’t just pernicious for those within the Indian community, but for Americans who are not “white.” Many Indians regard themselves as “Aryan” and thus “Caucasian.” In the U.S. Supreme Court case The United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, Thind—an Indian Sikh—claimed he was a "high caste Aryan, of full Indian blood" and asserted his was white and should be allowed get U.S. citizenship at a time when only white immigrants (because of the 1917 immigration law) could legally become citizens. The justices unanimously denied that he was “white” or could be naturalized. It is thus highly ironic that the civil rights laws of the 1960s ended-up being enormously beneficial not just for white women, but for “high-caste” Indians who chaffed at the idea that they should not be treated just like any white person in this country—yet within their own community continue to practice a rock-solid form of discrimination. 

How rock solid? In 2018, the UK government attempted to pass a law banning caste discrimination, but decided to back down after widespread denunciations by Hindu groups bent on preserving their “privilege” to discriminate against others, even non-Indians. This is not to say that there are no liberal-minded upper caste Indians who oppose the caste system, and Gandhi not only opposed it, but it was the motivation behind his assassination. We are already seeing the effects of this kind of discrimination against American citizens in many areas of the economy; the question is with so many tech companies, particularly those with Indian managers, demanding more and more visas and green cards, and with an ever increasing “hidden” population that continues to occupy the country illegally without any oversight by immigration authorities, just how far down the caste totem pole do Americans want to go before someone decides that discrimination in any of its forms is illegal in this country?

Regardless of who wins the election, the ACA's fate is back in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court

Yesterday, Donald Trump made it official: he is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety.  A U.S. District judge in Texas had struck down the ACA, using as its justification the Republican tax law that removed the “mandate” which required all people to have insurance or pay what was essentially a “fine” to help defray medical costs of being deliberately uninsured. It isn’t clear why the ACA would be “invalidated” by the removal of the mandate, but it is clear that partisan politics is at its core. Texas still has the highest uninsured rate in the country, and in the past it has supported the use of so-called “mini-medical” plans that are regarded as scams in other states—ones that only pay a small initial lump sum and force the “insured” to be responsible for the rest. 

The “wildcard” in the Supreme Court is of course Chief Justice John Roberts, whose vote allowed the ACA to proceed in first place. A decision is unlikely to occur before the election, which Trump is banking on. His “base” support obliviously opposes anything with Barack Obama’s name on it, but I suspect that many voters who have grown accustomed to the ACA don’t really believe that the Supreme Court will really overturn it—or at least it hasn’t hit them that there is the possibility that it will. Democrats will surely make the possibility an issue during the election, but what will happen even if Joe Biden wins the election? Now that the case is officially in the Supreme Court’s “court,” there is little to be done until a decision is made, and perhaps even less that can be done if the law is struck down.

Last week the acting head of DHS, Chad Wolf, claimed that DACA was still “illegal” despite the Supreme Court’s recent decision rejecting the Trump administration’s rationale for ending it, and further claimed that the “American People” had not yet spoken on the issue. Polling, of course, says otherwise; nearly four-in-five Americans support DACA, even a majority of Republicans. But Trump continues to hear only a tiny, but highly vocal and hate-filled minority whose chief “spokesperson” is Fox News. In regard to the ACA, while support has often dipped below a plurality in the past, the closer to this election, the more voters have been concerned; a poll quoted in Forbes in February indicated that 55 percent of Americans supported the ACA, and the Kaiser Foundation’s recent polling continues to show that a majority of Americans favor the continuation of the ACA.

According to Kaiser, polling shows that “more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would prefer voting for a candidate who wants to build on the ACA in order to expand coverage and reduce costs rather than replace the ACA with a national Medicare-for-all plan. Additionally, KFF polling has found broader public support for more incremental changes to expand the public health insurance program in this country including proposals that expand the role of public programs like Medicare and Medicaid. And while partisans are divided on a Medicare-for-all national health plan, there is robust support among Democrats, and even support among over four in ten Republicans, for a government-run health plan, sometimes called a public option. Notably, the public does not perceive major differences in how a public option or a Medicare-for-all plan would impact taxes and personal health care costs.”

Remember that former Speaker of the House supported the gutting of the Medicare, and that despite claims that he would not touch Medicare in 2016, Trump has included cuts in Medicare in his budget proposals. Republicans showed themselves incapable of passing a health care plan of their own even when they only needed a simple majority in the U.S. Senate. Republicans continuing to misread the majority of public’s desire for some kind of national health care program that covers them when no other affordable option is available.  But once more, Republicans are the slave not to the public’s interest, but to those of a minority of hate-filled fanatics who oppose the ACA even though it is in their long-term interest to support it, or any other “public option.”