More crap

On Friday, we learned that the Trump administration denied North Carolina's request to extend FEMA's Tropical Storm Helene relief funding for debris removal.

The storm caused about $60 billion in damages for the state and killed approximately 100 people. It was awful. North Carolinians are still trying to figure out how a storm with the force of a hurricane could ravage the mountains.

To be fair, FEMA is still providing 90 percent funding, but the remaining 10 percent is the equivalent to $200,000 million, which is not insignificant when people are still living in tents.

A few months ago, Kim and I went to Asheville to hear one of our favorite bands, Underhill Rose, perform. On the way up, the first hint of damage we saw was at Old Fort. Trees were still down. Some buildings were uninhabitable. 

By the time we reached neighboring Black Mountain and Swannanoa, the scope of the damage was clearly evident – and almost unbelievable to process from the inside of a car.

When we finally reached Asheville, the Interstate still had a layer of river silt imprinted on its surface and storm damage – particularly fallen trees – lay strewn on either side of the road. And this was five months later. It's going to take a long, long time for complete recovery.

But on Friday, the Trump administration said nope, further assistance is "unwarranted" and gave no reason why. So much for the transparency they claim to have.

And this coming from a guy who criticized then-President Joe Biden for abandoning the state and mishandling the hurricane response. Forgotten, I guess, was Trump's own response to North Carolina in 2017, during his first term, when the state requested $929 million in aid in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. North Carolina received just one percent ($6.1 million) of what it requested. Thanks, bro.

In the back of my head I'm thinking the only reason to deny the state recovery funding is retribution. Governor Josh Stein is a Democrat who doesn't mind sparring with Trump now and then. And Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, voted heavily Democratic for Kamala Harris in the 2024 general election. She received 98,602 votes (61.47.percent) while Trump totaled 59,016 votes (36.77 percent). So the payback presidency continues because a child pretending he's a clown sits at the Resolute Desk.

Roy Cooper, another Democrat, was the governor in 2017, in case you're looking for a pattern.

Meanwhile, the idiocy continues. When he's not denying FEMA funding, Trump's trying to punish Harvard University by banning the enrollment of foreign students for absurd or inexplicable reasons. Fortunately, a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order to block the ban. That action puts a stop – at least for now – of a potential brain drain that could hurt this country for decades. Harvard, like most prestigious universities, do invaluable work in research and development. For example, Harvard is probably the leading university in the world in cancer research. So, yeah, let's shut that down.

•   •   •

On a side note, I've noticed that whenever MAGA responds to criticism of Trump, the explanation often given is that the critic is suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), as if it's an actual thing that is treatable with counseling.

I've been seeing and hearing that for years. I suspect I'll get a few TDS's for today's blog. 

Political debate is a natural, even a genetic, part of this country's heritage. Unless free speech is suddenly declared illegal by executive order, agreeing to disagree is part of a normal and healthy exchange. Declaring that an opponent has TDS amounts to nothing more than a tired, childish ad hominem attack in an attempt to extinguish a person's viewpoint from the debate with a weak insult. 

Be better than that, MAGA.

 

 

 

 

Immigration game

The other day I saw a story published by The Wall Street Journal – a conservative newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns FOX News – that the Department of Homeland Security is considering a reality TV program that pits desperate immigrants against each other in a competition for U.S. citizenship.

I thought this was pretty much more dystopian Trump administration nonsense until I got to the part where TV producer Rob Worsoff has been pitching a show like this as far back as the Obama era (Worsoff, by the way, helped produce Duck Dynasty).

The story gained further credence for me when it noted that DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said she has been in contact with Worsoff and that the Trump administration is interested in the concept, revealing the idea is "in the very beginning stages of that vetting process."

Holy hell. Is there no end to Trump's indignities? His excessively corrupt administration (see: gold-plated Qatari 747 jet airliner) thrives on the pain and despair of others, and immigrants are an easy and special target for him. Not all immigrants, mind you. South Africans, who are white and speak English, are coming to the United States as asylum seekers and are welcomed by the Trump clown show. But Hispanics, who are usually non-Whites, don't generally speak English and are often being labeled, without due process, as MS-13 gang members, are being deported (probably unconstitutionally) to foreign nations not native to them. Cruel and unusual? Well, yes. That's the point, isn't it?

All this abomination got me to thinking about immigration in this country. It's not a particularly pleasant picture when you get right down to it.

Oh, sure. We've seen the images of poor Europeans coming off ships at Ellis Island under the shadow of the State of Liberty, and it's as feel good an image as there is. It's what America is all about. It's the Statue of LIBERTY, for crying out loud.

Until you consider that Black Africans were brought to these shores in 1619 to serve as slaves – by white Europeans, and primarily, by white Englishmen and who were mostly Protestant Christians.

Which makes the white Englishmen this country's first immigrants, not to mention its first slave holders. And one of the first things the white Englishmen do is steal the land from native Americans, who are not white. Oh, my God! It's an invasion!

It's a slippery slide from there.

As the country grew, so did its biases. As humans, we don't seem to do well with things we don't know about. Like somebody else's culture. Or their religion. So when the great potato famine sparked Irish immigration to the U.S. in the mid-1840s, it also brought with them large numbers of Catholics, and well, you know the rest: Irish need not apply.

Then it was the Germans in 1848, crossing the Atlantic to escape revolution. The resident Englishmen were so confused by this they called the Germans "Dutch" because the German word for German is "Deustch." Makes sense, right? It's a dehumanizing tactic to label an ethnic group something they're not. Well, we know that now. Because we're still seeing it happen.

About the same time that the Germans came over, the Chinese arrived, hoping to take advantage of the gold rush in California. Here's a factoid: the Chinese were primarily used to build the western section of the Transcontinental Railroad. Approximately 12,000 Chinese immigrants helped with the construction of the project from 1865 to 1869, often working under horrendously dangerous conditions. Imagine that. The American railroad system, made in China.

Then came the Italians in the 1880s, trying to escape hardship and political strife. Oh, my God. Mafia. More Catholics. And that Mediterranean dark skin. Watch out.

Meanwhile, Jews are coming to the United States in three significant waves from 1820 to 1924. One of the most shameful moments in American history, to my mind, occurred in 1939 when the German ocean liner MS St. Louis tried to disembark 900 Jewish refugees who were fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany immediately prior to World War II. But the United States, Canada and Cuba refused to admit the asylum seekers. Some returned to Germany, only to perish in the Holocaust.

And, of course, we have the Muslim ban. After all of our past history, it's no surprise, I guess. 

We like to think of ourselves as a nation founded on Christian values, but our past often reveals us for who we really are: humans who struggle with prejudice, fear and ignorance. The hope is that we can learn from our past.

And then the next thing you know, we find ourselves with government sanctioned immigration games on TV. 

Do you feel like we're being set up for something?

 

 

 

 

Mom, again

There's this picture of Mom that I love when she had just turned 19. She's just graduating from high school, so I figure it's about 1947.

I don't think the photo was professionally done because the top of her head was nearly cut off. It might have been taken by a family member. Perhaps one of her four siblings. Or maybe her dad, Harry. Or even my Dad, who was dating Carol at the time. I'll never know. 

 But it's beautifully posed.

She's standing in an open field, in heels, wearing dress gloves and an above-the-knee skirt, complete with a shoulder bag. And a corsage.

She might be smiling, but I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's the hint of a smile. Or perhaps the suggestion of one, as if she knows some really good stuff and she's not going to tell anyone. At least not yet.

What I love about this picture is that she is standing firm on her ground, facing 45 degrees from straight on. She's looking ahead. There's confidence there, I think. She's holding her shoulder bag with a measure of authority.

Mom and Dad are already an item by this point, and it'll be three more years before they are married. I remember hearing stories that Dad would take the trolley from where he lived in Allentown to see Mom, who lived in neighboring Bethlehem.

There's no way she can clearly see what awaits her, however. 

She never goes to college (she did major in accounting in high school and worked for an insurance agency for a while) but she and Dad end up having three sons who kept them pretty busy.

I'm supposing Mom was the ideal 1950s-60's housewife, but I have to guess this part: even though I lived it, I was in my world, she was in hers. Dad changed jobs fairly often, first as a high school English teacher, then a Red Cross counselor, then a teacher again, and then a Moravian minister before becoming a teacher once again and then, at last, back to the church again. I like to say he couldn't keep a job, but that wasn't it. I think he needed to find his true challenge; his authentic self. It always seemed to be somewhere he wasn't.

Consequently, the Wehrles lived in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Connecticut and back to Pennsylvania before moving to Ohio, and then, finally, to Wisconsin before Dad found himself. I'm pretty sure Mom never factored in all the traveling she would do as a housewife in her life, but there it was.

Sometime in the 1960s, Betty Friedan wrote a bestseller called The Feminine Mystique and a copy somehow ended up in our house. It wouldn't surprise me if Dad bought it for her because she was a voracious reader, but the book challenged the belief at the time that "fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949 – the housewife-mother."

I'm not sure if this book was life changing for Mom or not. I was only 12 in 1963. But I think an independent streak emerged and evolved in Mom. She got a job at Moravian College to help with finances while Dad was in seminary. A few years later, when Dad had a church in Coopersburg, Mom turned to oil painting. She was very good at it. I'm sure she found a sense of fulfillment in her talent and soon Carol Wehrle originals were hanging in many of the rooms of our house.

I have a few to this day.

She died in 1991 at the early age of 63 when she could no longer hold back the breast cancer that  ultimately ravaged her body. She outlived Dad by four years (who died of the prostate cancer that found his bones), and in those four years she displayed a courage and strength I don't think I'd seen in her before, even though she needed courage and strength to raise three sons.

I didn't see it then.

I see it now.

Thanks, Mom.