Have you no decency Mr. Trump?

Two years ago Donald Trump, then a Republican presidential nominee trailing in most polls, responded to accusations that he had sexually harassed a number of women by mocking one’s appearance: “She would not be my first choice.” All of them, he said, were “liars.”

On October 7, 2016, during the 2016 United States presidential election, The Washington Post published a video and accompanying article about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and television host Billy Bush having “an extremely lewd conversation about women” in 2005. Trump and Bush were in a bus on their way to film an episode of Access Hollywood (now Access), a show owned by NBCUniversal. In the video, Trump described his attempt to seduce a married woman and indicated he might start kissing a woman that he and Bush were about to meet. He added, “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Donald Trump publicly bragged about violating women’s privacy and bodily autonomy at he Miss Universe contest that he owned. Women have shared stories of being harassed by Trump in the very ways he has publicly boasted about. Tasha Dixon was 18 when she competed in the Miss USA pageant, winning the state crown. She reported to CBS, “He just came strolling right in. There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Other girls were naked.”

Despite his past behavior and language Trump seems to think his support for Brett Kavanugh is a winning strategy to retaining control of both house of Congress in the November 6 elections.

And now Trump has voiced his concern for the men who have sexually harassed women.

November 6 should be a time when you send the boorish, obnoxious, sexual harasser a message.

You are not fit to be president of the United States.

Minorities are Unwelcome in the United States

Beware! If you are not a White European you are not welcome in the United States. DO NOT believe what is written on the Statue of Liberty if you are not part of that group.

The behavior of the United States today should be a warning to those who are not White Anglo Saxons about their treatment and opportunities if they migrate to this country.

More than our mistreatment of African Americans (Blacks) who were held as slaves until the Civil War that ended on May 13, 1865. Other Non-White people have been treated with disrespect, hated and jailed because they are viewed enemies of America. Look at America’s history as a guide. The following events are examples of the treatment of Non-White in the United States. There are many more.

I wish it wasn’t so.

From 1778 to 1871, the United States government entered into more than 500 treaties with the Native American tribes; all of these treaties have since been violated in some way or outright broken by the US government, while at least one treaty was violated or broken by Native American tribes.

One of the worst and most disgusting things happened in the 1829 decision by the Supreme Court in Johnson v. M’Intosh. The court ruled that the U.S. Government could sell Native American land to non-Native people out from under the tribes. Believe it or not, they were actually trying to do just that. Under President Andrew Jackson Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee, Creek and Seminole people were forced from their lands required to march to Oklahoma. Thousands died in that march.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. Those Chinese were needed to build the transcontinental railroad but by the 1880s the job was done.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor all people of Japanese descent, even though they were born and raised in the United States were put into internment camps for the duration of World War 2. Many Americans don’t like calling them concentration camps but that is what they were.

The Mexican Repatriation was a mass deportation of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans from the United States between 1929 and 1936. Estimates of how many were repatriated range from 400,000 to 2,000,000. An estimated sixty percent of those deported were birthright citizens of the United States.^[2]:330 Because the forced movement was based on race, and ignored citizenship, the process arguably meets modern legal definitions of ethnic cleansing.

In 1955 Mexican immigrants were caught in the snare of Operation Wetback, the biggest mass deportation of undocumented workers in United States history. As many as 1.3 million people may have been swept up in the Eisenhower-era campaign with a racist name, which was designed to root out undocumented Mexicans from American society. The short-lived operation used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants—some of them American citizens—from the United States. Though millions of Mexicans had legally entered the country through joint immigration programs in the first half of the 20th century, Operation Wetback was designed to send them back to Mexico.

MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner. In 1939, she set off on a voyage in which her captain, Gustav Schröder, tried to find homes for over 900 Jewish refugees from Germany. Due to countries’ immigration policies based on domestic political realities, rather than humanitarian grounds, they were denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada. The refugees were finally accepted in various European countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, and France. Historians have estimated that approximately a quarter of them died in death camps during World War II.

Words To Live By

On this fourth of July:

“ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU – ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY”

Who said those words?

Most Americans know three of them by heart. Scant phrases which, though spoken in the most ritualistic and formal of settings, commonly define an age, and a speaker. “With malice toward none” Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Nothing to fear but fear itself” in his first. John F. Kennedy, whose centenary is celebrated this month, uttered the third such phrase at his only inauguration and it is, in popular memory, recalled the most simply: “Ask not.” Of course, that is not the whole of the quotation, or the whole story, which is told here…

The seventeen most inspiring words in 20th century American history were spoken by John F. Kennedy, around mid-day, on January 20, 1961, in Washington, D.C. The occasion was his Presidential Inauguration, and came as he was concluding his Inaugural Address. Kennedy, the first President born in the 20th century, and 27 years younger than his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had just declared that the torch had been passed to a new generation of Americans – “born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage” – and pledged to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Then he spoke the seventeen words –

And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.

Those words, when first heard over a half-century ago, were positively electrifying. No president had ever challenged citizens, in peacetime, to sacrifice or commit to a larger vision. With that single sentence, Kennedy inspired people to new possibilities. He raised their expectations of themselves, and of their nation. In response, some joined the Peace Corps, others the Green Berets; thousands flocked to Washington to be part of the “New Frontier.” Students, thinking ahead to government service, went to law school or into programs with social benefit. All across the country, Kennedy’s words changed lives. “It was a special time,” a Senator remembered years later. “Lord, I’ve never had such a feeling before or since then. It was marvelous; without living it, you can’t express it. It gave the country a lift; it gave the world a lift. People cried in the dusty streets of Africa when he died.” All because of, really, seventeen simple words of inspiration.

My favorite words: “Give me liberty or give me death” and “Don’t tread on me” are my reasons for being an American.

Has Donald Trump or the previous recent presidents lived up to the JFK challenge? Sadly the answer is NO!

Refugees

REFUGEES

June 21, 2018 503me

It’s easy for Americans to blithely say that people should not flee for refuge when in our lives, never has there been a need to flee for refuge. I would like to share the following written by Warsan Shire.

The writer is a British writer, poet, editor and teacher, who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. Her words “No one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark”, from the poem “Conversations about Home (at a deportation center)”, have been called a rallying call for refugees and their advocates.

HOME
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breathe bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
I want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
I don’t know what I’ve become
but I know that anywhere
is safer than here.

~ Warsan Shire

Skyscraper Building Boom

When we visited Toronto Canada for the first time in 2009 we were astonished by the number of high rise buildings under construction throughout the city. Walking on Yonge Street there were signs announcing plans for more sky scrapers to be built within the coming year or two. When we visited Toronto again in 2017 the construction of new sky scrapers had not diminished.

There is a high rise (skyscraper) construction boom under way in many major cities all over North America.

The Comcast Development Center in Philadelphia is adding a 1,121-foot-tall building to that city’s skyline.

Chicago is adding the Vista Tower. It is an 1,186-foot tall luxury hotel and condo tower. There is actually 50 high rises of 100 feet or more under construction in Chicago.

After 1992, when the California Plaza was built there were no new skyscrapers in Los Angeles until 2003. That new high-rise was just a 35 story building. Then starting in 2009 there has been a resurgence in high-rise construction throughout Los Angeles. The Wilshire Grand was just completed last year as the tallest building west of the Mississippi. It is about to be eclipsed by another high-rise at 1107 feet.

77-story planned Bunker Hill tower drawn into a photo of the area

The first phase of a massive redevelopment of the old Boston Garden site will ultimately add 1.87 million square feet of shops, restaurants, offices, hotel rooms, and residences and is set to finish sometime this year. Eventually, the joint project between developers Boston Properties and Delaware North will include a 38-story residential tower, 21-story office tower, as well as new transit connections and outdoor space.

There 14 high-rises under construction in San Francisco right now. The Salesforce Tower will be that city’s new tallest building beating the famous TransAmerica Tower.

Meanwhile Toronto Canada is trying its very best to be second to New York City with traffic, subways and over 60 high rises over 500 feet. Most of them are jammed into their downtown area. The tallest is 978 feet. A 1,043 foot tall 85 floor building is under construction now an even taller 98 story building is awaiting approval of their city council.

Artist conception – Tallest building tower “Yonge Street Living” is proposed for downtown Toronto

Most of these projects are a combination of offices, hotels, stores, and residences. Living closer to the center of the city means less commuting. That translates to less traffic on our congested roads and easier access to museums, entertainment centers, and hospitals. Add to that is we like living in busy cosmopolitan cities. The proof is the tourism to NYC, Las Vegas, and downtown San Francisco.