Wednesday, July 17, 2019

The power in a word

Response to the R-word, from the right was violent and swift. Trump's former ICE director threatened our congressman, Chuy Garcia with a "beating" after Chuy aggressively questioned him about the horrid conditions in the detention centers. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got in trouble Tuesday for calling President Donald Trump’s racist tweets “racist.” It turns out there’s a congressional rule that lawmakers can’t accuse a sitting president—or any member of the House or Senate—of racism on the floor. Pelosi was even briefly prohibited from speaking at all from the floor after the parliamentarian ruled her remarks criticizing Trump’s tweets were out of order.
-- Slate
I guess I wasn't the only one demanding that Pelosi and the Democrats call out the President and his men for racism. Yesterday, the tide turned, at least on that score, Dems actually began using the R-word to push back on Trump's invitation to The Squad (and to all those who "don't love America") to leave it.

Speaker Pelosi even felt it safe enough, despite the so-called, congressional rule, to use the word in a House Resolution condemning Trump's "xenophobic tweets". Only four House Republicans dared vote for the resolution which won by 240-187 over near-solid GOP opposition.

The rule, as you might have guessed, was handed down from slave-owning English and American politicians.

But one-by-one, Democratic pols around the country seemed liberated when the word was put back in play by Pelosi, and when they were permitted to join-in, at least for the moment, alongside their four women-of-color colleagues in a unified party front.

Be still my beating heart. The secret for victory in 2020 was thereby revealed.

The blowback from the right was immediate and violent. The word itself was enough to pull the hood off the Trumpists. When Congressman Jesus "Chuy" Garcia aggressively questioned Trump's former ICE director, Thomas Homan, about the horrible conditions in the detention centers, even implying racist motives, Fox News talking-head Horan, said, "he broke" let out that he "thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room," thereby confirming Chuy's contention. Even though, Chuy never used it, such is the power in a word.

Also, if he thinks our congressman can be intimidated by threat of a beatdown, Homan must not know where Chuy is from.

This from the Chicago Tribune...
Homan clashed with other Democratic lawmakers while defending the Trump administration policies. When New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Homan recommended family separation at the border, for example, Homan responded by saying he recommended zero tolerance, apparently in reference to migrants who cross the border illegally. He also noted that U.S. citizens who are arrested with children would also be separated from their children.
On Tuesday, Garcia’s office issued a statement saying it wasn’t going to validate comments from an angry man, which they say is how Homan described himself on television.
“Congressman Garcia didn’t call him racist, but it is clear the Congressman got under Mr. Homan’s skin for a reason. If the shoe fits, Mr. Homan should wear it,” according to the statement.
The shoe fits.

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