By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 22, 2020 ~
If you feel like you’re waking up every day to a country that’s reenacting a page from the Dr. Seuss children’s classic, “Wacky Wednesday,” you’ll be comforted to know you’re not alone.
Today is Wednesday. It was wackier than usual.
First there was the story by Brentin Mock of Bloomberg News about how the District Attorney of Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, had said this about the potential for Trump’s paramilitary coming into his city and hauling people away in unmarked cars:
“Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office.”
That Wacky Wednesday statement was made because federal “law enforcement” is actually assaulting and kidnapping peaceful protestors on the streets of Portland, Oregon on orders from Donald Trump, the President of the United States.
The Attorney General of Oregon, Ellen Rosenblum, has sued the Trump administration in federal court, alleging criminal acts by federal law enforcement. The charges in Rosenblum’s federal complaint are so Wacky Wednesday that you may want to print it out and store it safely to read to your children when they are older as a cautionary tale of the time that fascism arrived in the United States in the middle of a pandemic.
Rosenblum tells the court the following:
“On information and belief, federal law enforcement officers including John Does 1-10 have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland, detain protesters, and place them into the officers’ unmarked vehicles, removing them from public without either arresting them or stating the basis for an arrest, since at least Tuesday, July 14. The identity of the officers is not known, nor is their agency affiliation, according to videos and reports that the officers in question wear military fatigues with patches simply reading ‘POLICE,’ with no other identifying information…
“Ordinarily, a person exercising his right to walk through the streets of Portland who is confronted by anonymous men in military-type fatigues and ordered into an unmarked van can reasonably assume that he is being kidnapped and is the victim of a crime.
“Defendants are injuring the occupants of Portland by taking away citizens’ ability to determine whether they are being kidnapped by militia or other malfeasants dressed in paramilitary gear (such that they may engage in self-defense to the fullest extent permitted by law) or are being arrested (such that resisting might amount to a crime).
“State law enforcement officers are not being consulted or coordinated with on these federal detentions, and could expend unnecessary resources responding to reports of an abduction, when federal agents snatch people walking through downtown Portland without explanation or identification.”
Then there was the editorial in the Washington Post today which revealed that during Trump’s press conference yesterday, he was asked about Ghislaine Maxwell. That’s the woman sitting in federal prison in New York after getting a 12-year free ride by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida despite dozens of witness statements that she had recruited underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse.
According to the Washington Post, Trump answered the question about Maxwell with this:
“I just wish her well, frankly. I’ve met her numerous times over the years especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is.”
“Whatever it is?” Shouldn’t the President of the United States know what it is that his own Justice Department has charged a notorious international child sex trafficker with? One of the main accusers of Maxwell, Virginia (Roberts) Giuffre, has credibly indicated in previous court filings that Epstein, with Maxwell participating, sexually abused her “between 1999 and 2002.” (See Ghislaine Maxwell, Wall Street’s Secrets and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.)
Trump has now undermined his own federal prosecutors’ case by sending well wishes to the target of their criminal probe. Can it get any wackier than that?
Of course it can, and will.
The cognitive dissonance that millions of Americans are feeling right now is deeply rooted in a collective shame of what our country has become. America is the country that invented the electric light bulb; the phonograph; the airplane; the personal computer; and a host of other inventions that advanced society. Now we have to deal with the reality that the rest of the world sees us as a basket case when it comes to getting the pandemic under control. Our sense of national pride has been greatly diminished.
If we can ever rid Congress of the Neanderthals that got there with the Koch network’s money, we need to hold a series of comprehensive hearings to find out how we got to this deplorable moment in America’s history.
