My scripts for calling my Senators about the Muslim/refugee ban

by Doctor Science

I'm incandescently appalled by Trump's Executive Order yesterday about refugees and visitors from certain Muslim countries. Today I wrote up some scripts for calling my Senators.

The talking point I chose to focus on is the vote to confirm John Kelly for Secretary of Homeland Security. Of my two Democratic Senators, Cory Booker voted against and Bob Menendez voted for-- the latter, I'm sure, in part in hopes that Kelly would be a moderating influence. Yeah, not so much.

Right before I called, I checked the Senators' websites and discovered that both had released statements opposing the Executive Order (Menendez; Booker). I then edited my script to remove my request that they release a statement, and changed it to thank them. I also thanked them on Twitter for their statements.

I was able to leave a message for Booker, but mailboxes at all of Menendez' numbers (DC, Newark, Barrington) were full. I'll call both of them again on Monday.

For Senator Booker:

I'm a constituent, calling to thank the Senator for his statement about Trump's refugee ban, and for his vote against John Kelly for Secretary of Homeland Security. I hope, going forward, that the Senator will vote against *all* Trump cabinet nominees, no matter how "reasonable" they seem to be. I also urge you to play hardball with consent decrees, too much is at stake not to.

For Senator Menendez:

I'm a consitutent. I'm calling to thank the Senator for his statement against Trump's Muslim ban.

The Senator voted to confirm John Kelly for Homeland Security Chief, possibly because Kelly said he was personally opposed to a Muslim refugee ban. The events of the past 24 hours have proved that this was meaningless.

We all make mistakes, but I urge the Senator to make NO MORE when deciding about Trump's cabinet picks. Vote against *all* Trump cabinet nominees, no matter how "reasonable" they seem to be. I also urge you to play hardball with consent decrees, too much is at stake not to.

I also called my Representative, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and urged her to make a statement opposing the Executive Order.

Everything going to have to be done all over again on Monday, when there are actually people in the offices, but it's a start. I've added my Senators' DC & local phone numbers to my address book (I already had my Rep's there). If you have scripts for use on Republican Senators, please add them.

Now I'm going to make dinner and stay away from the Internet for a while. Except for maybe animal pictures.

Middle-eastern Refugees: Landscape with Flight into Egypt, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. (source)

Comments

[bobbyp]

"The United States of America is a racist embarrassment to the world"

We need an emoticon for 'spits in disguist'.

[CaseyL]

Of all the appalling things that bastard has come up with, this is the tops - until tomorrow, anyway.

I haven't heard of similar situations happening airports other than JFK, has anyone else?

It does my heart good to see veritable armies of lawyers are at JFK working for travelers who are suddenly stranded there. They're filing habeas petitions by the bucketload, making handwritten signs to hold up so stranded travelers can find them, putting the word out on twitter to call them. All kinds of lawyers, too; not just immigration attorneys.

I'll do what I can: make another contribution to the ACLU, and probably to some immigration rights organizations.

[Ugh]

Gave some $$ to planned parenthood and center for constitutional rights in December. Maybe should do my giving in January for 2017. Christ.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/28/trump_has_suspended_due_process_for_muslims.html

ACLU suit:

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/1-_complaint.pdf

[Ugh]

This:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-republican-congress-is-responsible

Ryan and McConnell need to own all of Trump's sh1t unless they are out there actively trying to stop it.

[Ugh]

Like this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/paul-ryan-trumps-refugee-ban-does-not-target-muslims/2017/01/28/e0cf1fe4-e56e-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_conservatives-227pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.d821a6d7c950

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks for this Doc, I think JFK is bearing the brunt because the countries named are more likely to be flying into those airports. Another thought, if I were someone potentially affected by the ban, and the enforcement is concentrated at JFK, I'd be very hesitant to go into any other airport, cause that would probably be taken as an admission that you were trying to sneak in.

This is what these kind of enforcement regimes do, if you go through the front door you'll be rejected, if you go through a back door, it is automatically taken as admission of guilt.

[Ugh]

Protests at ORD and SFO as well. NYC Taxi drivers called work stoppage at 6pm - no trips to/from JFK.

[Ugh]

IAD too.

[wj]

In addition to the protest, our local paper reports: "Immigration advocates say at least one refugee family is detained at San Francisco International Airport"

[Countme-In]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYyeDBwcgRw

Read the comments below the video. Jew-hatred. Trump's and the Republican Party's actions will not stop with innocent Muslims from seven countries.

In a few weeks, you will begin hearing once again, from those organs of hate Trump employed so deftly during the election and since, that the ACLU and other human rights organizations, are liberal Jew-organizations infiltrated by Muslims, Communists, and gays.

The CONSERVATIVE Jews surrounding Trump will chime in with accusations of anti-Zionism against the decent liberals, as conservatives in every walk of life and in every country and society on Earth, including the ones Trump has targeted in a pointless, malign, sadistic move to keep their conservative terrorist haters out of this country, are vile haters and murderers.

lj, maybe think about getting your family and yourself back into the states while you can. You, and everyone here, including the deluded, minimizing conservatives, are being monitored for their relative loyalty to Trump and the Republican Party.

Peaceful demonstrations are all very nice. Within three months, I estimate, peaceful demonstrators in too many parts of this country, the bloody red ones, will be mowed down by bullets, with help from the well-established right-wing militias, who will be deputized by Trump and Republican Governors, and who have been heavily armed by the Republican conservative movement for just such eventualities.

I'm using the words I'm allotted to give you this news. As requested, I've left out the words that nail the truth about who and what we are up against, and what needs to be done.

By writing this comment, I've placed my life in grave jeopardy.

Back to silence.

[Ugh]

Protests:

https://thinkprogress.org/muslim-ban-protests-344f6e66022e#.erkzczezt

Thanks for stopping by Count!

[russell]

Taxi drivers called work stoppage at 6pm - no trips to/from JFK.

How beautiful is that.

I'm trying to find out if there is anything those of us who haven't consumed the Breitbart bile-flavored Kool-aid can do to help these people out.

$$$ for legal aid or transport to some other, friendlier country, food or clothing, whatever.

These people are fucking screwed. And we did it to them.

[Donald]

Tried to donate to the ACLU just now and couldn't get through because their traffic level is so high. Which is good.

[Countme-In]

http://juanitajean.com/director-national-intelligence-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-removed-from-the-nsc/

As demonstrations proceed and the U.S. Courts do their meager best to thwart this fascist takeover, there will soon be at least one major violent terrorist attack in the United States, probably in one of the Court Districts acting against Trump and company.

The attack will not originate from any of the seven countries under question. It will not originate from any Middle Eastern country, though the conservative government of one may applaud the backlash, as will the ascendant right wing fascist movements in Europe. It will not originate from China. It will not originate from Mexico. It will not originate from North Korea.

The Judge who rules today will have to go into hiding.

Russian agents, I expect, will be tangentially involved, but at the highest levels. Some of the directly-involved actors will be suitably swarthy paid collaborators recruited and trained by the the highest levels of the U.S. Republican Government to kill Americans in the service of scaring the shit out of enough frightened Americans to further the deadly darkness of perpetual foreign and domestic warfare descending upon us.

'“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly told Radosh in 2013. “Lenin,” he continued, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon’s fondness for the Russian revolutionary is telling in light of the the recent scrutiny over Russia’s pro-Trump interference in the 2016 election. Vladimir Lenin was the leader of Russia’s Bolshevik Party whose 1917 October Revolution threw a provisional government out of power, leading to the creation of the USSR.'

[Ugh]

Bannon and Miller are in charge:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/donald-trump-travel-ban-terrorism/index.html

And we're 8 days in...

[Ugh]

Hilzoy's description of Cheney could be applied to Bannon:

"darkness, combativeness for its own sake, obsessive secrecy, a cramped and constricted heart, and a tiny shriveled thing that must once have been a soul."

http://washingtonmonthly.com/2009/05/04/motiveless-malignancy/Thanks

Except Bannon seems like he is somehow worse.

[Ugh]

Oops here is hilzoy link

http://washingtonmonthly.com/2009/05/04/motiveless-malignancy/

[wj]

Cheney, at least, never acted like destroying the government and the country was his purpose. Bannon not only has said that's what he wants, he seems to be acting on it now that he has the chance.

[liberal japonicus]

This, via hilzoy
https://lawfareblog.com/malevolence-tempered-incompetence-trumps-horrifying-executive-order-refugees-and-visas

NBC is reporting that the document was not reviewed by DHS, the Justice Department, the State Department, or the Department of Defense, and that National Security Council lawyers were prevented from evaluating it. Moreover, the New York Times writes that Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the agencies tasked with carrying out the policy, were only given a briefing call while Trump was actually signing the order itself. Yesterday, the Department of Justice gave a “no comment” when asked whether the Office of Legal Counsel had reviewed Trump’s executive orders—including the order at hand. (OLC normally reviews every executive order.)

and this

Let’s start with the malevolence of the document, which Amira Mikhail summarized and Adham Sahloul analyzed earlier today. I don’t use the word “malevolence” here lightly. As readers of my work know, I believe in strong counterterrorism powers. I defend non-criminal detention. I’ve got no problem with drone strikes. I’m positively enthusiastic about American surveillance policies. I was much less offended than others were by the CIA’s interrogations in the years after September 11. I have defended military commissions.

Some of these policies were effective; some were not. Some worked out better than others. And I don’t mean to relitigate any of those questions here. My sole point is that all of these policies were conceptualized and designed and implemented by people who were earnestly trying to protect the country from very real threats. And the policies were, to a one, proximately related to important goals in the effort. While some of these policies proved tragically misguided and caused great harm to innocent people, none of them was designed or intended to be cruel to vulnerable, concededly innocent people. Even the CIA’s interrogation program, after all, was deployed against people the agency believed (mostly correctly) to be senior terrorists of the most dangerous sort and to garner information from them that would prevent attacks.

I actually cannot say that about Trump’s new executive order—and neither can anyone else.

Astonishing.

[Nigel]

Astonishing indeed. I've always thought Wittes a pretty obnoxious character, but I am wholeheartedly in agreement with his conclusion:
Moreover, it’s a very dangerous thing to have a White House that can’t with the remotest pretense of competence and governance put together a major policy document on a crucial set of national security issues without inducing an avalanche of litigation and wide diplomatic fallout. If the incompetence mitigates the malevolence in this case, that’ll be a blessing. But given the nature of the federal immigration powers, the mitigation may be small and the blessing short-lived; the implications of having an executive this inept are not small and won’t be short-lived.

[Nigel]

Jeez, Trump filed for re-election five hours after inauguration:
https://mobile.twitter.com/resisterhood/status/825435325535252480

Which means that non-profits (e.g. Planned Parenthood) are restricted in what they can say about him without risking their non profit status...

[Ugh]

Writes is giving the Bush administration, or at least certain actors in it, way too much credit, it represented its own unique threat to the rule of law in certain ways that were more dangerous than the current sh1tshow.

[Ugh]

Wittes that is. Gitmo and the black sites, for example.

[Ugh]

McConnell and Spicer on This Week and Priebus on MTP, will see what questions they get and answers they provide.

[Nigel]

Don't disagree with you,Ugh.
What's extraordinary is that *even* Wittes thinks Trump beyond the pale, and that I can find myself agreeing with his conclusion almost word for word.

[Ugh]

I know Nigel, I just couldn't let Wittes characterization of the Bsuh Administration go.

[Ugh]

Also lots of ugly stories about Dulles CBP defying court order. Remember, the CBP union endorsed Trump.

[Girl from the North Country]

Somebody just sent me these. It's important to know what the opposition is putting out, I guess. Unbelievable, and yet all too believable.

https://twitter.com/Jess4_RK/status/825358392575266816/video/1

https://twitter.com/seankent/status/825557232377008128

I suppose it's a very good sign that Google, Facebook etc are standing up against this, and that Chesky offered free airbnb accommodation (although I'm unclear who would need that - protesters maybe?). Anyway, since the tech people are the merchant princes of our age, one has to assume he needs them. Let's hope.

[Donald]

Yeah, on Wittes, defining deviancy down is a perennial theme in American politics. With Trump setting new and lower standards, we will be seeing a lot of this sort of thing.

[wj]

It appears that our "closest ally" is moving forward:

A petition set up on a British government website calling for U.S. President Donald Trump to be barred from visiting the country has attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures, qualifying it for a parliamentary debate."

I hope our British folks will keep us updated on how the debate goes.

[Doctor Science]

Have any of you with Republican Senators/Reps called them? Do you have any suggestions about how to change my scripts for use with Rs?

[Tony P.]

Let's hear once again about the "white working class" and its economic angst. That should help us make peace with the presence of a fascist cabal in the White House.

Hilzoy once described Cheney as a "motiveless malignancy" -- a memorable epithet but not literally accurate. Everybody, Cheney and He, Trump included, has motives.

He, Trump's chief motive has been obvious for decades: adulation for Himself. He adroitly fostered the adulation of the "white working class" to get Himself elected. Until the "white working class" gives He, Trump a resounding raspberry, He will keep up his drunk-at-the-end-of-the-bar act.

Am I expressing a certain loathing for the "white working class" here? Yup. They may feel entitled to be coddled and deferred to, but enough is enough.

I almost wish I had a Republican Senator or Congressman to give a piece of my mind to, here in snooty librul MA. Almost.

--TP

[CaseyL]

Tony P., you might have opportunities to give your Dem Senators and Representatives a piece of your mind. The Democrats this weekend have been pretty damn good in their response, with many of them joining demonstrations at airports. But I'm waiting to see what they do on Monday.

Now that Trump has made it clear he stands by the EO as issued by Bannon and Miller - and also made it clear Bannon is welcome to stay on the NSC instead of the DNI and Joint Chiefs - I want the Dems in full cry. Bannon is an avowed fascist whose stated intent is to destroy the country; one may assume Trump shares his viewpoint and intent.

[Countme-In]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

We're not invited.

[Girl from the North Country]

I might be going into the spam trap again. Oh well, in the scheme of things, it's a small complaint.

[Doctor Science]

GftNC:

I don't see anything from you in the spam trap. Your comment at 12:16 (with the links) seems to have posted ok, as far as I can tell. What are you not seeing?

[Girl from the North Country]

I posted a cheery little note after the Count's 02.09 saying Hi to him, and saying times must be hard indeed when he is seen as a ray of sunshine (not as insulting as it sounds, I hope).

[Girl from the North Country]

On the other hand, I do have the new computer blues, so it could possibly be something to do with that.

While I have your attention, Doc, your scripts are obviously no good to us furriners, but I'll be ringing the ACLU tomorrow to try and donate (not keen on doing it online at the moment), and if successful will encourage everyone I know to do the same. That's unless anyone here comes up with a reason why it might reflect badly on the ACLU if it turns out they are taking foreign donations?

[bobbyp]

Tony,

Insofar as dyed in the wool Trump supporters are in the "white working class", yes, there is no reaching them, and thus no need to agonize over trying to appeal to them.

See here.

The Democratic Party circular firing squad should cease. Full throated and uncompromising resistance must begin.

To the ramparts!

[Nombrilisme Vide]

To stretch that metaphor, that's fine so long as we don't have commissars sniping at the backs of outward-facing "dissidents" up on the ramparts. Which, broadly speaking, we still do. The Iron Law of Institutions has not, alas, ceased to function.

[JanieM]

Off topic, except that it's all the same topic these days....

Did someone post a link here within the last week or so of a book about Germany in the 1930s? I feel like I saw it here, but I didn't bookmark it, and now I can't find it. Emphasis on resistance, protests, etc.

P.S. "Incandescently appalled" is so much the way I feel...thanks to Doc for finding the words.

[bobbyp]

Which, broadly speaking, we still do.

Stretching back atcha'...

Broadly speaking...in this particular instance, both sides do it. I opine that even these snipers are becoming more aware their institution may be facing an existential crisis. And I've seen some really execrable 'analysis' by leftier-than-thou commentators that is simply cringe inducing.

When "all bets are off" it's hard to find a bookie.

[bobbyp]

NV,

I guess we'll just have to drag those snipers along.

Keep on truckin'

[Girl from the North Country]

Someone just sent me a link to a statement by Kasich posted on the Fox twitter feed, and when I looked further down their feed, among all the pro-Trump stuff, I saw this:

https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/825814926019141633

Interesting, no? Undercuts all the rubbish POTUS was saying today and yesterday, and on Fox too.

[wj]

Here's a thought for those of you who happen to be Republicans**: write the Speaker of the House. Tell him that it is time to join the many other Republicans in Congress in speaking out against this lunacy.

** I suppose the Democrats (and independents) could do so as well. But I suspect that a bunch of letters from Republicans will be more likely to get his attention.