Our nation lacks stability and order.

Our government, controlled by Republicans, was shut down last Friday – because our Chief Executive, Donald Trump, wanted to shut down the government – and the Republican leadership couldn’t get more than 46 Republican Senators to keep the government open on the terms that Mr. Trump demanded; worse, Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knew that would be the result, shutting down the government, when he forced the vote, and so the vote was a congressional exercise in tragic futility.

Mr. Donald Trump is unprecedented as the nation’s Chief Executive in his openly stated bias against non-white nations and persons of color; and that appears to be the sticking point for Mr. Trump – his general opposition to non-white immigration.  The rub is that Mr. Trump has to approve and sign whatever bill both houses pass.

Mr. Trump showed us his true self about immigrants just days ago when he erupted in an infamously bigoted tirade against immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and Africa, echoing his earlier sympathetic remarks for white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Hours into the shutdown, while partisans were negotiating to open the government over the weekend, Trump hurled another of his rhetorical grenades, in a “political campaign ad,” unimaginably charging that “Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.”  Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan would not say Dems were “complicit” in murder, thought the charge was not productive, but didn’t denounce it. Continue reading →