Folks … the time has come … for … SNARKY SNIPPETS! Yes, I’ve not done any for at least a day now, and I have several tabs hanging open that I thought would be perfect for a snippet here and there, so … here we go … !!!
You may remember a post I wrote back in May about a man, Scott Warren, who was about to go on trial because he had committed a terrible crime … he had provided food, water and shelter to a pair of immigrants who were crossing the Arizona desert. Warren was part of a group called No More Deaths or No Mas Muertes that provided immigrants struggling across the desert with food, water, clothing, and a bed for a night. Humanitarian aid, not anything criminal or seedy … the barest essentials required to sustain life.
His trial that started last May ended in a hung jury, but this time, his second trial, the jury unanimously agreed that he should be found not guilty of harboring undocumented immigrants. Score one for common sense and decency!!! Says Warren …
Scott Warren (center) of Ajo, Ariz., celebrates with his attorneys Amy Knight and Greg Kuykendall outside court in Tucson, Ariz. on Wednesday.
“The government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness.”
Back in the early days of Trump’s tenure in office, I did a little thing that brought me a bit of a sense of being a rebel, a part of the resistance. Every time I was at a bookstore, most often Barnes & Noble, I would turn any Trump books I saw backward on the shelves. I rather saw it as a public service, keeping people from having to look at the face of ugly. I got caught once or twice, but the staff there all know me and only gave me a wink and a nod for my ‘crime’. I’ve since stopped doing it, for now there are at least 30 different books on the shelves with Trump’s ugly mug on the front, and I have better things to do with my precious bookstore time than to spend it all turning books around, just making more work for the staff.
Well, it turns out that at the library in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, someone has been hiding books! Not, mind you, books about Trump or that are favourable to Trump, but rather books that criticize Trump. They wind up misfiled in out-of-the-way corners where readers will be sure not to find them.
Library Director Bette Ammon received a note from the prankster …
“I am going to continue hiding these books in the most obscure places I can find to keep this propaganda out of the hands of young minds. Your liberal angst gives me great pleasure.”
While none of the books in the latest incidents appear to have been stolen, some have been hidden in ways that made it nearly impossible to find them when patrons wanted to check them out. They have been discovered inexplicably filed in the wrong sections, hidden behind a row of Stuart Woods novels, or shelved with the spine facing inward.
After a local television station did a story about the missing books, one person called Ms. Ammon to praise whomever had hidden them, complaining that the library only carries books that represent a liberal point of view.
This isn’t the first time the Coeur d’Alene library has gone through this situation. Back in the 1970s, Richard G. Butler, a former engineer at Lockheed Martin in California, bought land north of Coeur d’Alene to build a compound for a white supremacist group known as the Aryan Nations. Long story short, city leaders successfully led efforts to combat the racists, and in 1986 the city was awarded a Raoul Wallenberg Civic Courage Award for its role in combating the hate group and used funds from that prize to establish a collection of human rights literature in the library.
It included books about the Holocaust, the persecution of African-Americans and the history of various religions. Then the books started disappearing. The library ultimately decided that the best way to protect the books was to put a lock on the floor-to-ceiling glass cabinet where they were kept. They stayed there until Ms. Ammon took over the job in 2005 and decided they should be integrated into the rest of the library’s collection.
The latest wave of book disappearances started in 2018. Over the months, they found books moved from prominent displays to the wrong stacks, or hidden behind rows of books against a back wall, near a pillar labeled “TEEN ZONE.” Some dealt with social issues, such as “The Women’s Suffrage Movement.” One book, “Guns Down,” detailed a political strategy for defeating the National Rifle Association.
Hmmmm … I’m getting ideas here … and we will likely be at Barnes & Noble sometime this weekend …
Yesterday, it was announced that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was formally charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, making him the first Israeli premier to be indicted while in office. (Are you listening, Bill Barr?)
The cases against Netanyahu centers on allegations that the prime minister and his wife, Sara, accepted more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods in exchange for political favors and that Netanyahu interceded with regulators and lawmakers on behalf of two media companies in exchange for positive news stories. Interestingly, during the three years this investigation has been ongoing, Netanyahu has frequently referred to it as a “witch hunt”. I think Donnie & Benjamin must have gone to the same school to learn how to distract and obfuscate, for they seem to speak a common language!
Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, William Barr’s counterpart, made this statement that I think Mr. Barr should read carefully …
“I made this decision with a heavy heart but with a whole heart and a sense of commitment to the rule of law. Law enforcement is not a discretionary matter. It is an obligation that is imposed on us. It is my duty to the citizens of Israel to ensure that they live in a country where no one is above the law and that suspicions of corruption are thoroughly investigated.”
Key phrases here:
- Rule of law
- No one is above the law
Rather than hindering the investigation into Trump, William Barr should be taking the role that Mandelblit took and be leading the investigation. We have the same rights the Israeli people have, to live in a country where corruption is thoroughly investigated and where no one is above the law.
Netanyahu has, predictably, acted in much the same manner as Trump, demanding that an independent body review the prosecution, or “investigate the investigators”. In a combative address Thursday night, Netanyahu called the indictment “a coup attempt” driven by a corrupt set of prosecutors. Sound familiar?
Surprisingly, I’ve not seen any response by Trump to Netanyahu’s indictment … perhaps his tweety-machine is broke? We can only hope.
Just a brief note that today marks 56 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.
Well, folks, that’s all the snippets I have time for today, but you know I’ll be back with more before much time passes. Have a wonderful weekend!
Tom Clay was a disc jockey in 1971, working for radio station KGBS in Los Angeles, California when he created this remix. The narrative includes sound bites from speeches of John and Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., and makes a heartfelt social/political comment.
By Patti Davis
There is an inherently parental role to being president of the United States. The person holding that office is supposed to know more than we do about dangers facing the country and the world, and is entrusted with making the appropriate decisions to keep us safe and secure. The president is supposed to keep us from falling. What happens when the president is the biggest child in the room — any room? It upends the natural order of things as surely as if a child’s parents started throwing tantrums and talking like a second-grader.
What will happen if the country faces serious danger? I was 10 years old in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation about the Cuban missile crisis. I remember sitting on the floor in my parents’ bedroom watching him on television. I remember asking my father if we would go to war. He replied, “I hope not. But the president is doing the right thing.” Kennedy’s somber confidence did make me a little less afraid. At the end of the speech, he said: “The cost of freedom is always high — but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose is the path of surrender or submission. Our goal is not the victory of might but the vindication of right.”
