The Spirit of Paul Gosar's America

           Republican Congressman Paul Gosar [Photo AP]

Well it's been awhile since I've given out a George Lincoln Rockwell Award and this week's winner has to be the cartoonishly-conservative Republican Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar.

My last blog about this peculiar poster boy for delusional Tea Party ideology was back on October 26, 2017 when he made headlines for comments in an interview with Vice in which he made the asinine suggestion that the organizer of the Charlottesville, VA neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally, Jason Kessler,  was "an Obama sympathizer." 

As some of you may recall, in that same Vice interview with Elspeth Reeve, Congressman Gosar also suggested that the Virginia rally was some kind of vast liberal conspiracy backed financially by the progressive activist billionaire George Soros, a Holocaust survivor.

On Tuesday Gosar made national media headlines yet again after he contacted both the Capitol Police and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to suggest that 24 young undocumented immigrant Dreamers who accompanied some Democratic members of congress to Trump's State of the Union address be arrested when they entered the chamber. MAGA!

That's actually a pretty interesting stance considering Gosar's own maternal grandparents were Basque immigrants from Banca, France and his paternal grandparents were from Slovenia.

Two days ago I was both flattered and honored to get a shout-out on Twitter from J'aime Morgaine.

One of J'aime Morgaine's homemade blocks

She's the progressive activist and U.S. Army veteran who has earned national recognition for her personal dedication to peaceful, non-violent protest and active engagement in the political process.

In an era when a measly 60.2 percent of eligible American voters bothered to cast a vote in the 2016 presidential election, Morgaine represents the kind of grassroots energy progressives will need to swing the 2018 elections.

A resident of Arizona's 4th congressional district, Morgaine helped draw national attention to Gosar's efforts to block his own constituents from posting comments on the Facebook page he uses as an official communication portal for his congressional office by driving two hours from her home to Gosar's regional congressional office to deliver actual bricks with the message "Please stop blocking your constituents" written on them.

Take a few minutes to check out both Morgaine and Gosar being interviewed for Vice on the issue - to me this is what civic engagement and democracy in action is all about.

Few people are an open book, but it's hard to figure out exactly what goes on inside the mind of a four-term Congressman like Gosar, who was initially elected to represent Arizona's 1st congressional district in 2010, then won election to the state's 4th congressional district in 2012 after it was gerrymandered to make it more Republican-friendly. MAGA!

Don't get me wrong, the First Amendment right to freedom of expression applies to everyone lucky enough to live in this nation equally.

Pope Francis addressing Congress in 2015

But Gosar seems to have a thing for using his position to make some intentionally divisive, and in the humble opinion of your's truly, absolutely ludicrous public statements.

For example as Elsie Viebeck reported for the Washington Post back on September 21, 2015, Gosar announced his intention to boycott Pope Francis's address to Congress because of his views on climate change and man's role in causing irreparable damage to the environment.

As Viebeck noted, in an op-ed posted in the conservative-leaning Website Townhall, Gosar said:

"[Pope Francis has] adopted all of the socialist talking points, wrapped false science and ideology into 'climate justice' and is being presented to guilt people into leftist policies."

Was Gosar was on some kind of crazy right-wing ideological bender that month?

Because six days before announcing that he was boycotting an address by the leader of the Catholic Church, Devin Henry of The Hill reported that Gosar was "circulating a resolution calling for the impeachment of EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, accusing her of perjury while testifying before congress [in 2015]"

Gosar's outrage was triggered over McCarthy's congressional testimony arguing in favor of the EPA expanding its authority to regulate America's waterways.

Former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy

He self-righteously accused her of "making false statements to Congress [that] are an affront to the fundamental principles of our republic and the rule of law"

Why? Because of obscure overlapping differences between McCarthy's justification of the expanding of the EPA's authority and the wording used by the two federal agencies that drafted the original rules governing oversight of waterways (the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers).

For that Gosar accused her of being guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors", which is actually laughable.

Especially considering the shady dealings of the current occupant of the White House, members of his immediate family and his advisors - both current and former.

Gosar's preachy brand of self-righteous indignation is also laughable in light of the release of Republican Congressman David Nunes' "memo" on Friday as some kind of phony excuse for Trump to fire Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein so the White House can replace him with an ideological lackey Trump sycophant.

Journalist Garrett Graff

One who will attempt to dismiss special counsel Robert Mueller based on the FBI being "biased" against Trump.

Regardless of whether you think Robert Mueller is politically biased, you should take a few minutes to listen to journalist Garrett Graff's interview with Terri Gross on NPR's Fresh Air on Tuesday - no wonder Trump is desperate to discredit this man.

When all is said and done, I don't have anything against Congressman Paul Gosar personally.

If he wants to exist in a sphere of far right-wing extremism, or perpetuate baseless half-truths and concocted innuendo to fire up Trump's base, hey that's his right and his business.

But when he attempts to use his office as a platform to espouse those kinds of beliefs, trumpet kooky conspiracy theories and block residents of a congressional district that he won because it was intentionally gerrymandered to make it easier for him to win - then he's the one who is guilty of actions that are "an affront to the fundamental principles of our republic and the rule of law".

And frankly, if you're a grandchild of immigrants to this country and have the temerity to ask the Capitol Police and the Attorney General to arrest young people who were brought to this country at an early age and raised here, people who were invited by members of Congress to a State of the Union address - you're not demonstrating the true Spirit of America.

You're demonstrating a contempt for the very principles on which this country was founded.

And there's nothing American about that.

Cruise Missiles For Kids? Or Distraction From Russian Meddling?

5-year-old Syrian boy Omran Daqneesh in 2016 [AP]

Listening to Trump express his contrived personal agony over viewing photos of "beautiful babies" from Syria killed in the heinous chemical weapons attack on Tuesday strained the boundaries of hypocrisy.

As he used his fake moral outrage over Syrian children as justification to order U.S. Navy ships to launch 59 cruise missiles at the Al Sharyat airfield in Syria, the EPA announced plans to cut $17 million from two programs intended to protect American children from the effects of lead poisoning.

Back in August 2016, as the world reacted in horror to the photograph of shellshocked five-year-old Syrian boy Omran Daqneesh sitting in an ambulance covered in blood and dust after an airstrike on the Syrian city of Aleppo, the puffed-up anti-immigrant xenophobia that defined Trump's nationalistic presidential campaign rhetoric, made no mention of the hundreds of Syrian children being injured and killed.

One of Trump's very first bungled initiatives as president was the executive order banning Muslims from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. - a ban that included Syrian refugees fleeing the same horror of war that the erratic POTUS used as an excuse to bomb Syria on Thursday.

So was Trump really motivated by his concern for the welfare of children?

Or was his military order simply an excuse to try and shift public focus from the ongoing Congressional and intelligence probes into he and his top advisor's ties to Russia and Putin's interference in the 2016 elections?

Ethically-compromised GOP Rep. David Nunes

Remember folks, there were two major news stories released hours before the cruise missile attacks that cast even more clouds over the Trump administration's conspiring with Russia.

It was during the day on Thursday that the House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Republican Congressman David Nunes, finally announced that he was stepping down from his role in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

Over the past two weeks, the Republican Party has taken serious heat over Nunes' role.

It's actually remarkable that it's taken Republican leaders so long to understand that the ethical minefield of a Trump advocate leading a bi-partisan Congressional investigation of Russian meddling has exponentially increased suspicion that the White House is engaged in a massive coverup.  

From a strategic political perspective, the Trump administration has been on the defensive in the wake of the failure of the Republican-controlled Congress to even vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act.

The monumental conflict of interest from Nunes having secretly travelled to the White House to brief Trump on intelligence information about the investigation, classified information that he had not shared with Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee investigating the White House, only seemed to magnify the political dysfunction of a Republican Party that controls the Senate, House and White House - but has yet to pass one single significant piece of legislation.

Remarkable? It gets even better.

As TheHill.com reported on Thursday: "(Nunes') announcement came moments before the House Ethics Committee announce an investigation into Nunes over potential 'unauthorized disclosures of classified information'."

On the very same day, Jo Becker and Matthew Rosenberg published an article in the New York Times about Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner having committed a felony by lying about meetings he had with foreign leaders on a questionnaire he filled out to grant him top-secret clearance for national security.

Were the cruise missile attacks a cover for
Kushner's lie about meeting with Kislyak?

As the Times reported, those meetings include two meetings in December "with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconomobank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak's behest."

So after both the Nunes and Kushner stories were preparing to dominate the weekend news cycle, by Thursday evening, at a hastily-arranged press conference at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida, Trump announced his decision to order the cruise missile attacks on Al Sharyat airfield just south of the Syrian city of Homs.
 Coincidence?

Knowing Trump's well-known propensity for showing a willingness to do or say almost anything to deflect negative press coverage, I'd say no.

Shocking atrocities against Syrian children didn't start with Tuesday's chemical attack - and Trump's own policies haven't exactly made concern for children's welfare a priority of his administration.

As Yvette Cabrera reported in an article for ThinkProgress.org on Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services conducted a survey in 2011 that showed that up to a third of the approximately 106 million homes in the U.S. are contaminated with lead-based paint.

Contamination that will have an adverse impact on poor children, especially poor children of color.

The EPA voted to lift restrictions on
the pesticide chlorpyrifos last week

As Cabrera noted, the Washington Post first published a copy of an EPA memorandum sent by the agency's acting chief financial officer David A. Bloom outlining a 31% cut in the EPA's budget for fiscal year 2018.

Cuts which include the two programs intended to educate Americans about the dangers of lead poisoning, as well as 54 other programs targeting issues like pesticide safety.

Those cuts also include a 25% cut in staffing at EPA, cuts which will have a direct affect on the health and well being of the "beautiful babies" Trump suddenly seems so concerned about.

The EPA's own research showed the pesticide chlorpyrifos poses a risk to babies, but they lifted restrictions on it last week.

Where is Trump's concern about the babies whose neurological health will be impacted by the presence of chlorpyrifos on the fruit and vegetables they eat?

Most people would agree on a unilateral UN-supported global effort to stop the civil war in Syria, just as most people are outraged and horrified over using chemical weapons on civilians.

But launching 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield isn't going to stop Bashar Al-Assad from killing his own people - with chemical or other weapons.

Nor will a cruise missile attack quell the American people's demand for a thorough Congressional investigation into links between Trump and his top advisers, and Russian efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections.

Syrian refugees arriving in Lesbos, Greece

Frankly if Trump really cares about the "beautiful babies" in Syria or anywhere for that matter, he should stop gutting the budgets of the Department of Education, HHS, EPA and cutting U.S. contributions to the United Nations.

If he hadn't signed executive orders banning Syrian families from coming to the U.S. in the first place, maybe some of those "beautiful babies" killed in chemical attacks in a rebel-controlled province in northern Syria would be alive today.

After all, Assad's decision to use chemicals against civilians in his own country (again) last Tuesday may well have been motivated, in part, by the White House's own decision last week to publicly announce that it had ditched the goal of removing Assad from power as part of its ambiguous "America first" foreign policy.

As White House press secretary Sean Spicer said just last Friday, "With respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept,"

What a sad and tragic difference a week makes.

Oh and by the way, Reuters is reporting that the $90 million worth of cruise missiles that were fired at Al Sharyat airfield did very little damage since Trump informed Putin before the attack and Putin in turn informed Assad - so the Syrians actually moved planes and other equipment before the cruise missiles hit.

As the British-based Syrian Observatory For Human Rights reported, Syrian planes took off from the base on Friday and attacked rebel-held areas in the northern Homs province.

$90 million to make a point and the airfield is still operational - par for the Trump presidency and bogey for the American people.