A passage from The Bard came to mind, which seems to describe the attitude some folks have toward the current occupant of the White House.

[quote]Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.[/quote]-- [i]Julius Caesar[/i] by William Shakespeare (Act I, Scene 2)

The reference is to the Colossus of Rhodes, a huge statue of the god Helios that for 54 years stood astride entrance to the harbor until it was toppled by an earthquake.

Fast forward to the 1870's. French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, inspired by abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye, decided to create a truly monumental gift to the United States, to honor the friendship between to the two nations, as well as the abolition of slavery. A few more details on this may be found in item 4 [url=http://thebattery.org/lady-liberty-10-fascinating-facts/]here[/url]. I am sure that some Forumites will find other of the details therein appealing as well.

[i]Anyway[/i], Bartholdi travelled to the United States, and selected the site for the statue, then known as Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island).

He had studied the toppling of the Colossus of Rhodes and found that it had snapped off at the ankles. He came up with a completely different structure to eliminate this mode of failure -- a thin skin placed over a framework supported by a strong internal support structure. For the design of this structure, he turned to the great French engineer Gustave Eiffel. Modern assessments have indicated that, given the materials and techniques available at the time, the support structure was about as good as it possibly could have been.

However, a large pedestal was required, and getting the money to build it proved to be a problem. A public fundraising effort was initiated, and the money was raised.

As a part of this effort, a poetess named Emma Lazarus wrote the following sonnet, which was largely ignored at the time and soon forgotten. However, after her death, a friend waged a successful effort to have the poem memorialized, and it is now on a bronze plaque mounted inside the pedestal:

[center][b]The New Colossus[/b]

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"[/center]

I'm no poet, and I know it, but I have tried notwithstanding to rework the last, best-known part of this poem, to serve as a campaign slogan for the Orange Colossus. Improvements desperately sought!

[center]Give me your minds unwell,
Your huddled bigots yearning to run free,
The wretched who would fall under my spell.
Send these, who think that all is lost, to me.
I lift my lamp beside the gates of hell![/center]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;554995]Send these, who think that all is lost, to me.
I lift my [STRIKE]lamp[/STRIKE] [U]gun[/U] beside the gates of hell![/QUOTE]
I made a slight change. Fist would work too.

A solemn anniversary
 

On August 27, 2019, 19-year-old Harry Dunn was killed when his motorcyle was hit by a car.

Anne Sacoolas has been charged with causing death by dangerous driving, by driving on the wrong side of the road.

She left the country after being interviewed by investigators, having had diplomatic immunity at the time of the offense charged.

This has been discussed on the Forum, in this and at least one other thread.

To commemorate the anniversary, I post some links to recent news stories.

BBC, July 22: [url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-53500449]Harry Dunn death: US immunity rule used by Anne Sacoolas closed[/url]

BBC, Tuesday [url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-53907098]Harry Dunn death: Attorney general 'considers virtual trial'[/url]

Washington Post, today: [url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/harry-dunn-anne-sacoolas/2020/08/26/ff5408d8-e23d-11ea-82d8-5e55d47e90ca_story.html]Britain considers trying American accused of killing Harry Dunn in absentia[/url]

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;554999]I made a slight change. Fist would work too.[/QUOTE]
"Raise my fist" is good. He frequently makes the "raising a clenched fist" gesture. Thanks!

It's déjà vu all over again!
 

[url=https://apnews.com/94695dd39b2277401b7d76c0c2491de2]Who's in power? Convention lineup has clues to Trump's favor[/url]

For the benefit of younger Forumites, this sort of headline and story was quite common during the Cold War. People (usually called "Kremlinologists") were always trying to figure out what the powers-that-be in the Soviet Union were up to, who was in favor, and who had lost favor. They would take note of the presence, absence, and placement of officials at events such as the annual Mayday Parade in Moscow. If the placement of officials relative to the Party Chairman had changed from last year, this was interpreted as shifts in how they were held in official favor. If some high official was mysteriously absent, he was out.

Also in the "I've seen this movie before" department, I was talking with my neighbor the other day -- the one who's borrowing my hummingbird feeder. She'll be 90 years old next month. She is currently reading [u]Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man[/u]. She told me she has asked members of the younger generations of her family, "Do you see Hitler?" She says, "I am not encouraged." She [i]remembers[/i] Hitler.

Honestly, the "the next Hitler" trope has gotten really shopworn - and a whole lot of actual Hitler-worthy warmongering has been done in its name. How many countries has the US imperium blown to smithereens in the last 40 years after noisy MSM-abetted propaganda campaigns which proclaimed the leader of one the targeted-for-forced-'democratization' countries to be the next Hitler? If you compare e.g. actual wars of aggression started-by, erosions of civil liberties overseen-by, etc, for recent presidents, Trump is certainly no extreme outlier.

And the DNC seems to be doing its darndest to maximize the odds of him getting a second term, by nominating a truly odious pair of neoliberal elitist faux-progressives in form of Joe Biden, career-long warmonger and water-carrier for the Elite looter class and Kamala Harris, whose similarly vile policy record one is not supposed to criticize because "as a woman of color, she's a historic VP choice" and similar identity-politics nonsense.

Let's start with Trump's latest genius idea to cut Social Security - indeed, a vile proposal. Problem? The candidate opposing him has publicly, loudly, and over his entire career gone on record and on video multiple times saying we need to cut Social Security.

More - A little Biden-related blast from the past (2008), from the late, great Alexander Cockburn:

[url=https://www.counterpunch.org/2008/08/23/quot-change-quot-quot-hope-quot-why-they-must-be-talking-about-joe-biden/]Cockburn — Change, Hope … Why They Must be Talking About Joe Biden![/url]
[quote]Another shining moment in Biden’s progress in the current presidential term was his conduct in the hearings on Judge Alito’s nomination to the US Supreme Court. From the opening moments of the Judiciary Committee’s sessions in January, 2006, it became clear that Alito faced no serious opposition. On that first ludicrous morning Senator Pat Leahy sank his head into his hands, shaking it in unbelieving despair as Biden blathered out a self-serving and inane monologue lasting a full twenty minutes before he even asked Alito one question. In his allotted half hour Biden managed to pose only five questions, all of them ineptly phrased. He did pose two questions about Alito’s membership of a racist society at Princeton, but had already undercut them in his monologue by calling Alito “a man of integrity”, not once but twice, and further trivialized the interrogation by reaching under the dais to pull out a Princeton cap and put it on.[/quote]
Biden's treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings was similarly reprehensible.

Kamala Harris - the fact that [url=https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/26/kamala-harris-has-complicated-history-with-wall-street.html]she gave multiple white-collar megacrooks[/url] (like current SecTreas Steve Mnuchin, former head of a crooked foreclosure mill, [url=https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/]OneWest Bank[/url]) free passes while going hard after that truly dangerous class of villains, parents of truant children, is a huge red flag. And this sort of thing is clearly a pattern for her:

[url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/09/while-pge-played-cat-and-mouse-game-with-california-regulators-where-was-kamala.html]While PG&E Played a ‘Cat and Mouse Game’ With California Regulators, Where Was Kamala?[/url] | naked capitalism

From last September. Also -

[url=Harris Lets Statute Of Limitations On San Onofre Lapse, Defends Governor Brown]Harris Lets Statute Of Limitations On San Onofre Lapse, Defends Governor Brown[/url] | Capitol Watchdog
[quote]California Attorney General Kamala Harris had evidence in her hands that she could have used to bring former PUC President Michael Peevey, architect of the secret San Onofre deal, to justice. And she had plenty of time, three years, to file criminal charges before the statute of limitations ran out on obstruction of justice–the easiest charge to prove.

She had all she needed from a search warrant executed at Peevey’s home in September 2015. That’s where a California Justice Department criminal investigator working on her behalf turned up damning evidence of an under-the-table deal to put $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion needed to close the defective nuclear plant onto ratepayers. Hand-written notes, scrawled in Warsaw on Hotel Bristol stationary in March 2013–where Peevey met with a Southern Califoria Edison executive–laid out the numbers. The notes also showed that Southern California Edison would donate $25 million to a UCLA research institute as part of the deal.

It is…evident that Peevey utilized his position to influence SCE’s commitment to millions of dollars to UCLA to fund a research program...[/quote]

Did y'all see the lineup of featured speakers at the Dem convention? It was one right-wing Republican and worst-of-the-Bush-administration rethuglican after another. John Kasich and Colin frickin' Powell, ferchrissakes. To think that the only thing that matters is getting rid of Trump, and not who replaces him ... delusional. The lesser of 2 evils is still evil, and quite often proves not-lesser.

I've said it before - folks like the Obamas and Bidens of this world are more dangerous than the Trumps, because they mask their evil deeds with a veneer of civility and well-spokenness. They lull you with their "decorous psychopathy", and the MSM give them a free pass on same.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;555406]Honestly, the "the next Hitler" trope has gotten really shopworn - and a whole lot of actual Hitler-worthy warmongering has been done in its name. How many countries has the US imperium blown to smithereens in the last 40 years after noisy MSM-abetted propaganda campaigns which proclaimed the leader of one the targeted-for-forced-'democratization' countries to be the next Hitler?
<snip>[/QUOTE]
My soon-to-be 90 years old neighbor would likely be puzzled by the word "trope." She sees a clear resemblance between the Hitler personality cult (which she remembers) and that of the Jobbernowl Who is God. She says she has to keep her mouth shut about politics with some of her own progeny because (to paraphrase) they are cultists. She knows it is futile to try to argue with them.

I told her about the recollection of a German man who had, in his teens, along with his friends, swallowed the Nazi ideology hook, line and sinker. He explained, "We were young, and we were stupid." He talked about it at the dinner table with his parents. His father argued with him. His mother stopped him. "Dear, there's no point. He's been brainwashed." My neighbor thought it was relevant.

(BTW, this same man also recalled what happened when, as a member of the Waffen SS, he was sent to Russia as part of the occupation force in some remote village. He fell in love with a Russian woman. "Suddenly," he said, "I knew I was in the middle of something terrible.")

"Blown to smithereens?" Talk about "shopworn." I recall every US military venture since 1980, but can't recall a single country being "blown to smithereens" in that period. The first reasonable candidate that comes to mind is Afghanistan, which your masters in Moscow did quite a number on from 1979 to 1986, with the Taliban pulverizing what was left until 2000. After 9/11, about all US efforts could do was "make the rubble dance."

The other candidate is Syria, which Bashir al-Assad, with no small assist from your masters in Moscow, has pretty thoroughly wrecked.

And, speaking of "shopworn," "US imperium" is practically a throwback to [i]Pravda[/i] writing of the Stalin era.

As to the Orange Colossus, he is certainly an outlier in the internal politics of the US, which, despite your desperate attempt to change the subject, is the subject of my neighbor's concern, with an election coming up.

Every avowed racist in the country, if not on the planet, has claimed him as one of their own. When's the last time [i]that[/i] happened with a US President? Of course, anyone who has a problem with, say, a black man in Kenosha, WI being shot seven times in the back and paralyzed from the waist down is a "thug" and an "anarchist." The paralyzed victim was cuffed to his hospital bed, while the guy who murdered two people protesting the injustice was allowed to walk free.

How about the Republican National Convention, where the Secretary of State, after promulgating State Department policy that State Department officials must refrain from participating in partisan politics, spoke at the Republican Convention? When's the last time [i]that[/i] happened?

The Admin's response to COVID-19 shows the complete triumph of political bootlicking over competence and science. The latest guidelines, willfully disregarding the possibility of transmission by asymptomatic transmission, was promulgated in the absence of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was undergoing surgery. And, of course, cult members don't give a hoot.

[YOUTUBE]vVSgSogHf6o[/YOUTUBE]

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;555419][YOUTUBE]vVSgSogHf6o[/YOUTUBE][/QUOTE][i]Where will he go next? This phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare. Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami, Florida? Vincennes, Indiana? Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because, through these things, we keep him alive.[/i]

-- closing narration, [i]He's Alive[/i]

In Gahan Wilson's [u]"...and then we'll get him!"[/u] there's a cartoon showing an aged Adolf Hitler in South American exile walking with two canes on a balcony, his face a portrait of fury, while a guy sitting in a chair in the corner says, "Oh, stop bitching about it, will you? It's all been over and done with for years?"

(That last question mark may be a typo, but it's not [i]my[/i] typo. It's printed that way in my copy of the book.)

[URL="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/2020-voting-guide.html"]The best way to vote in every state of the US[/URL]

[url=https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/09/seaside-on-edge-over-planned-open-carry-march-sunday.html]This article[/url] and [url=https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3377595582278803&id=396757797029278&ref=page_internal]this open letter[/url] show us that the brownshirts have arrived in little Seaside, Oregon. Or (given my predilection to use the moniker [i]Il Duce[/i]), is it the blackshirts?

And here the Orange Colossus® is running as the "law-and-order" candidate who will get rid of the thugs in the streets.

Oh, wait, he ran as the "law-and-order" candidate in the [i]last[/i] election. Well, I guess one term isn't enough for him to deliver. We'd better give him a second term. And if that isn't enough, let's just throw the Constitution away and start planning the coronation.