Category: Local Politics

If you are of a certain leftist ilk in this country, you are pro-Palestinian to a fault. I mean that in the literal sense – to a fault. In other words, your support for the Palestinian cause is of such crystal purity that it insulates you from certain truths.

One of those truths is that Gaza, which is ostensibly part of the Palestinian Authority, has been run by a group known as “Hamas” since 2007. Another one of those truths is that Hamas is not some benign and ragtag group of grassroots resistors, but a well-organized, well-funded, internationally supported paramilitary group whose primary remit is to exterminate Jews. It receives support and funding chiefly from Iran – an oppressive, authoritarian theocracy – and Qatar, which is wealthy and Westernized, but still little more than a feudal emirate whose existence is fueled by reserves of natural gas and oil.

In other words, neither Iran nor Qatar are what your, e.g., local DSA chapter would normally aspire to impose upon this country. Hamas, too, is an expressly religious movement, seeking to impose an Islamic republic on the entire territory of what had been the post-Ottoman, post-1922 Palestinian mandate, whilst driving the Jews into the sea.

Again, I’m not sure why some doctor’s kid costuming as “proletarian” with a Carhartt toque prefers an Islamic state, but that’s really for them to explain.

The history of Israel and Palestine is too complex to be well-served by self-righteous, reductive sloganeering. So, when I see local Buffalo leftists pat themselves on the back for their placement of a bedsheet bearing the term “hashtag ceasefire now” over the 33, it underscores for me the lightweight, unserious nature of their understanding of the problems and their simplistic and frankly genocidal solution to them.

Palestinians have a right to exist. Jews have a right to exist. These two things do not need to be mutually exclusive.

Hamas is not Palestine. Palestine is not Hamas. Gaza, however, is run by Hamas and has been since 2007. Israel does not occupy Gaza. Hamas, to put it simply, are not the good guys. If your reaction to bad guys doing bad things is to attack their victims, what kind of pacifism, human rights, civil dignity, or democracy do you exactly believe in? You’re just making excuses for authoritarian oppression and violence against innocent civilians.

On October 7th, an Iranian proxy Islamist military organization that seeks to eradicate not just Israel, but Jews, attacked, kidnapped, and slaughtered Jewish people in their homes, in a Kibbutz, and at a festival.

If you’re some kind of leftist pacifist who hates oppression and state violence, the events of October 7th deserve your attention, at least – if not your full-throated condemnation. But I don’t see a lot of that, at all.

It bears mentioning that Israel’s policy of annexation and settlement in its West Bank territories has been oppressive, racist, and shameful. That does not excuse a massacre of civilians any more than American policy in the Middle East justified 9/11. The West Bank Palestinian entity is not run by Hamas, but by a different, more moderate Palestinian political entity, Fatah. But let’s be honest about what Israel is. There is a reason why it exists. There are very specific ways in which it became populated by Jewish people over time. I am of the belief that there is enough room in the world for 22 Arab states to permit one Jewish state to exist.

American leftists will tell you they’re not antisemites, they’re just anti-Zionists. OK, well tell me where Jews should go, then? Jews all over the world throughout modern history have lived in places that have, at best, tolerated them. At worst, they were slaughtered or expelled. Because Jews always existed in these places as a tolerated-at-best minority of the population, when bad times came, they were instantly scapegoated and mistreated. The word is pogrom and they weren’t unique to pre-1945 Germany.

I mean, Google it.

How is it that your sympathy for the plight of Palestinians is a moral justification for a genocidal pogrom by yet another bunch of Jew-haters? Do you agree with Hamas that Jews should be driven into the sea? That the state of Israel should cease to exist? That a random post-Ottoman, post-colonial area of Asia with straight-line borders must never be sullied by International Jewry because Arabs lived there after the Jews were expelled and enslaved under Roman occupation?

So, sure, hashtag ceasefire, but if you condemn inhumanity and violence perpetrated by Israeli forces, but remain silent or make excuses when Hamas bombs a bus in Hebron or hurls missiles indiscriminately at Israeli cities, or carries out a pogrom in Southern Israel, you’re not a pacifist or an earnest supporter of freedom fighters. You’re an apologist for one particular slaughter of one particular population, and whether coincidental or not, it’s the same population that has been subjected to hatred, expulsion, and genocide for a millenium.

So, yes, free Palestine indeed, from its current and former terrorist overlords who think that maybe this time they can drive the Jews out and create a Palestine that is as functional as Syria, as uncorrupted as Lebanon, as free as Jordan, and as democratic as Egypt.

After Syria’s independence from France, Jews were slaughtered, their synagogues burned, and Jews who weren’t murdered, fled. What was left of Syria’s Jewish population has suffered from mob violence, and the Assad dictatorship has, at times, encouraged and discouraged it. But rest assured, Syria has done a great job of cleansing Jews from its territory. It is estimated that a population of 40,000 Jews in 1948 is now down to a robust population of four.

Jews have fared only slightly better in Syrian client state, Lebanon. Most Lebanese Jews fled the civil war of the mid-70s, especially as Syrian influence grew. Hezbollah – an Islamist, Iranian-backed theocratic authoritarian movement was big on taking Lebanese Jews hostage and murdering them. The handful of Jews left in Beirut exist underground, unfree to practice their religion.

In Egypt, a population of about 75,000 Jews in 1948 has shrunk to fewer than 10 today. Most Jews were expelled and dispossessed in the mid-50s, if not imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. In 1956, Egypt declared that all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state, and one can imagine how well that went for Jewish Egyptians. In a scene reminiscent of events of just twenty years earlier, Jews were rounded up by police, told to take one suitcase and some cash, forced to sign over their possessions to the Egyptian state, and told to fuck off out of Egypt. During the 1967 war, further terrorization of the Egyptian Jewish community was overseen by Leopold Gleim, the head of the Gestapo in Poland and head of the Egyptian secret police under the name Ali al-Nahar.

After the Palestinians rejected the UN’s proposed 1947 partition of Palestine, Israel was formed, and all of the countries of the Arab League – including Jordan – waged war on Israel. By the end of the war, Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Jordan immediately set about expelling Jews who lived in Jerusalem’s old city. In 1954, Jordan offered citizenship to non-Jews living in its occupied territories, and during its 19 years of occupation, Jewish homes and places of worship were destroyed. All but one of the 35 Jewish houses of worship in the Old City of Jerusalem were destroyed. Jordan’s occupation was ended following the Six-Day War in 1967. As of 2006, no Jews were known to live in Jordan.

There are 2.1 million Arabs living in Israel as Israeli citizens of Palestinian heritage, a mixture of Muslims and Christians. So, it’s possible for Jews and Arabs to live side-by-side in the same country, much less adjacent ones.

If you stand for civil rights and human dignity, I think those principles stand in stark contrast to Hamas.

Yesterday, the Republicans got rid of their own Speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Plenty of people are pointing fingers at Democrats for not backing McCarthy up, but honestly why is it Democrats’ job to backstop Republican dysfunction and malfeasance? Sounds like a them problem and not a we problem, and if they have a small handful of ne’er-do-wells consisting of the most extreme and noxious political personalities in the nation, then it’s up to less-noxious Republicans to sort that out.

It bears mentioning that Nancy Pelosi got a lot done between 2021 – 2022 because she is competent and knew how to keep her caucus united and functioning.

I’ve been writing a blog of some sort since 2003 and throughout that time, I have observed and chronicled the slow-rolling decline of the Republican Party. Whether or not you agreed with its platforms and ideas, it was a competent participant in our federal system of government at least until 1994 when Newt Gingrich really launched its current descent into bellicose extremism. Then it morphed into a parochial religiousist party, and now it is nothing more than a nihilist cult, busily scaring its voters, reinforcing and feeding its least-informed and neediest base, and trying to out-do one-another in fealty to the cult of Donald Trump, the maximum rule. The Red Caesar. The emperor-king.

The Republicans had an amoral adulterer preside over the Clinton impeachment, all the while spouting moralistic claptrap. Then they stole the election from Al Gore, they destablized the Middle East by invading Iraq, then President Obama’s election completely fried their brains as the Tea Party and Sarah Palin ushered in a whole new era of know-nothing nihilist ignorance, culminating in the cult of Donald Trump – the most un-American and anti-American President ever to serve.

As the Republican Party implodes, the Democrats should let them have at it. If the country for whatever reason needs a functioning “conservative” political party, then someone really ought to found one because the Republican Party isn’t it, and never will be again.

Defenestrate the Republican Party just as they defenestrated Kevin McCarthy, and cast it into the ashbin of history, with the Whigs.

According to this guy, it is illegal for a person to oppose another person being appointed to a volunteer ethics board position.

According to this guy, if two people oppose someone else being appointed to a town board, that’s an actionable conspiracy.

Bonus points for the gratuitous and silly use of “ANTIFA” like a good and obedient little trumpster.

Silly season came early this year, just oozing from the town of Cheektowaga. A town supervisor’s race explains the silliness. The candidates are Brian Nowak (D) and Michael Jasinski (R). Jasinski is being supported by outgoing Supervisor, Diane Benczkowski.

Things must not be looking too great for the Jasinski campaign, because he and Benczkowski have manufactured out of thin air probably the most transparently idiotic nontroversy, calling for the censure – nay resignation – of Councilman Brian Nowak because he had the audacity to point out that a woman under Council consideration to serve on a volunteer Cheektowaga town ethics board has flown a Confederate battle flag outside her home. So, they’re accusing him of “bribery”.

I mocked the whole thing in this post.

Well, Benczkowski and Jasinski (and Benczkowski’s lawyer, Gary Borek), believe that they can propel Jasinski to victory by libeling Brian Nowak, accusing him of making a $400,000 bribe (!) and of being mean to the Confederate flag lady.

The bribery allegation is as absurd in its supposed facts as it is politically manufactured. Nowak doesn’t have $400,000 with which to bribe anyone, and the whole thing is ridiculous. It goes without saying, I suppose, that if Jasinski and Benczkowski and Borek think that bribery took place, they should call the cops. Or the DA. There should be an investigation and, if warranted, a prosecution. Maybe if Nowak is indicted for bribery, then the town board can take that up. What it is doing now, instead, is defaming him. Libeling him. Notwithstanding the transparent bullshittery and absence of proof, this silly little wannabe-junta put forth a censure resolution, and it lost 3-3. WNYMedia took some great snippets from that meeting.

On this week’s episode of the @dianebencz and Michael Jasinski @CheektowagaInfo side show circus and 🤡 extravaganza we meet “behind closed doors” Christine Adamczyk pic.twitter.com/m0NkrzygoF

— WNYmedia Network (@wnymedia) September 27, 2023

In an election year, a month or so out from election day, Nowak, an astute, sincere, and honest politician, is being attacked in a nakedly political theatrical production where people pretend that it was somehow improper to point out that the lady applying for the ethics board admittedly flew a confederate flag outside her home.

I have to say, as an aside, I love the town commentariat wondering which flags Nowak approves. Good question. We should narrow that down. I’m willing to bet he’s not ok with Confederate flags or Nazi flags. I’d reckon that if you’re flying one of those outside your house on a busy road and you want to volunteer for the town ethics board, your feelings and opinions about race, religion, equality, genocide, and diversity are going to be called into question. It’s an ethics board.

At the town council meeting on the 26th, especially as to the “bribery” nonsense, Nowak correctly put the people defaming him on notice that he intends to pursue every legal avenue available to him in order to combat the defamatory accusations being made against him. Frankly, I hope he sues them all to Kingdom come.

Nowak’s supporters rallied behind him, and Benczkowski’s lawyer, Borek, takes to Facebook, (obvs), to attack Nowak and his supporters some more.

Borek is claiming that it is a First Amendment violation for a town board to reject an applicant for a volunteer post based on the fact that the applicant has literally, admittedlym, flown the flag of white supremacist secession, sedition, and slavery. He cites some legal cases to support his conclusion that “Dan Jones” is a “wannabe attorney.” Luckily, I am an actual attorney. So, I looked into it.

I should note that the applicant, whom I am not naming, blames her husband for his “act of rebellion” in flying that flag and she denies holding the views of genocide, slavery, white supremacy, and the subjugation of Black Americans for which that flag stands. I have no reason to doubt her protestations, but the fact remains that it was her house and that flag was flying there. If I flew that flag outside our house, I wouldn’t be married anymore. It’s not a joke, and she’s not a victim. If anyone should be apologizing, it’s the person who deliberately flew that flag or allowed it to be flown. The accusations, victimhood, and lack of contrition are absolutely glaring.

I also have to note the irony of this comment Borek left to his own other comment:

So, it’s ok for Gary Borek to threaten people exercising their First Amendment rights, just to be clear. A conspiracy implies criminality, and there is no criminality at issue here. If Borek thinks there is, he should immediately report this to the police or have someone swear out a complaint, because falsely accusing someone of a crime is libel per se. Also, it is protected and non-defamatory opinion to characterize as racist someone who has admittedly, knowingly, flown a Confederate flag outside their house, and I don’t care what sort of excuses or explanations you have to try and paint yourself as the victim. I mean, if you can’t maintain a basic level of intellectual consistency within the same thread, are you even Facebooking?

When we attorneys cite cases, we look to make sure the circumstances are substantially similar. The problem with Borek’s analysis is that the case he cites is factually distinguishable from the one at hand. In Gagliardi, the Plaintiffs alleged that the government officials had retaliated against their protected speech by doing something that had a direct adverse affect on a property right – something of value, which they owned. They alleged that the Village and its officials made improper decisions as to the zoning and zoning enforcement of an industrial property adjacent to the Gagliardis’ own, which resulted in harm to their property rights.

Generally, a person can bring a claim under 18 USC §1983 if they allege that their Constitutional right to something was violated in retribution for an expression of speech. It’s not an absolute right, though. Assuming that flying a Confederate flag of white supremacy, sedition, and slavery is an exercise of free speech, what did our applicant here lose? What right belonging to her was violated? She did not lose her job. She did not lose any property right. Nothing belonging to her was harmed in any way – real or imagined. She never had a property right to sit on that ethics board.

Look at the cases Mr. Borek cites in the quote above. “Wrongful discharge”; “denied permits”. Someone lost a job. Someone’s property rights were affected. In the case of this ethics board applicant, she lost nothing to which she had any pre-existing right. She did not lose employment or remuneration – the ethics board is a part-time volunteer position. Her house was not foreclosed upon nor was any sort of zoning decision implemented to the detriment of her property right.

In Christie BB v. Isaiah CC, 194 A.D.3d 1130 (3d Dept 2021), an appellate panel found that, although a Confederate flag emblem was protected speech, it is a “symbol inflaming the already strained relationship between the parties” and that the Family Court can factor in its continued presence in analyzing what may be in the best interests of a mixed-race child.

The right to free speech is not absolute or without consequence, and the government can definitely deprive someone of a right due to speech when that speech is especially repulsive. In Pappas v. Giuliani, 290 F3d 143 (2d Cir. 2002), that Court found that a police officer’s First Amendment rights were not violated when he was terminated from the NYPD after sending bigoted leaflet materials. (Note that in our case here, the ethics board applicant did not have a job that she lost – indeed, she has not been harmed at all as to any right to which she was previously entitled.)

When a government employee is terminated as a result of protected speech – of a “matter of public concern” – courts must “arrive at a balance between the interests of the citizen, in commenting on matters of public concern, and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.” (Pickering v. Board of Ed., 391 U.S.563, 568 (1968).) If the government entity believes that the speech would “potentially interfere with or disrupt the government’s activities, and can persuade the court that the potential disruptiveness was sufficient to outweigh the First Amendment value of that speech,” it has acted lawfully.

The Pappas court found that the right to speak one’s mind about matters of public concern, “is not absolute. At times, the right of free speech conflicts with other important governmental values, posing the problem which interest should prevail…For this reason, the employee’s right of free speech is sometimes subordinated to the interest of the effective functioning of the governmental employer.”

The Court in Pappas found that the proper functioning of a police department is dependent on the respect and trust of the community and the perception that it enforces the law fairly and without bias. If the police treats one segment of the population with contempt, that population will see the police as an oppressor, and the work of the police is impaired.

The police officer in Pappas distributed leaflets hostile to Jewish and Black people, and the Court found that these statements damaged the effectiveness of the police department. They cause harm and strife. “The restrictions of the First Amendment do not require the [NYPD] to continue the employment of an officer whose dissemination of such racist messages so risks to harm the Departnment’s performance of its mission. “A policeman may have a constitutional right to [speak his mind], but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.” Pappas, 290 F.3d at 147, citing McAuliffe v. Mayor of New Bedford, 155 Mass. 215, 220 (1892), cited in Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 143-44 (1982).

Likewise, our prospective ethics board member has a constitutional right to fly all the Confederate flags she or her husband wants; she does not have a constitutional right to be a member of the town ethics board.

If the town feels that it would harm the reputation of the ethics board, or the board’s performance of its mission by appointing someone to it who arguably espouses Confederate viewpoints, then it is incumbent upon the Council, which appoints people to that board, to vet these prospective members and prevent the appointment of people who fly flags which stand for chattel slavery of Black people.

I think that the situation involving our Confederate-flag-waving ethics board applicant more closely follows the situation in Pappas, and the town’s hand is even stronger because there wasn’t a firing – there was a declination to appoint. The town didn’t take her flag, or her property, or any right belonging to her.

What would have happened had the board failed properly to vet this person and it came out later that this now-member of the ethics board had on a couple of occasions had a pro-slavery treason flag flying in front of her house? Would that have been better? Or would that have harmed the reputation and interests of the town and its ability efficiently and without disruption to carry out its activities?

At the town board meeting on September 26th, at least one town board member objected to the fact that Nowak did what he did at an open council meeting. Yeah, he did. But he literally just passed around photographs to the other members of the board, and told them that they should take that into account. He said accurately what it showed. He did not show the pictures to the public, even to this day. He didn’t get up and accuse anyone of anything untrue.

The town of Cheektowaga has residents from myriad backgrounds, religions, and skin colors. It absolutely should not blindly or ignorantly be hiring someone to any town office – elected or not, paid or not, who has flown a flag of sedition and racial hatred outside their house. These three should be thanking Nowak for bringing this to their attention before the appointment so as to avoid a lot of bad press and embarrassment later.

Dear Mabel,

The war is not going as planned. The sweltering August heat persists into these early days of September, and our window air conditioners can scarcely keep up. Our rations of cold quinoa are more frequently replaced by hot takes as we muster from time to time to do battle with the woke Yankees who would end our very way of life. Our crippling monotony is broken only by the occasional rush of excitement when the Yankees fly their flag, which would turn me into a woman at the slightest provocation. What, dear Mabel, will become of us if we are forced against Heaven to treat every person as a person?

Our general has taken our Bud Light, leaving us parched. We are entertained periodically with “Sound of Freedom” and “Try That in a Small Town”. One day we were ordered to show reverance to the ballad of “Rich Men North of Richmond” and the next day it was lost at the battle of Target Aisle. Our lifted pickups roll coal to own the libs, yet these are but fleeting successes. Oh, Mabel, how our leaders forsake us in these trying times. We do not know for how much longer we might sip from the cold brews of pumpkin cream, which soothe us in times of despair. If you could spare it, please Venmo me some Greybacks to sate my thirst.

In South Cheektowaga, though, the battle flag flies high, reminding all who see it for what we stand – seditious rebellion against the united States, the enslavement of Africans, the divine supremacy of the white race, and secession in order to secure for ourselves and our descendants these unending ideals for which we fight. Must not these voices of truth and feudal plantation honor be included within the “diversity” about which the woke Yankees cry incessantly? Woe be unto those who would impose on us the woke mind virus to infect us with ideations of “equality” and “liberty.”

Pray for us, Mabel.

Yours, John

Oops, sorry.

It was actually a guy with a Hungarian surname who supplied drugs to a woman with an Irish surname who was about to testify as a witness in a trial involving alleged racketeering and bribery by members of the Italian mob.

To my knowledge, all the people involved are American citizens.

This is the text of a letter I wrote to the Casilio campaign and other listed candidates / electeds who are hosting what is being called a “Migrant Crisis Forum” tonight.

Will pitchforks and torches be provided, or should your anti-immigrant posse bring their own? 

I am truly disappointed that I am unable to join your “migrant crisis forum” this evening. I would very much have appreciated the opportunity to tell all of the participants, to your faces, how ashamed and disgusted I am by your use of some of the most vulnerable people in our community as pieces in a political game of checkers. Your flyer for this event invites people to have their “voices heard” because Democrats have “blindly welcomed this crisis without any input from residents.” I wasn’t aware that asylum-seeking refugees, whose cases are being managed by a coalition of local resettlement agencies, needed to subject themselves and their housing and safety to your right-wing base.  

I say “ashamed” because western New York already has a reputation for being especially racist and xenophobic. Stoking hatred and politicizing Immigration is an easy play for craven politicians who wish to attain power through fear. 

Here we have an invitation to a “migrant crisis forum” hosted by people with Italian surnames like “Casilio” and “Todaro” and Polish ones like “Zachowicz” and “Jasinski”, with Kracker and Ortt bringing up the Teutonic rear. Mr. Zachowicz’s campaign even hosted a recent “Party in Polonia” without a hint of irony. 

How soon we forget. It was a short century or so ago that white Anglo-Saxon protestants were aghast over the influx of what they considered to be uncouth Catholic immigrants from places like Italy, Ireland, and Poland. These immigrants were derided as degenerate, disease-carrying ne’er-do-wells whose presence in the country was a negative development in all respects. 

Now, people fleeing some of the worst violence and political oppression in the world from places like Venezuela, Cuba, and sub-Saharan Africa trek thousands of miles, with just a few belongings, making a perilous journey to come to America to find peace and asylum and a chance at the same prosperity that people like the Casilio family enjoy today. Venezuela is a post-Stalinist socialist failed state. It must have taken a lot for you all to opt for “hate immigrants” over “hate communism” but hey ho, it’s a new, edgier Republican Party than the one I remember. 

The tell here is that you don’t refer to these people as refugees or asylum seekers – you rely instead on “migrants” and you know full well that a large swath of your supporters considers these legal refugees as “illegals”. You know they’re not illegal, but you’re not going to correct anyone if they say it. You know that given some help and a work permit,  they’d be overwhelmingly good for this region and a net asset, but for some reason you’re not really looking for solutions to a problem – you’re looking for scapegoats. After all, it’s an election year and you have literally nothing else. 

When you stoke fear and hatred against refugees, as you have, and as you are, and as you will continue to do (because of politics), you embarrass yourselves. You shame your families. You bring disgrace to your own ancestors who endured exactly the same kind of hatred, scorn, and defamation a century ago. 

There’s a difference, though. The difference is that your ancestors weren’t fleeing persecution when they left Poland or Italy. They were just seeking a better economic situation. They came to a country where everyone was from somewhere else and the force of old-world prejudices was blunted. They came here for opportunity and freedom. Yet you would deny this to people who are no different from the Casilios and Todaros and Jasinskis and Zachowiczes of yesterday.  Here you all stand, ready to pull the ladder of opportunity up behind you. Here you all are, taking a lazy focus-group-approved, push-poll fueled move to stoke fear, hatred, and division against people who left behind everything they had – and everyone they knew – to start fresh in a free country. Here you all are, making sure that the absolute worst people in our community have someone new to hate and to fear. As refugees from Burma, Sudan, and Somalia enrich our little region with their culture and labor, you insult them and anyone else whose path to this country came about due to war and oppression. 

So, that is why I am ashamed. As for disgusted, all of this is disgusting. When my parents came to this country from an Eastern European dictatorship, my father was drafted only 3 years after his arrival, receiving expedited citizenship and he served this country during the Vietnam War. They encountered no problems in the melting pot of Queens, New York, but when stationed in the South Carolina of 1969, they were treated to exactly the kind of vile, hateful rhetoric and behavior that you all now gleefully heap on people from Congo and Ghana and Venezuela. 

Someday, I hope and pray that your children or grandchildren will ask you about the history of each of your families and the unique and rich history they all brought to this country, and the difficulties they faced and sacrifices they made to succeed in the New World. And I hope you know and learn of those stories. And then I hope someday that you are confronted with the legacy of your lies, fear, ignorance, and hatred. Maybe someone you love will come under the care of a Venezuelan nurse who came here in 2022, or a Congolese physician. You should look that person in the eye and tell them the truth about how you talked about them when they were penniless, alone, afraid, and vulnerable.

Our region likes to tell people that we are a city of good neighbors. That we are kind and welcoming. That we are friendly and that we celebrate our diversity. Your cheap and lazy “migrant crisis” rhetoric really puts the lie to all of that. 

Shame on all of you. 

The idea that a person with the surname “Malczewski” would be the loudest Republican voice in Erie County defaming asylum-seeking refugees fleeing war and famine is beyond hysterical. Someone get this guy a trophy for “biggest hypocrite.”