A couple of bad days for Donald.

I It's been a rough couple of days for Donald trump. The guy just has zero chill, and he gives new meaning to the term thin-skinned.

First, he disparages the  mother of a fallen soldier by suggesting that she let her husband speak at the DNC because she is a Muslim woman. (Yo Donald, guess who else watches her husband speak while standing at his side without saying a word?) And then he claims that the brave soldier's father "viciously attacked" him for simply speaking his mind.   

He told a flat out lie about the NFL contacting him about the timing of the debates. He also claims that he turned down a chance to meet with the Koch brother. (They said they never sent him an invite.) Now I am no fan of the Koch brothers, but I think it's fair to say that they have more credibility than Donald trump on this one.

And in between all of this he makes fun of a military hero, rips the man that rescued him from an elevator, and  drops the f-bomb into an open mic.

I am not sure who is running trump's campaign these days, but now might be a good time to lock him away into a room and only bring him out when there is total control of what he has to say. Clearly the man can't help himself.

The man couldn't even feign empathy for the Khan family because his ego wouldn't let him. Mr. Khan "attacked" him and all he could think of was lashing out against the man. Losing sight, as he always does, of the bigger picture. It's not about this family who spoke out against him at the DNC; it's about all the families whose loved ones have given the ultimate sacrifice for all of us.

The fact that he himself  took deferment after deferment so that he didn't have to go to war and defend this country, makes his words and actions even more reprehensible.  

Anyway, all this won't really matter. Donald will get his 45% of the voters no matter what, and the news networks and political junkies will have an election close enough to keep us watching their coverage so that they can get a ratings boost.

"If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. Maybe she wasn't allowed to. You tell me."

I would try to tell you Donald, but you wouldn't hear me. Once you stop hearing the sound of your own voice, you tend to tune out everything else.

I almost feel sorry for the people running your campaign. Almost.

*Pic from rawstory.com

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: I thought you said that this would give me a buzz.


*Pic from people.com

One giant step for voting rights.

There has been some good news from a couple of court rulings regarding voting rights, lately.

The first ruling was against the state of North Carolina, where state republican legislators have been watching their state turn slowly blue and decided to do something about it. They did what republicans always seem to try and do: limit access to the ballot box.

"A federal appeals court on Friday struck down the heart of a North Carolina voting law seen as the strictest in the nation, finding that Republican lawmakers intentionally discriminated against African-Americans when they passed it.

A divided 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the measure's provisions "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision."

The ruling is just the latest court win for voting rights advocates. A different federal appeals court ruled this month that Texas's voter ID law is racially discriminatory and must be softened."

The Court said the right wing legislators targeted and went after African American voters with "almost surgical precision". Now that's some scary stuff.

Ya'll might want to think about that the next time you say that voting is not important.

The other favorable ruling for those who cherish our right to vote comes from Wisconsin.

"A federal judge threw out multiple aspects of Wisconsin's voter ID law on Friday, leaving the law itself intact but ruling unconstitutional many restrictions on voting passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature and Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Two liberal groups filed a lawsuit in May challenging the laws, including a requirement that voters show photo identification. U.S. District Judge James Peterson agreed with arguments that the laws were enacted to benefit Republicans and make it harder for Democratic supporters to vote, and ordered a range of changes."

Whoops.


What's that they say? Oh yeah: "The best laid plans of mice and men always go awry".  






  

Understanding conservatives.

Before I drop tonight's cut and paste job, I have to mention a couple of stories that had me scratching my very bald head today.

They really make me question the sanity of some people.

The first one has to do with Donald Trump Jr. accusing Barack Obama of plagiarizing some of his speech. Think about that for a minute. The young Trump actually lifted the same lines from the president who used them long before his daddy decided to run for president, and yet he has the audacity to accuse the president of lifting his lines. Unbelievable!

"Melania Trump, the elder Trump’s wife, came under fire last week when it was revealed that she had plagiarized from a speech first lady Michelle Obama delivered at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. 

Inexplicably, Trump Jr. appears to be trying to spark similar outrage by claiming the president stole material from him. 

He has failed, largely because the line he’s claiming to have coined wasn’t even his ― elected officials, including Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush, have been using it for years." 

Then there is Bill O'Reilly, a popular conservative talk show host who actually had the nerve to declare on his popular talk show that slaves were well fed, and had proper  lodging while they built the White House.

It's nothing new, of course, conservatives have a long history of trying to delegitimize  the stain and pain of slavery. But to see one of them do it so openly and without hesitation was shocking.

Now, of course, after all the backlash, he is trying to clean up his statement.

 "As any honest historian knows, in order to keep slaves and free laborers strong, the Washington administration provided meat, bread and other staples, also decent lodging on the grounds of the new presidential building. That is a fact. Not a justification, not a defense of slavery. Just a fact. Anyone who implies a soft-on-slavery message is beneath contempt."'

Bill, that is a "soft on slavery message", and you are beneath contempt. But we all already knew that; your history, both professionally and personally, proves it.  

So on to the must read article of the day:

"It is not Barack Obama’s fault that Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, any more than the proverbial hurricane is the fault of the proverbial butterfly. But just like the butterfly and the hurricane, the fact that Trump’s ascension comes at the end of the Obama era is hardly a coincidence — and it’s hard to imagine one without the other.

More specifically, Obama’s election helped pave the way for Trumpism: not the idiosyncratic and often incomprehensible campaign that Donald Trump himself is running, but the anti-immigration, anti-trade, "law and order" populist sentiment that he’s brought back into the American mainstream and that will probably outlast his (probable) loss in November.

One of the reasons Trumpism has surprised political and media elites with its passion and strength is that it draws from a deep well of anxiety about America losing its culture and values in the face of (among other things) multiculturalism.

The idea that America is being both overrun and taken over by people with different values is partly inspired by reminders of difference in everyday life: seeing people in the streets who "look like" unauthorized immigrants; having to press 1 for English. But it’s also reinforced by the media, and by who represents America on the world stage.

And for the past eight years, that’s been a man of Kenyan ancestry — with, as Obama himself said during his 2004 convention speech, "a funny name."

Obama’s election was the result of the underlying demographic changes that have provoked so much anxiety that something’s being lost in America. But it was also a symbol of it.

More importantly, it offered a way for people to express those anxieties under the banner of disagreement about politics — which is acceptable in polite company — instead of under the banner of "complaining about nonwhite people," which is generally considered racist and frowned upon discussing openly.

Accusing African Americans or immigrants of being un-American or disloyal is a longstanding theme, but it’s not a polite thing to say. But asking whether President Obama was really born in America anyway, or saying he has a "Kenyan anti-colonialist" outlook because of his father, or darkly hinting that he is more sympathetic to America’s Islamist enemies than its allies because he has something in common with them? All of those are pretty strong and ugly criticisms, but they’re criticisms of a politician — of the most powerful man in the world, in fact. That makes them more acceptable than if they were about someone else.

Birtherism, of course, is the issue that made Donald Trump a conservative hero in 2011. The swell of support he felt then was almost enough to tempt him into a run in 2012, and it was definitely enough to tempt him into a run in 2016.

Trump had been toying with a run for president for decades. And while some of his policy stances have definitely shifted (to say the least) since then, his history as a racial provocateur goes back decades.

But Trump is a good marketer. He understood, when he ran this time, that his ability to make controversial statements was a close relative of the conservative resentment of "political correctness," and the yearning to more openly express certain people’s fears without courting offense or censorship. He saw his time had come." [Source]

Open thread Wednesday.

I need ya'll to tell me what you think of Obama's speech, and other happenings in the political arena today.

Lost in Philly.

 I didn't want to go out at lunchtime today, cause it was just too damn hot, and, frankly, I don't really like crowds that much. And in case you have been living under a rock for the past few days, thanks to the DNC, there are some large crowds in Philly these days.

So anyway, on my way back to the office from my quick lunch run, I was stopped by a group of older white women who were obviously lost, and who wondered if I could point them in the right direction to a popular destination for tourists in our city.

I grabbed their map, smiled kindly, and proceeded to go over everything that I thought they needed to know. I kept up my Philly tutorial until I was sure that they knew exactly how they were going to get to their destination.

They thanked me over and over again, and before they left, I asked them where they were from. They told me that they were all from Tennessee, and for all but one of them it was their first visit to Philadelphia. They said that they were having a wonderful time, and that everyone had been really friendly and  kind.

Philly sometimes gets a bad rap for rudeness, so it was nice to meet some folks whose experiences went against the perception.

I gave each one them a business card, and told them that if they found themselves in any trouble that they should not hesitate to give me a call. [Southern accent] "Well we plan to party for the rest of the week so we might just take you up on that". *Laughter all around.*

They were all such nice ladies. Now I am glad that I went out of my building for lunch and bonded with the ladies from Tennessee.

I know I know, some of you are waiting for that cynical hook that sometimes accompany my posts, but tonight there will be none.

That's it. That's my blog post tonight. Just a wonderful experience with some older ladies from the South. 

*Pic from visitphilly.com

Convention, heat, and hackers.

 With apologies to Nelly, it's hot "herr" in Philly this week, folks. The heat came just in time for the dems big party.

I gotta give it to Bernie's peeps, they were out in full force in the midday heat trying to make their voices heard. Meanwhile, my Jamaican ass was running for the closest air conditioned building. (Hey, I was in a suit; they were in shorts and flip flops.) That type of dedication is what wins elections. Hillary better hope and pray that they put some of that energy into getting her elected.

Sparks are already flying at the convention. Bernie's people actually gave their leader a real Philly welcome for all the world to see.

They are pissed because hacked e-mails confirm what they already knew: That the DNC was favoring Hillary over Bernie.

Now I get it, Bernie was never really a democrat, but he ran as one, and the fair thing to do would have been to give him equal treatment in the race. Sadly, Debbie Wasserman Shultz did not do that, and now, thankfully, she is gone.   

Dems are saying that the Russians hacked their e-mails to embarrass them and give trump the edge in the upcoming election. Apparently the trump Putin bromance runs deep, and word is that Vlad would love to see his buddy Donald running things in the most powerful country on earth.

They sure seem to have a lot in common, and there sure seems to be a history between them.

"Over the last year there has been a recurrent refrain about the seeming bromance between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. More seriously, but relatedly, many believe Trump is an admirer and would-be emulator of Putin's increasingly autocratic and illiberal rule. But there's quite a bit more to the story. At a minimum, Trump appears to have a deep financial dependence on Russian money from persons close to Putin. And this is matched to a conspicuous solicitousness to Russian foreign policy interests where they come into conflict with US policies which go back decades through administrations of both parties. There is also something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of evidence suggesting Putin-backed financial support for Trump or a non-tacit alliance between the two men.

Let me start by saying I'm no Russia hawk. I have long been skeptical of US efforts to extend security guarantees to countries within what the Russians consider their 'near abroad' or extend such guarantees and police Russian interactions with new states which for centuries were part of either the Russian Empire or the USSR. This isn't a matter of indifference to these countries. It is based on my belief in seriously thinking through the potential costs of such policies. In the case of the Baltics, those countries are now part of NATO. Security commitments have been made which absolutely must be kept. But there are many other areas where such commitments have not been made. My point in raising this is that I do not come to this question or these policies as someone looking for confrontation or cold relations with Russia.

Let's start with the basic facts. There is a lot of Russian money flowing into Trump's coffers and he is conspicuously solicitous of Russian foreign policy priorities.
I'll list off some facts.

1. All the other discussions of Trump's finances aside, his debt load has grown dramatically over the last year, from $350 million to $630 million. This is in just one year while his liquid assets have also decreased. Trump has been blackballed by all major US banks.
2. Post-bankruptcy Trump has been highly reliant on money from Russia, most of which has over the years become increasingly concentrated among oligarchs and sub-garchs close to Vladimir Putin. Here's a good overview from The Washington Post, with one morsel for illustration ...

Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

3. One example of this is the Trump Soho development in Manhattan, one of Trump's largest recent endeavors. The project was the hit with a series of lawsuits in response to some typically Trumpian efforts to defraud investors by making fraudulent claims about the financial health of the project. Emerging out of that litigation however was news about secret financing for the project from Russia and Kazakhstan. Most attention about the project has focused on the presence of a twice imprisoned Russian immigrant with extensive ties to the Russian criminal underworld. But that's not the most salient part of the story. As the Times put it,

"Mr. Lauria brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm preferred by wealthy Russians “in favor with” President Vladimir V. Putin, according to a lawsuit against Bayrock by one of its former executives. The Icelandic company, FL Group, was identified in a Bayrock investor presentation as a “strategic partner,” along with Alexander Mashkevich, a billionaire once charged in a corruption case involving fees paid by a Belgian company seeking business in Kazakhstan; that case was settled with no admission of guilt."

Another suit alleged the project "occasionally received unexplained infusions of cash from accounts in Kazakhstan and Russia." [More]

Ok, so maybe the theory that the Russians hacked the DNC e-mails to get trump elected is not so far -fetched after all.

"People of color" put up a "firewall".

The Field Negro education series continues.

The following post was written by Denise O. Velez for Daily Kos:

"We, the people of color of these United States of America, are going to be the salvation of this nation. We are the firewall that is standing strong against the travesty that we’ve just seen displayed at the Klanvention convened by Republicans in Cleveland.

Black folks are not buying what Donald Trump and the rest of his raft of Republican racists are selling. Neither are Latinos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans. As the traditional media tries to sell us on a neck-and-neck horse race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—ignoring the electoral college—and as Trump and other Republicans ramp up the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic volume, there is one thing Democrats need to keep in mind: A big part of our voting base is black and brown, and that base is growing.

The coalition that elected Barack Obama twice isn’t shrinking.

President Obama achieved victory by carrying 93 percent of African American voters, 71 percent of Latino voters, 73 percent of Asian American voters, and only 39 percent of white voters

Republicans know that, which is why they are fighting tooth and nail to initiate more voter suppression across the U.S., and have even incorporated those efforts into their platform.

The Republican Party's platform formally endorses laws requiring voters to show identification when they cast ballots. The new provision inserts the national party into a contentious debate over voter access at a time when several states are tightening identification requirements. The party platform, adopted unanimously by delegates in Cleveland on Monday, goes farther than language that had been included in earlier years. The party "support[s] legislation to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote and secure photo ID when voting," the document reads. Four years ago, the GOP platform "applaud[ed] legislation to require photo identification for voting and to prevent election fraud."

 The stronger language comes ahead of a presidential election in which 12 states -- including critical swing states like Wisconsin, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia -- will enforce voter identification laws for the first time."This is part of a broader move to curtail voting rights, which began after the 2010 election, when state lawmakers nationwide started introducing hundreds of harsh measures making it harder to vote," wrote the Brennan Center for Justice, which opposes many of the new laws.

We need to mount every effort possible to not only fight voter suppression, but to increase our GOTV efforts in black, Latino, Asian, and Native American communities.

The good news is the Clinton campaign “gets it” in regards to expanding efforts with black voters.

NBCBLK has confirmed from a Hillary Clinton aid that Hillary for America is expanding its African-American outreach team for the general election.

The Clinton campaign has hired several staffers in an effort to build an already sizable advantage with African-American voters. During the primaries, African-American voters favored Clinton overwhelmingly and a recent poll in Pennsylvania showed Trump's African American vote support at zero.

We should expect to hear from her campaign about ramped up Latino and Asian outreach very soon. However, we can’t just focus on the critical presidential battle. We have to flip the Senate and make inroads into the House, while also beginning to undo the depredations caused by Republican legislatures across the nation. As we fight the battle for victory in November, our eyes have to be on the ultimate prize of dominating midterms, and building our local and state participation. Ignoring the central importance of people of color as the bulwark against white supremacist/fascist ideology and practice imperils us all, no matter your individual race, ethnicity, or gender.
Bear with me as I digress and rant here.

From my perspective as a black Democratic voter, married to a brown Democratic voter, who has been fighting for our voting rights since being inspired by Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer (among others) in 1964, I’m more than a bit ticked off by all the hand-wringing from the white left about white voters and the fantasy that the loss of “the white vote” is going to doom us. Before white Democrats read this and get upset, let me be clear: If you are white and not buying the racism—right on. If you are white and fighting voter suppression—right on.

Democrats lost “the white vote” decades ago. That doesn’t mean “all whites,” but it sure as hell tells us something about the pervasive impact of racism in American politics. [More]

Thoughts?

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

*Pic from nbc.com

TGIF, but not for all the news it brings.

This has been quite a news day.

There was another terrorist attack in Europe. This time it was in  Germany , where some nut-job decided to kill at least nine people (including children) before killing himself. (That might just eliminate the radical Muslim jihadist angle.)

Dude was yelling  "you fucking Turks", and his rampage comes on the anniversary of a white supremacist shooting and killing 77 people in Norway. (77!!)  

If it does turn out that this was some nationalist nut job acting alone,  and not the work of a Middle Eastern terrorist group, look for the coverage to change.

Whoever it is, it won't stop  Donald trump from using this as just another reason to ramp up the fear factor. (Is he still giving his address?) The world is going to hell in a hand- basket and only I alone can fix it.

And will someone please tell the folks in the republican party that optics matter? Retweeting something posted on a white supremacist website on your convention jumbotron in the middle of your nominee's speech, was not a good look. The white only elevator signs we can live with, because we understand that it might have been an oversight. (Might.) But at some point you have to start wondering about the motivations of these folks.   

Hilary also picked her running -mate today. I guess if you want safe and steady Tim Kaine is the way to go. Virginia would be a nice feather in Hillary's electoral college cap, although with the latest ruling from the supreme court in Virginia it won't be that easy.

Finally, the most troubling news of the day comes from Austin, Texas. Where some police officers in that department decided that it was cool to dehumanize and abuse a woman of color.

Her name is Breaion King; she is a school teacher, and what happened to her should sicken every person of conscience in this country.

Watch the video tape, and listen to what they say about black people.

"First and foremost, let me just say this to Breaion King, her family, her friends, her neighbors, her supporters: 'I’m sorry that on the day that you were stopped for going 15 mph [above the speed limit], you were approached in a manner and then treated in a manner that is not consistent with the expectations of this police chief," Acevedo said. "There’s a way to do this job, and that day, we did not approach it anywhere near the way we should’ve approached it."

Acevedo said that "the chain of command" who reviewed Richter's use of force in the incident determined that "the incident was not consistent with the expectations of the department." Richter was told to attend training and counseling. "

 

Chief, all the counseling in the world will not help that man and you know it.

 

Ms. King, I am just glad that you are still alive.  We all know that things could have turned out a lot

worse for you and your family.

 

*Pic from abcnews.go.com

 

 

Gretchen takes down Roger.

     So Roger Ailes, the Jabba the Hutt look alike who created FOX NEWS into a money making right-wingnut echo-chamber, is stepping down.  The alleged serial sexual harasser was, in the end, brought down by one of the blondes that he liked to trot out (skirt raised) for his melanin challenged  AARP and octogenarian viewers to see.

I hate to give Gretchen Carlson a profile in courage award, because for years she went along to get along while she cashed the checks. That is, of course, until FOX ( and Roger) thought that it was time for her to move on.

But it takes all kinds. I guess it's better late than never. I suspect that the only people who will miss Ailes are the men and the blondes with no talent over at FOX.

The irony in all this, of course, is that Aisles is stepping down on the night that the FOX NEWS created candidate- who leads what was formerly the republican party (now known as the American Nationalist Party) is going to give his coronation speech and reintroduce himself to the American people.

The Donald has had quite a ride, and he has FOX (and the FOX light folks in the main stream media) to thank for it. Ailes figured it was best to blow up the republican party and give the FOX viewers what they really want: Someone who shares their fears and their prejudices and who is unapologetic about his bigotry. The republicans were better than the democrats, but the "establishment republicans" just didn't get it. These new republicans  wanted a revolution in Washington and they wanted the bums thrown out. It was a revolution, by the way, that took hold in their minds after the election of the first president of color.

Now they can see a little light at the end of the tunnel, the orange haired one just might win this thing. A trump presidency with a sympathetic FOX News working their propaganda magic on the American people. Wet dreams all around.

Sadly for Roger, he might not be around to enjoy it.  

*Pic from salon.com  

Open mic Wednesday.

It's "hump day", so let me know what you feel about a few things.

For instance, the RNC convention going on in Cleveland.

The Montel Williams Bill O'Reilly feud.

Roger Ailes becoming Bill Cosby.

Is Melania's alleged speech writer even real?

Steve King letting his inner Klan show.

And twitter suspending a right-wingnut.

How not to handle a crisis.

  Folks are still talking about Melania trump ripping off some of the First Lady's speech.

At first you wouldn't think it's such a big deal. I mean who among us hasn't taken some liberties with the inspirational words of others? If you write enough, or engage in enough public speaking , it's easy for the P bug to come and bite you in the ass. I mean sometimes you just forget to give proper credit where it's due without thinking about it.

The president did it with Duval Patrick's speech, and Joe Biden among others have also ripped off the writing of others without properly attributing it. (Although in the case of Obama and Biden they were borrowing lines from ideological soul-mates)

The thing that makes the Melania plagiarism scandal so bad is how the campaign has been reacting to it after the fact. Instead of just making a statement to the effect that she did take some words from the First lady's speech because regardless of their political differences she has had similar inspirations, sadly, they choose to deny the obvious and look like bigger fools because of it. They have in essence  kept a news story going that should have had a very short life span.

Now, as it turns out, the story is getting even weirder.   

"A new report is providing some insight into how Melania Trump ended up reading a speech featuring a paragraph that plagiarized Michelle Obama.

NBC News’ Hallie Jackson reported on MSNBC tonight that Matthew Scully was brought on to write her speech for her, and “the draft submitted by Scully shows none of the portions in question.”
So, basically, the passage in question was added after the draft was submitted."

I guess now they can't throw the speech writer under the bus. But they have to do something; this scrutiny on Mrs. trump is not a good thing. There might be all kinds of things about the  former beauty queen that I am sure the campaign would rather the rest of us don't find out about. If that's the case, the sooner they put this one to rest and come clean, the better.

*Pic from twitter.com

If you thought that the Oscars were white.....

I tweeted this earlier, and it is worth repeating for this post: The problem with not knowing any black people or having any "black friends" (I see you Paul Ryan), is that when you need to trot out a black face you are forced to go with lunatics like Sheriff David Clarke.

Dude is one of the speakers at the RNC convention tonight (Don 't worry David, that white only elevator sign was just an oversight), and to say that he is a bit unhinged is an understatement.

Let's just say that the sheriff from Milwaukee has some issues.

I certainly hope that speakers like David Clarke will be few and far between at the RNC convention this week.

And I hope, for the sake of the country, that we won't have anymore of this:

"Donald Trump has moved on from the birther movement to float another equally reckless conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama.

After three police officers were killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the president said that “there is no justification for violence against law enforcement. None.” He made similar comments after five officers were killed in Dallas on July 7, calling the attack “vicious, calculated and despicable.” He also flew to Dallas on Tuesday to speak at a memorial for the fallen officers.

Still, Trump questioned the legitimacy of Obama’s grief and concern.

“I watched the president, and sometimes the words are okay. But you just look at the body language and there’s something going on. Look, there’s something going on,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Monday.

“There’s just bad feeling,” he said.

Trump was responding to the head of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association’s claim that Obama “has blood on his hands” because he also condemned the police shootings of two African-American men.

“The president of the United States validated a false narrative and the nonsense that Black Lives Matter and the media are pressing out there to the public,” Steve Loomis said. “He validated with his very divisive statements and now we see an escalation.” [Source]

I suppose that president Obama can't grieve and show genuine concern because...well....you know.... those Black Lives Matter folks have to stick together. *big eye-roll* 

*Pic from rawstory.com

A nation divided?

“I know we’re about to enter a couple of weeks of political conventions where our political rhetoric tends to be more overheated than usual. And that is why it is so important that everyone regardless of race, or political party, or profession, regardless of what organizations you are a part of, everyone right now focus on words and actions that unite this country rather than divide it further. We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric. We don’t need careless accusations thrown around to score political points, or advance an agenda. We need to temper our words and open our hearts. All of us.”

"I condemn, in the strongest sense of the word, the attack on law enforcement in Baton Rouge.  For the second time in two weeks, police officers who put their lives on the line for ours every day were doing their job when they were killed in a cowardly and reprehensible assault.  These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law, and on civilized society, and they have to stop.  

"We may not yet know the motives for this attack, but I want to be clear:  there is no justification for violence against law enforcement.  None.  These attacks are the work of cowards who speak for no one.  They right no wrongs.  They advance no causes.  The officers in Baton Rouge; the officers in Dallas – they were our fellow Americans, part of our community, part of our country, with people who loved and needed them, and who need us now – all of us – to be at our best.

"Today, on the Lord’s day, all of us stand united in prayer with the people of Baton Rouge, with the police officers who’ve been wounded, and with the grieving families of the fallen.  May God bless them all."

 

~President Obama~ 

 

"✔

@realDonaldTrump

President Obama just had a news conference, but he doesn't have a clue. Our country is a divided crime scene, and it will only get worse!"'

 

~Tweet from candidate trump~ 

 

"A divided crime scene", huh ?

 

I guess this is why we will continue to hear rhetoric like this, and this.  

 

Thank goodness there are still some adults left in the room.  

 

*Pic from rawstory.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: Keep it short Mike, my makeup is running.

*Pic from rawstory.com

Setting the agenda on race.

   Black folks are not feeling much love for ABC News these days. (Sorry D.L. it's not only FOX VIEWS that likes to clown us.) Apparently the town hall meeting n race hosted by the network last night was somewhat of a sham. Just another prime time spectacle to capitalize on our current racial climate and drive up their ratings and their profits.

"Thursday’s ABC town hall with President Barack Obama was anticipated with bated breath.
Many were looking forward to an honest conversation about race, and the current tensions between the black community and police officers in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the attack in Dallas that left five officers dead.

Unfortunately, many activists left disappointed, even angry, at what they witnessed and heard.
Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner who was choked to death by New York City police in 2014, stormed out of the taping of the town hall, saying she had been “railroaded” by the network, denied the opportunity to ask the president a question, something she said she had been promised.
Garner said she felt that she had been “used for ratings,” and a few activists in the room agreed that the event seemed to be manipulative.

“It felt manipulative and disingenuous, and if we’re really trying to have a town hall about race in this country, it’s going to have to look much more like a truth-and-reconciliation process. It can’t be an hour and 15 minutes with the president taking up the most space, with people asking what he thinks of things instead of demanding that he do things,” Patrisse Kahn-Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, told The Root Friday.

“The town hall was clearly a curated event for ABC to quell protesters and organizers. It had nothing to do with actual future for black, people and I think that for us, we want to push POTUS in his last few months as the president to take executive action, to defund law-enforcement agencies that have consistently violated the civil and human rights of black people,” she added." [Source]

President Obama was the featured speaker, and he tried to calm their anger and fears with his usual platitudes.

The thing is, though, these kids out here are not trying to hear it. They think they see a set-up, and  they are going to let their voices herd no matter what. 

*Pic from cnn.com

More terror in Europe, and the coming autocracy in America.

  Another attack in Europe. This time it was not a truck bomb, but an actual truck. Man these fools are relentless. The death toll is 80 and rising. And it happened during Bastille Day celebrations, which is the French equivalent to our 4th of July.

Anyway, as is to be expected, a certain candidate for president has already called for a declaration of war to be authorized by congress.

The problem is, of course, that I am pretty sure he can't tell us what nation he wants us to go to war with, or even where he wants to put our troops to start the fighting.

Saying we don't want any refugees in the country sounds good for political sound bite purposes, but the reality is that most terrorist attacks on our soil has been carried out by American citizens or people who are here on visas issued by the state department.

In times like these you might want to take time to read the following:

"Autocracy is government based on fear, domination and insecurity. It is of course billed as the opposite. But it is born of these three horsemen and in turn breeds them. One of the shaping thoughts of the generation of actors and thinkers who emerged from the Second World War was the seared perception that stability, trust, peace and virtuous cycles of all sorts are not natural phenomena or human norms. In fact, they are brittle creations and perhaps abnormal in human affairs. Of course, these beliefs and the ambitions and goals which grew out of them led to their own follies. One can jump from 1945 to 1965 and see the wisdom of this recognition conditioning many of the same people to walk into a folly of an entirely different kind. Those men who built much of the world we live in today also built a world that was perpetually on the brink of cataclysmic nuclear annihilation. Their creation, let us say with some understatement, had real shortcomings. And yet, for all that complicated history and all that human folly, some basic realities remain. Democracy, borders that are peaceful rather than armed and bloody ... none of these things are natural states of being like a rock that rolls to the bottom of a hill and then stays there until some greater force than gravity and friction presses it along or pushes it back up the hill.

Whether it was wise or not for the United Kingdom to walk out of the European Union is a question that I can't answer, though I certainly have my opinions. What is worth noting, though, is that what we now know as the EU was not created to promulgate human rights or create efficiencies of trade and labor mobility. All of these came later. The predecessor organizations of the EU were created with a single, very focused aim: preventing the recurring pattern of the rivalries of Europe unleashing horrific wars which not only destroyed the lives of millions of Europeans but embroiled the entire world in spasms of almost unimaginable destruction. The key was binding together France and Germany and from there the other great nations of Europe and then the smaller states into one whole, to build connective tissue, whether of trade or culture, which would prevent the every generation blood-letting. Numerous of Europe's small nationalities want to break free from the nation-states of which they are a part. We have frozen under our own feet many of the centripetal forces which tore Europe apart in the past. And in an ever-deepening European Union perhaps they can do this. We can have a Scotland and a Basque homeland and a northern Italy able to stake out on their own, unfettered by peoples they've never quite felt part of and it can all happen within an umbrella of Europe. But if that umbrella frays the picture looks rather different.

We sometimes hear that Europe's 'brand' is human rights. But that is a recent and aggressive rebranding. Europe's real brand is barbarity and killing on an almost unimaginable scale. Europeans are and were no more evil than Indians or Chinese or subsaharan Africans or any other people. To believe otherwise is just a relic of eurocentrism. But their fortuitous grasping of control over key trading networks in the 17th and 18th centuries and then development of key technologies in the 19th and 20th allowed them to practice barbarity, to be shall we say human on a scale and with an intensity never imagined before. Yes, there were marvelous symphonies and advances of science and art. But the barbarity and killing should hold our attention. Indeed, that was what held the attention of the men and women, but still largely men, who pondered how to reconstruct the world in the 1940s.

It worked almost unimaginably well, certainly in Europe and by and large around the globe as well. European institutions, NATO, the benign and generally soft dominion of the United States, which reinforced both, created what was and is, in the scope of most human history a period of peace and unrivaled prosperity. For all the uncertainty and novel animosities we've unleashed and seen unleashed in recent years, the thought of Germany and France going to war with each other is close to unimaginable. The same with England and France, England and Germany, Germany and Italy. All of these contentions are part of a distant past.

But here we see the United Kingdom simply decide to up and leave. And why not? Perhaps the British will see an economic downturn, some perceptible diminishment of prosperity over the decades. But it seems more or less a free choice. Scotland can contemplate and perhaps will decide to leave the United Kingdom in turn. Because, again, why not? No one imagines the Scots and the English will go to war, despite the fact that Scotland is a tiny country compared to England and not one that could easily defend itself alone against an aggressive England to the south.

Of course I am not saying that England and Scotland couldn't peaceably part. But the fact that they can is a product of institutions and history and habits of trust and rule-keeping that are the product are conscious and hard-taken decisions which we now take as the natural order of the things but are in fact not natural at all.

As John says, the horror of autocracy is diminishing as the living memory of World War II drifts into oblivion. But it's not just autocracy. It's the world of cycles of killing, 'high fear' rather than 'high trust' patterns of international relations and domestic accord that we take for granted as the natural order of things but most definitely is not.

Of course in the United States we have Donald Trump, a man of erratic impulses and petty but intense grievances who has, like all demagogues, ripped at the existing fissures of our society as a way to grasp political power. American institutions have preserved political order and domestic peace for going on a quarter of a millennium with the very notable and brutal exception of four years of civil war 150 years ago. Those institutions can in all likelihood weather four years of his mental instability and toxic incitement. But not necessarily. Britain's exit from Europe, Scotland's exit from the United Kingdom, the increasingly militarized border between 'Europe' and Russia can likely all be managed. But maybe not. Violence and instability can build quickly on themselves.

I believe generally in what Democrats believe in rather than what Republicans believe in. It informs almost everything I've written in almost twenty years as a professional writer about American politics. But both have been able to govern the country within a broad consensus of what we consider acceptable behavior. Trump represents something quite different. And the kind of menace he represents is amplified by the rise of complacent instability and reckless behavior we see today in Europe, in the conflagration in the Middle East and the still distant but rising specter of great power confrontation on the borders of Russia and in East Asia. The belief that we can roll the dice with no consequences, that we can provoke and act out with no consequences is a dangerous illusion. We are indulging that illusion along with many other peoples across the globe. But there are consequences. And they can multiply and spin out of control quickly." [Source]

Church!

*Pic from cbsnews.com