"Dirty old men"?

   Just when you thought that this election season couldn't get any more creepy and salacious, it has.

You have, for instance, three guys who have nine wives between them, lecturing us about infidelity and threatening to bring up Bubba's past indiscretions.  One of them (Rudy Giulliani) even married his cousin for crying out loud. (A real trump supporter if there ever was one.)

Donald's little fingers turned to twitter fingers last night, he let go with a not so lucid rant about sex tapes, lies, and other various things.

But hey, at least Alicia Machado is over 18 years old.

"While he was talking about women he does and does not find attractive (as one does), he brought up Paris Hilton.

“Now, somebody who a lot of people don’t give credit to but in actuality is really beautiful is Paris Hilton,” he said. “I’ve known Paris Hilton from the time she’s 12, her parents are friends of mine, and the first time I saw her she walked into the room and I said, ‘Who the hell is that?”"[Link]

Yo Donald, WTF man?! SHE WAS TWELVE!

“Well, at 12, I wasn’t interested…I’ve never been into that … but she was beautiful,” said Trump."

 

 I think I will take a shower now.

 

*Pic from motherjones.com

 

 

 

From George, to David, to Donald.

I I  sure hope you Negroes know your history, because you are going to have to understand American history to know what type of times we are living in.

Think of the backlash against blacks during the radical reconstruction period from 1867 to 1877, a time when blacks were finally gaining political power in the South. Think of 1964 when race was the dominant issue in American politics, and Lyndon B Johnson, fresh after getting the civil rights act passed, was facing serious backlash from Southern whites.

1964 also brought us George Wallace and "Goldwater rallies".  The democratic party, as we know it, changed, and so did the republican party.

We forward now to the year 2016, and,sadly, I am afraid that America is once again in that place.

We now have Donald trump, and he has done something that David Duke and his crew could not: main stream bigotry.  Is it any surprise, then , that we have incidents like this, and this, and this, day in and day out?

If you know your history all of this will come as no surprise, and you will be able to get through these tough times by practicing proper Negro survival skills.

Finally,

"CNN host Don Lemon scolded a Donald Trump supporter on Thursday for insisting that Donald Trump’s birther remarks about President Barack Obama were not racist and that “only liberals on television” felt like that was the case.

“Here’s the thing I said about the campaign being tone-deaf,” Lemon told Andy Dean, before urging him to look at his monitor and consider that both he and panelist Van Jones were African-American.
And to a lot of African-Americans they interact with, he explained, Trump’s allegations that Obama was not born in the US “is an issue that they have a problem with, that they see racist, that they see as delegitimizing the first African-American president when your candidate is trying to reach out to African-Americans. We as African-Americans are telling you this is an issue that we see as racial and you’re saying ‘no it’s not.’ That is being tone-deaf. Don’t you understand that?”

“Throughout American history, there’s been questions as to peoples’ birthplaces,” Dean responded. “It has nothing to do with his skin color, as evidenced by the fact that five other individuals have gone through this.”

“You didn’t hear anything I said,” a perturbed Lemon replied. “You didn’t hear anything I said. You may not think it’s a race issue. I’m telling you how African-Americans feel about it and you’re denying how African-Americans feel about it.”

Earlier in the evening, Trump’s campaign released a statement — attributed to a spokesperson — saying that the former reality show host believed that Obama was born in the US, hours after he told the Washington Post that he would address the issue at another time. For his part, Jones described the statement as an attempt to save face

“He kind of stepped in the doggie poo with the Washington Post,” said Jones. “Hillary Clinton smacked him for it. He had somebody push out a statement for him, try to stop a little bit of the bleeding. At some point he’s going to have to stand up in front of the American people like you want anyone else to do with his own mouth and say that he was wrong. And it would be great for him to apologize.”

Jones also said that Trump’s campaign to get Obama to release his birth certificate felt to Black Americans “like it was a cheap shot at somebody who had a different skin color.”

“Apologize, show you’ve got some empathy, you might go somewhere with this,” he urged Trump. But Dean rejected the idea." [Source]

Still waiting on that apology, Donald.

Because Stevie Wonder himself could see that the entire birther thing was racist.  

*Pic from democracynow.org 

"Stiffing" the piano man.

"At Monday night's debate, Donald Trump was called out for stiffing the people who work for him. Trump has been accused of failing to pay hundreds of contractors. And so far, he hasn't seemed very sorry. When asked about failing to pay someone by Hillary Clinton this week, Trump replied, "Maybe he didn't do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work."

I take that attack personally. I'm one of the many small business owners who've been used by Trump, exploited and forced to suffer a loss because of his corporation's shady practices.

My relationship with Trump began in 1989, when he asked me to supply several grand and upright pianos to his then-new Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. I'd been running a music store for more than 30 years at that point, selling instruments to local schools and residents. My business was very much a family affair (my grandsons still run the store). And I had a great relationship with my customers -- no one had ever failed to pay.

I was thrilled to get a $100,000 contract from Trump. It was one of the biggest sales I'd ever made. I was supposed to deliver and tune the pianos; the Trump corporation would pay me within 90 days. I asked my lawyer if I should ask for payment upfront, and he laughed. "It's Donald Trump!" he told me. "He's got lots of money."

But when I requested payment, the Trump corporation hemmed and hawed. Its executives avoided my calls and crafted excuses. After a couple of months, I got a letter telling me that the casino was short on funds. They would pay 70 percent of what they owed me. There was no negotiating. I didn't know what to do -- I couldn't afford to sue the Trump corporation, and I needed money to pay my piano suppliers. So I took the $70,000.


Losing $30,000 was a big hit to me and my family. The profit from Trump was meant to be a big part of my salary for the year. So I made much less. There was no money to help grow my business. I had fewer pianos in the showroom and a smaller advertising budget. Because of Trump, my store stagnated for a couple of years. It made me feel really bad, like I'd been taken advantage of. I was embarrassed.

Today, when I hear Trump brag about paying small business owners less than he agreed, I get angry. He's always suggesting that the people who worked for him didn't do the right job, didn't complete their work on time, that something was wrong. But I delivered quality pianos, tuned and ready to go. I did everything right. And then Trump cheated me. It's a callous way to do business.

Trump keeps saying that it's time we got a businessman to run the country. Of course, I think it's important to find someone who can bolster the economy. But I also think we need a president who cares about small business owners, and about honoring his commitments. That's not Trump."

J. Michael Diehl is the retired owner of in Freehold, N.J [Source]

Mr. Diehl, maybe Donald really couldn't afford to pay you.

Now that we are starting to see his real worth that explanation makes more sense.

*Pic from pinterest.com

The day after.

 Hillary Clinton was doing victory laps this morning, just hours after putting a debate beatdown on the Donald. The (sometimes) orange haired one declared victory, because the Matt Drudge online poll told him so. But this is all you need to know: Things got so bad that my man was calling for a lifeline from someone in America. (Sean Hannity) Sorry Donald, this is not a game show.

At some point in the debate he actually said that Hillary lacked the "stamina" to be president, but just an hour in he was the one looking like he just spent a long night in Studio  54 with a tray full of blow. He certainly was sniffing like it.

Things were so bad for him that he blamed his poor performance on everything from the microphone, to Chelsea Clinton being present.  

Anyway, here is the thing, as deplorable (pun intended) as trump's debate performance was, I would have forgiven all of his missteps and his incoherent babbling if he would have just come clean on the birther thing and apologized to the president of the United States for his years of racist rhetoric. But, of course, he did not. Instead, he chose to double down on yet another lie and had every African American in the country (except Omarosa and a bunch of greedy preachers) vowing not to even consider supporting him for president.

Now of course I understand that I have to stand in line and wait for my apology, because apparently there is a long line of people who deserve one as well.

“One of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest,” Clinton said. “He called this woman Miss Piggy, then he called her Miss Housekeeping, because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado.”

For the majority of Americans, Machado’s name will not ring a bell. But almost every Venezuelan, myself included, remembers when the former Miss Venezuela won the title of Miss Universe in 1996. (After all, beauty pageants are somewhat of a national sport over there.) We also could never forget how humiliating it was to see Machado later fat-shamed in front of international press by Trump.

After earning her crown, Machado, who was 20 years old at the time, famously gained a few pounds. In several recent interviews, she revealed her weight gain caused Trump to start calling her Miss Piggy and an “eating machine.” “She weighed 118 pounds or 117 pounds and she went to 160 or 170,” he said during one press conference. “So this is somebody who likes to eat.”


Trump’s strategy for dealing with Machado’s weight gain was to parade her in front of 90 media outlets while they photographed and filmed her working out next to a trainer. “I was about to cry in that moment with all the cameras here,” Machado told The New York Times. “I said, ‘I don’t want to do this, Mr. Trump.’ He said, ‘I don’t care.’” A newspaper headline later dubbed the awkward PR stunt “Beauty Treated Like a Beast.” “It had turned into a circus,” Machado recalled in a Clinton ad that was released on Monday night after the debate. “The joke of the fat Miss Universe. A joke that caused me a lot of pain.”' [Source]

Alicia, I am standing right behind you.

*Pic from latinapost.com

                               



 

Debate night.

I guess I will be joining the 100 million or so other Americans who will be watching the presidential debate tonight. 

The bar has been set so low for trump that if he simply stands there without falling asleep, throwing up, or calling Lester Holt the n word, he will be declared the winner.  

Poor Hilary is going to have to try and prove to America than she is more qualified to be president than a serial lying reality television star who refuses to release his tax returns.

 Good luck with that, because given all of this, she is still in a dead heat with the guy.

I will also be live- tweeting over at @fieldnegro with a few thousand of my twitter friends, so feel free to come over and join me.

*Pic from washingtonpost.com

"Dear white people."

  Frank Vyan Walton wrote the following essay and it's posted over at Daily Kos.

It is important because it can give those of you in the majority population another glimpse of the mindset of some individuals in the African American community. Especially as it relates to one Donald J trump.  

"I know it’s been a good long while since we had an honest and open conversation. I can’t say that I speak for everyone from my particular demographic of African Americans, because we don’t all agree—just as we all know not every Caucasian American thinks or believes the same.

But before things go too much further and get too much worse, we need to talk. Seriously talk. Not at each other, not about each other from another room, but to each other.

First: Let’s get to brass tacks about this Trump guy.

He says he wants to make things better for all of us, which would be nice. However his track record is a bit spotty. He once did something nice for Jesse Jackson. Okay, that’s cool. But he was also president of his father’s company when they were deliberately trying to keep black people from living in their buildings. Yeah, sure, that was a long time ago. In the meantime there was the Central Park Five incident, when he called for the death penalty to be used on five innocent black teenagers accused of a brutal rape. That one still kinda burns.

He desegregated his Mar-a-Lago Club, but the truth isn’t that he did that for the benefit of blacks and Jews who had been excluded from other clubs. He did it to get back at the Palm Beach society, which looked down its nose at him.

For many longtime residents, Mr. Trump's decision to set up camp here was bad enough. That was in 1985, when Mr. Trump paid about $7 million for the 128-room Mar-a-Lago mansion, built 70 years ago by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Over the decades, Ms. Post's party schedule had placed the estate at the center of Palm Beach social circles. By the time she died in 1973, it was a local institution. (Part of the original guest quarters eventually became the Bath and Tennis Club.)

Mr. Trump arrived well-known, though not necessarily well-regarded. He brought with him a reputation as a real-estate developer accustomed to battling local residents who resist his wishes and as a latecomer to high society who hadn't learned the art of discretion.
…
In the early 1990s, Mr. Trump found himself mired in a costly divorce just as real-estate markets began to slide. He complained openly about the $3 million a year in maintenance costs that the estate was costing him. He proposed subdividing the 17-acre property into smaller lots for residential development.

That set the stage for Mr. Trump's first big battle with Palm Beach leaders. The town, which years earlier had approved a subdivision proposal for the site from another developer, rejected Mr. Trump's plan, prompting him to sue for $50 million in damages. He dropped the suit when the idea emerged to turn the home into a private club. The town council agreed to that, but placed restrictions on the club, such as allowing no more than 500 members, to allay residents' fears about traffic congestion and noise. In the spring of 1995, the Mar-a-Lago Club officially opened, and is now charging $75,000 for membership, plus annual dues.

So here’s the thing: Mar-a-Lago wasn’t really a club prior to Trump’s arrival—it was a private residence. It was a home. Trump needed to make some cash, so he tried to make it into 17 separate residential properties he could sell or lease, which the city council rejected. That’s when he decided to make it a private club with a $75,000 annual membership fee, like some of other local clubs.  Many of those clubs were segregated, his new club was not, and he used that fact as a way to cry that he was being discriminated against by the city.

Last December, after the council refused to lift the restrictions, Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Palm Beach, alleging that the town was discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African-Americans. The suit seeks $100 million in damages
…
Even the Anti-Defamation League in New York, which in a 1994 battle forced Palm Beach's Sailfish Club to open up its membership, was concerned that Mr. Trump was using the charge of anti-Semitism for his own mercantile ends. The league's national director, Abraham Foxman, met with Mr. Trump soon after to air his concerns. According to Mr. Foxman, Mr. Trump agreed to modify his claims to allege only that the town council has treated Mar-a-Lago unfairly, compared with other clubs in town.

So just to set the record straight: He was in fact trying to get a better deal out of the Palm Beach City Council for his club, not doing anyone else a favor. This one time, he wasn’t as jerky as the other local clubs, so kudos on that. However since then, generally speaking, he really hasn’t done anything else for black people. Not really.

But now he says he’s our only hope. Now he says only he can make things better for us. And he starts out by saying things have never been worse for us, “ever ever ever.” Do you understand why that’s not a comforting appeal? If not, I’ll let Don Lemon explain it for me. [More here]

Thoughts?

*Pic from ussatoday.com

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

*Pic from buzzfeed.com 

No post.

Been out of pocket field hands, but I will have my Caption Saturday pic today, and my regular posts starting again on Sunday.

"Stay woke", people.

State of emergency in Charlotte.

“I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.” — Malcolm X

Now comes Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Another questionable police shooting has ignited a power keg of rage and frustration from underserved people in that city. We could be talking about Tulsa, Oklahoma as well, but fortunately the citizens of that city have remained relatively peaceful. Interestingly, the shooting in Tulsa was even more shocking, because unlike the case in Charlotte we saw the video.  

So now, once again, there will be a call for peace and for open "dialogue" with all members of the community. I think it's interesting that there is always a call for dialogue AFTER the violence and protests start in the streets. Where has the "dialogue" been in these cities throughout the years?  

The usual suspects are saying that this was not a racial issue of black versus white, because the police officer who shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott was black.

This is wrong on so many levels, and it  ignores the real issue: Better police training and community policing practices. This should be our focus. So much of this  could be avoided if police officers were properly trained. If you are a racist or color aroused police officer, no one will know if you are properly trained and follow your training in the right way.  If you are not properly trained, you will shoot an unarmed black man on camera for all the word to see.

Anyway, take heart Charlotte, your biggest athletic star will make a statement about all the unrest in your city, soon.

He just has to get some more talking points from Frank Luntz.

We wouldn't want him saying the wrong thing that might make him seem too much like that quarterback in San Francisco,

Finally, today I saw Donald trump in Ohio pandering to some Negroes from a church. And I have to tell you, it was hard to watch.

Don King actually dropped the n word while introducing trump, and I swear I saw a smile on his face. (Penny for your thoughts, Donald.)   

*Pic from youtube.com

"Color aroused" police officers and the damage they do to all of us.

    More Americans are starting to see the live and in living color execution of Terence Crutcher.  And, as is usually the case, everyone is saying all the "right things". (Well, everyone except a certain presidential candidates. Really? More dangerous than Afghanistan?)This will go on until the next black man is unnecessarily killed by someone who is paid to protect and serve us.

Fortunately, one of the candidates for president is at least talking about it, but sadly, the other candidate is not. It's  not hard to figure out why. Most of that candidates support comes from a group of people who somehow believe that black men bring it on themselves by simply being....well, black.

You see it's like this: as a black man in America you don't have to be armed to be considered dangerous; just being a black man is in of itself a weapon to some of those "color aroused" folks out there.

Being color aroused makes you refer to a large black man as a "bad dude" without knowing anything about him. Color arousal makes you treat blacks as something other than American. Color arousal makes you lump them all together and treat their communities as somehow being separate and apart from the rest of America.

We might not be able to help being color aroused from time to time, but we should never let it dictate our actions in such a way.

Finally, I have been saying for weeks that Donald trump should release his taxes

Believe it o r not, I am not coming from a bad place with this, I am actually trying to help the guy out.

He is going to need the help if these stories about him giving $258,000.00  to pay off one of his business debts with money from his charity are true. So releasing his tax returns will show the world that his "milk is clean", and that he is being transparent and showing the world that his financial house is in order.    

*Screen print image from newson6.com

Terence Crutcher did not plant any bombs.

 I am glad that law enforcement caught caught that maniac who was making and planting bombs in New York and New Jersey. We can rest a little easier as a nation now that one less depraved lunatic is off the street.

Having said that, I find it ironic that law enforcement  was able to shoot and take down a terrorist who attempted to cause mass destruction and carnage without actually killing him, while police officers in Tulsa, Oklahoma killed an innocent man who actually had his hands raised.

"Video footage released Monday showed Tulsa police shooting an unarmed man to death on Friday night after he approached his SUV with his arms raised.

In footage filmed from a police helicopter, Terence Crutcher, 40, can be seen slowly walking from the edge of a street north of Tulsa toward his vehicle, which authorities said had been reported abandoned at 7:36 p.m. (8:36 p.m. ET) and left running in the middle of the road.

For several seconds, an officer follows Crutcher from behind with a gun trained on him. Three more officers then converge on the scene as Crutcher lowers his hands and approaches his SUV. While standing beside the driver's side door, he suddenly drops to the street. Moments later, blood can be seen saturating his white t-shirt.

The Tulsa Police Department also released dash-cam video of the incident.

During a news conference Monday, Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan said that Officer Tyler Turnbough tasered Crutcher, and a second officer, Betty Shelby, fired at him after telling a dispatcher "that she's not having cooperation from" Crutcher.

Citing an ongoing investigating, Jordan declined to provide additional details, though he said that no weapon was found on Crutcher or in his SUV. Jordan, who called the footage "disturbing," said that he asked the Justice Department to review the case.

"I will make this promise to you, we will achieve justice," he said.

Shelby, who was hired in 2011, was placed on routine administrative leave with pay.

During a news conference Monday, a Crutcher family lawyer, Melvin C. Hall, said that Crutcher was only having problems with his SUV before he was shot to death. "They treated him like a criminal," added a second lawyer, Benjamin Crump. "They treated him like a suspect. They did not treat him like somebody in distress who needed help. Instead of giving him a hand, they gave him bullets."
Crutcher's twin sister, Tiffany, described him as a brother and father who was enrolled in Tulsa Community College and loved singing at church.

And she criticized one of the officers in the chopper who can be heard telling a second officer aboard that Crutcher looks like "a big bad dude."

"That big bad dude — his life mattered," she said." [Source]

Of course his life matters, but when we remind people of that we are told that "all lives matter," and that we shouldn't just single out the blacks ones.

Still, when you see what happened to Terence Crutcher, you have to wonder if some folks in law enforcement got the all lives matter memo.

And folks, if you are having a  Déjà vu  kind of feeling after reading this article, your instincts are not failing you.

"A jury found a sheriff's deputy guilty of second-degree manslaughter Wednesday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed suspect.

Robert Bates, who was a volunteer reserve sheriff deputy for the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office last year at the time of the shooting, never denied shooting Eric Courtney Harris.

Bates, 74, said he meant to use his Taser stun gun, not his revolver, on the suspect, who had been tackled by other deputies and was being held on the ground." [Source]

We will soon be getting that feeling again, because sadly, some lives still matter more than others. Even the lives of terrorists.   

*Pic from rawstory.com

A black writer tries to help the republican nominee get some black votes.

The Field Negro education series continues.

The following essay was written by Maya Rockeymoore  for theroot.com. 

"Donald Trump, thank you for thinking about us in the black community so much over the past few weeks. It means a lot to know we’ve got a true winner fighting for us on the road to the White House. But listen: You’ve stumbled a few times before, so I want to make sure you’re armed with a foolproof plan for winning over the skeptics among us. Yes, it’s a little late in the game, and yes, it’s going to be an uphill battle, but I’ve condensed your to-do list into three easy steps that will get you the black vote in no time.

Step 1: Take back everything you’ve said about race since you announced your presidential campaign. And ever, actually.

It may come as a surprise, but some of your comments on race have made black folks wonder if you have the slightest clue what it’s like to be a person of color in America in the 21st century.

For example: In November you tweeted an image with a number of false “statistics” about homicide rates, including one claiming that blacks had killed 81 percent of white homicide victims in 2015, that came from the fictitious “Crime Statistics Bureau” in San Francisco. That same month, you told Fox & Friends that a Black Lives Matter protester deserved the physical beating he got from your supporters during a rally in Alabama.

Then, in February, you refused to say whether you’d reject the support of David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan, a noted white supremacist and a hate group.

In May you implied that a federal judge could not fairly preside over a case on Trump University because of his Mexican heritage, which House Speaker Paul Ryan called “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

Now that I’m thinking about it, let’s not limit this to just the past year. Your thinly veiled racist business practices have led to lawsuits by everyone from black casino workers in Indiana to the Justice Department—twice. You’ve openly voiced an opinion that “laziness is a trait in blacks.” You encouraged New York to reinstate the death penalty in order to execute five teenagers of color who were accused—falsely, as it turned out—of raping a woman in Central Park.

Once you’ve taken every single one of those positions back—unequivocally—you’ll be in a great position to launch into the next step. Only two more to go!

Step 2: Speak to some black people.

And I’m not talking about Omarosa.
The campaign staff with which you’ve surrounded yourself doesn’t have a good record when it comes to race. And the audiences you’ve chosen to address are overwhelmingly white—even when you first discussed your plan to get black voters on your side in Wisconsin.

By “speak to some black people,” I mean seriously engage with black thought leaders, policymakers and families and incorporate their perspectives and experiences into your platform. Swaying to the music at a black church doesn’t count. Maybe then, black voters will understand that you’re “the least racist person” out there.

So if you really want the black vote, get out there and speak to some black people. You can start with me, which leads to the final step.

Step 3: Adopt a progressive and inclusive policy platform that includes real reforms to reduce inequality and lift up communities of color.

In December I asked you to specify the steps you would take to close this country’s racial wealth gap, in which white households have a median net worth more than 15 times larger than that of black households and more than 13 times that of Latinos. This gap is the result of centuries of second-class citizenship and is perpetuated by the economic and physical exclusion of people of color in every community. It has bred and reinforced segregation in education, housing and opportunity and contributed to a violent culture in which black Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to be killed by the police.

You didn’t answer.

I encourage you to do so now, and to pledge to fight for inclusive policies that will move our society toward the equal-opportunity nation you claim to desire. That means taking bold actions like closing the wage gap, expanding Social Security, preventing the restriction of voting rights and pushing other elected officials to value America’s diversity instead of pushing it aside.

And that’s it. Who knew it would be so easy to court the black vote? Just three steps and I have no doubt you’ll get, as you predicted, “over 95 percent” of us on board in no time. No need to thank me. Just stop trying to plant the false idea that voter fraud—which is largely nonexistent—in majority-black areas is going to cost you the election, and focus on making these last two months count. See you in November!" [Source]

I could add a few more to that, but for now I will just add one: Apologize to the president for your disgusting birther charade. 

*Pic from politicsusa.com