Misguided outrage over a comedian.

I am going to need the right-wingnuts and some of the other folks who took issue with Michelle Wolf's stand up routine at the White House Correspondence Dinner to give me a break.

Since when is a comedian not allowed to make fun of famous people? Besides, pretty much everything she said was true.

It's just amazing to me that some of the same folks who defend this president and his vile and reprehensible behavior every day are now saying that this comedian went too far. She did not. She did what she was hired to do: Tell jokes. Donald trump makes fun of disabled people, and he tries to fat-shame women he disagrees with, and some of these same journalists who are now complaining about Wolf failed to cal him out for his boorish behavior. Trump himself said some pretty outrageous and dangerous things at his rally in Michigan, while Wolf was entertaining journalists in Washington, but it's crickets from America's chattering class and those who should be calling him out on it.

Katherine Timpf, writing for the National Review, had a great take on this issue.

"Wolf then continued to suggest that Sanders was a sort of “Uncle Tom but for white women.”

Sanders was visibly upset the entire time, and many people on the right rushed to her defense — saying that Wolf’s jokes were inappropriate and an outrage. Here’s the thing, though: Many of those same people have absolutely no problem with it when President Trump makes fun of people, no matter how low the blow.  

 Yes. In case you’ve forgotten, Donald Trump also really likes to make fun of people. On the campaign trail, he referred to Marco Rubio as “Little Marco” and Jeb Bush as “low-energy Jeb.” During a debate, he readily agreed that he’d compare Rosie O’Donnell to a “fat pig,” “slob,” “dog,” and “disgusting animal.” He mocked Carly Fiorina, saying “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” During his presidency, he made fun of Mika Brzezinski, saying he once saw her “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” The list goes on and on.

If you find yourself being outraged about Wolf’s jokes about Sanders, I’d suggest you ask yourself: Were you outraged about any of the above jokes as well? If not, why not?

The way it appears now is that when Trump makes fun of Mika’s face, the Right says “Chill, it’s just a joke!” and the Left says it’s an outrage. When Michelle Wolf says Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s eyeshadow is made of lies, the Left says “Chill, it’s just a joke!” and the Right says it’s an outrage. There’s certainly an element of hypocrisy on this issue on both sides, but there’s also one difference: Michelle Wolf is a comedian, not the leader of the free world, so she does deserve a bit more leeway when it comes to making jokes." [Source]

Maybe that's the problem, we can't separate the two, since "the leader of the free world" is such a joke.



  

CAPTION SATURDAY.

• • 

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: See how easy it is to find a house Negro? 

*Pic from youtube .com  

"Dragon energy."

I know that Yeezy has been showing love to Donald trump recently, and that he has declared that trump might not be bad for black people. It's hard to imagine that just a few years ago this same dude thought that he was insigthful enough to see that the sitting president at the time did not care about black people.

Anyway, I have a news flash for Kanye West: Donald trump cares a lot less for black people than George W. Bush. I don't care how much "dragon energy" he has.  And his dislike for us manifests itself in many different ways. 

"A white man shot up a Waffle House in Nashville, and killed four people. The belief by officials is that more would have been killed in the "iconic diner" if a young man, James Shaw Jr., had not disarmed the suspected shooter, Travis Reinking (who was captured in the woods), while he was fixing or reloading his AR-15 rifle. On Sunday, every major network hailed Shaw as a hero. The Mayor of Nashville thanked him for saving lives.

But because he is black and the suspect is white, and the dead are people of color, our president has said nothing about this mass shooting. True, Trump is owned by the NRA, and this organization (or death cult) impatiently wants the current and unprecedented sequence of resistance against American gun madness to cool and cease, and, in essence, doesn't care who shot who. It just does not want the shooting to excite more resistance. The fact that the victims of the Waffle House shooting are not white, but de facto second-class citizens, will make it easier for it to enter the void at the end of the current news cycle. Trump can comfortably sit this one out.

There is also lots of justified talk about this mass shooting being racially motivated, and therefore another act of domestic terrorism. But again, only white American Christians who are killed by Muslims have the honor of being the victims of terrorism. White Christians killed by white people are just unlucky and have to moan and go on. Let me repeat this: If you are a white person killed by a white supremacist, you are nothing. If you are a black person killed by a white supremacist, you are less than nothing." [Source]

Kanye, it's OK to be a "free thinker", but if you support a racist with power you are not free, you are a mental slave. 

Open thread Wednesday.

It's open thread Wednesday.

Give me your thoughts on some of the news stories happening now.

For instance, is Kanye's new album going to be a best seller in red state country now that we know that he is a trump fan? And just what the hell is "dragon energy"?

Will Melania ever smile again?

Will Ronny Jackson withdraw his name from consideration to be the head of the VA?

Is Michael Cohen pleading the fifth in the Stormy Daniels case a big deal?

Has French president Macron been playing trump all along?

Finally, is it a god idea for Ben Carson to raise the rent for low income families in subsidized public houses?

Dining while black.

Dyamn! Black women can't eat at a restaurant in peace up in HARLEM?!  What is America coming to?

 I mean we knew it was tough to just chill and have a nice meal as  a person of color away from home here in America. But Harlem?!

"Two African-American women are suing a popular Harlem eatery, alleging they felt “violated” after an employee racially profiled and falsely accused them of dining and dashing.

Tara Fitzgibbon visited the Angel of Harlem restaurant on Frederick Douglass Blvd. near W. 122nd St. for the first time on Feb. 10 with her friend Tamara Young. As they ordered drinks, a manager came up behind them and gruffly accused them of racking up a tab during a previous visit.

Fitzgibbon, of New Rochelle, Westchester County, and Young, of Harlem, charge in a complaint filed with the city’s human rights commission earlier this month that they felt “dehumanized” by the experience, as the manager snatched menus from their hands, violently banged his hands on the bar and accused them of “lying and stealing.”

“It was a public embarrassment and humiliating to us and to everyone else who was in the restaurant,” Fitzgibbon told the Daily News over the phone Tuesday. “There was a lot of people there.”

The two women tried to ease the situation, telling the fuming manager that they had never been to the restaurant before.

But the unidentified manager was unrelenting and told Fitzgibbon that he had surveillance footage of her dining and dashing at the eatery the week before. “Look at your tape because I was not in Angel last week,” Fitzgibbon said, according to the complaint.

To her shock, the manager then showed Fitzgibbon surveillance footage of a woman who she says looked nothing like her — except that she was also black.

“What, do all black people look alike to you?” Young exclaimed in response, according to Fitzgibbon.

The manager became “violently defensive” after Young’s comment and pushed her as she and Fitzgibbon left the restaurant, the complaint states.

Richard St. Paul, a Westchester attorney representing Fitzgibbon and Young, said the women will seek damages in the “hundreds of thousands” for the emotional distress and embarrassment that the manager inflicted.

Fitzgibbon also says she hopes that their complaint will force restaurant management to retrain the staff.

“This shouldn’t have to happen to anyone else,” she said.

Anahi Angelone, the owner of Angel of Harlem, did not return several requests for comment on Tuesday.

When The News first reported on the allegations in February, Angelone insisted that “there are two sides to every story” but declined to specifically address the women’s allegations.
“It’s very sad that it went down the way it went down,” Angelone said at the time.

Angelone is also facing flak over a sexual harassment lawsuit filed last month by an employeeource] at Angel of Harlem’s sister restaurant, Corner Social, on Lenox Ave. near W. 126th St."  [Source]

Ladies, next time take it down to Amy Ruth's, and I promise you that there will be no such problems.

Besides, the food will be a lot better and less expensive.

*Pic from the New York Daily News. 

The masks keep coming off.

Dear Racists, I know that now that Donald trump is in power you all feel emboldened to carry out your racists acts, and you have thrown all pretense of being decent human beings out the window with your dirty sheets. 

But you just can't trample over the rights of black folks who this country claims are equal to you. And you sure as hell can't use the police force who are sworn to serve and protect ALL citizens as your own personal enforcers to carry out your dastardly deeds.

Now comes yet another story of ignorance and racism. This time it's from York, Pennsylvania.

"A Pennsylvania golf club called police on five members this weekend after the club’s co-owner felt that the group was playing too slowly and claimed that they did not leave the course when asked. The members—all five of whom are black women—say that they were discriminated against.

No charges were filed, according to the York Daily Journal, and the golf club has now issued an apology.

The five women belong to a group called Sisters in the Fairway and are all experienced golfers, they told the Daily Journal. They were on the second hole at Grandview Golf Club when the father of the club’s co-owner approached the group to say that they were playing too slowly. One of the women told the Associated Press that she then consulted a club pro, who said that the group was fine because they were keeping pace with the people ahead of them. The women decided to skip the next hole anyway to avoid any potential problems.

After the ninth hole, three of the five women left; the two who chose to keep playing were approached by the man who had spoken to them earlier, whose name is Steve Chronister, and his son, the club’s co-owner, Jordan Chronister. The pair reportedly told the women that they had taken too long a break at the turn and needed to leave the course. The women said they responded by claiming that their break had not been too long, pointing out that the group behind them was still taking a break of their own and not yet ready to tee off.

“I felt we were discriminated against,” one of the women, Myneca Ojo, told the Daily Record. “It was a horrific experience.”

The club’s other co-owner, JJ Chronister—wife of Jordan Chronister and daughter-in-law of Steve Chronister—issued a public apology to the women and has asked them to meet with her “to fully understand what happened so that we can ensure it never happens again.”

One of the women, Sandra Thompson, isn’t certain that a meeting is the right solution.

“There needs to be something more substantial to understand they don’t treat people in this manner,” she told the Associated Press." [Video and story here.]

Finally, I posted last night that the Waffle House shooter (unless he killed himself) would be captured without incident and not a hair on his little blond head would be touched. Well it seems that I was right. And, to top it off, if his people can make god on two million dollars if he were to run, he can actually post bail for killing four people.  Four people!

Oh wait, I am looking at a picture of all the victims......

Now it all makes sense.

A tale of two Waffle Houses.

I spend a lot of time in the South (Mrs. is from Louisiana), and whenever I get a chance I like to pop into one of those Waffle House establishments for breakfast.

So imagine how upset I was to hear that a killer walked into a Waffle House armed with an AR-15 style rifle, and that he proceeded to kill four people and wound four others before a brave and heroic customer sprung into action to stop the carnage. Sadly, the gunman got away, and as of me writing this post, he is still on the loose.

It should be interesting to see how this saga plays itself out. The last time a young white male committed an act like this and went on the run, he was apprehended and taken for a Happy Meal (or whatever it is they serve at Burger King) before being taken away to jail.

Let's contrast this to another Waffle House story which played itself out in Alabama. In this story     an African America lady has her clothes ripped from her body while being violently arrested by a bunch of white police officers. Her crime? Getting into a dispute over a plastic eating utensil with the manager.

"Clemons asked for plastic utensils while placing an order at the Waffle House on Industry Parkway in Saraland early Sunday morning, and was told by a female employee that plasticware costs 50 cents, according to Clemons-Howard.

When Clemons and Adams told the employee that they had not been charged for utensils when they purchased food from the same Waffle House the night before, the employee canceled the order, Clemons-Howard said. At that point Clemons asked for the contact information of the Waffle House district manager who oversees the Saraland location.

"They didn't even ask her to leave, she was waiting for them to give her the district manager's card so she could file a complaint on one of the waitresses," Clemons-Howard said. "When they went to go get the card, that's when the police showed up. The officer should've come in and said we need you to leave."

What happened after that was a miscarriage of justice, according to Clemons-Howard.
"The footage shows the story completely," she said, declining to go into further detail. "My nerves are very, very bad right now."

Mobile NAACP President David Smith said in a Sunday statement that the organization is gathering facts about the incident.

"In light of the current situation in our country -- such as the arrest of two young black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks coffee shop -- we felt it was important for our members to get a first-hand account of the incident, which has now gone viral on social media locally and across the country," Smith said.

Waffle House spokesperson Pat Warner did not respond to a request for comment Sunday afternoon." [Source]

After killing four people at a Waffle House in Tennessee, Travis Reinking  (unless he takes his own life) will be treated better, and with  more respect, than Ms. Clemons-Howard was in that Waffle House restaurant in Alabama.

Sadly, such is life in America these days. 

*Pics from usatoday.com and breaking112.com

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

*Pic from eonline.com

Et tu, LA Fitness?

• 

I am starting to see a trend.

One of the good things about living in a world where we can use our cell phones as video cameras, is that we can now see and hear things that some of us thought never happened in this country. Like, for instance,  open racism and bigotry in public spaces.

We all know by now what happened in that Philadelphia Starbucks on the edge of Rittenhouse Square. (BTW, the police were called within minutes of the men entering the store. They did not loiter for hours as some racist websites are suggesting.) But it's not only Starbucks with the alleged racist employees. Let's go to an LA. Fitness gym (full disclosure my current gym of choice) in the great state of New Jersey.

 "Amid nationwide backlash over a racial profiling incident at a Philadelphia Starbucks, three employees at a New Jersey gym have been fired for a similar situation.

In a series of Facebook videos that went viral Tuesday, two black men were kicked out of an LA Fitness in Secaucus after an employee called police.

Tshyrad Oates, who posted the videos on his account, said he was visiting on a four-day guest pass Monday. His friend, he said, had been a longtime member at the gym.“After about a half hour I was approached by this same employee telling me that I had to leave or pay and I explained to her that I just signed in with her with the guest pass,” Oates wrote on Facebook. 

“She stated that it was my friend who did not pay (unaware that her manager had already signed him in with his membership pass). My friend stated to her that he is an active and current member and that his gym tag was in his locker. He felt racially profiled and embarrassed by the harassment of this LA Fitness employee in front of other members at the gym.”

Oates continued to say that two policemen showed up at the LA Fitness to question them.
“We explained to them about our guest pass and rescanned my friend’s member tag and it resulted in current active statues. (The LA Fitness employee did look at the computer screen that showed current member status and said nothing),” he wrote.

“We again started our workout and 10 mins later an LA Fitness manager told us to leave, we stated that we did not do anything wrong and have active current memberships. 2 mins later 5 police men show up asking us to leave.”

The gym manager allegedly told Oates that he had been banned from the LA Fitness and his friend’s membership “has been terminated effective immediately.”

In one of Oates’ videos, his friend noted that they were “the only two black people in the gym” and that he had been “having problems with this staff for months.”

In another video, a man, seemingly a gym employee, insisted that no filming was allowed on premises as the videographer recorded his conversations with the police and other employees.
A spokesperson for the national branch told the Daily News late Thursday that the three employees are "no longer with the company."

"For over 30 years, people of all races have been welcome in our clubs. We do ask for a Membership card or ID to gain entry. The front desk staff employee was confused and thought the member was a guest. He explained that he was a member, had checked in earlier, and did not want to retrieve his membership card a second time. The front desk employee who made the request was not working when this member checked in the first time, so she was unaware," the statement to The News read.

"Regrettably, from there our staff unnecessarily escalated the situation and called the police rather than work through it. Clearly, this is a long time member, with a current, valid membership. We want to clarify that no membership was cancelled and no one, including the member’s guest, was banned from the club. We have spoken to the member to apologize and assure him that he and his guests are welcome in our clubs at all times."

LA Fitness also said that the company is "currently exploring potential training content and opportunities to better train our staff."

Oates did not immediately returned a request for comment. The local police also declined to comment." [Source]

I will paraphrase what a colleague of mine declared recently: The shit is exhausting, bro.   

Open thread Wednesday.

It's open thread Wednesday field hands, and I need your thoughts on a few things.

Does Sean Hannity and his network now have a serious credibility problem? 

Do you believe president trump when he says that he has been tough on Russia? 

Is Nikki Haley going to run against trump in 2020?  ("I don't get confused") 

Why is the story of white terrorist found guilty of plotting to blow up an apartment complex full of African immigrants getting so little press?

Will trump fire Robert Mueller? The Pittsburgh police department seems to thinks so. 

Should the new climate of little or no regulation in Washington be blamed for that recent Southwest Airlines crash that killed one person? 

Did the New York AG take away trump's pardon power with their latest move?

Finally, will Michael Cohen give up his boy, Donald trump, to the feds?

It's 2018.

Former First Lady Barbara Bush passed away today.

Here is what your president tweeted:

Starbucks, we have a problem.

Two black men walk into a Starbucks coffee shop. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, until you see what happens next: The manager called the police to have the two men arrested for being....well...two black men in a Starbucks.

Thankfully, there were some white folks there who used their white privilege to record the entire sorry episode and post in on social media.  It's always good to have conscious white folks around who will take note of the disparity in treatment between the races and call out the perpetrators on their actions.

True confessions. I used to go to Starbucks quite often, primarily because I had a thing for their Caffe Misto. But I have since broken away from my Starbucks jones,  because I do not like the idea of being addicted to a particular drink--- or anything else for that matter. Sadly, I always noticed a classist yuppie vibe about Starbucks that I found offsetting. There is a perception that they are these liberal progressive folks who cater to a like-minded people, but I have learned long ago that certain types of "liberal progressive" people can be some of the most racist who harbor implicit biases about black folks that are no different than those in different ideological camps.

Anyway, clearly the manager at this particular Philadelphia store fit into that category. She felt the need to call Philly's finest on the two men for trespassing  because she felt that they stayed in the store too long without making a purchase. Forget the fact that the men were waiting on a friend to consummate a business deal, or that Starbucks is a place where folks (see white people) hang out for hours after purchasing just one cup of coffee or nothing at all.

"Ever since I posted this, I’ve had white strangers AND friends say “there must be something more to this story.” That assumption is a big part of the problem. It does happen. All the time. Just not to you and me. Believe it and speak up."

Melissa, I could not have said it better myself.

*Pic courtesy of  @missydepino 

  

CAPTION SATURDAY.

• 

I need a caption for this pic.

*Pic from businessinsider.com

A bad week to be a member of "Cult 45".

BREAKING! NBC is reporting that Robert Mueller is to report about at least four findings on trump and obstruction of justice soon.

Also, the president just might have a love child running (or crawling) around out here. And he might have had the child with his housekeeper.  I guess Thomas Jefferson was one of his heroes as well.

Then there is Jim Comey's new book. It has all kinds of nasty dishes about the loser in chief. 

Anyway, this has not been a good week for trump and the "Cult 45" folks. 

This might be a good time to read  another great essay from Matt Bai.

"Let me put it to you this way, Mr. President. Who are you going to listen to — the voice of the stable genius inside your head, or the timid voices of experience, the ones that said you’d never win?

You know what you want to do. Just do it already.

Oh sure, all the sour-faced pundits are warning of a national crisis if you follow through. All those bed-wetting Republicans on the Hill are counseling patience and caution. Your senior staff is glued to their Twitter feeds, praying you won’t hit Send on something you can’t take back.

But they’re not the ones who sit in that swivel chair, are they. They never in their lives registered so much as a blip in the Nielsen ratings. Paul Ryan’s so smart that you gave him the biggest tax cut in the history of civilization and he still can’t hold his seat in Podunk, Wis.

Go on, Mr. President. Fire Bob Mueller. Please.

Don’t stop there, either — fire the rest of them, too. Sessions will be useless. That Boy Scout Rosenstein won’t have your back, either. There must be something in the halls of the Justice Department that causes people to suddenly grow a conscience, like some goiter sprouting on the soul.

Burn it down, Mr. President. Do what you really came here to do. Let’s see how those Ivy League lawyers like taking orders from Attorney General Laura Ingraham and her new deputy, Michael Cohen.

You said it yourself: This latest raid on Cohen, your most trusted personal lackey, was an attack on America. I couldn’t agree more. The first image that jumped into my mind when I heard the news was Pearl Harbor.

Many years from now, our grandchildren will mark the day of the Stormy Daniels Raid with little shoebox dioramas of federal prosecutors marching into Rockefeller Center.

What were they really after, anyway? Payoffs to paramours? Campaign finance violations? No, Mueller’s aiming higher than that.

Prosecutors sometimes talk about “tickling the wire,” by which they mean purposely freaking out witnesses who might be under electronic surveillance. You rattle the dumpster a little, and then you sit back and listen as the rats inside panic.

My guess is that Mueller is onto the real stuff now: loans from Moscow laundered through European banks, clumsy backchannel connections to your meathead son-in-law, bullying from the Oval Office that might cross the line into outright obstruction.

He’s crossed the moat and breached the castle now. He’s rummaging through the Hall of Armor.

And what he’s doing now is goading you. Tickling the wire. Pushing your buttons to see just how reckless your cronies can get.

You and I know who Mueller is, Mr. President. Born in Manhattan, schooled at St. Paul’s and Princeton. He played high school hockey with John Kerry. He even looks like John Kerry. He might be John Kerry, for all we know.

The newspaper profiles never fail to mention that Mueller joined the Marines, fought in Vietnam, got himself covered head to toe with medals for valor. Meanwhile, you described your own version of combat, after all those deferments, as having dodged venereal diseases while hopping from one bed to the next.

Can’t anyone around here take a joke?

No, Mueller isn’t just a prosecutor; he’s the stand-in for all the bluebloods and public service types who never respected you, who never thought you belonged, who always thought you too coarse and outer-borough, too much of a carnival barker, to join their clubs or sit on their boards.

He’s trying to destroy you, Mr. President. He thinks you’re beneath the office.

And if you’re going to stop him, what better time to do it than now, just as Jim Comey’s big memoir hits the virtual shelves? You don’t need me to tell you what getting rid of Mueller would do to the Comey Sanctification Tour. This is what you’re better at than anyone alive — commandeering the news cycle.

This isn’t hard. Look at all the people you’ve already fired. Priebus, Flynn, Tillerson, Price, McMaster — the list goes on.

Of course, you didn’t actually fire them, eye to eye. That’s something you only do on TV, when people are watching and you get to humiliate some wannabe TV star. Your style is more to let them know on Twitter, or in the fake news.

Which is why I’ve theorized that you’re a man of show business, not of action. I’ve said that other world leaders sense your insecurity and walk all over you. I’ve never bought the storyline about you as an aspiring tyrant because, when you get down to it, I don’t think you really have the steel.

So prove me wrong. Reprise Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre. Find your Robert Bork.

Because here’s the thing, Mr. President: All these responsible people frantically warning of a constitutional crisis if you do this — they’re afraid. They don’t think the institutions of American democracy and jurisprudence are strong enough now to withstand the assault. They think the Republican Party you’ve annexed will prostrate itself in your presence, as it has for the entire last year.

Even more than that, they don’t believe in the voters. Their faith is shaken. They fear that Americans are so angry at the system, so dimwitted and disillusioned, that we’ll accept anything that comes disguised as anti-elitism.

They worry that you’ll win, and America’s claim to being a nation of laws will be lost.

I don’t. If I’m being straight with you, I think firing Mueller is your Waterloo. And this kind of clear-cut crisis may be exactly what we need.

I think there are more than enough Republicans who genuinely believe in the bedrock principles of American government (and, not for nothing, who can see what your leadership is about to do to them in the midterm elections), and a solid majority of patriotic voters who won’t stand by and watch another president try to strong-arm the judicial system.

I think trying to shut down the special counsel and seize control of the Justice Department will be the thing that brings this entire Legoland of an administration crashing down on itself.

So enough bluster, Mr. President. It’s time to walk the walk.

Because I’m pretty sure that all you’ll have left, when Mueller and Rosenstein and Sessions are all back at law firms basking in the public’s admiration, are enough unshakable, reactionary supporters to just about fill a park in Charlottesville.

Everyone else in your party will have moved on to President Pence." [Source]