Unfit for office.

     The following essay is a must read for all who want to know what kind of man  Americans elected to be their president. It's from a newspaper in Montana of all places. 

The field Negro education series continues.

"Author, social commentator, public speaker and actor, Fran Leibowitz recently said, “the biggest danger of Trump is that he’s a moron...You don’t know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump.” She believes naked racism was behind Trump’s election. “He allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in ways they haven’t been able to in a long while, and they love him for that.”

WaPo opinion writer, Jennifer Rubin, writes, “...Trump’s tenure seems rockier than ever...entirely unfit for...office (temperamentally, intellectually and in every other imaginable way)...becoming worse with time...The quality of each new addition to Trump’s administration...is worse than that of the person being replaced, while qualified, ethical public servants want no part of this train wreck.”

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WaPo’s David Nakamura writes, “Trump’s continual verbal assaults against black reporters, candidates and lawmakers...renew criticism that...he employs insults...aimed at making his African American targets appear unintelligent, untrustworthy and unqualified...” He recently launched well-reported personal attacks against three black female journalists. “...attacks he levels against people of color including black professionals...are straight out of historic playbooks about black workers and professionals...not being qualified, nor intelligent, nor having what it takes to succeed in a predominantly white environment.”

Princeton’s African American studies chairman said, “Trump’s language...is not subtle...It’s important...to understand this as a central part of who he is.”

And close to home: {Montana}

As Republicans bashed Democrats for “mob” tactics ahead of the midterms, Trump praised Gianforte’s assaulting a reporter.

A White House correspondent said, “Americans should recoil from...Trump’s praise for violent assault on someone doing his constitutionally protected job...celebrating criminality by someone sworn to uphold our laws, and an attack on the First Amendment by someone who soon after, solemnly pledged to defend it.”

It’s time for change!" [Source]

Well, if Mr. Mueller has his way (and judging from the news lately,it looks like he is getting there), a change will be coming really soon. 

Not all "good guys with guns" are created equal.

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"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun".

Not so fast there, NRA. That saying only applies if the "good guy with a gun" happens to be of the white variety.

How else do you explain two recent high profile incidents where the good guys with guns actually lost there lives because they had guns and were trying to be good guys? I always said that if you want to do away with the NRA and America's obsession with guns, have law abiding black folks start embracing the Second Amendment and carry their firearms around like some of these good ole boys like to do. America would decide very quickly that having too many guns around is a bad thing. Think of the Black Panthers back in the day. That's when conservative white folks were all for good control. 

So back to those two incidents. In Illinois a black security guard was a good guy with a gun who had disarmed and subdued drunk bar patrons. The drunk bar patrons had opened fire with their firearms in a bar. Unfortunately for him, though, he was the wrong color to be "the good guy with a gun" and it cost him his life. Two Chicago police officers came on the scene and shot the security guard to death.

"He had somebody on the ground with his knee in his back, with his gun in his back like, 'Don’t move,'" witness Adam Harris told WGNTV.

But an officer responding to the scene fired at Roberson and killed him.

"Everybody was screaming out 'Security!' He was a security guard," Harris said.

The Midlothian police department confirmed to The Hill that two of its officers responded to the shooting and one opened fire.

"Upon arrival Officers learned there were several gunshot victims inside the bar. A Midlothian Officer encountered a subject with a gun and was involved in an Officer involved shooting.  The subject the Officer shot was later pronounced deceased at an area hospital," Chief Daniel Delaney the Midlothian Police Department said in a statement.

Delaney added an investigation into the shooting of the security guard is now taking place.

Translated: The officer will be put on paid desk duty to cool his heels until the outrage dies down.

The second incident of  a  "good guy with a gun------ who happens to be the wrong color, took place recently in Alabama. 

I must confess that when I first heard the story I thought to myself that the victim, Emantic Bradford, Jr., was carrying an illegal fire arm and maybe the shooting by the officer was justified. Now, as it turns out, he had a permit to carry his fire arm and he was a veteran who served his country. From all accounts he was playing peacemaker and was trying to apprehend the shooter, when police mistook him for the original shooter. 

A lot of people are speculating about what happened, but there is actually a video tape of the incident that the police have so far yet to release to the public, which I am sure would clear up a lot of the speculation.

"An Alabama city and its police department publicly expressed condolences Monday to the family of a black man fatally shot by an officer in the chaotic moments after a prior shooting at a crowded mall on Thanksgiving night.

But a statement issued by officials in Hoover, 10 miles south of Birmingham, placed some of the responsibility on Emantic "EJ" Bradford Jr., who was killed by an officer working private security at the sprawling, two-story Riverchase Galleria.

The statement said Bradford, 21, was shot during Hoover police's efforts to secure the scene after the initial shooting, which wounded an 18-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl. A manhunt for at least one shooter continued Monday.

"We can say with certainty Mr. Bradford brandished a gun during the seconds following the gunshots, which instantly heightened the sense of threat to approaching police officers responding to the chaotic scene," the statement said.

Police clarified that "brandished" meant Bradford was holding a gun.

'We are deeply and sincerely sympathetic to Mr. Bradford's grieving family and all of those affected by this incident," the statement said. "We all want answers, and we believe that with patience and focus the truth will be firmly established.'

In the hours after the shooting, Hoover police lauded the "heroic" officer for taking down a suspect. Several hours later, police walked the story back, saying Bradford was not the initial shooter." 

"Suspect"! That's what they call a "good guy with a gun" who happens to be the wrong color these days.  

They have a lot to lose.

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Roland Martin recently asked poor white people in Mississippi what they had to lose by voting for the democratic candidate. He was attempting to flip the script that trump uses on black folks by posing the same question to poor white people.

It's an interesting question, but it misses the point of why they (poor white people) don't vote for democratic candidates in the first place. There are a couple of reasons for that.

First, often times the democratic candidate is a person of color. ---That happens to be the case in Mississippi now--- Most of these people, regardless of what you hear from the main stream media, are just flat out racist, and there is no way in hell they are going to vote for a black man to be dog catcher let alone their senator. The Negro cannot represent them because he or she is not worthy. It must be someone who looks like they do, and  who"shares their values". It was racism not "economic anxiety" that drove all those poor white people to vote for trump.

Which leads me to the other reason. The republican candidates are smart enough to play on the racial fears and prejudices of these poor whites. (See Donald trump). They understand that these people would rather stay poor and uneducated than to change their way of life or thinking.  It works every time. Just promise them their god and guns, and they will do without proper health care, better paying jobs, or a proper education for their children.

When you ask these people what they have to lose they are thinking that they do in fact have a lot to lose. They are thinking that the power that comes from being white is more valuable than money and a  better quality of life for themselves and their families. So what, the thinking goes, if I am poor ; at least the people in charge and with power look like I do. That has to count for something.

This is why, even though we can objectively say that she is a racist, Cindy Hyde-Smith will more than likely be the next senator from Mississippi. All those poor white people down in Mississippi will not vote for  a black man to be their senator.

Vanity Fair posted an article recently and wanted to know if Smith is too racist, even for Mississippi. The answer to that question would be no. And every poor white person in Mississippi knows it.

Caption Saturday.

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I need a caption for this pic.

*Pic from newsweek.com

Turkey day.

This morning I woke up with so much to be thankful for. My health, my family, my well being, and a host of other things that I can't even begin to mention. Yes, I thought to myself; like is good!

But then I read stories like this, this, and this, and this, and this , and....well, you get the the picture. I have to question the humanity of some of the people living among us. 

Honesty,  I am starting to think that maybe it would be better if the turkeys were slaughtering us humans en masse this holiday season instead of the other way around.  

Happy turkey day field hands.

Scandal overload.

The hits just keep coming with this president. So much so that the American press is having a hard time keeping up with the scandals dogging the White House.

I mean just when you think that one outrageous act can't get any worse, along comes another one that is equally appalling.

Where do I begin? Well, for starters, today the American president chose to side with a murderous dictatorial regime over his own intelligence community.  Mr. trump declared (even after un-controverted evidence to the contrary) that the Saudi Arabian government and their leaders should not be held accountable for chopping up an American journalist in their embassy. Why? Because they were just too important a partner on the world stage. (Translated: I can't afford to jeopardize my business interests with the Saudis.)

I have to give it to trump, though, at least he is consistent. His love for dictators and disdain for things  having to do with democracy has not changed since he took office.   

And then there is his daughter, Ivanka, who we learned today has been doing what her father wanted his 2016 opponent arrested for: using private e-mails to conduct government business. These people and their supporters are such word class hypocrites that it boggles the mind.

Now you will hear all of the excuses from the right, and the whataboutisms that they are so good at throwing out when they are caught in a lie or with their backs against the wall. 

"Early on and for a little period of time, Ivanka did some emails. They weren't classified like Hillary Clinton. They weren't deleted like Hillary Clinton," Trump told reporters.

"She wasn't doing anything to hide her emails... They are all in presidential records... There were no servers in the basement like Hillary Clinton had. You're talking about a whole different -- all fake news."

I hear ya, orange one. But the good news for the American people is this: Come January there are some new sheriffs in town, and they are going to want some answers.

And finally, what might be the biggest story today from this scandal plagued White House, is the one from the New York Times detailing how Mr. trump tried to order the justice department to prosecute James Comey and Hillary Clinton.  

This man really believes that the justice department is his own personal tool to go after his political enemies. Sorry orange one, that is not how it works in America, at least not yet. 

Fortunately for the country (and for him), he was talked out of it by White House lawyers who had to write a memo to him explaining why prosecuting political enemies is something that his buddy Putin would do, but is not cool here in America. (Not yet.) 

There is one person who might be interested in getting to the bottom of this article, and that is one Robert Mueller. (Remember, one of those same White House lawyers is now cooperating with him.) The man whose obstructing of justice case just got a whole lot stronger.    

"Lock them up". 

   

Turkey week.

As the actual turkey day approaches, I would like to take a look at the ten biggest turkeys in America as I write this post.

Here they are, and they are not necessarily in order of importance. They are all equal turkeys in my book.

1. Mitch McConnell: This guy looks more like a turtle than a turkey, but he earns a place on our top turkey list because of his refusal to bring a bill to the senate floor that would protect Bob Mueller.

2. Cindy Hyde-Smith: This turkey is running for a Mississippi senate seat and she is making jokes about lynchings. Seriously?!

3. Louis Kemp: This turkey is a county commissioner in Kansas, and he has no problems telling black folks that he is a member of the master race. 

4. Sarah Huckabee Sanders: This turkey in the White House will need not need pardoning this Thanksgiving. Her neck is safe, because she lies almost as much as the president.

5. Donald trump: He could be on this list for so many reasons. Today he is on it for his ridiculous statement about climate change and his lie that he talked to the Finnish president about it. 

6. Bernie Sanders: Making excuses for racists makes you a turkey this week. 

7. Baraboo School District:  Raising a new generation of racists in your school gets you turkey         status in my book.

8. Mark Zuckerberg: Pretending he didn't know all the nefarious crap going on at facebook gets him turkey mentions.

9. Mike Pence: This guy is a turkey every day of the year,

10. Brian Kemp  Overseeing an election you are in and making it hard for the other guy to get elected is a serious turkey move.

Caption Saturday.

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I need a caption for this pic.

Example: It's me, Robert Mueller, I have something for the president.  

*Pic from washingtonpost.com

Conservative cowardice.

Here is something else to reflect on for trump and all of his trumpbots after they beat- down they took in the midterm elections.

"In the Trump era, when every day brings fresh insanity, looking back is hard. But it’s worth remembering what Donald Trump did in the final days before Tuesday’s midterm elections. It’s worth remembering because it’s a template for what he may do in 2020. And for how mainstream conservatives will respond.

According to CNN, Republican officials wanted to close the campaign with an upbeat “Morning in America”–style commercial touting the country’s strong economy. Trump disagreed. He demanded that Republicans end by demonizing immigrants. On October 31—six days before the midterms and four days after a man enraged by Jewish support for the immigrant caravan murdered 11 people in Pittsburgh—Trump tweeted out an ad about the caravan. When Paul Ryan called him the Sunday before Election Day to implore him to talk about the economy, Trump instead boasted that his focus on immigration was rousing the GOP base.

He was probably right. Trump does appear to have incited Republican fury over immigration, which likely helped the GOP match the Democrats’ high turnout. His strategy worked, in part, because he understood something about the respectable people in his party: They wouldn’t challenge his bigotry, no matter how blatant it was.

Bigotry involves ascribing negative characteristics to an entire racial, religious, or ethnic group. Trump’s caravan ad does that emphatically. It’s built around the stereotype—which has been repeatedly debunked—that undocumented Latino immigrants are disproportionately violent. As William Saletan has noted in Slate, it begins with a man declaring, in a heavy Spanish accent, that he wants to kill police. If his ethnicity isn’t clear enough, the ad gives his name—Luis Bracamontes—and says he “killed our people!” It later features an interview with a man who says in Spanish, according to an interpreter, that he wants to come to the United States to seek a pardon for attempted murder. The ad also shows what appears to be a Nicaraguan flag, and a mass of people violently pushing against a fence.

Even Fox eventually rejected the ad. But that didn’t significantly undermine conservative unity because respectable conservatives—the kind who initially shunned Trump—bent themselves into pretzels trying to deny the obvious. The day after Trump released the commercial, Robert VerBruggen, a deputy managing editor of National Review, noted that it had “produced comparisons to the Willie Horton ad and accusations of racism … despite the fact that the criminal featured is, uh, rather pale.” VerBruggen’s claim was that the ad couldn’t be racist because Latinos are sometimes described as white. This is semantic nonsense. Whether or not Latinos constitute a “race,” they’re a distinct group. Their distinctiveness is highlighted in Trump’s ad, which emphasizes Bracamontes’s accent and name. So whether or not Trump’s ad is “racist” toward Latinos, it is clearly bigoted.

On November 2, the National Review editor Rich Lowry weighed in. “I looked up Luis Bracamonte [sic], who is featured in the Trump ad that Robert mentioned. His case doesn’t implicate Democrats in particular the way the video says. But he is the worst of the worst, a vicious and unrepentant killer.” The implication is that because Bracamontes really is a remorseless murderer, there’s nothing wrong with targeting him in an ad. This is staggeringly naive. Does Lowry think that Trump—who during his 2016 campaign called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and said that a Mexican American judge couldn’t be impartial—chose a Mexican murderer by accident?

Finally, on that same day, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru gently took issue with VerBruggen. “What I think he overlooks,” Ponnuru wrote, “is that the controversy over the ad isn’t coming out of a clear blue sky. The president has a history on race, and the ad can reasonably be viewed in the context of it.” Even Ponnuru, however, wouldn’t come out and call Trump’s ad bigoted.

But if National Review’s response to Trump’s ad was tepid and evasive, it was nothing compared with the response of Erick Erickson, another formerly anti-Trump conservative respectable enough to be invited on Meet the Press. “I don’t actually think it is racist,” Erickson tweeted. “I think it is a terrible ad, but calling it racist doesn’t make it so. It’s just a really bad and poorly executed ad. Yes, it plays on fear, but I don’t think it plays to racist sentiments per se.”

Erickson, you’ll notice, makes no argument and cites no evidence. He just says again and again that the ad isn’t racist. The Washington-based former news anchor Derek McGinty then tweeted a question: “Reminds me very much of Willie Horton. Do you think that was racist?” Erickson answered: “No I didn’t, but then I was 12. I think it stoked people’s fears about crime at the time, not so much about Horton’s race.” McGinty probed further: “Would the ad have been as effective if Horton wasn’t a ‘scary Black’ man?” At which point Erickson conceded: “That’s a fair point.” And then claimed that the first person to use Willie Horton was Al Gore.

Let’s summarize the exchange. First, Erickson insists, with no evidence, that the caravan ad isn’t racist. Then he insists, again with no evidence, that the Willie Horton ad isn’t racist either. Then, when gently challenged, he acknowledges that maybe the Horton ad is racist, but still doesn’t acknowledge that the caravan ad is. Why not? Who knows?

What makes all this so depressing is that National Review and Erick Erickson once actually did challenge Trump. In January 2016, with Trump already the GOP presidential front-runner, National Review’s editors called him a “philosophically unmoored political opportunist” with “strong-man overtones” who was “not deserving of conservative support.” In August 2015, Erickson disinvited Trump from a conference he had organized because of Trump’s sexist and insulting comments about Megyn Kelly. It was easier back then; Trump hadn’t yet taken over the Republican Party. But their actions also reflected the fact that Erickson and National Review take conservatism seriously. At times in the past, they’ve tried to remain true to their vision of it, even when doing so put them at odds with the GOP.

In the final days before the midterm, however, they weren’t willing to challenge their readers. They couldn’t clearly admit that Trump was peddling racism because that would have required them to repudiate him. But neither could they muster serious arguments for why the ad wasn’t racist. So they half-heartedly waved the whole thing away.

Which is just what Trump expects. Bullies can sense cowardice. The lesson he’ll take away is that next time he can go even further—secure in the knowledge that respectable conservatives will avert their eyes and go along for the ride. [Source]

If conservatives let him go even further the next time, they will lose their party forever.

Actually, now that I think about it, they probably already have. 

Losing it.

Mr. trump, in an incredible display of ignorance, decided that it was cool to stay at home on Veteran's Day instead of going out and paying his respect to our veterans like so many other presidents before him did in the past.

I guess I can't blame him for not wanting to show his face in public. The last few days have been particularly tough on him. From the shellacking he took in the midterms, to his disastrous European trip. (The man was afraid to go in the rain for crying out loud.) Throw in the fact that Robert Mueller is champing at the bit to drop another indictment bomb, and it is clear that he has a real orange mess on his hands.

I am watching this president lose it right before our eyes. Just watch how he has been talking to reporters (particularly black female ones), and becoming more unhinged when asked a legitimate question. He is hating democracy more and more. I am sure he wished that he had things as easy as one of his authoritarian buddies right now.  Life is so much easier for a psychopathic narcissist when you can control the population by controlling the free press.

"What a stupid question that is," Trump responded. "What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions."  

Any day now.

*Pic from pinterest.com

Tribalism or racism?

The following article is a must read for those who want to understand what's happening in places like Florida and Georgia when it comes to the most recent midterm elections.

 "It’s fashionable in the Donald Trump era to decry political “tribalism,” especially if you’re a conservative attempting to criticize Trump without incurring the wrath of his supporters. House Speaker Paul Ryan has lamented the “tribalism” of American politics. Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has said that “tribalism is ruining us.” Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has written a book warning that “partisan tribalism is statistically higher than at any point since the Civil War.”

In the fallout from Tuesday’s midterm elections, many political analysts have concluded that blue America and red America are ever more divided, ever more at each other’s throats. But calling this “tribalism” is misleading, because only one side of this divide remotely resembles a coalition based on ethnic and religious lines, and only one side has committed itself to a political strategy that relies on stoking hatred and fear of the other. By diagnosing America’s problem as tribalism, chin-stroking pundits and their sorrowful semi-Trumpist counterparts in Congress have hidden the actual problem in American politics behind a weird euphemism.

Take Tuesday’s midterm elections. In New York’s Nineteenth Congressional District, the Democrat Antonio Delgado, a Harvard-educated, African American Rhodes scholar, defeated the incumbent Republican John Faso in a district that is 84 percent white, despite Faso caricaturing Delgado as a “big-city rapper.” In Georgia, the Republican Brian Kemp appears to have defeated the Democrat Stacey Abrams after using his position as secretary of state to weaken the power of the black vote in the state and tying his opponent to the New Black Panther Party. In Florida, the Republican Ron DeSantis defeated the Democrat Andrew Gillum after a campaign in which DeSantis’s supporters made racist remarks about Gillum. The Republican Duncan Hunter, who is under indictment, won after running a campaign falsely tying his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, who is of Latino and Arab descent, to terrorism. In North Dakota, Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp lost reelection after Republicans adopted a voter-ID law designed to disenfranchise the Native American voters who powered her upset win in 2012. President Trump spent weeks claiming that a caravan of migrants in Latin America headed for the United States poses a grave threat to national security, an assessment the Pentagon disagrees with. In Illinois on Tuesday, thousands of Republicans voted for a longtime Nazi who now prefers to describe himself as a “white racialist”; in Virginia, more than a million cast ballots for a neo-Confederate running for Senate.

A large number of Republican candidates, led by the president, ran racist or bigoted campaigns against their opponents. But those opponents cannot be said to belong to a “tribe.” No common ethnic or religious ties bind Heitkamp, Campa-Najjar, Delgado, or the constituencies that elected them. It was their Republican opponents who turned to “tribalism,” painting them as scary or dangerous, and working to disenfranchise their supporters.

The urgency of the Republican strategy stems in part from the recognition that the core of the GOP agenda—slashing the social safety net and reducing taxes on the wealthy—is deeply unpopular. Progressive ballot initiatives, including the expansion of Medicaid, anti-gerrymandering measures, and the restoration of voting rights for formerly incarcerated people, succeeded even in red states. If Republicans ran on their policy agenda alone, they would be at a disadvantage. So they have turned to a destructive politics of white identity, one that seeks a path to power by deliberately dividing the country along racial and sectarian lines. They portray the nation as the birthright of white, heterosexual Christians, and label the growing population of those who don’t fit that mold or reject that moral framework as dangerous usurpers.

The Democratic Party, reliant as it is on a diverse coalition of voters, cannot afford to engage in this kind of politics. There are no blue states where Democrats have sought to make it harder for white men without a college education to vote, even though that demographic typically votes Republican. Democratic candidates did not attack their white male opponents as dangerous because four white men carried out deadly acts of right-wing terrorism in the two weeks prior to the election. Democratic candidates for statewide office did not appeal to voters in blue states by trashing other parts of the country considered to be conservative. Democratic candidates who ran for office did not advertise their willingness to use state violence against groups associated with Republican constituencies.
I am not arguing that the Democratic Party or its members are particularly virtuous. A little more than a century ago, it was the Republican Party that was reliant on a diverse coalition of voters, and the Democratic Party that rode white rage to power. Rather, I am saying that when a party’s viability is dependent on a diverse coalition of voters, that party will necessarily stand for pluralism and equal rights, because its survival depends on it. And when a party is not diverse, it will rely on demonizing those who are different, because no constituency exists within that party to prevent it from doing so, or to show its members that they have nothing to fear.

In the Trump era, America finds itself with two political parties: one that’s growing more reliant on the nation’s diversity, and one that sees its path to power in stoking fear and rage toward those who are different. America doesn’t have a “tribalism” problem. It has a racism problem. And the parties are not equally responsible." [Source]

Caption Saturday.*

• 

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: You are one uppity Negro, you know that? I like black females to act like Diamond and Silk. 

Again!

There was a massacre today in America (no, not what happened to republicans in the House), and another American community has been ripped apart by a tragedy. 

This latest American terrorist slaughtered 12 people and then apparently turned the gun on himself. I will give you one guess (only one) to tell me his race and his gender.

I am not going to write about the NRA or the gun debate in this country, because it won't do any good. If a school full of little children can get slaughtered and Americans shrug their collective shoulders, what's 12 more kids partying to country and western music in a club?

Meanwhile, in Washington, a totally unhinged president continues to battle the free press. If you didn't see his press conference yesterday, please take the time to watch it. It was, in a word, crazy. He called out an  African American  reporter as being racist, and he ordered one of his flunkies to take the microphone from a reporter. He has since revoked that reporter's White House credentials, after lying that the reporter assaulted the women who went to get the reporter's microphone. I watched the video tape over and over (not the doctored one the White House put out) and there was no assault. 

Still, I can see why Mr. trump is in a bad mood. He has to know that Mueller is winding up his Russian investigation, and now that the democrats control the House, Washington will be known as subpoena city for the next two years.  Make no mistake, he is doing his best to protect his family and the crooks who surround him. And his first order of business was to fire Jeff Sessions ("the only confederate monument that he didn't leave standing"), and to hire a sycophant in his place to protect "the family".

The acting attorney general has already said that he will not recuse himself, and trump said that he could "fire everyone right now".

"If Robert Mueller is fired, there will be holy hell to pay."  

That was Lindsey Graham. But that was many rounds of golf ago. He is now trump's boy, and he is one of the people on team trump making sure that there will not be hell to pay. 

*Picture from latimes.com