Caption Saturday.

Give me a caption for this picture.

Image from the AP in dailymail.co.uk

Break.

I'm on the road field hands.

I will holla at you later.

Be safe out there.

In service to the "chosen one".

 

" Never forget that Russia chose the REPUBLICAN party to destroy America. Why? Because they knew they would sell their souls for power and money." ~@Leeanna Ernest~

I read an article by Max Boot in the Washington Post today, and in it he rightly pointed out that the republican party has turned into a "quasi-fascist party" in service to its leader, Donald trump.

The signs are everywhere. If you watched the impeachment hearings last week and the sycophantish behavior being displayed by the GOP members of congress who questioned the impeachment witnesses, you would know what I am referring to. 

They were not playing to the millions of American watching, they were clearly playing to an audience of one: Their dear leader. The man with whom they have made a Faustian bargain to sell their souls for who knows what. 

Today Rick Perry pretty much confirmed what I wrote above by declaring that Donald trump was chosen by God to lead us.

"Over the weekend, outgoing Secretary of Energy Rick Perry sat down with Fox & Friends host Ed Henry to share his belief that Donald Trump, a thrice-married serial philanderer accused by multiple women of sexual assault, is God's "chosen one," echoing language Trump has previously used to describe himself. " 'If you're a believing Christian, you understand God's plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet and our government,' " he says he told the president.

Perry, who announced his resignation from Trump's cabinet back in October, acknowledged that although the man who appointed him is not "perfect," God has "used imperfect people all through history" to carry out his will. In what is likely a first for the official in charge of America's nuclear-weapons arsenal, Perry revealed that he had even authored a memorandum comparing Trump to Old Testament kings Saul, David, and Solomon in order to drive home the point."

What's scary is that trump himself believes this nonsense, and he is starting to act  accordingly. 

Do not be surprised if trump loses the next election and refuses to step down. He will declare that it's not yet God's will that he leaves office, and he still has some unfinished business to do. And before you call me crazy, you must understand that members of his cult are already saying that they would be cool with that, and trump himself has joked said that he might just do it and stick around beyond his term. (*Constitution? What Constitution? We don't need no stinking Constitution.*) 

I honestly do not believe that America could survive twelve years of trump. Heck three years has seemed like thirty under the rule of this lunatic. But there are many in this country who are probably thinking that they can't live without him being in power. He is, after all, God's chosen one. 

Hey, maybe God did choose him. It is said that God works in mysterious ways.  

The thing is, there is no mystery as to who and what Donald trump really is. The fact that so many people can't see it is what should keep is all up at night.  

*Image from knowyourmeme.com and twitter.

  

Caption Saturday.

I need a caption for this pic.


*Image from thehill.com

Is sexual assault an impeachable offense?

  I have been wondering about a particular issue ever since Mr. trump became president.

Here is an article written by Megan Barber writing for The Atlantic about the issue I speak of.

"To watch the public impeachment hearings of Donald Trump is to experience a very particular form of whiplash. The House inquiry has featured a series of collisions, between Democrats and Republicans, yes, but also between accountability and its opposite. Here is a proceeding led in part by lawmakers who have, when it comes to the president, repeatedly prioritized fealty over facts. And here is the key question at hand—did Donald Trump extort a U.S. ally for his own political gain?—chafing against the other questionable matters not being addressed in the hearing: the reported frauds, the well-documented lies, the atmospheric fact of Trump’s bigotries. The precision guiding the House inquiry—bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors—is constitutionally mandated; it is a proportional response. Watching it play out, however, is a little like watching Hannibal Lecter getting tried for tax evasion.

Here is another matter left largely unaccounted for in the proceedings: Donald Trump, currently accused of bribery, has also been accused of rape. He has been accused of other forms of sexual misconduct as well, by more than 20 women, their allegations ranging from kissing to groping and grabbing, all against their will. If you include allegations of nonphysical forms of sexual harassment, the number of accusers grows even larger. The president has, in reply to these claims, issued a blanket denial: The people making accusations against him, he has said, are lying. (That list includes, ostensibly, Donald Trump himself, who has made his own claims about assaulting women: “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”)

It is easy, in the impeachment hearings’ tumult—the testimonies, the twists, the history made in real time—to ignore those accusations. They are not, after all, a direct element of the inquiry. They are not among the alleged crimes that the House of Representatives has determined to be impeachable. A constellation of reasons, constitutional and political and cultural, explains why the impeachment inquiry is unfolding as it is—at this moment, rooted in this one particular incident of alleged abuse of power. It is nonetheless a sobering thing, to watch the hearings for the one alleged crime play out while the other alleged crimes are, effectively, ignored.

One function of presidential impeachment hearings, my colleague Yoni Appelbaum wrote in a rich and prescient essay earlier this year, is their ability to convene public attention. Americans are constitutionally distractible; the Constitution, it turns out, offers a way to mitigate that. Impeachment, on top of everything else, is a way of cutting through the noise of rumors and conspiracy theories, putting the truths of a president’s actions to the test and determining what, in presidential leadership, ultimately matters. There is a flip side to that power, though. When the question at hand is whether Trump engaged in an abuse of power with Ukraine, his alleged abuse of power with women becomes less relevant. All the other facts of unfitness—the families seeking refuge, torn apart at the American border; Trump’s insistence that the tragedies of Charlottesville, Virginia, featured “very fine people on both sides”; the bigotry; the cruelty; the offenses both casual and sweeping—get consigned to the background.

One function of presidential impeachment hearings, my colleague Yoni Appelbaum wrote in a rich and prescient essay earlier this year, is their ability to convene public attention. Americans are constitutionally distractible; the Constitution, it turns out, offers a way to mitigate that. Impeachment, on top of everything else, is a way of cutting through the noise of rumors and conspiracy theories, putting the truths of a president’s actions to the test and determining what, in presidential leadership, ultimately matters. There is a flip side to that power, though. When the question at hand is whether Trump engaged in an abuse of power with Ukraine, his alleged abuse of power with women becomes less relevant. All the other facts of unfitness—the families seeking refuge, torn apart at the American border; Trump’s insistence that the tragedies of Charlottesville, Virginia, featured “very fine people on both sides”; the bigotry; the cruelty; the offenses both casual and sweeping—get consigned to the background." [Source]

Ms. Barber, we can throw a newly appointed Supreme Court Justice in that mix as well.

*Image from bbc.com

The Vindman effect.

America is in a very bad place. I say this because a decorated Lieutenant Colonel who served honorably in Iraq- and earned a various military commendations- was set up on by GOP senators in an effort to undermine his credibility.

Alexander Vindman  gave damning testimony today when he declared what president trump did in his attempt to shake down the Ukrainian president.

It fits a pattern, as witness after an witness confirm what we already know: The American president committed impeachable offenses in his dealings with President Zelinski of Ukraine.

The trump cultist tried their best to gaslight and throw red herrings, but everyone outside of the cult of trump could see what was going on: The American president was trying to use a foreign power to investigate a domestic political rival.

I guess we can't totally blame the trump cultist, though, I mean let's face it. they take their cues from the president.

"Donald Trump has mocked witnesses at the impeachment hearings – while two of them were testifying – claiming he does not know them and making fun of their clothing.
The president, speaking to the media ahead of a cabinet meeting, was asked about Lt Col Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council expert who was testifying to the House impeachment hearings on the 25 July phone call between Mr Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart which sparked the probe.
Lt Col Vindman was listening to the call, in which Mr Trump appeared to pressure Volodymyr Zelenksy into starting investigations into his political opponents in return for releasing US military aid.

The Iraq War veteran was wearing his military uniform at the hearing and at one point insisted on being addressed as Lt Col Vindman after Republican congressman Devin Nunes called him Mr Vindman.

Mr Trump, appearing in public for the first time since an unscheduled medical visit at the weekend, mispronounced the Iraq War veteran's name and mocked him for wearing his uniform. 
He said: "I don't know him. I don't know, as he says, the 'lieutenant colonel'. I understand that somebody had the misfortune of calling him 'Mr' and he corrected them.

"I never saw the man. I understand now he wears his uniform when he goes in. No, I don't know Vind-e-man at all."' 

Yes Cadet Bone-Spur, unlike you, he is proud of his uniform. Of course you would never understand that, because you were too much of a coward to put one on. 

   

Caption Sunday.

I need a caption for this pic.


Example: "We got nothing."


*Image from pressform.info

Bombshell after bombshell.

So this happened today:

"When Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, testified on Capitol Hill Friday morning during the second day of impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump, it didn’t take the president long to send a tweet attacking her.

“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Trump wrote. “She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. it is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”

Yovanovitch was ousted from her ambassadorship back in April after she apparently got in the way of Trump’s efforts to persuade the government of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

Her testimony on Friday was clear, calm, and mostly unflattering to the Trump administration. “As Foreign Service professionals are being denigrated and undermined,” she told members of Congress, “the institution is also being degraded. This will soon cause real harm, if it hasn’t already.” [Source]

You read that correctly. The president of the United States was live- tweeting his impeachment hearing, and he tried to intimidate a witness via tweet while she was testifying. 

Needless to say that Mr. trump's behavior was despicable and bordering on criminal.

Job well done by Adam Schiff for calling out Mr. trump for the entire country to see. 

But let's see what happens. I suspect that the cult of trump will not be moved, and they will continue to go down this very dark road with Mr. trump no matter where it leads. 

This also happened:

"For decades, Roger J. Stone Jr. played politics as a kind of performance art, starring himself as a professional lord of mischief, as a friend once called him. He tossed bombs and spun tales from the political periphery with no real reckoning, burnishing a reputation as a dirty trickster.

On Friday morning, a reckoning arrived, the consequence of his efforts to sabotage a congressional investigation that threatened his longtime friend President Trump.

Mr. Stone, 67, was convicted in federal court of seven felonies for obstructing the congressional inquiry, lying to investigators under oath and trying to block the testimony of a witness whose account would have exposed his lies. Jurors deliberated for a little over seven hours before convicting him on all counts. Together, the charges carry a maximum prison term of 50 years.

In a last-minute bid for salvation, prosecutors said, Mr. Stone appealed to Mr. Trump for a pardon on Thursday, using a right-wing conspiracy theorist who runs the website Infowars as his proxy. Mr. Trump attacked the guilty verdict against Mr. Stone in a tweet on Friday but made no mention of a pardon." [Source]

I hope that the folks in the cult of trump see a pattern here. It never ends well for people who enable and act as sycophants for this crime chief. The people around him continue to fall like flies while he continues to walk free. 

Roger J. Stone joined that club today. The only sad thing about today's proceedings was that he was allowed to walk free and was not immediately taken into custody to await sentencing.  

Fortunately for Mr. Stone, whiteness still has its privileges. 

Impeachment day in America.

Today was impeachment day in America. And for the first time Americans could watch the proceedings live on television.

Two career diplomats pretty much told America that the American president was involved in a scheme to bribe a foreign country to meddle in America's elections, and then he participated in a conspiracy to cover it all up.

Sadly, this won't move the needle very much when it comes to sentiments among the partisans. Republicans will continue to say that trump did nothing wrong (in spite of all the evidence to the contrary) and democrats will continue to marvel at just how deep the cult of trump goes.

But as important as the impeachment news was today, there is other news coming out of Washington which was just as appalling.

For instance, those white nationalist and racist e-mails that were sent by White House adviser, Stephen Miller.

  "WASHINGTON – Stephen Miller, a senior White House policy adviser, pushed white nationalist material to staffers at Breitbart, a right-wing website, through 2015 and leading up to the 2016 election, according to a report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The report released by the SPLC is the first installment in a series. More than 900 emails between Miller and Breitbart were examined by SPLC’s Hatewatch. “More than 80 percent” of the emails “relate to or appear on threads relating to the subjects of race or immigration,” the report says.

Miller is one of Trump’s main influences on immigration policies, including restrictions on travel from Muslim majority countries and family separation policies at the southern border. "

There is more to the story. And the more you read it the more you realize that our country is being run by some scary people. The president's right hand policy adviser pushing e-mails with links to white supremacist websites should remind us all why we all fear this administration in the first place. 
Then these was this doozy of a story.

"She claimed to be a Harvard graduate, but she was not. She also greatly expanded the depth of her nonprofit’s scope. When Congress began to question her resume as part of an even larger government job with a one billion-plus dollar budget, that was when things began to unravel.

She lied about being part of a U.N. panel, saying she had spoken at “both Democratic and Republican national conventions and implied she had testified before Congress.”

Her current job in the Trump administration called for her to help manage conflict prevention in politically unstable countries. Her salary is six figures, and she managed a six million dollar budget. She would be required to have a top-secret security clearance for that position, but whether she had one was not clear.

On her State official biography. she claimed to be a graduate of Harvard Business School. She only attended a seven-week course in 2016. She also said she graduated from an Army War College program. Instead, she attended a four-day seminar on national security. She did have an undergraduate degree from an unaccredited Christian School with volunteer teachers, the University of the Nations."' [Source]

The woman even had a phony Time Magazine cover for crying out loud. If it sounds familiar it's because the man she was working for did the same thing. 

The she article is referring to is a senior White House aide to the president, and her name is Mina Chang. And what she did fits a pattern of behavior in this trump administration: Lies, half-truths, evasion, and deceit.

The trump administration came into power promising to drain the swamp. From the looks of it they jumped in the swamp rather than doing anything to drain it.

*Image from the newsweek.com.

Stealing from those who serve.

Let me start this post by saying thank you for your service to all of the Vets out there.

This is the day that we pause to celebrate their sacrifice for this country.

It's just sad that our brave men and women in uniform have to report to a commander in chief who was too much of a coward to serve his country, and who actually lied and used his family's connections to avoid serving in the military.

That is all bad, but what is just as disgusting and egregious , is the fact that this same man stole two million dollars that he lied and said was meant for the veterans he is supposed to be looking out for.

Here are excerpts from an article outlining some of the shenanigans:

"President Donald Trump must pay a $2 million judgment for improperly using his Trump Foundation charity to further his 2016 presidential campaign, a New York state judge ruled Thursday.

The order appears to bring to an end the New York attorney general's lawsuit against the president and three of his oldest children over the now-shuttered foundation, which the attorney general said had engaged in repeated wrongdoing.

“Our petition detailed a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation — including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more," then-Attorney General Barbara Underwood alleged in a statement late last year.

In her seven-page ruling, New York Supreme Court Justice Salliann Scarpulla wrote, "Mr. Trump’s fiduciary duty breaches included allowing his campaign to orchestrate the Fundraiser, allowing his campaign, instead of the Foundation, to direct distribution of the Funds, and using the Fundraiser and distribution of the Funds to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign."

The judge was referring to a Jan. 28, 2016, event Trump held in Des Moines, Iowa, that he'd billed as a fundraiser for veterans. The event was counter-programming for a GOP presidential debate on Fox. Trump was feuding with the network at the time." [Source] 

This story has gotten a shockingly small amount of traction among the main stream media outlets. I suppose it's because that nothing this president does can shock the conscience anymore. I mean compared to other things that he has done this might qualify as just another dog bites man story. 

America, we can do better. Those brave men and women whose service we celebrate today, didn't sacrifice so much for us to live in a country with such a leader.  

Caption Friday.

I need a caption for this picture. 

Pic from wtop.com 

Just say no.

     Black America, we have a problem. It's this damn Popeye's chicken sandwich craze that has been taking the country by storm.

Popeye's knew what they were doing. They shorted the supply, put all the right slap yo mama ingredients in the chicken, fried it up really good, and then slapped it on some fresh bread. The result? A fried chicken sandwich like your peeps made back in the day.

Still, I don't care how good it is, y'all have got to stop treating it like it's a new strain of crack or something. I see you all lining up for it, rioting for it, and even killing each other over the damn thing. I don't have to tell y'all how bad this all looks. The New York Times just featured an article about the stupid sandwich for crying out loud.

I am still trying to figure out why the article bothered me so much.

 Maybe it's because of lines like the following in the article:

"In a Facebook post in August, Nadiyah Ali, a nurse from Katy, Texas, compared the sandwich to a rival’s: Chick-fil-A’s version, she wrote, tasted as if it were made “by a white woman named Sarah who grew up around black people.” The Popeyes sandwich, she added, tasted “like it was cooked by an older black lady named Lucille.”

Black people were saying they liked the chicken not just for its taste, but also for the feelings of home cooking it evoked. It was the type of chicken they could take to a family potluck and not get a side-eye.

“You most definitely can take a bucket of Popeyes chicken, and nobody’s going to say anything,” said Los, 27, who declined to give his last name as he left a Popeyes in Kansas City, Mo. “They’ll be like, ‘Ah, who cooked this?’ ”. 

What's next, an article about why black folks love watermelons? 

But it's not just black folks. One white man actually sued Popeye's because he couldn't find any of the chicken sandwiches to purchase after Popeye's advertised how good it was and ran out of the damn thing. Don't laugh, a Judge actually said that his lawsuit can go forward. 

He is seeking $5,000 in damages. That's a lot of chicken sandwiches.

I am writing from on top my soap box tonight, but I won't front. The other day, in a moment of weakness, I tried to slip into a Popeye's drive- thru and order one of those bad boys.

"Hello, welcome to Popeye's. May I take your order?"

*Me in my best not me voice* "Yes,  I will have one of those new chicken sandwiches, please."
Long pause......"I am sorry sir, we are all out of those . Can I get you something else?

Damn you Popeye's!!

It was always about race, not economic anxiety

I am forever amazed at how many of our fellow Americans continue to normalize the presidency of Donald J. trump. It's as if all the blatant racism and overall ignorance he has been displaying for the past three years (eight years if you count his birtherism BS) should just be ignored.

I suppose that if you belong to a particular group of Americans it's easier to do that. In fact, members of that particular group is why we have a President trump in the first place.

The following article by Carol Anderson was written in November of 2016 for Time Magazine. It is an article that is worth revisiting given where we are in the trump presidency with impeachment looming over the horizon. 

"White rage got us here. While the economic anxiety of Trump supporters is often touted as the driving force behind the mogul’s electoral college victory, that rationale is just a ruse, a clever red herring. The median income of a Trump supporter is more than $70,000 per year, which is well above the national average, and a 2016 study noted that it would take African Americans 228 years to equal the wealth of whites in the U.S. Clearly, Trump’s pathway into the Oval Office is not really about white economic angst. Rather, Barack Obama’s election — and its powerful symbolism of black advancement — was the major trigger for the policy backlash that led to Donald Trump, and which has now put America’s national security at risk.

Republicans carved out this trench shortly after Obama’s 2008 victory. The GOP pushed through a number of laws at the state level to block as many of his voters, primarily African Americans, from the polls as possible. North Carolina targeted black voters with nearly “surgical precision.” Wisconsin Republicans were “giddy” about disfranchising African Americans, especially in Milwaukee. Florida’s GOP cut particular days of early voting to nullify the political participation of black churchgoers. Texas required certain types of government-issued photo IDs to vote and then ensured that nearly 1.6 million black and Latino citizens would have very limited access. Ohio skewed its early voting laws to diminish the turnout in the cities while also implementing a literacy test that officials applied only to those in urban counties.

The end result was that the Republicans had effectively shattered the black and Latino demographic firewall that could have prevented a Trump presidency. A Trump presidency, to be clear, that many in the Republican establishment rightfully feared because of the mogul’s demonstrated unfitness for office.

But they didn’t fear it enough. Because even in the wake of federal court orders striking down many of the most odious, discriminatory features of voter suppression, the GOP resisted, stalled and defied the judiciary until confusion and resignation reigned at the polls. It was too late.

In a horrific Faustian calculation, these Republican patriots put the nation at risk so that Trump could fulfill his dominant campaign promise. And, to be clear, it was not to make America great again, but to make access to America’s resources “whites only” again. The Klan recognized it, as did the white nationalists who gave Trump their full-throttled support. But, this wasn’t just a fantasy of the far right. The allure of a revived Jim Crow nation that proudly, willfully excludes and debases millions of nonwhites was so reaffirming and reassuring that everything else became secondary or tertiary. Everything else, including national security.

Despite his glaring lack of qualifications, patriots shoved Trump into the role of Commander in Chief — a man who had already maligned the U.S. military as a “disaster,” denigrated the generals dismantling ISIS, and disparaged POWs for being stupid enough to get caught. Patriots cheered on as Trump asked the Russian government to hack an American citizen who had led a national-security agency. Patriots acquiesced to a foreign policy that encouraged nuclear proliferation, oozed profound ignorance about the basic fundamentals of U.S. nuclear capability, and kept in play use of the ultimate weapon by a man who has difficulty even maintaining control on Twitter.

Patriots gleefully ignored warnings by the National Security Agency that the hacked documents released by WikiLeaks were actually the result of and washed through Russian intelligence. Patriots didn’t blink when Trump’s economic plan included the possibility of defaulting on the U.S. debt although that “could undermine the stability of global financial markets” on a scale not seen since the Great Recession and cost American taxpayers billions of dollars in higher interest rates. Patriots accepted Trump’s admiration of Vladimir Putin, disdain for the President of the United States, and a foreign policy agenda that matched up smoothly with the Russian — not American — government’s.

In other words, in January 2017, a man will be at the helm of the U.S. military, intelligence and foreign policy bureaucracies, who actually encouraged foreign intervention in an American election and advocated for dismantling the alliances that will aid Russian expansionism and weaken U.S. influence and power. Yet, the patriots bet that the trade-off will be well worth it.
Clearly, white rage has brought us here." [Source]