Trouble for the "trump train."

Someone I respect, and who happens to be a regular reader of my blog, confronted me today and wanted to know why I was being so hard on Donald trump.

"You have been relentless in your criticism of this guy. I follow you on twitter and you are even harder on him over there."

Guilty as charged. But I need folks to understand that my utter contempt for the man is not based on some type of ideological or political hatred. The truth is, if the republican nominee for president was say Jeb Bush, Jon Huntsman, John Thune, or John Kasich I might disagree with some of their policies, but I would not believe, as I do with trump, that they would be totally unfit to hold the office.

I am sorry, but as a person of color, red flags go up for me when I hear the head of the American Nazi party say that a trump victory would be an "opportunity for white nationalist". Or, when black folks are openly called the n-word by trump supporters at his rallies, and when he tries to question  the legitimacy of the first African American president by questioning where he was born. When I consider all of these things, I have to question the sanity of African- Americans who would actually support the man.

But it's not only me, well respected republicans are running away from the guy faster than Usain Bolt in Rio.  And the polls are starting to show that the rest of Americans are coming to their senses as well. Donald loves to talk about polls, but he is down double digits to Hillary in most polls and is tied with her in states like Georgia, which is a state that republicans have been winning since Jimmy Carter left office.

"Come on man, get on the Trump-train, there is room for everybody."

I'll pass. I got a glimpse of the operator, and I don't like what I see.

*Pic from usatoday.com

The takeover.

   The next republican debate is just a few moments away, and there is still no sign that the leading contender to represent the party will participate. 

Mr. Bad Hair just took his ball and went home. (Find another ball)

He is leading by a lot, so why should he give the also- rans a chance to beat up on him?
Dude is taking on the media arm of his own party and seems to be winning. It is driving traditional conservatives nuts.  All those millions Jeb is sitting on might as well be Monopoly Money, because it will not help him in this presidential race.

Anyway, this might be a good time to cut ad paste in the middle of an interesting article I saw in The New Yorker:

"The last real outsider to take over a party was Jimmy Carter, in 1976. In a piece I wrote for the magazine on the 2012 race, I cited the reaction of Averell Harriman, the former governor of New York, when he learned of Carter’s impending victory. “Jimmy Carter? How can that be?” Harriman said. “I don’t even know Jimmy Carter, and as far as I know none of my friends know him, either.” But even Carter was an elected official (a state legislator and one-term governor from Georgia) and had been active in the Democratic National Committee. On the Republican side, you have to go back to Senator Barry Goldwater’s nomination, in 1964, to find a Republican who captured a party against the will of the party’s élites.
 

Donald Trump’s attempt at a hostile takeover of the G.O.P. is astonishing in its breadth. He is not just competing against a large field of candidates for votes in the primaries; he is at war with nearly every power center in the Republican Party—and he is winning. How is he doing it? One of Trump’s strengths is that he has effectively co-opted a conservative counter-establishment that has been growing during the Obama years, which has seen the rise of a movement on the right that dislikes Republican leaders almost as much as it dislikes the President. Trump is finding that the anger of this movement can be harnessed to attack a broader array of targets than just Washington politicians.
 

Take, for instance, Trump’s war with Fox News. The fight started when Megyn Kelly, the Fox anchor and one of the moderators of a Republican debate last August, asked Trump about his pattern of insulting women with terms like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” After the debate, Trump seemed to make Kelly’s point by attacking her in a vulgar way. For months he has continued to belittle her, despite on-again, off-again truces reportedly negotiated between Trump and Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News. Certain shows on Fox—though not all of them—soon became hubs of anti-Trump voices, and Trump, who is well-known for holding grudges, responded by publicly attacking Fox pundits by name, especially George Will and Charles Krauthammer.
 

This week, according to Fox News, Trump’s campaign tried to muscle Kelly out of her moderator chair for a debate on Thursday. The fight descended into a volley of schoolyard taunts between the two sides, and Trump pulled out of the debate and said he would organize his own competing event, in Iowa, to benefit veterans. Trump’s campaign continued to escalate its attack on the network. “Fox News Corp. has donated over $3,000,000.00 to the Clinton’s [sic]. Makes you wonder what goes on behind the scenes….” Daniel Scavino, Jr., Trump’s senior adviser, tweeted. The number apparently combines donations to Clinton political campaigns and corporate philanthropic donations to the Clinton Foundation, though Scavino’s sources and methodology were unclear.
 

Fox News has long been considered the most influential news organization for conservatives. In an e-mail newsletter today, the longtime Republican consultant Alex Castellanos called Fox “the most powerful Republican institution in contemporary American politics” and “the stage on which Republicans play.” He added, “Most Republican candidates kneel before it, supplicants hoping to sip airtime from its chalice.” No matter how unfair the coverage, few Republican candidates dared to launch the kind of assault that Trump and his aides have initiated. It was considered a death sentence in a Republican primary. Similarly, Trump has been attacking, and been attacked by, the main organs of conservative opinion—National Review and The Weekly Standard—which were previously considered the enforcers of conservative ideology and institutions to be flattered rather than condemned." [More]

They created this monster; he is their totalitarian. The man who a certain segment of the population is reaching out to and yearning for after eight years of the Negro in charge.

Let the trumpless debate begin.

 

Hypocrisy accomplished.

It has been a year since O and his band of Navy Seals took down the tall Arab guy with the long beard. Of course, as is to be expected, Flipper and company do not like to be reminded about it. "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order". Oh stop it! Flipper is so classless. Just days after the guy (Carter) gives him a compliment, he makes fun of the former President for making a courageous call (albeit a failed one) to save American citizens who were being held hostage in a foreign country.

Republicans are claiming that O is politicizing the killing of OBL and are outraged that an American president would politicize the war on terror. ---That sound you hear is me throwing up. I would like to take you back to the year 2003, and I want you to picture a certain president standing on an aircraft carrier and declaring that our mission in Iraq has been "accomplished".

How about a certain Mayor of a city that was attacked on September 11, 2001? He is a man who actually ran for president and based his entire campaign on his actions during that tragic time in the nation's history? And yet, republicans cry a river over O taking credit for killing OBL. Unbelievable!

But that's republicans for ya. I loved the oped in the Washington Post that I read about them:

"Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges." [More] 

Yes, even something as simple as acknowledging the killing of the most wanted terrorist in the world becomes a problem.

This is not "dysfunctional", this is delusional.









        

One Southern white man and the R word.

An avid reader of this blog who happens to be white, sent me that pic of the chosen one via e-mail. (I won't say her name because she asked me not to.) Her husband saw it in the window of a gun shop in rural Wisconsin and took a picture of it. Now I know that it's going around in conservative and wingnut circles, but for the most part they have just tried to make it their own little secret. Which is why I was surprised to learn that it was actually in a window of a business establishment.

Still, I am not going to make a big deal about it. If his O ness doesn't think that the actions of any of his political enemies is motivated by race, who is some race chasing field Negro to jump into the fray? His O ness is on his own with this one. It's his "post racial A-merry-ca". After they are done talking about his daddy and posting vile images of his wife, he can hold hands with them and sing kumbaya until his heart's content.

So what we have is a current president running away from the issue of race (too uncomfortable, and not smart politically) and a former one staring it down. If there is a more hated white man in A-merry-ca today than Jimmy Carter I would like to meet him.

The thing about my man racism is that he doesn't like to be spotted by white folks. (Especially former presidents.) Oh it's cool to mess with the field Negroes of the world and dare us to chase him, because folks don't really take us seriously. (Oh that's just field being field, he is always chasing the big R.) Jimmy Carter crying racism really upset the order of things. Here in A-merry-ca we like our racism to be kept hidden away. The crazy uncle in the attic who we only let out when our guests are gone. Thing is, Carter, at 85 years old, doesn't really care anymore. He is more than willing to open the attic door and let uncle R out.

Carter has been involved with Southern politics since the sixties, so I think he has heard the N word a time or two. If Bo knows football, Jimmy knows racism. The poor guy probably just got tired of playing the game. Peel the scab off and let the chips fall where they may. Yeah but field, did he have to label everyone who disagrees with Obama a racist? He didn't. Let's look at what he said again:"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American,.." "An overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity.." A portion of a group is not everyone. I think my republican friends are being a bit sensitive.

But enough about Jimmy Carter. We always knew he had a little field in him, so I am not surprised at what he said. I am not surprised about what the White House said ,either. When it comes to some people, his O ness can be pretty consistent. When it comes to other people, on the other hand, not so much.

How "evil" will they be?

I guess you all know by now that three hikers have gone missing in a part of the "axis of evil", also known as Iran. My first reaction to this story was: why would a bunch of hikers want to go backpacking in Northern Iraq and on the border with Iran in the first place? But then, I realized, that they could be young white people. And you know how you all are. I swear you all go looking for shit. Honestly, I don't know the race of those poor hikers, but I am going to bet you here and now that they ain't black. Hell no! Black folks don't go looking for adventure by hiking in groves of pistachio trees in the most dangerous place on earth. Just being black in A-merry-ca is adventure enough. (Ask Skip :)) So that kind of "be all you can be" shit just doesn't happen. Going on a ski trip (where 90% of us don't even go near a lift) or on a big ass roller coaster at "Great Adventure " is as wild as it gets for us.

But I don't want to make light of this. This is serious business and we have been down this road before. Besides, that damn Ahmadinejad could try to turn his O ness into Jimmy Carter by playing this for all it's worth. For them (the Iranians) this could be a major coup. This is just the kind of distraction they need after all the internal turmoil in their own country.

They will declare that these A-merry-cans were spies and that they are holding them for their own national security. Meanwhile, the US military is going all out to try and find these missing hikers....wait, did I just write missing? Can we stop saying that? "Missing Americans"? Missing is when you are lost in the woods or some shit. Missing is when no one knows where you are. We know exactly where our friends with the National Geographic jones are. They are in Iran.

Hell they communicated with their friend and said they were surrounded by a bunch of Iranians for crying out loud. So I wouldn't exactly say they are missing. Although, being held somewhere near Ahmed Awaa, ain't like being held in Tijuana if you get my drift.

Anyway, here is hoping that this ends well for those poor kids and that they will find themselves safely home without World War III breaking out. We need that kind of resolution for their families and for A-merry-ca. My pronouncement might seem premature, but lord knows we don't need another Ronald Reagan emerging out of this.

Color aroused.

My man Francis Holland has this theory about racism. He doesn't think it exists. He thinks racism is the wrong word to use when describing one races dislike for the other. Francis thinks it's a false term as we are all a part of the same race (humans), therefore we cannot be racist towards one of our own. Francis, instead, calls the phenomenon Extreme Color Arousal Disorder, or ECAD. Now I must admit that when I first read this theory by Francis I thought he was nuts. But now.....I am not so sure. I think Francis might be on to something. People do tend to do irrational things and act against their own best interests when they are color aroused.

Take the latest Wapo poll which finds that three in ten A-merry-cans still have some issues with race. Now three out of ten might not be a bad average if you are a baseball player. A life time 300 bating average can get you into the hall of fame. But here in the land of the [not]so free and the home of the [some are] brave that number just doesn't seem so right now does it. After all, this is A-merry-ca. Aren't we above those silly racial distinctions? Isn't this where we expect to be able to live a life where we can be judged by the content of our character?

Of course this poll is all centered around the "O" man and his historic run for the highest office in the land. All the pollsters want to know what's really on the minds of A-merry-cans when it comes to the "O" mans's complexion. Is there really ECA when it comes to the "O" man? Let me answer that for you: yes. And I suspect that the real number is more like five out of ten A-merry-cans are a little uncomfortable with the "O" man's race. They say he is "risky", he is unproven, he is still unknown......let's keep it real. The real problem is that he is black. (At least to them) Hell who knew Ronald Reagan, or Jimmy Carter, or JFK for that matter, before they all came on the National scene? Of course we didn't really know them, but we knew they were white, and that was quite comforting to us now wasn't it?

But that Obama fellow, not only doesn't he look like us he has a funny Muslim name. Now if that doesn't make him a "risky" ass pick I don't know what does. But is he riskier than Mr. Morton?

What did Francis say about acting against your interest if you are color aroused again? Hmmmm, I think I see some of that here.

Now I have been saying all along that there is no way in that little place the devil calls home that A-merry-cans will select the "O" man as their leader. And this poll gives ammunition to my position. We all know that when it comes to race people taking the polls try to be PC with the pollsters, and they ultimately end up lying about how they really feel. I suspect that happened here as well.

Now Mr. Morton and his crew are doing everything in their powers to be on the losing side of history. To stay with my baseball analogy, they want to be the pitcher that serves up number 763. How else do you explain all the fucking up they have been doing lately? And not to mention all the goofy ass ideas that Mr. Morton has been trotting out there. Is he even Okay? What is that shit on top of his head? Everyone has been worrying about the "O" man surviving this election season for obvious reasons. But we need to start worrying about Mr. Morton's ass.

I have to confess, I get extreme color aroused sometimes. When I see the color brown it reminds me of all the bullshit that I have had to endure for the past eight years. I keep telling myself that the frat boy nightmare is almost over, and the country will be back to normal again. But given the two choices how can we go back to normal? If the "O" man wins ECA will rule the day. And if Mr. Morton wins.....well, just make sure your wills are in order.