A rocky start for our thin- skinned leader.

         I know that our President- elect will turn out to be a disaster for the country, and I know that I am going to have a lot to write about as a blogger over the next four years, but I did not now that the material would start coming in so early.

What a first few days it's been  for Mr. trump.

First, he appoints a white nationalist, an unapologetic xenophobe, and a a man who has tried everything in his power to destroy voting rights to three of the most powerful positions in his administration.

Recently he agreed to pay $25 million to the poor people he defrauded with his phony Trump University. If you will recall, he said that he would never agree to a settlement because he did nothing wrong. We now see how that all worked out.

Then there is the story of his Indian business partners rolling into New York  and him meeting with them in spite of all of his promises to set up a blind trust to avoid such conflicts with the presidency and his business interests. This is almost as bad (almost) as having his daughter sit in with him when he met with Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. That woman sitting almost right next to the Japanese leader is not some diplomat or state department representative, it is the daughter of the president who has a controlling interest in his businesses.

All of the above is troubling, and I thought that what I mentioned above would be the extent of  my issues with our president elect for now. But alas, it is not.

Unfortunately president trump went on a tweet storm last night and expressed his displeasure with the SNL crew and the members of the cast of the play Hamilton. I think it's important that America's president keeps his focus on more important things than what the cast of Saturday Night Live is saying about him.

As for Hamilton, it would seem that his VP was booed when he went to see the play, and one of the cast members hurt his feelings by telling him that he hopes that the trump administration will be fair to everybody. Oh the horror! Imagine a politrickster being booed in a public space.   Not in Fuhrer trump's world. Now, even satire is offensive, and actors performing in a  play do not have First Amendment rights in his America.

"Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!"

Wrong! This should happen. And the moment it stops happening we will be in trouble, because the Donald trumps of the world will have won.

I wonder where some of these same right-wingnuts who are outraged that Pence was booed were when president Obama was being called a liar (by an elected official no less) in the middle of his state of the union address?  No calls for safe spaces because the president's feelings had been hurt. No calls for that scumbag to apologize? (Although we know that was all about.) 

How discouraging is it that we have a president who chooses to engage in a twitter meltdown over the actions of a theater audience and actors? He is demanding an apology for his VP because folks exercised their right to free speech, but he refuses to apologize for all the horrific things that he has said and done. Mr. President- elect, that is not how this democracy thing works. Time to put on your big boy pants and stop being so thin- skinned.

"We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us — our planet, our children, our parents — or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir.... “But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”

Donald, you should be memorizing that statement, not asking him to apologize for it.

*Pic from cbsnews.com

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

The Field Negro education series continues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 2: Speak to some black people.

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

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

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

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

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

You didn’t answer.

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

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

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

*Pic from politicsusa.com

It's only Tuesday.

Trump kicks a baby out of his rally.

Trump refuses to endorse the republican speaker of the house and a senior senator from Arizona in their upcoming elections.

Trump doubles down on feud with a Gold Star Family, and the parents of a true America hero.

Trump makes light of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Judge in Trump University case rules that the lawsuit must go forward.

The president, standing next to a foreign leader, said that Trump is not fit to be president.

Trump's sanity is questioned by friends and pundits. 

All this and it's only Tuesday, folks.

Finally, there is a troubling case of another police shooting in Baltimore, but I am going to wait for all the facts to come out before I jump to conclusions and get on my Ajax box.

Still, whoever is in charge of making sure that we get all the facts should do so in an open and fair manner.

Sadly, I am not sure that is possible.

*Pic from salon.com

The R word is not for Republican.

     I see that the president formally endorsed Hillary Clinton today. You could tell that he was just itching to jump into the election fray. He couldn't wait to meet with Bernie and tell him to call it a day.

As soon as the meeting with Bernie was over he and his peeps were firing up the video.

Of course you can't blame the president for being so opposed to the  republican nominee. This was, after all, a man who called him a non-citizen who was unqualified to be the president. And one who demanded to see his birth certificate to prove that he is one of us.

It's amazing that the rest of the country is just now discovering that the man is a flat out racist, even after all that he has done to get to this point where he finally took his hood off. The people who are just now discovering that trump is a racist were either living on Mars or had their heads in the sand here on earth.

If you don't believe it, please take the time to read the following from Fortune magazine:

"Is Donald Trump racist? The question that has hung over the presumptive Republican nominee for president as he has called Mexicans “rapists” and proposed a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Lately, though, the question has taken on more urgency as Trump has repeatedly publicly attacked the judge who presides over Trump University class-action lawsuits. Calling the American-born Gonzalo Curiel a “Mexican,” he said Curiel was therefore biased against him, and he added to the flurry of objections by suggesting that Muslim judge might also be incapable of hearing a lawsuit involving any Trump entity.

In between these remarks he managed to offend by singling out a black man at one of his rallies, calling him “my African American” as if the fellow’s presence proved Trump was on the right side of the race issue.

For the long followers of Trump’s career, however, none of these incendiary remarks are especially surprising. Trump has a long record as a provocateur on matters of race and ethnicity.
It starts in 1973, when the United States Department of Justice went to court with a discrimination complaint against the Trump family business which rented apartments across Brooklyn and Queens. Coming from the administration of Richard Nixon, who was hardly a civil rights agitator, the complaint was based on an investigation that found four different Trump employees confirming that applicants for leases were screened by race. One rental agent said Trump’s father had told him not to rent to blacks and that he actually wanted to reduce the number of African Americans in his buildings. Three doormen said they had been instructed to deflect blacks who came to Trump buildings to apply for apartments.

Though just 26 years old at the time, Donald Trump was already president of the Trump Organization. Rather than work with the government to bring the company into compliance with the law, as the New York apartment king Sam LeFrak had done, Trump retained one of the most notorious lawyers in the country, Roy Cohn, and commence an all-out legal war. Cohn, who had been Joe McCarthy’s chief inquisitor during the senator’s witch hunt for communists in the government, filed a $410 million lawsuit against the federal government and smeared the justice department attorneys with terms such as “storm troopers” and “Gestapo Trump complained in the press of “reverse discrimination” and alleged a “nationwide drive” to force landlords to “rent to welfare recipients.”...

...In 1989, he told Bryant Gumbel in an interview, “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market…if I was starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I really do believe they have the actual advantage today. “ In fact, all the serious studies refuted that. However his statement did serve as a kind of shout-out to those who were ignorant about the racial dynamics in the in the U.S. economy.

Earlier in that same year Trump helped fan the flames of racial resentment when black and Latino teens were arrested in the infamous “central park jogger” attack. Trump alone chose to pay for $85,000 worth of full page newspaper ads trumpeting, in capital letters, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” In the text Trump objected to then-Mayor Ed Koch’s plea for peace. Mayor Koch has stated that “hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so.”

As Trump and other New Yorkers indulged in hate and rancor, the five accused were subjected to intense interrogation, most without their parents present, and gave false confessions. After years in prison, they were exonerated by DNA evidence. A book and a documentary film on the case showed how fear and race played substantial roles in the wrongful convictions but Trump, who fanned the flames, remained steadfast in his views. When the men received compensation for their imprisonment, Trump denounced the payments and smeared the men by saying, “These young men do not exactly have the past of angels.

Next in the Trump record on race came a 1991 book by John O’Donnell, who had been president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. O’Donnell quoted Trump saying,“ Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes… Those are the only kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else…Besides that, I tell you something else. I think that’s guy’s lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks.”

O’Donnell’s report was shocking, but Trump did not contest it at the time. In 1997 he was interviewed for Playboy by author Mark Bowden and he confirmed that the O’Donnell book was “probably true.” [Source]

You know what else is true? That this man being so close to being our president is a poor reflection on all of us. 

"Show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are."

   Because of recent events in the news, there are more than a few people now calling Donald trump a racist.

Well, everyone except Mitch McConnell.

No profiles in courage with this guy. Sadly, his denial of the obvious when it comes to trump is typical of folks like him in Washington. 

The person who looks really bad in all of this is Paul Ryan. He played a slick political game of trying to drag out his endorsement of trump to make the country believe that he was really agonizing over his decision, when we all knew that his endorsement of trump was a foregone conclusion.

Now, all of a sudden, like Captain Renault from Casablanca, he too is shocked to hear that the current standard- bearer for his party is a racist.

He should have taken the high road and declared to the world  that he cannot support a man who questioned the legitimacy of the sitting president, and wanted to ban members of one of the world's largest religions from entering our country. But he did not. Beating Hillary Clinton was more important than doing the right thing. George Will of all people trashed him for it and he wrote a scathing piece in the Washington Post about the cluelessness of the party structure and their support for trump.

"On May 12, a Trump meeting with Ryan resulted in a cringeworthy joint statement that had to be read to be properly disbelieved. The two spoke about the “great conversation” they had about “our shared principles.” They celebrated their “many important areas of common ground” while offhandedly mentioning “our few differences.” Those who know, or thought they knew, Ryan doubted that he could name a single shared principle, and he did not do so.

In spite of, and in conspicuous dissonance with, the May 12 happy talk, Ryan continued to withhold his endorsement. Perhaps he hoped that Trump, at age 69, was going to mend his manners.

Instead, Trump dragged a personal problem, his coming trial on fraud charges associated with Trump University, into the presidential campaign. Having first done so in February, on May 27 he again attacked the “Mexican” judge (born in Indiana, 1,332 miles from Mexico) who will preside at the trial, asserting that the Hoosier Mexican was unfit to preside because his ethnic heritage would incline him against Trump, the wall-building scourge of Mexican rapists. On May 30, Trump again attacked the judge, again embracing the identity politics that actually characterizes contemporary progressivism: An individual has, always and only, the interests and motivations of his race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

By June 2, Ryan had heard enough. He endorsed Trump. He did so because President Trump would sign Ryan’s House “agenda.” Well.

Since May 5, the Hamlet of southeastern Wisconsin had indeed learned something. He had learned Trump’s contemptuous response to his scruples. Trump’s response was an insouciant intensification of his anti-institutional politics — the judicial system, too, is “rigged.” Ryan limply described Trump’s attack on the judge as thinking “out of left field” that he could not “relate to.”' [Source] 

Words you will probably never read from me again: Well said Mr. Will.

*Pic from politicsusa.com











  

 
  

When do Americans become Mexicans?

No wonder trump's campaign can't get an African American family that actually supports him to pose for a campaign promotional photo.

It's because of this:

"Donald Trump, the actual Republican candidate for president, now endorsed by his party leaders, openly said he wants to exclude someone from a government job because of his race and ethnicity.
As the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, Trump said he wants to disqualify the federal judge overseeing the Trump University case because of his "Mexican heritage" and membership in a Latino lawyers association:

Mr. Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had "an absolute conflict" in presiding over the litigation given that he was "of Mexican heritage" and a member of a Latino lawyers' association. Mr. Trump said the background of the judge, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, was relevant because of his campaign stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the southern U.S. border. "I'm building a wall. It's an inherent conflict of interest," Mr. Trump said.

This is pure racism. There's no subtlety, no dog whistle, no coded language.

Somehow this isn't too surprising. Trump is, after all, the presidential candidate who launched his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants criminals and "rapists," and he proposed banning all Muslims from entering the US.

And with this latest remark, Trump is just turning the thinly veiled subtext into text. He had already previously brought up Curiel's Mexican heritage, suggesting that there was a conflict of interest because of it but not saying it quite so explicitly.

Reading this, it's hard for me, a Hispanic American, to avoid feeling a little personally insulted. This suggests that Trump would probably dismiss my opinion — indeed, this article — because of my name. Yet millions of Americans — and a major political party — want him to be president, despite his clear racism.

Maybe the media plays a role here. After all, instead of calling it like it is, CBS News, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times have called Trump's comments about Curiel "racially charged" and "racially tinged," the weasel words the media typically uses to describe racism. It makes one wonder: What would it take for them to finally call Trump or his remarks just plainly racist? If claiming a qualified, vetted judge shouldn't be able to do his job because of his race and ethnicity isn't racist, then what the hell is?" [More here]

Don't worry Donald, you will always own this guy.

*Pic from thinkprogress.

"Mr Meltdown" fights back.

      This trump Rubio feud  is getting serious. I mean these cats are beefing like Biggie and 2Pac.

Ugly stuff. I saw their rallies today and the way they were carrying on was not becoming of two men who are seeking the highest office in the land.

Poor trump seemed a little rattled last night after Rubio stepped in that ass. It got so bad that he (trump) started using words like "bigly" (it's a real word), and he changed color so many times that I thought that there was something wrong with my television.

Poor Wolf Blitzer lost control of the debate early on, and it went downhill from there.

You have to wonder, though, what took one of the candidates so long to expose trump and call him out on things like his illegal immigrant workers, his tax returns, and Trump University.  

Now that the gloves are off Rubio seems to feel embolden to keep playing the dozens with the orange one. It should be fun, because others have tried before and failed. Trump has been non-stop in his counter attacks on the upstart Cuban American, but Rubio seems to be really getting under his skin.

"He called me Mr. Meltdown," Rubio said.

Rubio added:

Let me tell you, during one of the breaks — two of the breaks — he went backstage. He was having a meltdown. First he had this little makeup thing, applying makeup around his mustache, because he had one of those sweat mustaches. Then he asked for a full-length mirror. I don't know why, because the podium goes up to here. Maybe he was making sure his pants weren't wet. I don't know."

Your mama. No, your mama.

*Pic from star-telegram.com