It's the R word, stupid.

"It’s all over but the crying, which will also be fun to watch, but even after all these many months of Donald Trump vanquishing foe after foe, the media still doesn’t get it. They still bang on about this anger at “the establishment,” and as a result, they are giving Hillary Clinton bad advice already. During CNN’s coverage of the Indiana primary Tuesday night, liberal commentator and Bernie Sanders supporter Van Jones became just the latest pundit to misdiagnose the Trump phenomenon, and connect it to Bernie Sanders. There is a similarity, but not the one Jones identifies:

The same rebellion is happening in the country in both parties. The reason Hillary is still fighting is the reason that Trump won. There is a big, big discontent in this country and tonight for Bernie Sanders and we can say the same thing about Bernie, he shouldn’t be here either. I just don’t think that people get it yet. You got people sitting on a white hot stove in their houses right now and they are mad… I do think (Hillary) has got to, tonight, show that she’s got the message from both parties, the message from the Republicans, they’re mad and hurting, the message from the Democrats, they’re mad and hurting.

Jones is so close to being right, he even calls the anger “white hot,” but he just misses the absolutely crucial key to Hillary Clinton’s eventual defeat of Trump.

Since this race began, I have been predicting Trump’s victory. Just hours after he delivered his Mexican Rapists announcement speech, I predicted he would rocket to the top of the polls and stay there, and in my very first Mediaite column in over a year, predicted Trump’s victory in the 17-candidate field to a tee. I say this not just to brag (although I am doing that), but to try and get my media colleagues to understand that they need to listen to why Trump is winning, they need to stop ignoring it.

But first, allow me to rebut their ongoing theory of the case which is that this is all just a rebellion against “establishment politics” and “anger at Washington.” That argument held some water against dynastic sleepwalker Jeb Bush or Gang of Eight-er Marco Rubio, but most of the other candidates were not part of the establishment. But the greatest proof against this theory was demonstrated Tuesday night:

 

Ted Cruz, whatever else you think of him, is the most anti-establishment figure there is, and he was standing onstage with a high-powered, wealthy CEO who has never held public office, yet Trump managed to beat them all.

The reason is crystal clear, and always has been: it’s the racism, stupid. More broadly, though, it’s the racism’s kissin’ cousin, white male resentment, which isn’t just for white males. Trump has been forgiven every possible deviation from conservative orthodoxy and simple human decency because he has remained rock-steady about fighting the dirty Mexicans, the evil Muslims, and the uppity criminal blacks and their liberal allies. In his desperation, Ted Cruz actually managed to pick the only kind of hate that doesn’t sell so well anymore.

Van is onto something about Bernie Sanders, though it isn’t some general anger at Washington, either. Sanders’ largely white liberal support comes from a different strain of white resentment, a more patronizing one. While they all pay lip service to having the “right” positions on black issues, their overarching theory is that what’s good for everyone is especially good for black people, and if they’d only listen, they would get that. This is essentially what Bernie said at the beginning of his campaign, and what his campaign is still saying now. Yes, he was pressured into rolling out a racial justice platform, but even in that document, pivoted to his broader economic policies. Ask him today what needs to be done first, and his answer will be to overturn Citizens United and end economic inequality. "[Read more]

This author nails my sentiments about the current political season.

Pundits and those in the chattering class like to dance around the real reason for the rise of Donald, but no matter how they try they can't escape the reality. Just look at the majority of his supporters and listen to what they are saying.

And look, I get it. Angry working class whites who feel that they are entitled to god jobs and a Ozzie &  Harriet existence in America, cannot understand why they are losing everything, and Donald trump, with his Make America White Great Again brand, could not have come at a better time.

  

"Descending into "Barbarism".

           I have a trial tomorrow, so I don't have time to drop a post. Instead, I will leave you with a cut and paste job of William Saletan's writing which was done for Slate magazine.

 "How does an enlightened nation descend into barbarism? That used to be a question for historians. Now it’s a process you can watch in real time. In recent days, Donald Trump has been casting aside moral constraints on torture and violence against civilians. At his campaign rallies, crowds have cheered him on. What kind of country would the United States become if Trump and his followers get their way? Just listen as Trump spells it out for you.

1. Torture. Since November, Trump has said he would approve not just waterboarding, but “a hell of a lot worse.” That’s a change from George W. Bush’s administration, which justified waterboarding on the grounds that it wasn’t torture. Trump dismisses the taboo against torture altogether. “Let’s assume it is” torture, he said of waterboarding at a campaign event in South Carolina on Feb. 17. It’s still “absolutely fine,” he concluded, and “we should go much stronger.”

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2. Retribution. Other Republicans, such as Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, argue that brutal interrogation methods are justified only to prevent an attack. Trump rejects that constraint. On Nov. 23, he told a crowd in Ohio that waterboarding extracts useful information from terrorists, but that even if it didn’t, he would approve it, and “more than that,” because “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway

3. Collective punishment. In a Trump administration, you don’t have to be a terrorist to be targeted for retaliation. You just have to be related to one. On Dec. 3, Trump said of terrorists, “You have to take out their families.” When Fox News host Bill O’Reilly asked Trump to explain himself, Trump replied, falsely, that wives and children of the 9/11 hijackers had been sent home before the attack to “watch Daddy tonight on television knock down the World Trade Center.” He continued: “There has to be retribution. And if there is not going to be retribution, you are never going to stop terrorism.”

4. Hostage taking. Trump says he would target terrorists’ family members because they’re the
people terrorists care about. On Dec. 6, he said on Face the Nation that although terrorists “say they don’t mind dying ... I can tell you this: They want their families left alone.” At a Republican debate on Dec. 15, he added: “I would be very, very firm with families. Frankly, that will make people think, because they may not care much about their lives, but they do care, believe it or not, about their families’ lives.” The audience applauded. The next day, Trump repeated that terrorists “care more about their families than they care about themselves” and that he “would do pretty severe stuff” to a terrorist’s wife. The crowd roared its approval.
 

5. Religious war. Trump routinely demands payback against ISIS for killing Christians. “The enemy is cutting off the heads of Christians and drowning them in cages, and yet we are too politically correct to respond in kind,” he wrote in a USA Today op-ed on Feb. 15. Often, Trump mentions that ISIS kills other people, too. But the only victim group he identifies by name is Christians.
 

6. Weakness. If you don’t accept torture or targeting civilians, Trump says you’re soft. In the Dec. 15 debate, Jeb Bush said these ideas were “crazy.” Trump replied that Bush was “a very nice person. But we need tough people.” In another debate on Feb. 6, Cruz rejected torture and waterboarding. Trump called Cruz’s answer “really weak.” At a rally in New Hampshire on Feb. 8, Trump gleefully told the crowd what a woman in the audience was calling Cruz for his answer: “She said he’s a pussy.” [Source]

*Pic from slate.com


 

(Continued from Page 1)

7. Level playing field. Trump views laws and scruples as foolish impediments. At a rally in Florida on Saturday, he complained that in the war on ISIS, “We’re playing with two sets of rules: their rules and our rules.” At a press conference that night, after winning two primaries, he went further: “It’s very hard to be successful in beating someone when your rules are very soft and their rules are unlimited.” He vowed to loosen American torture laws “so that we can better compete with a vicious group of animals.”

In an interview that aired Sunday on Face the Nation, Trump reinforced this point: “We are playing by rules, but they have no rules. It’s very hard to win when that’s the case.” He pledged to “strengthen the laws so that we can better compete.” Trump’s exchange with moderator John Dickerson continued:

Dickerson: Isn’t that separates us from the savages—rules?

Trump: No, I don’t think so. No. We have to beat the savages.

Dickerson: And therefore throw all the rules out?

Trump: We have to beat the savages.

Dickerson: By being savages?

Trump: No. We—well, look, you have to play the game the way they’re playing the game. You’re not going to win if we are soft, and they are—they have no rules. Now, I want to stay within the laws. I want to do all of that. But I think we have to increase the laws.  

You can see where this line of thinking would take us. To even the odds—to equalize the rules—we would have to behave like ISIS. Trump thinks about the laws of war the same way he thinks about trade barriers: The only way to get a level playing field is to do to others what they’ve done to you.

8. Imperial presidency. In Thursday’s debate, Trump was asked what he would do if the military, citing U.S. law, refused his orders to target the families of terrorists. He replied, “They’re not going to refuse me. ... If I say, ‘Do it,’ they're going to do it.” The next day, apparently after consultation with cooler heads, he issued a statement promising, “I will not order a military officer to disobey the law.” But by Saturday, at a rally in Florida, Trump was vowing to push back those laws: “We’re going to stay within the laws. But you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to have those laws broadened.” On Face the Nation, he said he would “have the law expanded.” Trump has previously suggested that he could restore waterboarding without changing the law: “You reclassify [it], and you’ll see what happens.”

9. No limits. Trump rarely specifies what he would do to terrorists’ families. On Dec. 6, when Dickerson asked Trump what he meant by “going after the families,” Trump told him, “I’m going to leave that to your imagination.” In a Dec. 16 interview, O’Reilly asked Trump, “You’re not going to assassinate them, are you?” Trump replied, “I don’t know what I’d do.” Trump keeps his answers vague on the same grounds he uses to justify his vagueness about future military action: He wants to keep the enemy guessing. In both cases, the effect is that Americans have to guess, too.

Top Comment

Why does Trump talk so poorly?  More...

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Fifteen years ago, in an address to Congress after 9/11, President George W. Bush described the moral pathology of terrorists. “We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety,” said Bush. “By abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism and Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it leads, in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.”

Some day, God willing, that’s where Trump’s ruthless ideology will end up, too.

Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.

 

 

    

"It's gotta be da shoes", Marco.

"Is it the shoes? ... ITS GOTTA BE DA SHOES"

 I can hear my man Mars Blackmon hollering at Marco Rubio now: It's gotta be da shoes, Marco! 

What a crazy political season. Poor Marco Rubio could find his campaign going down the tubes because of a pair of shoes.

Marco must have thought that no one would notice his boots with the high heels. Shame on him. He should know by now that running for president would put him under a serious microscope.

Everything he does and says is scrutinized to the tenth degree.

The guy just wanted to seem a couple of inches taller. He knows that Americans prefer their presidents tall.   Marco is 5' 10" which isn't bad if you want to be the leader of say, Japan, but it isn't cutting it if you want to be the leader of the free world.

"Let me get this right,” ..... ISIS is cutting people’s heads off, setting people on fire in cages, Saudi Arabia and Iran are on the verge of a war, the Chinese are landing airplanes on islands that they built and say belong to them in what are international waters and somewhat territorial waters. Our economy is flat-lined, the stock market is falling apart, but boy are we getting a lot of coverage about a pair of boots. This is craziness, people.”

No it's not Marco, it's America. We tend to be superficial like that. And we prefer to see our presidents wearing wingtips than some Maison  Margiela knockoffs.  
 
But Marco shouldn't be mad at the public, he should be mad at his presidential rivals. They are the ones making all kinds of jokes and mocking him about his footwear. Rand Paul (who himself looks more like a jockey than presidential candidate) couldn't contain himself and made all kinds of jokes about Marco before going on The View 

Personally, I thought that they looked alright. The snug fitting Polo fleece he was rocking, on the other hand, not so much.

Finally, if you don't think it can be hard being black in America, after watching and reading about the following two incidents you just might change your mind. 

One man was jogging while black,  and the other one was simply shopping at Wal Mart while black.

I swear, to get that kind of unwanted scrutiny as a white man, you would have to be a presidential candidate with a fancy pair of shoes.

*Pic from vanityfair.com






 

Marco Rubio gets it, John McWhorter does not.

"This is a legitimate issue," Rubio said. "It is a fact that in the African-American community around this country there has been, for a number of years now, a growing resentment toward the way law enforcement and the criminal justice system interacts with the community. It is particularly endemic among young African-American males — that in some communities in this country have a much higher chance of interacting with criminal justice than higher education. We do need to face this. It is a serious problem in this country."

Rubio also gave a personal anecdote: "I have one friend in particular who's been stopped in the last 18 months eight to nine different times. Never got a ticket for being stopped — just stopped. If that happened to me, after eight or nine times, I'd be wondering what's going on here. I'd be upset about it. So would anybody else." [Source] 

Five stars for Marco Rubio for taking the time to understand the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and speaking in a thoughtful and instructive way about it.

If only some of his colleagues running for president could be as thoughtful and not just throw red black meat to their base to score brownie points when it comes to this issue. 

Contrast what Rubio is saying to the words of John McWhorter.

McWhorter's knee jerk essay about the BLM movement is a classic example of what is wrong with this debate. He focuses on the obvious problem of black on black crime within the community and by doing that he tries to downplay a very real problem that is one of the factors that contribute to black pain and suffering: The misconduct of those in authority  

Of course he will get a lot of shine because he happens to be black. People like McWhorter who like to say that we are the problem is the kind of Negro that America loves. 

Memo to McWhorter: Most of the people in the BLM movement (or those who support it) are quite aware of the problems within the black community, and they have been trying to do something about it for years. It is not impossible to bring attention to police misconduct and black on black violence at the same time.

"Black Lives Matter has become Exhibit A in this ideological conflict. Make no mistake, I admire Black Lives Matter. I’m just worried about it. I have never seen America getting closer to not just “talking about,” but actually doing something about, the relationship between black men and the cops. If there is one thing I have learned in 15 years of writing about and thinking about race, it is that this problem is the main one keeping America from getting past race. I was not offended by BLM’s conduct toward Bernie Sanders, quite frankly. And I consider the riposte “All Lives Matter” almost willfully uncomprehending of the issues that face us.

However, the way our smart people are covering Black Lives Matter, and some of the assumptions of the group itself, are bubble gum on our shoes. A movement cannot make a real difference in 2015 by pretending that it’s still 1965.

Here’s the problem. The going notion for anyone left of, roughly, the old New Republic is that disapproval of Black Lives Matter must come from “racism.” Charles Blow put this best, recently:

“Discomfort with Black Lives Matter is, on some level and to some degree, a discomfort with blackness itself.”

But this, even with the careful hedges, is a hasty, and even lazy, reading of the issue. I imagine there are some people out there who don’t like BLM because it’s black people making noise. But what disturbs a great many—and I highly suspect many more—people about the philosophical underpinnings of BLM is that black people in poor neighborhoods are in vastly more danger of being killed by young black men than by the occasional bad cop.

“Our demand is simple: Stop killing us,” the movement says—while people `````nationwide look on and see, especially during the summers, tragic epidemics of black-on-black homicides and maimings in one city after another. But America wonders: What about “Let’s stop killing each other”?
This year alone, in Chicago almost 80 percent of the people killed have been black. In Baltimore the figure is 216 black people versus 11 white, in Philadelphia 200 black people versus 44 white. Most by other black people....." And blah blah blah....

McWhorter falls into the old house Negro trap of seeking approval and acceptance from the majority population in our fight for social justice. When he says "while people nationwide look on and see" the people killed in places like Baltimore, Chicago and Philly, he is basically saying that we are to blame for all those killings and we have no authority to speak out until we get our house in order. Forgetting, of course, that those "people looking on" are the reason our house is out of order in the first place.

"The problem is not an America blind to racism, or even an America that thinks racism is solely the n-word, cross-burnings, and housing covenants. The problem is, I hate to say, a progressive ideology on race that confuses performance with action."

Sorry John, but if we followed your lead there would be no action at all.

*Pic from twitter.

Guns everywhere, and Marco needs a lesson about "class".

*As we keep seeing more sad and horrific stories like this ;and this ;and this; and this; and this; and.... ah you get the point. You have to wonder why this is happening in America.

I think it's time for that great Gyp Rosetti quote:

"I got a gun. He got a gun. He got gun...EVERYBODY GOT GUNS!"

Meanwhile, out in LA, they just found some poor stiff (literally) with an arsenal of over 1,200 guns.

I wonder how Wayne LaPierre sleeps at night.

Finally, Marco (I need water) Rubio says that the president doesn't have any "class".

   ** This is the same Marco Rubio who did all kinds of sleazy things while Speaker of the Florida House, and who spent big money on a speed boat and a luxury SUV even though he was deep in debt.

"Rubio's history of risky financial decisions has been well documented since he was a young Florida state assemblyman.

• In 2006, the Tampa Bay Times described Rubio as "barely solvent." 
• During his run for Senate several years later, the Florida senator was forced to defend his record after revelations that he put thousands of personal charges, including hair cuts, liquor-store runs, and a $10,000 family vacation on campaign and Florida Republican Party credit cards.
• According to The Times, in the early 2000s, the now presidential candidate bought several homes, putting no money down.
• On the eve of his presidential announcement, Rubio cashed out his $68,000 retirement savings to pay bills for a broken refrigerator, air-conditioning unit, and his kids' private-school tuition. The transaction incurs a significant tax penalty that could cost Rubio $24,000.
• Last week, Rubio's camp announced that the senator finally sold a Tallahassee home that he'd bought with Florida state Rep. David Rivera. The house proved to be a bad investment — Rubio and Rivera sold the home for $18,000 less than they paid for it.

Rubio's troubling spending habits are well known within Republican political circles. According to The Times, when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's team vetted Rubio as a potential vice presidential candidate, they found that the Florida senator's financial decisions were bad enough that they could damage the campaign."

Marco, I think you might need a lifetime supply of   Windex®  for all the glass it took to build your house.

No wonder Sheldon wanted his money back.

*Pic from thinkprogress.org

**Pic from huffingtonpost.com

Not their brother's keepers.

Race and ethnicity can be a tricky and nuanced subject.


I was watching a pundit (Chris Matthews I think) lament the fact that the two highest profile Hispanic republicans are against amnesty for immigrants and immigration reform. He thought it was "weird". "Why aren't these two men empathizing with other Hispanics?" One of the other pundits at the table reminded him that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are of Cuban descent, and, as a result, they do not have any empathy or connection to Mexicans and Central and South Americans who illegally come to the United States. 


That exchange brought back memories of an old high school classmate of mine. I attended a boarding school in Jamaica and one of my classmates was a kid named Franz Newman. Franz was Jamaican, but if you saw him you would think that he just got off a Lufthansa flight from Munich and was just in Jamaica for a vacation. Dude was blond-haired with blue eyes and had the whole Aryan thing down.


But Franz had never left Jamaica, and in many ways he was more Jamaican than most Jamaicans I knew. I never saw him as anything but a Jamaican.


Once Franz got in a fight with a classmate over something which I don't remember what right now. The kid was African American who was born and raised in New York and his parents (who I think were Jamaican)sent him to Jamaica to attend high school. They went at it pretty hard and I remember thinking at the time that I wanted Franz to kick his ass. (Which, if I remember correctly, he did.) Franz was my friend and the American kid was not. 


I understand now that Franz (who currently lives in Canada) will benefit from privileges that the other kid will never have throughout his life. At the time, though, my friendship and the shared ethnicity I had with my fellow countryman trumped any connection I might have had with the other kid because of our shared race.


I suspect that senators Rubio and Cruz do not consider themselves Hispanics like those other Hispanics who come to America from poor Third World countries. They don't share the same reality as some poor family coming to America for a better way of life. They are already living the American dream. They consider themselves Americans first, and in their world amnesty for illegal immigrants will destroy America.


"Sen. Ted Cruz on Sunday continued to slam President Barack Obama’s move to shield nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, saying the president was getting into the business of counterfeiting.


“For 4 to 5 million people here illegally, he’s promising to print out and give out work authorizations — essentially, he’s gotten in the job of counterfeiting immigration papers, because there’s no legal authority to do what he’s doing,” the Texas Republican charged on “Fox News Sunday.”' [Source]


I wonder how Franz feels about amnesty for undocumented immigrants.


Finally, now that the Benghazi conspiracy theories have been debunked (by republicans no less) I am guessing that the wingnuts and the folks over at FOX VIEWS will not spend a lot of time telling us how wrong they were.


Wait....just as I suspected; less than 30 seconds.


Of course this will not be enough for folks like Lindsey Graham. Poor Lindsey has spent a lot of time helping folks who play the Benghazi drinking game get drunk, so this is bad news for the senator.


"Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning that last week’s the House Intelligence Committee’s Benghazi report, which hollowed out a number of Republican arguments on the incident, was “full of crap.”


Guest host Gloria Borger asked whether Graham was accusing the House Intel Committee of lying.


“No, I’m saying the House Intelligence Committee is doing a lousy job policing their own,” he said. “I’m saying that anybody who has followed Benghazi at all knows that the CIA deputy director did not come forward to tell Congress what role he played in changing the talking points. And the only way we knew he was involved is when he told a representative at the White House, I’m going to do a hard review of this, a hard rewrite.”'


*Drink... drink.... gulps.*















  

Say what?

Dear Mr. Langone, the picture that goes along with this post is what Adolph Hitler did to fellow human beings during the Holocaust. He was a wicked and truly evil human being.


As a GOP fundraiser and a republican (I know that your peeps love all things Hitler) living comfortably in the 1%, you owe the rest of us an apology for comparing the current president of our country to that man.


Please feel free to look at all of these images and let me know if you stand by your original statement.


Finally, this is why I can't get behind poli-trick-sters; they are such damn hypocrites.


Take for instance Marco Rubio, the bottled water loving senator from Florida.


Marco won't say one way or another whether he smoked the good collie.


Although I am sure that he did hit the spliff at one point in his life. If he didn't, I am pretty sure that he would have said so.  Since he didn't commit to smoking weed, it's a safe bet to say that he did take a toke or two . ----You can't have someone from your past coming out and saying that they had a puff puff pass moment with you back in the day. -----


“If you say that you did, then suddenly there are people out there saying, ‘Well, it’s not a big deal, look at all these successful people who did it,’” Rubio told Karl. “And I don’t want my kids to smoke marijuana, I don’t want other people’s kids to smoke marijuana, I don’t think there’s a responsible way to recreationally use marijuana.”


“On the other side of it is, if you tell people that you didn’t, they won’t believe you.” That is quite a catch-22."


No it's not. Just tell the truth.... Oh wait, never mind. 

Hawkish on Russia.

Lots of hills and trees where I live, so this snow has me chilling at home today. I honestly don't feel like digging my way out of it. Old Man Winter I give up; you win this year.




Anyway, I caught just a little of the Oscars last night, and it was nice to see the beautiful and classy Lupita Nyongo  win the statue for best supporting actress for her acting in Twelve Years A Slave. (Shout out to my man John Ridley for winning a statue for that movie as well.) Maybe "the times they are a changing."




I am still trying to figure why these very wealthy people get free clothes from very expensive designers, and gift bags with over $80,000.00 worth of goodies.


Anyway, enough about fun and games in Tinseltown , there are serious things happening in other parts of the world. Vladimir Putin is still flexing his muscle in the Ukraine region and, so far, America and her allies in Europe are still trying to figure out what to do with Russia's version of Ronnie Reagan.


I know that John Kerry says that "all options are on the table", but the White House knows that realistically economic sanctions and kicking Mother Russia out of the G8-- which would really piss off Vladi-- is the only way to go. I like that idea. Go after Russian money and try to get European and American banks to cut off the pipeline to all that money from the uber rich Russian oligarchs.
Also, get more Europeans involved and engaged. It's their corner of the world, and they better get their butts in gear to try and protect it. Vladi might be trying to get at Poland next.


Of course the right-wingnuts in Washington, as is to be expected, have all come out to condemn the president and call him weak. They claim that Putin has been playing chess while Obama has been "playing marbles." 


The thing is, though, he is also their president, and America is involved in a very complicated and nuanced foreign crisis in a very volatile part of the world. So hearing senators attack a sitting president during this time was quite stunning to me. The only people whose "eyes are rolling" are those of us who see the right-wingnuts in this country for the lunatics that they really are.


Still, given the type of people we are dealing with, we shouldn't be surprised. They should understand, though, that their language only emboldens people like Vladimir Putin and weakens the perception of America in the world.


People like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio also seem to conveniently forget that W was in the same position as it relates to Putin in 2008 when he invaded Georgia.


But hey, let's not let facts get in the way of the latest right- wing talking points.


“I am deeply concerned that Russia’s ongoing military intervention in Crimea may soon expand to eastern Ukraine. Yesterday, President Obama said that Russia would face ‘costs’ if it intervened militarily in Ukraine. It is now essential for the President to articulate exactly what those costs will be and to take steps urgently to impose them."


McCain and those of his ilk are hoping that he tries to "impose" war, and the rest of us understand that when you deal with a madman, you have to tread very carefully.






     














  

The big overreach.

You [right]wingnuts might want to hold off on the impeachment party for the "Socialist" in the White House. I mean just when you think that you will finally get to see that Negro hold a press conference, put up a peace sign, and ride off into the sunset; it turns out that lady luck is smiling on him once again.

Anyway, it looks like the man in charge of allegedly targeting those Tea Party groups at the IRS was a W appointee. (Oh, and memo to Marco Rubio: there is no IRS Commissioner, that position has been vacant since November.)

"Oh Field, there you guys go blaming Bush for everything again"

Yes, and he makes it so easy for me.

But again, this all begs the question: Why is this even a scandal when W and his people were targeting the NAACP and other liberal groups with the heavy hand of the IRS when he was holding the hammer? The Tea Party apparently rejected an apology from the IRS; I would like to know why they (the IRS) even apologized to them in the first place. I certainly don't think the NAACP or Greenpeace got any when W was slapping his political enemies around.

Here is something you wingnuts and your friends might need to understand. If you are a political action group (such as the Tea Party)you cannot get 501(c)(4) tax-exemption status for your group. The IRS will target you if they believe that you are breaking these guidelines. These wingnuts crying a river over the government targeting should take a ticket and stand in line.

"Reuters has obtained part of a yet to be released report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) that confirms that the IRS was targeting groups on the left and right who focused their activities on advocating for expanding or limiting of the size of the government. The report also states that the screening process was not influenced by the Obama administration, and that none of the groups screened were denied tax exempt status.
Without the claims of a partisan witch hunt against conservative groups, this latest Republican fueled Obama scandal is set to lose all of its sizzle.
The real reason why Republicans are desperately trying to drum up a scandal here is because they don’t want the IRS forcing their dark money groups to pay taxes. The IRS is threatening their Citizens United fueled political slush fund, and Republicans want it to stop. Republicans are trying to bully the IRS into backing off.

It turns out that Obama isn’t Richard Nixon after all. He wasn’t using the IRS to attack his enemies. In their own bungling way, the IRS was trying to deal with the problems caused by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. First, Benghazi crashes and burns, and now the IRS scandal could be fading fast."

Oh yes, Benghazi, the places where almost half of you black helicopter tin foil clowns can't find on  a map. Well, as it turns out, those leaked e-mails were apparently edited to make the Socialist in Chief look bad.

"Turns out the press got played again by Republicans. Jake Tapper has the smoking gun of the original email from the Obama administration which differs significantly from the “leaked emails” ABC ran with.

In an exclusive for CNN, Tapper reveals that CNN has the original email sent by a top Obama aide, regarding the administration’s reaction to the Benghazi attacks. Tapper reported, “The actual email differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.” [Source]

I bet republicans all have very long arms.

Finally, on to a more serious subject: The urban terrorist terrorizing the hard working people of New Orleans.

19 people were shot at a Mother's Day parade, and the national press treated it as if it was just another one of those unruly young Negroes living out his gangsta fantasies here in America.

Two monsters cause death and mayhem at the Boston Marathon and they shut down a major American city and there is 24 hours cable news coverage about the incident. This was "terrorism", what happened in New Orleans was not.

Tell that to the poor people who live in that neighborhood or who went to that parade.

The FBI quickly issued a statement saying that this was not a terrorist act, and we could all just get on with our lives now. Nothing to see here America. Just Negroes in the hood being Negroes. You can all go back to pursuing happiness.  That is until the real terrorists strike again. (Shout out to Greg Fuller for this story.)

Melissa Harris Perry lives in that neighborhood, and along with the wonky Chris Hayes she tried to bring attention to the double standard when it comes to the mainstream media.

"You know, I thought that line, I want to ask you what you make of that line,” Hayes said. “This was street violence. I saw this on social media. Shooting in New Orleans. And then it was like, oh, oh, oh. That’s just, you know, gang-bangers in New Orleans, probably a black neighborhood, you know, that’s just life in the big city. Street violence isn’t terrorism, it’s not terrifying, it’s not terror that is being visited on people every day.” [Source]

Wrong Chris. "Street violence" is terror, and it's being visited on people every day. Maybe not the people in America that most Americans care about, but they are people, and they are Americans, and when they are terrorized it needs to be highlighted just like it is with the people of Boston.

The "smear merchants".

Man this right wing smear machine is relentless. Poor Uncle Joe can't catch a break. I mean we all know that the guy is prone to gaffes (Forget that last link, it was from the Onion) and that he tends to shoot off at the mouth from time to time, but editing his words to fit a wingnut narrative is not cool.

"On Wednesday morning, Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder spoke to a crowd in Rockville, Maryland, to highlight the urgent need to reduce domestic violence homicides. The conservative website National Review Online clipped a portion of the Vice President’s remarks to make it seem as though he was saying that a slap in the face is no big deal, when in fact, he was drawing a distinction between unacceptable forms of abuse. The site later added the crucial bit of context, without apology or correction, but simply a note saying the post was “amended.”

National Review Online’s Nathaniel Botwinick seems to have keyed in on Biden’s use of the clumsy phrase “garden-variety slap across the face” as a way to make the VP seem indifferent to women who are merely slapped. Here’s how their post originally appeared:

Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a new domestic-violence-reduction initiative in Maryland this morning. Unfortunately, Biden’s choice of words seemed to downplay certain forms of domestic abuse:

We’ve learned that certain behaviors on the part of an abuser portend much more danger than other behaviors. For example, if an abuser has attempted to strangle his victim, if he has threatened to shoot her, if he has sexually assaulted her, and there’s a number of other signs, about eight others. These are tell-tale signs to say this isn’t your garden-variety slap across the face.

The post was accompanied by this video featuring an obvious mid-sentence edit at the end. The video was uploaded to the NRO YouTube account, so it’s not as though they were “taken in” by some other user:" [Source]
 

Of course the National Review was not alone. Other conservative sites jumped on the Biden smear bandwagon and it got so bad that one of their own brethren had to call them on it.

All of this, of course, is not new. It seems that the right wing media has been functioning in a parallel universe that has yet to be visited by the rest of us here on planet earth of late.

This is why the wingnuts who only tune in to the right wing press were so devastated after the last election. In the right wing world Obama was going to lose by a landslide and the GOP would be the party in power for years to come.

Those of us in the real world knew better. We understood that there are facts, and then there is the right wing media.  

You would think that after the last presidential election they would have learned their lesson. But sadly, (or maybe not) they are back, and they have become even more isolated in that wingnut bubble.  

Finally, you have to feel bad for guys like Marco Rubio. There he was at CPAC today declaring to the world that he is not a bigot or a chauvinist.

Marco, here is something to consider: If you belong to a political party that has you having to declare that you are not a "bigot" or a "chauvinist" to the world, then you might want to reconsider who you choose to associate with.













 
 

 

Marco and Pac.

"Keep a vest for protection, from the barrel of a Smith & Wesson/ And all my n----s in the pen, here we go again/ Ain't nothin' separatin' us from a Mack-10."

Those are lyrics from Marco Rubio's favorite rapper, the now deceased (yes Negroes, he is dead) Tupac Shakur. I have to tell you, I have a new found respect for Rubio. He did a good job of defending his love and appreciation of gangsta rap and giving his take on the Biggie vs. 2Pac debate.

Watch out dems, this Rubio dude has some political skills. Now I even hear that he will be giving the republicans response to the State of the Union address next week. (Can that star rise any faster?) You better not blow this one Marco; your response can make you or break you. Just ask Governor Jindal.

Now if he can just get out of his own primary he should be a formidable opponent in 2016. Sadly for him, I am not sure how Bubba and Billy Bob will feel about their candidate for president liking rap music.  

"How do you want it? How does it feel?Comin up as a nigga in the cash game
livin in the fast lane; I'm for real"

Marco, I know you are for real, and I am guessing that Hillary isn't feeling too good right about now.

Finally, the next story falls into the truly sad category.

So let me get this straight,you have a three year old in your house, and you own a gun that happens to be pink, and yet the gun is not locked away to prevent the three year old from being able to get to it.

"Temorej Smith, a 3-year-old boy from Greenville, S.C., fatally shot himself with a pink handgun he thought was a toy, WYFF-4 reports. Police ruled the Friday night shooting an accident.

The boy was in the bedroom and his grandparents were in the living room when the gun went off. His parents were not home at the time of the shooting. Johnathan Bragg of the Greenville Police Department said that officers found that they boy had been shot when they arrived at the scene. No one is in custody but the investigation is ongoing. Police have not officially said who fired the weapon.

“If you have guns, if you own guns mostly we would prefer you have them in a lock box,” Bragg said. “At least have them out of the reach of children.”Jack Logan, a local activist who founded the group “Put Down the Guns Young People,” handed out gun locks at a Burger King, just down the street from where the young boy lost his life." [Source]  

*shaking head*