Uncomfortable History Month: Hammer Time

Posted on February 6, 2022 by jilldennison under education, History, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

Black History, like all history, is a mixed bag. Unfortunately, from the time the first slaves were transported to this continent until present, it seems that we keep taking two steps forward, then one step backward. Humans … seem to have an immense propensity for love, but also for hatred, and both are expressed in a myriad of ways. Brosephus’ post today shows us one of the uglier sides of humans and how it has played a role in Black History. Thanks, Bro!

The Mind of Brosephus

Day five, and what better topic is there than the Hammer himself. On this date in 1934, the greatest player to ever wear an Atlanta Braves uniform was born in Mobile, Alabama. Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron would leave Mobile and go on to become the homerun king of Major League Baseball.

I could go on all day about his career, but we all are pretty familiar with his stats. What makes his career even more impressive is when you realize that he accomplished all he did while under constant threat to both himself and his family. Just as revisionism portrays Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr as someone who was supposedly beloved during his time on earth, Aaron wasn’t universally accepted and loved by America during his playing years.

I’ll give you just a few samples of the thousands upon thousands of hate letters he and the Braves organization received…

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A Couple Of Thoughts …

Posted on August 8, 2021 by jilldennison under Bits 'n Pieces, Free Press Issues, Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry

You may remember the killing of a Black man, Botham Jean on September 6^th, 2018, but in case you’ve forgotten, allow me to refresh your memory.

Mr. Jean, a college graduate and an accountant, was sitting in his living room on the 4^th floor of his apartment building watching television and eating ice cream on that fateful evening. Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was off duty and returning home from her shift. Her apartment was one floor below Mr. Jean’s, on the third floor, but she somehow mistakenly went to the 4^th floor and allegedly believed Mr. Jean’s apartment was her own. She claims that his door was ajar, she assumed there was a burglar inside, and when she entered and saw him sitting there, she shot him dead. When she called police, the dispatcher asked for her location, and she had to go look at the number on the door to see where she even was. I don’t know about you folks, but if I walked into an apartment that wasn’t mine, I would immediately know I was in the wrong apartment! And how many burglars are going to sit around in their shorts, watching television and eating ice cream???

When I first wrote about this murder shortly after it happened, I sensed that if Mr. Jean had been a white man, he would still be alive today. Nothing I have read has changed my mind. A number of my readers also commented that there seemed to be some missing pieces, that there was likely more to the story than met the eye.

At any rate, it was several days before Guyger was arrested, and then she was only charged with manslaughter. The charges were later upgraded to murder, and on November 30, 2018, Guyger was indicted on murder charges by a Dallas County grand jury. The following year, on October 1^st, 2019, Guyger was convicted on the charges of murder and sentenced to ten years in prison. On August 7^th, 2020, Guyger’s attorneys filed an appeal, alleging that insufficient evidence existed to convict her of murder. The appeal sought either an acquittal, or a reduction in charge to criminally negligent homicide with a new hearing for sentencing on the reduced charge.

This week on Thursday, August 5^th, a panel of three state judges on the Texas appeals court upheld the murder conviction, denying her appeal. She remains in prison and will become eligible for parole in 2024. Sadly, Mr. Jean will not be eligible to have his life restored. This is one of only two cases I am aware of in the past decade where a white police officer has been held fully accountable for the murder of an unarmed Black person, the other of course being the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. It is good to see justice work, but there are so many more who need the long arm of the law to encircle them and carry them off to prison, such as officers Myles Cosgrove and Joshua Jaynes in Louisville, Kentucky, who shot and killed a Black woman, Breonna Taylor, while she slept in her own bed!

And since I’ve mentioned George Floyd and the conviction of Derek Chauvin, let me just touch on another topic that is disturbing me. A coalition of news media outlets has asked the judge who oversaw the trial of Derek Chauvin to release the identities of jurors who convicted him in the death of George Floyd. Attorneys for the coalition, which includes Fox ‘News’, the Associated Press, and even The Washington Post, is asking not only for the names of the jurors, which would be bad enough, but also for the juror profiles that would include such things as age, address, place of employment, etc.

Judge Peter Cahill had previously ordered the information sealed for the safety of the jurors. Think about it … how many white supremacists were incensed by Chauvin’s conviction and sentencing to 22.5 years in prison? How safe would you feel if you had been on that jury and one of these media outlets released your name to the public?

Attorney Leita Walker said the media and public have a right to information about a jury and said that that Chauvin’s trial is over “and there is no way that jurors’ fears of intimidation, harassment, or violence can unfairly impact their deliberations.” She also wrote that the coalition knows of no threat to any juror or prospective juror. Well duh … did you think they would contact you and say “We plan to kill harass, intimidate, and kill the jurors, so give us their names”? She said the court’s desire to protect jurors from unwanted publicity or harassment are not grounds to keep their identities sealed under law, and that “much has changed” in the months since the jury rendered its verdict “and at this juncture, resistance to releasing their names appears based on little more than a desire to have them left alone.”

Make no mistake … I am all for freedom of the press, and transparency to the extent that it makes sense and is not endangering people. However … jury duty is an important responsibility that ALL of us should take seriously, and most of us do. We do not, however, undertake this responsibility in order to be harassed and intimidated, to feel that our lives are in danger. Sorry, media, but this time you’re just plain wrong.

Facebook’s ban on the Former Guy Must Remain

Posted on May 4, 2021 by jilldennison under Election 2020, Free Press Issues, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

Tomorrow, Facebook will announce whether the former guy will be allowed back on. If he is, I will be closing my Facebook account on that same day, for it would show me the lack of values, lack of integrity of that outlet. Our friend Jeff over at On the Fence Voters weighs in on the topic, and I am 100% in agreement with him. Thanks, Jeff!

On The Fence Voters

Here’s hoping the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) does the right thing tomorrow and keeps the indefinite ban on the disgraced former president. American democracy eagerly awaits the decision.

For those of you who might not know it, Facebook created the Board to weigh in on certain moderation decisions made by the company and make sure that those decisions were “made according to its stated values.” Whatever decision they reach tomorrow cannot be overruled – even by Zuckerburg himself.

The Former Guy is seeking reinstatement of his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Currently, his accounts on YouTube, Snapchat, and Twitter remain suspended. All social media giants responded when the mob of thugs tried to overthrow our government on January 6. The Former Guy’s reprehensible promulgation of the Big Lie that the election was stolen from him directly resulted in the events of that day.

The media companies did the right thing then…

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Winning Over White Supremacists–One Hater at a Time

Posted on February 21, 2021 by jilldennison under Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

In the wee hours this morning, as I was trying to catch up and visit a few friends’ blogs that I had not visited recently, I came across one that gave me pause. Since the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, extremist white supremacist groups have been much on our mind. It is easy to lump them together and think of those who perpetrate such crimes as something less than human, but … sometimes they just need somebody to show them that love is better than hate. Please take a few minutes to read Annie’s excellent post … you won’t regret it! Thank you, Annie, for the time and effort you spent on this … very thought-provoking!

annieasksyou...

I am writing this piece with images of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol still very fresh in my mind. It is a huge stretch to think of those brutal, sadistic, remorseless thugs and imagine summoning an iota of compassion for them. But others of their ilk–and many psychologists and researchers–say that’s precisely what’s needed.

They call themselves the “formers”: former Klansman, neo-Nazis, or generic white supremacists or other racial extremists who are now devoted to guiding those who’d followed similar paths to come to a better life.

Christian Picciolini is one of them. As a 14-year-old, he’d joined a violent group of white power adherents who became the “Hammerskin Nation.” As he described his feelings to Dave Davies in an NPR interview, the group threw him a “lifeline of acceptance…I felt a sort of energy flow through me that I had never felt before—as…

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Filosofa Is Grrrrrrrrowling

Posted on January 15, 2021 by jilldennison under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2020, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Rants, religion, Social commentary

Some days, you look at the news and you just want to punch something. The ‘grrrrrrrrrr’ started this morning when I read that we the taxpayers are paying $3,000 per month for the Secret Service people protecting Ivanka and Jared to rent a bathroom in the house next door, because Jared & Ivanka don’t want them dirtying their house! My first thought was that then they don’t deserve the protection of the Secret Service … and they don’t, for they are a couple of entitled snobs. And then, the ‘grrrrrrrrrrr’ got louder as the day progressed.

Has he learned nothing?

You remember Kyle Rittenhouse, right? He’s the young white supremacist punk who killed two and wounded a third with a gun at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As I wrote a while back, some influential people with more money than sense posted Rittenhouse’s $2 million bail last November. Rittenhouse was arraigned January 5^th on two felony charges of homicide in the deaths of two men and a felony attempted homicide charge in the wounding of another man. Pretty serious stuff, yes? You’d think a 17-year-old kid would be on his best behaviour, quaking in his boots at the thought of what could happen to him. But not Kyle!

Just 90 minutes after leaving the arraignment, Kyle and his mother were seen in a bar where he was drinking beer (the legal age limit in his home state of Illinois is 21) and flashing white supremacist hand signals to other people in the bar. What kind of mother takes her underage kid who has murdered two people to a damn bar??? Prosecutors have asked the Kenosha County Circuit Court to modify Rittenhouse’s bond conditions.

The office is requesting that Rittenhouse be prohibited from possessing or consuming alcohol or being in any establishment that serves it; be prohibited from making any public display of any “white power” or “white supremacy” signs, symbols, or hand gestures; and not have any contact with any known militia members or members of any violent white power/white supremacist groups including the group identified as the “Proud Boys.”

This kid needs to be locked up for life, and his mother along with him! And yet, to some he is considered a ‘hero’ … oh yeah, folks, don’t tell me racism isn’t alive and well in the United States … you need look no further than this little punk and those who applaud him. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Franklin Graham once again proves his lunacy

More than a few times, I have criticized (that’s putting it mildly) various evangelical leaders, and Franklin Graham is the one who seems to cross my radar most often. Now, let me state in advance that I am not a Christian, not religious at all, however I respect other people’s right to their beliefs as long as they don’t try to inflict them on others. Franklin Graham is an idiot extraordinaire, and once again he seems intent on proving my point.

In a Facebook post yesterday, Graham wrote, in part …

“Shame, shame on the ten Republicans who joined with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in impeaching President Trump yesterday. After all that he has done for our country, you would turn your back and betray him so quickly? We have never had a president like him in my lifetime. He gave us lower taxes, a strong economy, and low unemployment. He made NATO take notice and pay their own way. He had the guts to take on North Korea and meet with their leader personally. He didn’t let China walk all over us. Just his Mideast peace initiatives in the last couple of months deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. He has defended religious liberty like no president before him, and that matters to all people of faith. He has worked to bring prison reform and secured our southern border. He defeated the ISIS caliphate in Syria, and he strengthened our military. He was also the most pro-life president we have ever had. But the House Democrats impeached him because they hate him and want to do as much damage as they can. And these ten, from his own party, joined in the feeding frenzy. It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”

Well, I wonder if Mr. Franklin has been living in some alternative universe? The hell of it is, though, that with over 9.5 million followers on Facebook, some will undoubtedly buy into his trash talk and some will no doubt join the planned insurrection next week, fully believing that they are doing ‘god’s work’. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

And speaking of religious freaks …

Brandon Burdon, pastor of Kingdom Life church in Frisco, Texas is less well-known that Franklin Graham, but no less a lunatic.

During a long rambling sermon just days after the Capitol coup, he told his (maskless) congregation to stock up on weapons, celebrated a God-ordained siege of Washington, spoke in tongues to give his statements added oomph, claimed Apple would create a national blackout, railed against FOX News and Mitch McConnell for not being conservative enough, urged everyone to stock up on generators and food, and said with absolutely certainty that Donald Trump would be president for eight straight years.

“We are locked and loaded at the Burden house. We have an executive order — not from Congress or D.C., but from the desk of the CEO of heaven, the boss of the planet. He said from his desk in heaven, this is my will; Trump will be in for eight years.”

Is it any wonder that I often say religion is the cause of most wars and most hatred in the world? I wonder how many people from Frisco, Texas will be among the gun-toting nuts planning to converge on D.C. next week?

Filosofa Snarks Again!

Posted on December 13, 2020 by jilldennison under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2020, Environmental Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

One of these days I’m gonna surprise you guys with positive news, good news, cheer and joy — and you’ll wonder what I’ve been smoking! Methinks, though, that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon, so do me a favour and don’t hold your breath, okay? And meanwhile, I’m back with more grousing and grumbling about the state of affairs in this nation.

Da prez is bored

Ladies and Gentlemen … the president of the United States of America has nothing to do. That’s right … despite a pandemic that is raging in most areas of the nation, with three thousand or more people dying every day, and despite the fact that chaos reigns and violence is barely simmering beneath the surface, Donald Trump had nothing to do yesterday. So, he ranted for a bit on Twitter about the fact that Attorney General William Barr stopped licking his boots last week, the fact that even his three hand-picked Supreme Court Justices told him to sit down and shut up, and ended with a threatening message, though he has run out of options. And then, he headed out on the presidential helicopter (we paid for it) to Andrews Air Force Base where he boarded Air Force One (we paid for it) to fly to West Point so he could occupy space at the Army-Navy football game (we paid for that, too). Y’know … if this is really all the ‘man’ has to do, then … why do we need him? Why not cut him loose now and inaugurate Joe Biden 38 days ahead of time so that this nation can have a real president? And before he can do any more damage or spend more of our money. Just a thought.

Who the hell is Joseph Epstein?

I don’t know who Joseph Epstein is, but I know what he is. He is a misogynistic asshole! In the Wall Street Journal, he wrote an OpEd that I found to be disrespectful, condescending, and obnoxious as hell. Here is a part of it …

“Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden ” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.” A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.”

First of all … Dr. Jill Biden earned that doctoral degree and it was hard work … I know because I still haven’t completed mine, though I’ve been working at it since 2008! She has every right in the world to be proud of her accomplishments and to wear her title proudly! But even more to the point … would Mr. Epstein have made such a comment if he had been talking to a man? Would he have dared to call a man ‘kiddo’ as if naught but an errant teenager? I hardly think so. This is male chauvinism at its finest … grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

The writer of this piece admits that he, himself, has only a B.A. though he doesn’t tell us in what. After some self-promoting rambling, he ends with this condescending garbage …

“As for your Ed.D., Madame First Lady, hard-earned though it may have been, please consider stowing it, at least in public, at least for now. Forget the small thrill of being Dr. Jill, and settle for the larger thrill of living for the next four years in the best public housing in the world as First Lady Jill Biden.”

Furious, I did a bit of research into the heinous Mr. Epstein and found this is not the first time his bigotry brought him into the public view. In September 1970, Harper’s Magazine published an article by Epstein called “Homo/Hetero: The Struggle for Sexual Identity” that was criticized for its perceived homophobia. Epstein wrote that he considered homosexuality “a curse, in a literal sense” and that his sons could do nothing to make him sadder than “if any of them were to become homosexual.”

But, in a real twist of irony, in 2003, he was awarded a National Humanities Medal by the National Endowment for the Humanities! WTF???

Violence coming soon to a city near you

Saturday brought Trump supporters en masse to Washington D.C. and other cities around the nation. And wherever there are avid Trumpeters, there are likely to be members of white supremacist groups. And wherever there are white supremacists, there is likely to be violence. Yesterday was no exception, though thankfully nobody was killed … yet.

Although every court thus far, including the Supreme Court, has either declined to hear Trump’s cases of alleged voter fraud or flat out said there was no credible evidence presented and tossed the case. Trump has lost, at last count, 58 or 59 cases in the courts. Attorney General William Barr, a Trump uber-loyalist, has said there is no evidence of widespread or significant irregularities. Chris Krebs, former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security said there was absolutely no evidence of any widespread or organized voter fraud. He was fired for doing his job and speaking the truth. And yet, because Trump continues to shriek like a banshee claiming that he won the election, that it was ‘stolen’ from him, his not-so-bright supporters are on a train bound for nowhere, thinking that they have the power to overturn an election their ‘hero’ lost by over 7 million votes … legitimate votes.

It doesn’t help that republican members of Congress, republican state’s attorneys general and others jumped onto the Trumptanic in the form of the now-failed Texas lawsuit implemented by Ken Paxton, a man who has been indicted on federal securities fraud. It doesn’t help that the republican members of Congress, in addition to joining the aforementioned lawsuit trying to overturn the election, are largely refusing to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election. Tomorrow, the Electoral College will meet and barring something absurdly illegal, they will confirm that Joe Biden won the election.

And so now those who either don’t read the news or don’t understand it are riled and they are out to cause mayhem and mischief, perhaps even death. They believe, erroneously, that the 1^st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives them this right. It doesn’t.

Yesterday, four people were stabbed, and one was shot. How many will it be next weekend, or the weekend after that? And on January 20^th, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, how many will be out in the streets with their guns, aiming to take the law into their own hands?

If people die because Trump’s followers are being encouraged by not only Trump but his sycophants in Congress, then Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Matt Gaetz, Lindsey Graham, and many others will have blood on their hands. They could put a stop to at least part of the madness right this minute by assuring their constituents that the election was fair and honest, that President-elect Joe Biden won by honest means, and that the American people have had their say. But no … they won’t … because their own political futures may yet depend on Trump and his big-money donors. Yep, folks … money speaks louder than our voices.

Telling It Like It Is — Reality

Posted on November 1, 2020 by jilldennison under Election 2020, Global Issues, Racism & Bigotry

I remember 2015-2016 when I would ask friends and acquaintances what, exactly, they saw in this clown named Trump who was running for president. Their answer was often an enigma: “he tells it like it is.” Now, I was never able to pin them down on just what “it” was, but in their minds, they were convinced that whatever ‘it’ was, Trump told ‘it’ like ‘it’ was. Well, we now know that he fed these people a bucket of bullshit, that honesty is not in his vocabulary, and that there is no ‘it’ that he understands well enough to talk about, but rather talks at the issues. However, journalist Charles Blow is one who actually does ‘tell it like it is’, especially in his latest column in the New York Times …

America Shocked Itself and the World

Charles M. Blow

29 October 2020

How could we have been so blind? How could we have been so naïve? How did we not believe that the worst was possible until we plummeted into it?

We didn’t believe that a demagogic tyrant-worshiper could rise to the presidency.

The founders of this country worried obsessively about the rise of a demagogue, and the power of foreign influence on our democracy. And yet somehow, over the years, after centuries of American presidents behaving in ways that at least demonstrated a fealty to the country and its institutions and the power of precedent and legacy, those fears waned to a whisper.

Having a demagogue, partially installed by a Russian disinformation campaign no less, who exalted our enemies in the world and hammered our friends, was somewhat unthinkable. This was America. We would only go so far. We might race up to the precipice, but we would never hurl ourselves into the abyss. Wrong.

With the election of Donald Trump, America did the unthinkable, shocking itself and the world: It put the most powerful country in the world under the control of a lying, grifting, shady carnival conductor. He had no experience in governance and no expertise. His entire life was a game of smoke and mirrors, double talk and double-dealing.

Even Trump, not a student of history or much else, didn’t seem to grasp the awesome power he possessed until he systematically started to test all the fences supposedly restraining him, only to realize that the only thing holding many of them up was customs and conventions. Most could be run through or pushed down.

It was like a scene in the film “Jurassic World” where the scientist created a hybrid, Frankenstein dinosaur because people got bored of the conventional ones. Well, the dinosaur was clever enough to break out of its cage and run through the park, killing everything in sight. As one of the scientists said: “You made a genetic hybrid. Raised it in captivity. She is seeing all of this for the first time. She does not even know what she is. She will kill everything that moves.” He continued, “She is learning where she fits on the food chain and I’m not sure you want her to figure that out.”

Trump realized the power of the presidency, that it was uniquely at the top of the food chain, and so began his rampage.

We didn’t believe that in this era we could have a president who could be so regressive on issues of white supremacy, white nationalism and xenophobia.

To be sure, there have been other presidents more racist than their predecessors.

Andrew Johnson assuming the presidency after Abraham Lincoln comes to mind. Although Lincoln had professed his white supremacy during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, he led the nation to emancipation and into Civil War in part over the issue of slavery. Johnson’s racist reconstruction plan after the war excluded Black electoral and governing participation, led to the rise of the Black Codes and led to his impeachment.

Lyndon B. Johnson being followed by Richard Nixon comes to mind. As a senator, Johnson had shepherded the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and as president he pushed through the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968. In addition, he nominated the first Black justice to the Supreme Court: Thurgood Marshall. Nixon on the other hand, was different. As Tim Naftali, an associate professor of history at N.Y.U., wrote last year in The Atlantic: “Nixon believed in a hierarchy of races, with whites and Asians much higher up than people of African descent and Latinos. And he had convinced himself that it wasn’t racist to think Black people, as a group, were inferior to whites, so long as he held them in paternalistic regard.”

But, in some ways, Americans came to see these occasional regressions as more minor — a hiccup, a stutter step in which the country took a small step back among much greater strides forward. We were not prepared for what Trump delivered: a generational retreat into darkness.

We had not seen a modern president so openly and blatantly court and even defend racists and xenophobes. We had not seen one refuse to clearly condemn white supremacist hate groups, instead retreating to a position of false obliviousness when condemnation was demanded. We have not seen a recent president who would stoop so low as to separate immigrant children from their parents, apparently with no plan to reunite them, as a matter of unwavering policy.

These are but two examples. But the list is legion. I could enumerate them until my fingers blistered. But they would all illustrate the same point: We, America, let our guard down for a campaign cycle, believing, surely, that the most qualified woman to ever run would defeat the least qualified man to do so. We didn’t vote with the intensity the emergency required. And in doing so, we allowed the country to be dragged to the brink of ruin.

We are now living the reality that the founders feared and that women, minorities and immigrants hoped was an artifact of former times.

“Un-American Propaganda”??? Seriously???

Posted on September 5, 2020 by jilldennison under education, Election 2020, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Just a few short years ago, this nation seemed like a sane place. Sure, we had problems … plenty of them. But we always thought there were systems and safeguards in place to keep any single person or any branch of government from overstepping their bounds. Never did we dream, say back in 2010, ten years ago, that one person could make such a power grab that the norms would all be shattered within a single administration.

Today, we realize what fools we were … or at least the majority of us realize it. A madman was elected with a minority of the vote, and nothing has been right ever since. The Constitution that every president and member of Congress takes an oath to uphold has been shredded by a president who knows no boundaries, who has been enabled by his sycophants in Congress, in his administration, and yes, even in the Courts. Where are those ‘checks and balances’? They are only as good as the people who are tasked with enforcing them.

The latest thing to send me into a fit of temper is Trump’s order to Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to cease the government’s racial sensitivity training. Trump calls such training “un-American propaganda”. That’s right, folks … it is un-American to try to teach people not to discriminate, to try to remove the systemic racism that exists within our government and law enforcement community. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. 🤬

Does this man understand that Black people are citizens of this nation with the same rights accorded to white people??? Does he understand that we have a huge problem in this nation with racism running rampant throughout our police departments? Does he realize that we are on the brink of a race war that he will have been responsible for starting?

Trump’s former attorney and ‘fixer’, the man who, for a price, made Trump’s problems such as sexual liaisons just disappear, testified under oath to Congress in February 2019 …

“I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience. I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.”

He is a racist. Was there ever any doubt? Cohen went on to cite some examples …

“He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a ‘shithole.’ This was when Barack Obama was president of the United States. While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way. He told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.”

Four decades ago, Trump and his father were sued by the federal government, which accused the Trumps of discriminating against people of colour trying to rent the Trump company’s apartments. Donald Trump was also sued for his mistreatment of black workers in his casinos and, according to a former hotel executive, once said “laziness is a trait in blacks.”

Then there was the Central Park Five case. A group of African American and Hispanic teens named Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time back in 1989 when a white female jogger was attacked and raped. The five teens were arrested, tried and convicted on false evidence and coerced confessions, and they served prison sentences until 2002 when the real assailant confessed to the crime. Donald Trump spent $85,000 placing the ads in local papers calling for the five teens to be executed. Even though the five young men were exonerated, Trump has since repeatedly reiterated the guilty verdict of the men and has refused to back down or admit his mistake. What if the teens had been white and the victim Black? I don’t think Trump would have had a word to say about it.

Yes, Donald Trump is a racist, but are we going to allow him to make this nation even more racist than it already is??? How many more George Floyds, Breonna Taylors, Botham Jeans, Atatiana Jeffersons, and Jacob Blakes do we want? How many more will it take until the thus-far peaceful Black Lives Matter protests turn into an all-out race war? We have a serious problem with all forms of bigotry in this nation, but particularly racism, and the very person who should be dealing with it, trying to find solutions for the problem and bring the people of this nation together, is instead pouring fuel on the fire. It should NOT be his decision to cancel the training that might … just might be a start toward a better understanding between the people of this nation.

Trump has assembled a long record of comment on issues involving African Americans as well as Mexicans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, women, and people with disabilities. He is not only a racist, but a misogynist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe, and more. This is a diverse nation with people of every nationality, religion, and ethnicity. That the nation is led by a person who cannot tolerate any who aren’t white, Christian and male is the ultimate hypocrisy. Will the people of this nation give him another four years to further our global reputation as a racist nation? Remember, my friends, we will all carry the stigma of that label, not just those who voted for Trump. Is this really how we want to be viewed? Is this really a nation we even want to live in?

Grumpy

Posted on June 27, 2020 by jilldennison under Bits 'n Pieces, Environmental Issues, Global Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Don’t you just love it when you wake up grumpy? Good thing I wrote Saturday Surprise last night, else it wouldn’t have been written. So, how about I share my ill humour so you guys can be grumpy, too?

Personae non grata …

European Union (EU) officials have compiled a list of countries whose residents can visit the EU when it reopens its borders next week and guess what? The U.S. is not on that list. Nothing political about the decision, simply common sense. The United States has failed to get a handle on the coronavirus, new cases are surging, and the EU doesn’t welcome us because of the high risk involved. Russia and Brazil are also excluded.

Despite Mike Pence’s assurances that everything is under control, the daily new case tally keeps breaking records. Yesterday’s new case total was 47,341 … nearly 50,000! Until the past week or so, the death toll in the U.S. was over 1,000 people daily. It has dropped slightly to around 600 per day, but it is only a matter of days before it is back in the thousand range.

Foolishly, Trump demanded that businesses re-open, even against the advice of the experts, and equally foolishly, the people of this nation felt their right to go out and have fun superseded safety. This is the result … we are now banned from traveling to the EU, and if Boris Johnson & Co in the UK have any sense, we will also be banned from travel to the UK. We have already been banned from traveling to Canada. We are, essentially, stuck in this virus-infested, fool-driven nation with a clown running the show, a ship of fools controlling our well-being … or lack thereof.

And the real terrorists are …

A new study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) last week titled “Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States”, determined that the problem of domestic terrorism in the U.S. is primarily from the far right. The report says “the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of rightwing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years”, with the far right launching two-thirds of attacks and plots in 2019, and 90% of those in 2020. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. All that talk about ‘antifa’ is just that … talk. Or perhaps an effort to distract from the real threat of white supremacy.

The report also shows the far left has been an increasingly negligible source of attacks since the mid-2000s. Those of us on the left fight our battles with our voices, not our guns.

In February, a report by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism reported that cases of circulated propaganda by white supremacist groups in 2019 had more than doubled from the previous year, and the 2018 figures were 180% higher than 2017. About two-thirds of the total propaganda incidents in the new report were traced back to a single white supremacist group, Patriot Front, which the ADL describes as “formed by disaffected members” of the white supremacist organization Vanguard America after the Charlottesville rally in 2017.

Is it purely coincidence that these groups have expanded only since Donald Trump took office? I think not.

Justice? We’ll see …

Well finally ol’ Roger Stone is going to prison … or is he? Stone, convicted on charges of repeatedly lying to Congress and intimidating a witness to impede the House’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, was sentenced to 40 months back in February. Stone had already received one delay on reporting to prison when he was first sentenced, and last week he requested yet another delay … until September 3^rd. He cites the coronavirus as his reason. However, Judge Amy Berman Jackson has had enough of the Stone/Trump show and ruled that Stone must report to the federal correction institution in Jesup, Georgia, on July 14^th.

But, unfortunately for the cause of justice, Donald Trump appears to have his pardon pen fully inked and ready to go. Just this morning, he tweeted …

“IT’s TIME TO #PardonRogerStone”

So, if I had to lay odds, I’d say that Stone will, just like another corrupt Trump crony Michael Flynn, be a free man by the middle of July. Stone has been a nasty piece of work since he was a very young man and has only gotten more insidious as he grew older.

Sadly, ‘justice’ is no longer defined in the United States as it once was. Today it does not matter if you are guilty or innocent, corrupt or not … it only matters what Trump thinks of you. I never thought I’d live to see the day when the United States became a banana republic, but that day is here.

Y’know … it’s really hard to stay grumpy when there is an adorable little squirrel just outside your window eating the bird seed and every now and then looking right at you. It’s funny, but the birds don’t seem bothered by him in the least … they just go right on eating, perfectly willing to share their food, even though he doesn’t quite look the same as them. Is there a lesson for us in that?

And Still More …

Posted on June 11, 2020 by jilldennison under Bits 'n Pieces, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Yes, folks, I am back with another dose of snarky snippets to get your day started right!

Awwww … Donnie got his feelings hurt

Never before in my memory has a president of this nation attempted to manipulate polling data in such a way. Until Trump, of course, but then he has demolished most of the things we thought to be normal.

On Monday, CNN released poll results showing Biden leading by a staggering 14-point margin, one of many polls showing Trump down by high-single-digit to low-double-digit margins. Is it any wonder, given his horrendous actions of the past two weeks since the May 25^th murder of George Floyd?

So, Trump took to his favourite venue, Twitter, and said that he hired conservative pollster McLaughlin & Associates to “analyze todays CNN Poll (and others),” which he said is “FAKE based on the incredible enthusiasm we are receiving.” Incredible enthusiasm??? I’ve seen none, but if there is any, it’s from the white supremacist element. He then sent a letter to CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, asserting that the poll is “designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling.”

It should be noted that all polls have a margin of error, some are more misleading than others, based on who’s doing the polling and the tone of the questions. The most reliable polls are neither conservative nor liberal, but ask questions in a neutral tone. McLaughlin is not among the most reliable, and in fact earns a C/D rating in FiveThirtyEight’s poll ranking.

The letter also ‘demanded’ that CNN retract the poll and apologize to the whiney toddler in the White House. Not gonna happen, folks. Donald Trump needs to learn that he does not control the nation, and damn sure has no special hold over the press. Facts is facts, though Trump seems to believe otherwise. The larger issue here, though, is that Trump believes he should be able to control the free press, which opens a whole new can o’ worms to be discussed another day.

Guess who’s writing Trump’s speech?

Remember on Tuesday I told you that Trump is considering addressing the nation sometime this week on the topics of race and national unity? Well, guess who’s writing the speech for him? None other than the biggest white supremacist in the administration, Stephen Miller. This makes as much sense as me trying to write a piece about what it’s like to be a tilapia fish in the ocean!!! I had to laugh, though, for any speech by Trump is bound to be so filled with lies and self-promotion that it’s more or less stand up comedy.Miller was a chief architect of Trump’s travel ban, the administration’s reduction of refugees accepted to the United States, and Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents. He has prevented the publication of internal administration studies that showed that refugees had a net positive effect on government revenues.

The people of Iowa finally had the good sense to reject their white supremacist representative in Congress, Steve King, by voting him out in the primaries. Unfortunately, it isn’t so easy for We the People to have a voice in ejecting a cabinet member. We will get rid of Miller when we get rid of Trump … and not likely a minute before. Meanwhile, Trump’s Miller-concocted speech should be good for a few eyerolls and will likely gain widespread approval from Trump’s white supremacist supporters.

A thumbs up to FedEx … 👍

Former FedEx employee James DeMarco staged an exhibition on Monday during a Black Lives Matter protest in New Jersey. His behaviour was a disgrace … he is shown kneeling on a friend’s neck, mocking the brutal murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin on May 25^th, and as protesters passed by his display of inhumanity, he yelled at them, “He’s dead because he didn’t comply.”

Notice the pickup truck in the background with the U.S. flag and a Trump banner prominently displayed. White supremacists are coming out of the woodwork, it seems, and our ultra-liberal 1^st Amendment gives them the right to make an ass of themselves and offend people possessed of consciences. But, while the Constitution might protect DeMarco’s right to be a jerk, FedEx does not. On Tuesday, they issued the following statement …

“FedEx holds its team members to a high standard of personal conduct, and we do not tolerate the kind of appalling and offensive behavior depicted in this video. The individual involved is no longer employed by FedEx. A diverse and inclusive workforce is at the heart of our business, and we stand with those who support justice and equality.”

One man who participated in DeMarco’s little stunt turned out to be a correction officer … his bosses recognized him on the video and he has since been suspended pending a “thorough investigation”.

Filosofa's Word

Cogito Ergo Sum

Tag Archives: White Supremacists

A Couple Of Thoughts …

Telling It Like It Is — Reality