Contributors

Sunday, June 28, 2020

Is Trump a Senile Idiot or a Liar? Yes!

Two stories in the news today highlight how senile and out of touch Donald Trump is.

First was the excuse he gave for retweeting a video of a geezer in a golf cart yelling "white power!"
The White House said Sunday that President Trump didn’t hear someone shouting “white power” in a now-deleted retweet of a pro-Trump rally in Florida. 
“He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said.
Yeah, Trump's excuse is that he can't hear.

The second was the story about how the Russians have been paying the Taliban bounties to kill Americans. The White House was briefed on this months ago in the PDB (presidential daily briefing), but Trump says nobody told him:
President Trump is denying a New York Times report that he was briefed on an alleged Russian effort to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill Western forces — including U.S. troops — in Afghanistan.

Citing unnamed officials, the Times report, published Friday, details how U.S. intelligence officials reached the conclusion about the secret payments and then briefed the president in March. The White House National Security Council conferred an interagency meeting that same month to discuss the matter, according to the report. The finding was also included in the President's Daily Brief, according to the Times.
The same people Trump is negotiating a peace deal with are being paid to assassinate Americans by a Russian dictator that Trump kowtows to at every chance. A dictator that helped get Trump elected.

And Trump says he had no clue this was happening. He's blaming his staff for not telling him, when he can't pay attention to his briefings for more than a minute unless they have lots of pictures and constantly fluff his ego.

It's like this all the time with this clown: either he's a deaf, oblivious idiot who can't hear someone yelling "white power" in a video and can't remember being told the Russians were putting bounties on American soldiers, or he's lying.

It's really that simple. He's a senile idiot or a liar.

Either way, this is exactly the sort of thing that disqualifies him from the presidency.

It's been clear from the get-go that Trump's dementia and mendacity were not either-or, but a double-dose of both.

How can any self-respecting conservative still support this senile, narcissistic piece of garbage?

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Shrinking

The Lincoln Project, a conservative group organized to defeat President Trump, has put together some fantastic ads that will be airing from now until election day. Here is my favorite so far. 

 

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Trumpbo

If you want to get a peek into just how deep the delusions are among Trump supporters, look no further than this little diddy.

Trump as fucking Rambo? Really? He pussed out of Vietnam (a war he "wasn't a fan of") because of bone spurs. He has visited the troops how many times?

Seriously. Fucking. Insane.

Monday, June 22, 2020

Sunday, June 21, 2020

A Perfect Summation of Trump Supporters Right Now




















Some rally last night. Really packed the house, right? 

This image really shows how isolated his supporters are from the rest of the country. 

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Trump is the Poster Boy for White Privilege

Last week there was a Black Lives Matter protest in southern New Jersey. This was the scene:
[A]s the diverse group marched along Monday, waving signs and chanting slogans in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, it was met by several white men who had gathered near a sign that said “All Lives Matter” and in front of a pickup truck draped with an American flag and a pro-Trump sign.

One of the men yelled at the marchers angrily while kneeling on the neck of another who was facedown on the ground — an apparent attempt to mock the killing of Mr. Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a white officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
In addition to mocking Mr. Floyd’s death, [the men] had yelled, “If George Floyd would have complied he wouldn’t be dead”; “Go cash your checks”; and “Black Lives Matter to no one.”
So this is their argument: If Floyd had complied, he wouldn't have died? He was in handcuffs, helpless on the ground. How much more compliant can you get?

Also, since when is the punishment for disobeying the police on suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill the death penalty? And since when do we try cases on the street, with cops acting as judge, jury and executioner?

Not long ago Rayshard Brooks, a black man from Atlanta, was friendly and complying with the police after being found asleep and drunk in his car at Wendy's drive-through. He fled when they tried to cuff him.  Given the large number of men who have died in police custody (Floyd, Eric Garner, and hundreds of others), this is a completely reasonable response.

The cops shot him in the back. Brooks was not a danger or himself or anyone else. The cops had his car, they knew who he was, but when he disobeyed and ran they murdered him. One of the officers has been fired, and the other has been suspended. The death has been ruled a homicide.

The underlying issue with these problematic cops is that they think their authority is limitless. If you disobey them (by talking back or running away), they feel disrepected and respond with deadly force.

The counterprotesters in New Jersey seem to think that killing someone for disobeying and disrespecting authority figures is just fine.

Can we think of someone else who constantly disobeys and disrepects authority figures such as federal judges (Gonzalo Curiel), the FBI, the attorney general of the United States, the many inspectors generals who have found him and his cronies breaking the law, and flouting the Constitution itself by accepting foreign emoluments?

If Trump had been born poor and black and displayed this attitude in his interactions with the police, he would have murdered on the street long ago. But since he's white and his daddy was rich, he could get away with opening his big fat yap as much as he likes.

This is what white privilege is all about. Ignorant rich white folks can get irate when the cops stop them in their expensive cars and there are no consequences, but if a black man says the wrong thing (Philando Castile: "Officer, I've got a legal concealed firearm"), the cops shoot them or they're down on the ground, getting the life choked out of them.

The police are public servants.They work for the people that they arrest and detain. In their dealings with wealthy white citizens the cops usually (though not always) remember to be courteous and fair. But when they deal with poor black and brown citizens the pretense of civility quickly falls away.

There should be no double standard.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Every State In The Union

There is still a minority of people in this country (mostly right-wingers) that falsely believe that this movement isn't a big deal. Time to remove your head from the sand and look at this map.

People are done. DONE. The system is going to change and it will do so rapidly. This is a good thing. Don't fight it. Don't cling to the lie that this is a "liberal" agenda.

It's an agenda for everyone and it's a winner.

Monday, June 15, 2020

Trump's Drinking Problem

Donald Trump has a history of using the military as a prop for his political campaigns. He insisted on bringing West Point cadets back for a graduation ceremony in the middle of a major pandemic, forcing the cadets go through airports and fly on airplanes that are proven vectors for the coronavirus. Sixteen cadets tested positive upon returning for Trump's speech.

During this dangerous, stupid and useless stunt, it became obvious (again) that Trump is not a well man. He slurred words (again) during his rant, and clearly had difficulty drinking (again), needing two hands to raise a small glass of water to his lips.

Afterwards, Trump clearly had difficulty walking down a ramp, looking like some pathetic geezer who had had too much to drink.

All this would probably have gone ignored, as it has many times before, except that Trump himself had to tweet about it, whining that the gently inclined ramp was slippery (it wasn't -- the general beside him had no problems), and claiming that he ran the last three steps. Trump is the only person I know who thinks that a shambling stumble is "running."

For years now people have debated whether it's appropriate to diagnose Trump's mental and physical well-being from symptoms exhibited at public appearances. Others, like David Graham at The Atlantic, think his physical ailments are irrelevant -- it's the lies and Trump's abysmal performance in office that matter.

The fact is, your physical health has a direct impact on your mental health. Trump's difficulty drinking and walking are probably indicative of some kind of neurological deficit. He might have trouble raising his arm because his rotator cuff is trashed from years of swinging a golf club incorrectly. He might have trouble walking because his ACL was torn, like Tiger Woods. Or maybe Cadet Bone Spurs' bone spurs were acting up.

Or his neurological symptoms may be due to Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, both of which affect mobility, or because he had a stroke. Diabetes causes nerve damage, which could also explain his difficulty walking and drinking.

Trump is famous for bragging about how little he sleeps, as if it's a badge of honor. Sleep is how the body takes out the trash in your brain. Get too little sleep and the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer's start clogging up the brain. Sleeplessness is a classic sign of dementia, according to the Mayo Clinic.

We know Trump is lying about his health, because the summaries of the physicals he provided the media are just puff pieces written by him or his campaign. His personal physician admitted this two years ago.

Trump is 74 years old and is obese. Joe Biden is 77 and is not. Six years ago Biden was able to jog around the White House with Barack Obama for a puff piece for Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign. At about the same age Trump was unable to walk up a hill in Sicily at a G7 summit.

Trump is constantly talking about strength, yet it is clear that he physically weak and clumsy, as demonstrated at West Point. More to the point, he is mentally weak and extremely erratic, as demonstrated by his constant kowtowing to dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim ("We fell in love") Jong Un, his inability to take any kind of advice or criticism from advisors who know far more than he does about subjects critical to the future of the United States, and the chaotic state of the White House, where everyone is walking around in fear that Trump will lash out and blame them for his latest gaffe.

We have had presidents in the past who suffered strokes in office (Eisenhower and Wilson), had severe physical problems (FDR and JFK), and were even suffering from Alzheimer's (Reagan). But they didn't act impulsively, tweet blathering insults at everyone, and constantly display complete ignorance about every subject important to the presidency, from the nuclear triad strategy, to how long it takes to mount a mission to Mars, to injecting bleach to stop the coronavirus.

How can anyone think this clown should be president?

Friday, June 12, 2020

There Is No Mystery...

I rode my bike over to a friend's house a couple of weeks ago. We got to talking about the coronavirus (what else?), and the people we knew who had been infected.

I told them about my sister: she had a stroke a decade ago, resulting in aphasia and paralysis on the right side of her body. She lives in a group home with four residents. The place had been in lockdown since early March, but one of the workers brought the virus in and my sister got sick. She was in the hospital for a weekend, but didn't need a ventilator, and she's recuperating now.

One of the guests was skeptical about the disaster that was unfolding in New York, especially in minority communities, certain that something else was going on there, insinuating some dark conspiracy or what, I don't know.

There's no mystery. The virus was brought into the city by business travelers coming from China, and vacationers returning from Europe. It didn't start in minority communities.

On the plane travelers infected flight crews and fellow passengers. At the airport they infected gate agents, janitors, rest room attendants, porters and other travelers. On the way home or to the hotel they infected Uber and cab drivers. At hotels these travelers infected check-in clerks, concierges, and maids. Residents of the city infected their doormen, maids, cooks, nannies. And their wives, husbands and kids.

Once in the city they went to stores, bodegas, bakeries, bars and restaurants, where they infected shopkeepers, stock clerks, bakers, bartenders, busboys, waiters and maitre d's.

Notice how most of the people travelers come into contact are working low-paying service jobs, which are very frequently staffed by minorities.

The population density in New York is the highest in the country, over 70,000 people per square mile in Manhattan. People, especially poorly-paid minorities, don't have cars, they ride the subways, crammed into standing-room-only trains.

So, if there's one place in the United States where you'd expect a disease to run rampant, it's New York.

An Ohio state senator was fired from his job as a physician this week for saying that "colored people" don't wash their hands as well as other groups:
State Senator Stephen A. Huffman, a Republican and a doctor, made his remarks on Tuesday during a hearing of the Senate Health Committee about whether to declare racism a public health crisis. They came as he speculated about reasons black people might be more “susceptible” to Covid-19.

“Could it just be that African-Americans or the colored population do not wash their hands as well as other groups or wear a mask or do not socially distance themselves?” he said. “Could that be the explanation of why the higher incidence?”
It's incredible that this guy would make this statement after literally months of news reports about Walmart and Amazon not giving their workers personal protective equipment such as masks, gloves, hand sanitizer and disinfectant. Most of these jobs don't offer health care or sick leave. Many employers demanded that workers show up even if they were sick.

The people who work at group homes like the one where my sister lives, and the nursing homes where the coronavirus has killed tens of thousands of elderly residents, are usually women, often minorities, almost always poorly paid, and very frequently working two or three different part time jobs at different facilities.

The very nature of their jobs prevents any kind of social distancing: they have lift elderly residents out of bed and put them in wheelchairs, put "transfer belts" on them to hoist them up, sit them on the toilet, give them baths, comb their hair, and even feed them.

Another major vector for the disease in the Midwest has been meat-packing plants, where the lines have workers standing shoulder to shoulder hacking chickens, cows and pigs apart. These jobs are difficult and horrible, poorly paid, and mostly staffed by immigrants and minorities. And then Trump issued an executive order to force workers to show up at these "critical infrastructure" jobs. I guess he can't survive without his Big Macs.

And as for masks: doesn't Huffman remember anything? At the start of the pandemic Trump told us the virus would disappear "like magic." Then the Trump administration told us all that masks wouldn't help. Then they said that masks should go to medical professionals instead. And then those same medical professionals couldn't get hold of masks! And then there was the price gouging by companies selling masks on Amazon. And the story about the faulty masks being passed off by a Trump crony to the Indian Health Service.

How can this guy possibly criticize the "colored population" for not wearing masks, when Donald Trump absolutely refuses to wear one, and many of Huffman's fellow Republicans in Congress and dozens of state legislatures categorically refuse to wear them?

Not wearing a mask, going out to bars and restaurants and ignoring social distancing rules have become a rallying cry for rabid Republicans, and yet somehow the "colored population" is at fault for getting sick because they work jobs that force them into close contact with people, their employers make them work when sick, and there were no masks to be had by anybody?

And once they get sick, American minorities are disproportionately affected by the coronavirus because they have a greater incidence of medical conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes, which increase the likelihood of dying, because they're poorer, live in "food deserts" and eat poorly, and have less access to health care.

There's no underlying secret conspiracy or racial predisposition behind New York's infection rate or the deadly toll the pandemic has had on minority groups. If you just open your eyes to the realities of life for the working poor, it's obvious that these people are sicker because American society has chosen to pay people working essential jobs next to nothing under terrible conditions.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

We Broke The Contract

White people need to understand exactly what the fuck is going on right now. Watch this video.
 
 

Get it now? Or are you still going to deny or blame others?

Acton. Change. Now. 

Monday, June 08, 2020

Minnesota is Being Overrun by Idiots from Florida

Minnesota has been the epicenter of a world-wide protest movement over the death of George Floyd, a black man who was callously murdered by four cops while bystanders recorded the crime and repeatedly told them they were killing Floyd. The killer, Derek Chauvin, kept his knee on Floyd's throat for more than eight minutes, slowly choking the life out of him, while three other cops just stood by and watched.

To coin a phrase, this cop is a male Chauvinist pig.

I could not figure for the life of me figure out what Chauvin was thinking while doing this cold-blooded murder, given the uproar over the killing of Eric Garner under similar circumstances in 2014. People were recording Chauvin while he calmly lynched Floyd, an act of domestic terrorism. It was even more egregious than Klan lynchings because it was committed under color of authority.

Then I read that two of the cops were trainees under Chauvin. Why was Chauvin choking the life out of a man so brazenly, in full view of the public and his trainees? He was making an example of Floyd for the public, and completing the other cops' training, showing them "how it's done."

This is the hard and fast truth about the systemic nature of police brutality against blacks in the nation's police forces.

Are all cops this bad? No. But it's not just a "few bad apples," as so many conservatives love to say. The underlying attitude is "the only thing these blacks understand is violence, so that's how we're going to treat them."

It irks me is that Chauvin is getting all Minnesotans branded as racist pricks, when the guy isn't a real Minnesotan:
On Friday, protesters gathered in front of another Chauvin home in Windermere, Fla., which he has owned since 2011 with his wife, Kellie, a Laotian refugee, realtor and former Mrs. Minnesota pageant winner.

Both Chauvin and his wife have registered to vote there, rather than in Minnesota, records show. Chauvin last cast a ballot in Florida in November 2018. His wife’s registration is listed as inactive. Both are Republicans.
Trump is constantly yapping about voter fraud. How does this racist Republican have a full-time job for 20 years as a cop in Minnesota, a part-time job busting heads outside a Minneapolis club, and still be voting in Florida? Huh? This is voter fraud and tax evasion, Derek.

Don't get me wrong, we've got plenty of racist dickheads native to Minnesota, like my dad. But it seems that police departments should require their employees to be residents of their cities (or at least their states), so they feel some sort of responsibility for their conduct on the job, instead of just hiding out in the suburbs after knocking a few heads downtown.

Shortly after Floyd's death, massive Black Lives Matter protests began, culminating one night with the burning of the Third Precinct police station, and then rioting, looting and more arson across the city and country. Everyone condemned the black community for the violence.

Well, the police have caught the guy who started the fire at the Third Precinct: a white guy named Branden Wolfe, a (former) security guard for home improvement chain Menards, who was arrested with a full set of police riot gear, including a baton and handcuffs.

And where is Wolfe from? Florida!

Another white guy, this time from Illinois, put photos of himself looting an Office Depot on Facebook and a video of himself saying, "Let's start a riot!" and the invitation: “I’m going to Minneapolis tomorrow who coming only goons I’m renting hotel rooms.”

Across the country have been widespread reports that cops have been beating peaceful protesters and reporters, shooting and blinding people with pepper balls and rubber bullets, indiscriminately using tear gas that makes people cough and gasp and wheeze during a pandemic, and knocking down old men in the street, and then lying about it.

Then a bunch of sheriff's deputies from Anoka County (a northern Twin Cities suburb) and state troopers were out slashing car tires, including those of at least two reporters! Are these cops or hoodlums?

Jesus H. Christ! How can anyone possibly defend this as good policing? "State Patrol troopers strategically deflated tires … in order to stop behaviors such as vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds in and around protesters and law enforcement," one spokesperson offered lamely in police-speak. Oh, you mean like the cop in Brooklyn who slammed his SUV into a crowd of protesters?

If this country needs a wall it should be around Florida to keep all those goons down there.

It should be noted that the attorney general of Minnesota, who upgraded the charges against Chauvin to second-degree murder, is Keith Ellison, an African-American Muslim. Ellison won his office in 2018 with 49% of the vote (to 45% for the Republican), in a state that is 85% white. He was previously a congressman from the Fifth District, which is 63% white, and won 69% of the vote in 2016. His successor in Congress is Ilhan Omar, a woman, a Somali immigrant and a Muslim, who won with 78% of the vote.

So we Minnesotans are not all racist dicks.

C or P?


Sunday, June 07, 2020

Trump Built His Wall

I can't think of a better metaphor for Trump and his followers.



They are walled off from reality. They haven't a clue what's coming this fall and they have deluded themselves into thinking there is a "secret" majority of Trump voters that will help him in 2020 as they erroneously believe they did in 2016. 

He barely won in 2016 and now he has to run on his record which is terrible. The election of 2020 is going to be a referendum on him and it will result in massive losses. What's even going to be more shocking is how he and his supporters are going to blame everyone else but themselves. 

I'm actually more worried about 2022 if the Dems get complacent again. 



Wednesday, June 03, 2020

A Man Living In Arizona Thinks He Knows More About My Hometown Than Me

Kevin Baker has been dishonest again on his eternally unchallenged, insecure bubble of self-referential confirmation web site. This time it's personal, though, because he's lying about Minneapolis, my town.

The police, like they have in Minneapolis, abandoned the city.

The Minneapolis police department did not abandon the city. A classic lie from a gun humper who is so insecure about his ideology that he feels the need to make shit up. 

Kevin, if you want to know what actually happened (and how those events make your arguments for AR-15s even weaker), comments here are completely open. Post whatever you want and it will not be deleted. That goes for anyone, btw. And, Kevin, I apologize to you unreservedly for deleting your comment. That will never happen again to you or anyone else (spam excluded).  

Further, I think you should invite me back to post on your site. Running back from an argument you lost on Quora to get back pats and high fives must not be very intellectually stimulating. I think you need someone to check your manufactured reality once in a while, especially with the coming election which I am certain is going to make your head explode.

I do understand, of course, if you refuse. It is hard to face reality:)

Monday, June 01, 2020