Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Open Thread Wednesday.

MORE DISCLAIMERSHey field hands, it's open thread Wednesday, and I need your thoughts on a few things.

Is trump calling for gun control an attempt to distract us from the fact that he has not ordered his administration to take steps to stop Russian meddling in our next election?

Is Hope Hicks resigning a day after she told a House intelligence panel that she tells "white lies" for trump a big deal?

Do you believe the Russian model who says she will trade dirt on trump for a get out of jail free card?

Is the fact that Robert Mueller is now focusing on whether trump knew about the stolen DNC emails a big deal?

Do we still think it's a good idea for teachers to be armed in classrooms after seeing what happened in Georgia today?

Thoughts?


Tuesday, February 27, 2018

The "bravest" man with the "best" people. Not!

Image result for trump umbrella president' image   Donald trump wants you to believe that he is a very brave man. He actually had the nerve to say that he would have "run" into the high school in Parkland, Florida and taken on the gunman even without a "weapon". Go figure, the guy who won't even protect his own family from the rain would have saved a high school full of children from being slaughtered.

Seriously, who can believe this man? He was too cowardly to serve his country in Vietnam; he is too afraid to fire someone face to face; and, he is afraid of a bird.And we are supposed to believe that this coward would have rushed into a building to take on a gunman with an AR-5 semi-assault rifle? I know that I don't. Only a deranged trump supporter would believe such a declaration. The rest of us aren't buying it. We know a coward when we see one.

Finally, remember when trump promised us that he would drain the swamp and rid Washington of corruption? Well, as we are learning more and more every day, trump being in office has had the exact opposite effect of what goes on in Washington. In fact, this might be the most corrupt regime in the history of the republic. They have gotten so brazen that they are actually cutting back on anti-corruption measures in various industries.

We have case after case of trump and his cronies using our tax dollars for their own benefit. And yet, he was sent to Washington by his minions to clean up the place and "drain the swamp".

Just today we learn that a HUD official was demoted because she wouldn't  break the law and spend a ridiculous amount of money to refurnish Ben Carson's office. (When in Rome huh Uncle Ben?)

"With his space-cadet demeanor and penchant for casually bringing up the apocalypse in conversation, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson is a lot weirder than most Trump cabinet secretaries. But he does share at least one important commonality with most of his fellow swamp-dwellers: The department he runs is an ethical nightmare.

The Guardian reported on Tuesday that a senior career official at HUD filed a lawsuit claiming that she was replaced with a Trump appointee after she declined to find extra (read: illegal) funds to help luxurify Carson’s office.

With his space-cadet demeanor and penchant for casually bringing up the apocalypse in conversation, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson is a lot weirder than most Trump cabinet secretaries. But he does share at least one important commonality with most of his fellow swamp-dwellers: The department he runs is an ethical nightmare.

The Guardian reported on Tuesday that a senior career official at HUD filed a lawsuit claiming that she was replaced with a Trump appointee after she declined to find extra (read: illegal) funds to help luxurify Carson’s office.' [Source]

Oh well, I guess that unlike Omarosa Uncle Ben is going to make sure that he enjoys the "plantation" life while he is there. 

*Pic from yahoo.com
  

Sunday, February 25, 2018

When reality comes to the house.

Don't you just love when house Negroes realize that there is still racism in America? Or worse, that they can become victims of it like everyone else?

Take for instance the case of former RNC Chair, Michael Steele. 

Poor Michael thought that he was different from the rest of us Negroes to his conservative pals. And then, sadly for him, reality came calling.

 "Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on Saturday that the party has a problem with racism after a spokesman for a conservative group said Mr. Steele was chosen as chairman because he is “a black guy.”

The spokesman, Ian B. Walters, made the comment on Friday night at a dinner in Oxon Hill, Md., that was part of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

“We elected Mike Steele to be the R.N.C. chair because he’s a black guy,” said Mr. Walters, the communications director for the American Conservative Union, which organized the conference. 

“That was the wrong thing to do.”

There were audible gasps when Mr. Walters made the comment, Jonathan Levine, the media editor at The Wrap, who was at the dinner, said on Twitter." [Source] 

FYI, when certain white folks "gasp" when they hear racism expressed openly, it's not that they don't co-sign with the sentiment, it's because they don't want it expressed so publicly. 

Of course, as is to be expected, Michael was not pleased.

"I wanted to talk to [CPAC chair] Matt Schlapp first, but I think it's painfully stupid what he said," Steele told Observer. "If he feels that way I'd like him to come say that to my face. And then I'd like him to look at my record and see what I did. I can't believe an official of CPAC would go on stage, in front of an audience, and say something like that. I've been a strong supporter of CPAC for many years, and I thought they raised them better than that here." [Source]

Now now, Michael, all that saying it to my face stuff will only reinforce some of their negative stereotypes of us black folks. I know it hurts, but you are a smart man. Think for a moment. Did you really think that these right-wingnuts that you like to pal around were not racists? Somehow I find that hard to believe.

  "It also goes to insulting not just me -- I mean, I can deal with that, I'm a big boy, put my pants on and go into the fight -- but it goes after everyone in the RNC who knew me and worked with me and supported the effort that I undertook to become chairman," he added. "But even more broadly, it insults every African-American and calls into question their personal accomplishments." 

Come on out here to the fields with us Michael. We have a lot of work to do.   

*Pic from artmaggot

Saturday, February 24, 2018

CAPTION SATURDAY.

  • Image result for nra guns trump image

I need a caption for this pic.


*Pic from miami.cbslocal.com

Friday, February 23, 2018

When good guys don't need guns.

I can't believe that folks are not more outraged at the president's latest proposal to arm school teachers.

It is a silly and lazy proposal to a serious problem, and , more importantly, it is straight from the NRA playbook. Not surprisingly, trump is parroting this talking point.

Teachers have a hard enough job trying to TEACH. Why are we giving them the added responsibility of being armed protectors?There are already people in society who we train and pay to do that. They are called police officers. Giving some poor English teacher a few hours of  firearm training and sending him out there to stop the next mass shooter is ridiculous. Teachers don't want a bonus for firearm training, they want bonuses for helping their students learn.

The NRA wants everyone to have a gun. Preachers. Teachers. Nurses. Doctors. Everybody. More guns means more membership dues, and more people spending money. It doesn't mean a safer society. That notion that a "good guy with a gun beats a bad guy with a gun" was recently debunked in Parkland, Florida. This good guy with a gun did nothing.   I suspect that what we say happen  in Parkland (the school police officer stayed outside rather than confront the shooter) would be the norm with this half-brained idea.

"These people are cowards. They're not going to walk into a school if 20% of the teachers have guns -- it may be 10% or may be 40%. And what I'd recommend doing is the people that do carry, we give them a bonus. We give them a little bit of a bonus," Trump said. "They'll frankly feel more comfortable having the gun anyway. But you give them a little bit of a bonus." 

The head of the teachers union had a different take.  

"Teachers don't want to be armed," "We want to teach. We don't want to be, and would never have the expertise needed to be, sharp shooters; no amount of training can prepare an armed teacher to go up against an AR-15."

* Pic from patch.com




  


Wednesday, February 21, 2018

"Code red".

MORE DISCLAIMERSThe following article is from Thomas L. Friedman writing for the New York Times.

The Field Negro education series continues.  

"Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.
Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the presidency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”
At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller — leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. — has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups — all linked in some way to the Kremlin — for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, America needs a president who will lead our nation’s defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy.

What would that look like? He would educate the public on the scale of the problem; he would bring together all the stakeholders — state and local election authorities, the federal government, both parties and all the owners of social networks that the Russians used to carry out their interference — to mount an effective defense; and he would bring together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin — the best defense of all.

What we have instead is a president vulgarly tweeting that the Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow” for how we’ve been investigating their interventions — and exploiting the terrible school shooting in Florida — and the failure of the F.B.I. to properly forward to its Miami field office a tip on the killer — to throw the entire F.B.I. under the bus and create a new excuse to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Think for a moment how demented was Trump’s Saturday night tweet: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the president — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as president, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyberdefense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.
My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.


But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office." [Source]

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Harasser in Chief.

"Donald J. Trump: You know and ...
Unknown: She used to be great. She’s still very beautiful.
Trump: I moved on her, actually. You know, she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it.
Unknown: Whoa.
Trump: I did try and fuck her. She was married.
Unknown: That’s huge news.
Trump: No, no, Nancy. No, this was [unintelligible] — and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping.
She wanted to get some furniture. I said, “I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.” I took her out furniture —
I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.

I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
Bush: Whatever you want.
Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.
Bush: Uh, yeah, those legs, all I can see is the legs.
Trump: Oh, it looks good.
Bush: Come on shorty.
Trump: Ooh, nice legs, huh?
Bush: Oof, get out of the way, honey. Oh, that’s good legs. Go ahead."

I posted the transcript of that exchange between trump and Bill Bush because it's instructive when trying to determine if one of trump's many accusers is being honest when she revealed how she was assaulted by trump a few years back.

trump, of course, says that she is lying. 

A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago. Never happened! Who would do this in a public space with live security......
    

Sunday, February 18, 2018

"Shut up and dribble", N****r.

Image result for lebron james obama suits charity imagesI am watching the All Star game with its usual pomp and circumstance, and all I can think about is the FOX VIEWS pundit and her ignorant and racist rant about LeBron James. She actually told James to "shut up and dribble"because he had the nerve to speak his opinion about the  president of the United States.

The last time I checked James is a tax paying citizen, who has every right to speak his mind against the president if he disagrees with him about a particular issue. Throw in the fact that James has done more to uplift his community and contribute to making this country a better place than this host could ever do, and you really have to wonder what she was thinking.

I think I know what she was thinking: How dare this uppity N****r speak out against a president who I consider an ideological soul-mate, and who happens to be a racist like me? 

She made fun of the fact that James did not go to college, and she had the nerve to say the following about James criticizing trump: “barely intelligible, not to mention ungrammatical.” Think about this for a minute: A FOX host making fun of someone for not going to college. Irony is clearly dead in America. I am quite sure that well over 50% of their viewers do not have college degrees. But whatever. If you have to fire up your viewers with a tried and true formula of disparaging the black man, well so be it.

Sadly, this is giving the host what she wants: Attention. And she already had her follow up show with the predictable black token and house Negroes going on her show to declare that missy is not a racist. And she even took to twitter to invite him on her show.

 “Hey King, Come play on my Court next week,”   

I don't think that's going to happen, right-wingnut, since I am pretty sure that Bron didn't even know who you were before all of this.

In fact.....

“The best thing she did is help me create more awareness, ” he told reporters. “I appreciate her for giving me even more awareness.”

He continued, “I get to sit up here and talk about social injustice, equality, and why a woman on a certain network decided to tell me to shut up and dribble. So, thank you, whatever her name is — I don’t even know her name.”

Bron, consider yourself lucky.

*Pic from pinterest.com







   

Saturday, February 17, 2018

CAPTION SATURDAY..


    • Image result for trump putin image



I need a caption for this pic.

Example: I think they are getting closer.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Taking cues from a leader.

It turns out that this animal who slaughtered those 17 people in Florida might have been a trump supporter.Yep.

Forget what you have been hearing from right-wingnuts, bots, and the Infowars crowd; these are the facts.

"The teenage gunman accused of slaughtering 17 people at a Florida high school on Wednesday had posted a photo of himself wearing one of President Donald Trump's signature red MAGA hats on Instagram, the social media site confirmed.

"The photo in question shows 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz wearing a hat that features Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan and an American-flag-colored bandana that covers the bottom half of his face.

Following the shooting, which left at least 17 dead and over a dozen more injured, Instagram deleted Cruz's account and released a statement about the action, writing, "This is a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the people who have been affected. There is absolutely no place on our platforms for people who commit such horrendous acts. We have found and immediately deleted the shooter’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram." [Source]

And of course, predictably, he was also a white supremacist.  But we don't worry about white terrorists in this country, just brown ones. The FBI was made aware of this animal, and apparently they even interviewed him. But they clearly didn't think that he was a threat. I wonder why.   

The president was blaming this latest shooting on mental illness, and some of  his minions were even blaming Obama. But the truth is that this very president and his administration overturned an Obama provision to prevent mentally ill people from purchasing guns. 

Anyway, I think we are all Sarah tonight.

"While Mr Trump said he sent his ‘prayers and condolences’ to the families of the dead, adding: ‘No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.’ Sarah replied: ‘I don’t want your condolences you fucking price (sic) of shit, my friends and teachers were shot. I don’t want your condolences you fucking price of shit, my friends and teachers were shot. Multiple of my fellow classmates are dead. 

Do something instead of sending prayers. Prayers won’t fix this. But Gun control will prevent it from happening again." [Source]



 







Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Open Thread Wednesday.

MORE DISCLAIMERS It's open thread Wednesday. And I, like most people, have been thinking about yet another mass shooting taking place in NRAmerica. This time it's in Florida. But it could have been anywhere. This is the 18th school shooting so far this year, and we are not even a full two months in. Think about that for a minute. 

We will now see the 24 hour cable news coverage, and we will hear from all the usual suspects about the need for gun control, or there is too much gun control..........blah blah blah.

And yet, in a week or two, it will be back to normal. trump will be talking about his wall to keep out those evil immigrants who commit all sorts of crimes, and all the politricksters who line their pockets with NRA money will be back to business as usual in Washington.

Meanwhile, the real threat to our safety, is the kid next door who has a self-esteem problem, or the stranger down the street who hates black people and Gays.

Oh yeah, and the politicians who make it so easy for them to get their hands on damn near any type of  weapon that they choose.

Thoughts?

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Vlad's Manchurian.

OK, this Russian thing is starting to really bother me.

I just saw what all those intelligence officials said about Russian meddling in our elections, and yet our your president refuses to acknowledge that there is even a problem. That,  and......well I will just let the image of these tweets say the rest.


  1. @puestoloco:What Intel did Trump, Kelly & Pompeo give to 3 Russian spy agencies? • Why were they here? Why was it secret? Why did Trump waive sanctions for 2? • What did they take back to Russia? • Why did Moscow Times break the story? • Who are Kelly's 40 without security clearances?
Yeah what they said.

Monday, February 12, 2018

A new low.

Donald Trump Fired - Real men Dont hit Women rAISE AWARNESS FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.

trump's buddy Duterte told Philippine soldiers to shoot female rebel soldiers in the vagina.
Wow! What's with these power hungry autocrats and their hatred for women?

Here in America we have our very own version of Duterte. Although he likes to grab women by the pussy, not shoot them there. He also likes to defend men who ("allegedly") beat the crap out of their wives.

Did I mention that trump loves this guy Duterte?

"President Trump praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines in a phone call last month for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem” in the island nation where the government has sanctioned gunning down suspects in the streets. Mr. Trump also boasted that the United States has “two nuclear submarines” off the coast of North Korea but said he does not want to use them.

The comments were part of a Philippine transcript of the April 29 call that was circulated on Tuesday, under a “confidential” cover sheet, by the Americas division of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. In Washington, a senior administration official confirmed that the transcript was an accurate representation of the call between the two iconoclastic leaders. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the call and confirmed it on the condition of anonymity." [Source]

trump sees a lot of himself in men like Duterte, and he sees a lot of himself in men like Rob Porter, Bill O'Reilly,  Roger Ailes, Corey Lewandowski, and all the other pigs [living and dead] who have been accused of similar things. It's why he seemed so passionate and sincere in his defense of Porter.
To him it was personal. And he can certainly relate, he has been accused of abusing (and even raping) countless women in the past. 

But this is where we are in America. The country is being led by a man who wants an ("alleged") wife beater to be given the benefit of the doubt, and he even feels sorry for him. Sadly, not a word about the victims. He doesn't even use the "bully pulpit" to address the serious issue of domestic violence in this country. And yet, some of us stick our heads in the sand and try to pretend that this is normal. Let me assure you that it is not. Unless, of course, you happen to live in the Philippines.  

*Pic from memegenerator.net