Youtube comments of freein2339 (@freein2339).
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Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to illegally entering the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 and who testified at a January 6th Committee hearing, provides a powerful lesson for Republican Party leaders and the obvious start to solving our country’s painful division: Tell the truth.
Stephen Ayres has to rebuild his life, but at least now, he will know that his actions in life will be built on the wisdom gained through his pain: "The biggest thing for me is to take the blinders off and make sure you step back and see what's going on — before it's too late."
Why is that lesson so hard for Republican leaders to process? They have seen the tragic consequences of their lies on the lives of people like Stephen Ayres, and they know they are lies. So, stop. It is really that simple.
The lies of Republican leaders have not only hurt people like Steven Ayres, they have fed the hate of right-wing extremists — both individuals and para-military groups. Charlottesville, Buffalo, South Carolina, Oklahoma City, etc., all stand as tragic demonstrations of their hate and its fatal impact on innocent Americans. Reports make it clear that those groups are only gearing up for more violence in the future, egged on by Trump’s massive 2020 election lie.
Here is the simple truth: There was no measurable fraud in the 2020 election. No one stole it. Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly.
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retsea1 Here's a little history lesson for your stupid "step-n-fetch-it" dumb ass.....
Remember the GOP "predictions" of how Obama was going to destroy the country.....?????
It’s now 2015, nearly two years after Obama took the oath of office for the second time. A few years ago, prognosticators were very confident about what would happen to America by now because of Obama’s reelection. Let’s check in and see how their predictions turned out:
1. Gas was supposed to cost $5.45 per gallon.
In March 2012, on the floor of the United States Senate, Mike Lee (R-UT) predicted that if Obama was reelected gas would cost $5.45 per gallon by the start 2015. Lee said that gas prices would rise 5 cents for every month Obama was in office, ultimately reaching $6.60 per gallon.
Lee was not alone. Newt Gingrich, running for the GOP nomination, predicted that if Obama was reelected he would push gas to “$10 a gallon.” Gingrich said he would reduce gas prices dramatically by reversing Obama’s energy policies. Gingrich flanked himself with campaign signs promising $2.50 gas if he was elected.
Today, the nationwide average for a gallon of gas is $2.24.
A lot of the reasons for the decline in gas prices are well beyond Obama’s control — including weak international demand and OPEC’s failure to reduce supply. But the policies that Lee, Gingrich and others criticized — the failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, more EPA regulation and limiting drilling on public land — have not gotten in the way of historically low prices.
2. Unemployment was supposed to be stuck at over 8%
In September 2012, Mitt Romney predicted that if Obama is reelected “you’re going to see chronic high unemployment continue four years or longer.” At the time, the unemployment rate was 8.1% and had been between 8.1% and 8.3% for the entire year.
What would breaking out of “chronic high unemployment” look like in a Romney presidency? Romney pledged that, if elected, he could bring the unemployment rate down to 6% by January 2017.
The unemployment rate currently stands at 5.8% and has been under 6% since September 2014. Since January 2013, the economy has created nearly 5 million new jobs.
3. The stock market was supposed to crash
Immediately after Obama won reelection in November 2012, many commenters predicted that the stock market was toast.
Charles Bilderman, the author of the “Intelligent Investing” column at Forbes, wrote that the “market selloff after Obama’s re-election [was] no accident,” predicting “stocks are dropping with no bottom in sight.” Bilderman said that the policies the Obama administration would pursue in his second term would “crash stocks.”
On Bloomberg TV, investor Marc Faber predicted that, because of Obama’s reelection, the stock market would drop at least 20%. According to Faber, “Republicans understand the problem of excessive debt better than Mr. Obama who basically doesn’t care about piling up debt.” Faber joked that investors seeking to protect their assets should “buy themselves a machine gun.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average currently stands at 17,823 and is up over 35% since Obama was reelected.
4. The entire U.S. economy was supposed to collapse
Rush Limbaugh predicted that “the country’s economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected.” Limbaugh was confident in his prediction: “There’s no if about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be gut wrenching, but it will happen.”
The economic freefall would begin, according to Limbaugh, because “California is going to declare bankruptcy” and Obama would force states like Texas to “bail them out.” California currently has a $4 billion budget surplus.
Limbaugh added, “I know mathematics, and I know economics. I know history. I know socialism, statism, Marxism, I know where it goes. I know what happens at the end of it.”
He did fudge, however, on the exact timing of the economic apocolypse. Limbaugh said it could take “a year and a half, two years, three years.” It’s been two years and two months since Limbaugh’s prediction, so he still technically has another 10 months to be proven right.
The U.S. economy grew at a robust 5% in the 3rd quarter of 2014, following 4.6% growth in the second quarter.
Although these dire economic predictions have proven false, it doesn’t mean there aren’t real, persistent problems with the U.S. economy. Most critically, wage growth for American workers remains stagnant. That’s why, although many economic indicators are strong, a lot of Americans aren’t yet feeling the impact. But the economy is much better than it was before Obama got elected...
A better question is...
What has the GOP done for the country in the last 15 years....????
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+Redblactivist You sound like a typical useless uncle tom with that weak bullshit...Black people don't have to "play the victim"..We have the racist white cops that
are kiiling unarmed Black people to victimize us...we have the GOP voter
suppression drive to victimize us...we have the bias court system which gives
Black defendants more jail time then white defendants for the same crime to
victimize us...we have Black professionals with a higher rate of unemployment
then less qualified white professionals to victimize us..We have a growing number of white supremacist groups that have pokitical power to vixtimize us...Black people have had it harder then any group in this country with the exception of Native Americans ..Has any other group gone through slavery , reconstruction , peonage , Jim Crow , being the last hired and first fired , and of course our heritage , religion , language , culture etc were all taken away....We have "manufactored knee-grow" like you worshipping to a white Jesus and thinkiing there is no longer a need to fight racism because in your shallow brain racism doesn't exist...That's interesting since Black unemployment is always much higher than white unemployment...AND... Black professionals and Black college graduates have a much higher unemployment rate than uneducated white workers...The answer of course is to have own businesses and hire our own people ...And don't think that has not been tried before or done before ...Remember Black Wall St and places like Rosewood...???..But we must try again and we cannot be afraid to expose racism ...By the way , must Black people are not on welfare , are not in jail , are not on drugs and are not waiting for some white person to give them anything..You and the rest of the "step-n-fetch-it" knee-grows believe the images that you see on television...However there is much work to be done and we cannot ignore problems that we caused ourselves but to ignore the racism that we have faced and will continue to face is stupid at best...Maybe you need to study a history and ask yourself who gets must of the "government money"...Oil companies get subsides , defense contractors get tax breaks , Russian and Italian mafia gets police and court protection , when wlefare was started in the early 1900s Black people got nothing , the healthcare system also practices racism ..There is a book by Dorothy Robeerts titled..."Killing The Black Body"....I suuggest you read it....And the most unanswered question is ....Where does all this hatred for Black people come from...???...can you answer that..??...By the way , Carson is a nutcase....
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+Ken Freeman You dumb ass nazis...Not everybody can avoid the racist court system and what happens when a white person assaults a Black person ..??..In most cases nothing ...You need to wake up and get your head out of your ass and stop making excuses for racism...The National Registry of Exonerations, a collaborative effort between the University of Michigan law school at Ann Arbor and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the School of Law at Northwestern University in Chicago. An updated registry of features stories of the wrongfully convicted and was recently released.According to the report, Blacks account for nearly half (47 percent) of all known exonerees in 1989, and Whites made up nearly 39 percent of all known exonerees. When the updated exoneration report was released in April, 57 percent of the known cases that occurred in 2012 involved Blacks.Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the editor of The National Registry of Exonerations said the 10 percent increase for Blacks was striking, but it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions. Gross said that he continues to learn about new cases that occurred in 2012. In last year’s report released in June 2012, the registry found that 50 percent of the all known exonerees were Black.“It’s striking and if it stands up and it repeats in another year or two it will be an important trend,” said Gross.According to the registry report, 52 percent of the wrongful conviction cases involved perjury or false accusation, 43 percent involved official misconduct and 41 percent involved mistaken eyewitness identification.The majority (57 percent) of all known exonerations were in homicide cases and 47 percent of those cases involved Black defendants and 37 percent involved Whites. Blacks accounted for 63 percent and Whites 18 percent of those wrongfully convicted of committed robberies.“Homicide and robbery, sadly to say, are crimes that African Americans are heavily overrepresented in the prison population,” said Gross.The report found that “African Americans constitute 25% of prisoners incarcerated for rape, but 62% of those exonerated for such crimes.”Faulty eyewitness identification continues to drive the high rate of Blacks involved in adult sexual assault exoneration cases. Gross said that this is likely because of problems associated with cross-racial identification.“White people don’t have the type of experience living with and distinguishing members of other races as minorities do,” said Gross. “There is also a long terrible history of racial discrimination in the prosecution of African Americans for rape when they are accused of raping White women and that may be a factor here, too.”According to the National Registry of Exonerations, a majority of the cases (52 percent) involve witness making a false accusation or committing perjury. Forty-one percent of the cases involve faulty eyewitness identification.“As a group, the defendants had spent nearly 11,000 years in prison for crimes for which they should not have been convicted – an average of more than 10 years each,” stated a report by The National Registry of Exonerations released in April.These are often the most productive years of a person’s life and the reason why many criminal justice advocates say that seeking compensation for wrongful convictions is the only chance that exonerees have in regaining a foothold in a world that is often much different than how they left it.“Unfortunately, many of our clients have been in jail for decades and often these were the best years of their life; the years where you can go to school and get an education, years where you can build a career and learn how to do a job,” said Paul Cates, communications director for the Innocence Project. “When they get out after 15 or 20 or 25 years, it’s very difficult to enter the job market without an education and without any marginal skills.”Cates said that, when the government confines someone for those lengths of time, they definitely deserve to be compensated. Cates added: “It’s particularly true when you consider that they have no way of making a living once they’ve been released.”Despite the proliferation of crime shows depicting the use of DNA in solving murders and proving innocence or guilt of a suspect, DNA testing is becoming less of a factor in wrongful conviction cases, because it is often initiated before cases go to trial.“DNA evidence can be very persuasive to courts and to judges and to prosecutors, because it’s a very definitive proof of innocence,” said Cates. “But in all these other cases where this evidence is not available, it’s really hard to prove when someone has been wrongfully convicted and the court system doesn’t make that easy.”..Like a typical little dick punk ass nazi you want Black people to remain silent about racism and think they are the fault of all this unexplainable hatred..By the way Adolf...Jesus had dreadlocks....These innocent people in jail did not act like fools...Tanir Rice was playing with a toy gun and was shot WITHOUT WARNING...did he act like a fool...???//..Did the Black cops that complainedt racist white cops act like fools...The fools are the ones like you that condone racism and then try to make excuses for it and then blame Black people for being targets of racism...Tell me Adolf......where does all this hatred for Black people come from...???
+Ken Freeman Typical useless nazi response...Tell you me you stupid ass...As an american citizen paying taxes and taking care of my family why shouldn't I expect to be treated fairly...??..And when I'm not treated fairly why should I be silent about it...???...Why are white defendant treated better then Black defendant...?? why is there a racist court system..??..,By the way , 90% of white people are killed by white people and most if not all serial killers are white nutcases that people like you keep making excuses for..You also keep making excuses for racism like it's some long lost novel tucked away in a small town library...Racism in this country is real and when unarmed Black people are killed for no reason then being Black that problem has to be addressed...Now I knoiw that you think white people are so damn wonderful and do very little wrong but the truth says otherwise...Therefore a movement like "Black Lives Matter" is needed just as the Civil Rights Movement was needed , just like the Panthers were needed , just like the Urban league was needed , just like the CBC is needed , just like the NAACP is needed...etc..etc.....Tell me ...where does all this hatred for Black people come from...???
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MrStugaez...The "tribal warfare" was nothing compared to the genocide in North America , South America , Austria , or the slavery , colonialism , and constant exploitation....Also the erasing of history that was replaced with a fake white Jesus and a fake belief that people of color "need" Europeans to survive...NOTHING could be further from the truth...And who do you think the Greeks learned mathematics form...???...Where was the first university , where are the great pyramids , where is the first written language....and who was the first man to receive the breath of life ..???....Europeans only brought disease , destruction , exploitation , and war on a much greater level...Ask Japan about the atom bomb...who dropped it...???..The best thing Europeans can do for people of color is to go back to Europe....Just leave us alone forever....we will be alright you can believe that....
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trump's father was in the KKK.....
The [Queens County Evening News] mentions Fred Trump as having been
"discharged" and gives the Devonshire Road address, along with the names
and addresses of the other six men who faced charges. Yet another
account in another defunct local newspaper, the Richmond Hill Record,
published on June 3, 1927, lists Fred Trump as one of the "Klan
Arrests," and also lists the Devonshire Road address.
Another article about the rally, published by the Long Island Daily
Press on June 2, 1927, mentions that there were seven arrestees without
listing names, and claims that all of the individuals arrested were
wearing Klan attire. ... While the Long Island Daily Press doesn't
mention Fred Trump specifically, the number of arrestees cited in the
report is consistent with the other accounts of the rally.
Significantly, the article refers to all of the arrestees as "berobed
marchers."
THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT WERE ARRESTED AT THAT RALLY WERE KLANSMAN...AND
FRED PUNK ASS TRUMP WAS AMONG THOSE ARRESTED....FUCK HIM AND HE PUNK ASS
SON DONALD...
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@keithbell9348 Yes you ignorant asshole the subject is voting...that's why you should shut the fuck up if you don;t vote...Now I suggest you take a good look at the supreme court , your local politics , the rise of hate crimes , the rising debt , the ignorance toward climate change , the blind eye toward police brutality , the love affair with dictators , the overall attack on people of color , the lack of common sense concerning healthcare , the racist judicial system , the racist education system etc etc...are you getting all this you little dumb ass...Voting is a tool that your relatives fought and died for and if voting was not important , why has there been such great pains to oppress it....wake up son...the view from the inside of your ass is limited....Sorry if I hurt your feelings but you are not looking at the big picture...
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@gbenay trump's father was in the KKK..... The [Queens County Evening News] mentions Fred Trump as having been "discharged" and gives the Devonshire Road address, along with the names and addresses of the other six men who faced charges. Yet another account in another defunct local newspaper, the Richmond Hill Record, published on June 3, 1927, lists Fred Trump as one of the "Klan Arrests," and also lists the Devonshire Road address. Another article about the rally, published by the Long Island Daily Press on June 2, 1927, mentions that there were seven arrestees without listing names, and claims that all of the individuals arrested were wearing Klan attire. ... While the Long Island Daily Press doesn't mention Fred Trump specifically, the number of arrestees cited in the report is consistent with the other accounts of the rally. Significantly, the article refers to all of the arrestees as "berobed marchers." THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT WERE ARRESTED AT THAT RALLY WERE KLANSMAN...AND FRED PUNK ASS TRUMP WAS AMONG THOSE ARRESTED....FUCK HIM AND HE PUNK ASS SON DONALD
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David Lowery Wayne Bertsch, a veteran GOP consultant told the Tampa Bay Times that targeting Democrats was always the goal in curbing early voting. "In the races I was involved in in 2008, when we started seeing the increase of turnout and the turnout operations that the Democrats were doing in early voting, it certainly sent a chill down our spines."
Another tactic, favored in Texas and Florida, is to target nonprofit groups that conduct voter-registration drives (the League of Women Voters, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). This is achieved by imposing onerous new training, registration and/or liability burdens on the groups' volunteers. The proportion of African-American and Latino voters who register through third-party drives is about twice what it is for whites.
Republican campaign consultant Scott Tranter
"A lot of us are campaign officials -- or campaign professionals -- and we want to do everything we can to help our side. Sometimes we think that's voter ID, sometimes we think that's longer lines -- whatever it may be," Tranter said with a laugh.
Franklin County (Columbus) GOP Chair Doug Preisse.. "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine." Preisse is not some rogue operative but the chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio's second-largest county and a close adviser to Ohio Governor John Kasich.
Pa House majority leader Mike Turzai, said his state's voter ID law "is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania,"
U.S. District Judge Stephen J. Murphy ordered Michigan election officials to immediately halt and attempt to rectify one of the two practices -- canceling voter registrations for those whose voter identification card is returned as undeliverable. Murphy ordered the state to remove the "rejected" marking in the qualified voter file for all persons whose original voter ID cards have been returned to the state as undeliverable since Jan. 1, 2006. About 1,500 people have been removed from the voter list in that manner this year, according to evidence presented in the case.
Voter hours were extended in white distrcits of Ohio while voting hours were cut in the Black districts....
Got all that Adolf...???...good now go back to your KKK meeting
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GreyWolfLeaderTW · The Council of Conservative Citizens, a St. Louis-based group that promotes the preservation of the white race, has sponsored its own tea parties in some Southern states.
The council’s website has referred to blacks as “a retrograde species of humanity” and said non-white immigration would turn the country into a “slimy brown mass of glop.”
· Gordon Baum, the group’s founder, told The Star that the council encourages members to participate in tea parties.
He described the tea party rallies as “mainly a white thing, because there’s not a whole lot of blacks that participate, and the ones that do get to be speakers.”
· That leads some groups into a bizarre hypersensitivity, he said.
“They have black speakers, and sometimes when they can’t get one lined up, they just get some poor devil that’s on their side, black guy, in the audience and drag him up on stage,” he said.
Some other white supremacy groups also see tea parties as recruiting grounds.
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@youtubedeletesmychannels2329 First of all do your homework....The Klan first emerged after the Civil War in an effort to intimidate Southern blacks to stay out of politics and to exploit their labor. It was created in Pulaski, Tennessee, by Confederate veterans: Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones and James Crowe. Mark Pitcavage, senior fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told The Associated Press that it was originally designed “purely for entertainment, with no political motivations.” Pitcavage said members engaged in social antics that grew to incorporate cruel pranks. The Klan gradually took on a political tone and by 1867 it began engaging in violent acts. According to Pitcavage, many KKK members were Democrats since the Whig Party had died out and white Southerners disliked the Republican party. He says, though, that the Klan was not started by the Democratic Party “ nor did it have ideological motives until later.”
By the 1870s the Klan had died out since white Southerners had retaken control of state governments “through their campaigns of violence and intimidation.” When a new Klan emerged in the 1910s, it attracted members from both parties, as well as members affiliated with no parties.
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@youtubedeletesmychannels2329 A collection of radical right figures including white nationalists and ultranationalist European leaders gathered in Manhattan for the New York Young Republican Club’s (NYYRC) annual gala Saturday night, where that group’s president declared “total war” on perceived enemies.
“We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets,” NYYRC president Gavin Wax declared to a room full of supporters at 583 Park Ave., an event venue on New York’s Upper East Side.
“This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power,” Wax added....At the five-hour event, which Hatewatch reporters attended, white nationalists Peter and Lydia Brimelow of VDARE hobnobbed with Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser and White House official. Donald Trump Jr. was also in attendance.
Republicans publicly lauded members in attendance from an Austrian political party founded by World War II-era Nazi party members. Racist political operative Jack Posobiec shared jokes across a table with Josh Hammer, the opinion editor of Newsweek. Multiple recently elected GOP congresspeople applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene, who told the NYYRC crowd in the event’s closing remarks that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol would have succeeded if she had planned it and that the insurrectionists would have been armed.
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+freein2339 Marco Rubio on Black Lives Matter.... "This is a legitimate issue," Rubio said. "It is a fact that in the African-American community around this country there has been, for a number of years now, a growing resentment toward the way law enforcement and the criminal justice system interacts with the community. It is particularly endemic among young African-American males — that in some communities in this country have a much higher chance of interacting with criminal justice than higher education. We do need to face this. It is a serious problem in this country."Rubio also gave a personal anecdote: "I have one friend in particular who's been stopped in the last 18 months eight to nine different times. Never got a ticket for being stopped — just stopped. If that happened to me, after eight or nine times, I'd be wondering what's going on here. I'd be upset about it. So would anybody else." If you're arrested, if you're a 19-year-old, young minority male — African American or Hispanic — you're arrested, if you don't have any money, you're going to get public defenders. And they're going to push you toward a plea deal, because they're handling a thousand cases. You now have a record, which means you are now stigmatized — in the eyes of your employer, in the eyes of your future, etc. …And once you incarcerate someone, their chances of repeating offenses in the future begin to climb, because you're now basically housing them with criminals that they're learning the tools of the trade [with].We do need to address that. And it is particularly troubling among young African-American males."
Part of the problem is also cultural. One reason police are more likely to use force on and arrest black Americans is because they're more likely to perceive black people as threats due to what's known as “implicit bias“ Studies show, for example, that officers are quicker to shoot
black suspects in video game simulations .Part of this can be addressed through better training for cops, but some of it is simply rooted in how a person is raised, the kind of media he's exposed to, and other cultural influences.So Rubio is right in acknowledging not just that racial disparities in the criminal justice system
are a big problem, but how the problem presents itself. That's a big contrast
to a Republican field that has ranged from ignorant to hostile toward Black
Lives Matter....That includes Ben Carson....
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+josh b
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler hated blacks almost as much as he hated Jews.
In his autobiography Mein Kampf, Hitler referred to Afro-Germans as “Rhineland bastards”—a reference to the children of German and African parents.Among other forms of oppression, the Nazis sterilized German blacks. The intent was to prevent Afro-German men from having children with white German women and “diluting” the Aryan race.In the 1997 documentary Hitler’s Forgotten Victims, black German survivors talked about the forced sterilization. After the procedure, often administered without anesthesia, the blacks were free to leave after getting a certificate … and vowing to never sleep with German women..Black prisoners of war faced illegal incarceration and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who did not uphold the regulations imposed by the Geneva Convention (international agreement on the conduct of war and the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). Lieutenant Darwin Nichols, an African American pilot, was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach. Black soldiers of the American, French, and British armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps. Others were never even incarcerated, but were instead immediately killed by the SS or Gestapo.There is also the American Nazi Party and they hate Black people ...just like you do ...Adolf...
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+Chris Kavanagh Here's what some republicans say about Obamacare...To be clear, the comments in this article are my opinion and mine alone and should not be construed as representative of the site in general.I’m also quite sure some of you have your fingers hovering over the R-I-N-O keys so let me start by giving you my Republican credentials and political views.I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life other than maybe when I was 18, didn’t know what I was doing and voted for people based on how patriotic their names sounded.I’m worried our entitlement programs have turned into a handout and not a hand up. Without better accountability measures, I think our current system traps families in a cycle of poverty.I would love to be able to invest my own Social Security money because with the government in charge, I don’t think my money is going to be waiting for me at retirement time.I’m concerned with our punitive tax system. We say it’s the American dream for everyone to make it big, but if you succeed, by golly, we’re going to take your money away and give it to someone else.I think less government is better government, except in cases of life and death (which is where I think health insurance falls).So that said, this is why I love the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare as it is so affectionately called by some.I love that it will help ensure everyone has access to careI’ve been reporting on health reform since before the law passed, and in the early days, there was a lot of concern about government death panels deciding who would get care and who would be left to die.Well, we already have our own version of death panels: It’s called health insurance. If you have coverage, you get treatment. If not, well, tough for you.True story: When my husband was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, the parting words of the doctor who did the endoscopy were, no joke, “I hope you have health insurance. Because you’re going to need it.”Boy, was he right. When I called the cancer center for general information, they asked for our insurance information. When I made the consultation appointment, they asked for our insurance information. When we showed up, they checked our insurance information. In the middle of the consultation, we met with a finance guy who, that’s right, checked our insurance information.And then get this. We show up for the first chemo visit, my husband is hooked to the IV and the nurse says she needs to wait a minute before getting started. When my husband asked why, she said it was because they needed to reconfirm our insurance coverage. My husband asked what happens if the insurance company says they won’t pay, and the nurse told him they would probably pull us back to meet with a financial adviser and they might need to change the treatment plan.In other words, if you don’t have health insurance, you get sub-par treatment.That brings me to the next reason I love Obamacare.I love that it gives new options for those with pre-existing conditionsIf you have only ever had insurance through your workplace, you probably think the health insurance system is great. I know I did when I had group coverage. One huge difference is how pre-existing conditions have been treated under the law. . However, no such protection was extended to those buying individual plans. If you had a pre-existing condition and needed to buy your own health insurance, you were up the proverbial creek and without an oar.Here’s my real-world example – one that helped change my view on health insurance. In the summer of 2010, in anticipation of leaving my office job, which provided our family insurance, I received a quote for individual coverage that was $800 a month with a $7,000 deductible. And that was the good plan out of multiple choices.My husband was diagnosed with cancer a few months later and then our options dwindled down to exactly zero. Fortunately, a 1986 federal law – – gave me the right to continue to buy my former workplace policy for 18 months. It cost $1,300 a month but, hey, what else are you going to do if you need coverage?Then after 18 months, thanks to that same federal law, our insurance provider was required to offer us an individual insurance plan. This mercifully dropped our premiums to $800 a month but gave us a $5,000 deductible. However, we were grateful to just have insurance since my husband’s pre-existing condition meant no one else would cover us.You may be thinking there were high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions, right? Well, in our state, you needed to be uninsured for six months to be eligible. That’s not much help to people who have immediate medical needs.It may also be crossing your mind that people could just get a job or they should have gotten health insurance earlier or it’s such a small percentage of people affected that we shouldn’t bother changing the system. Maybe or maybe not, but again, we’re talking about people’s lives here. I find the attitude of “too bad for you” to be disturbing, particularly when it comes from my fellow Christian Republicans.I love that it focuses on preventive care and essential servicesOn a different note, I love that Obamacare is requiring insurance companies to provide free preventive services and cover essential services.I know mandates go against the pro-business party line, but as a Republican, I appreciate the fiscal soundness behind this strategy. It makes more sense to pay 60,000 a year to help someome manage thier diabetis than it does to have them develop end-stage renal disease, which can cost upward of 70,000 per patientSame thing goes for mental health services which, prior to the passage of Obamacare, were not covered by 1 in 5 heslth plans.Under the law, mental health and substance abuse services are essential health benefits and must be covered by all new health insurance plans.Does mandating mental illness coverage increase our health insurance premiums? Perhaps, but I can’t believe our costs will go up more than the estimated 4 billion we are already paying annually as a result of untreated mental illness. And that doesn’t include the emotional price we pay when someone’s untreated mental illness leads to tradegyIn the short run, paying for preventive services and essential health benefits might cost us a little more. However, after crunching the numbers, I like to think my fiscally conservative friends would agree, in the long run, paying for preventive care simply makes sense.I love that it gives premium assistance to working familiesSo many government assistance programs are geared toward people living at or just above the poverty limit, and I love that Obamacare is extending some financial love to the working middle class.Many people work long hours to make ends meet and stay off the welfare rolls. If the government is going to be doling out money – and we all know it is – I’m glad these families are finally getting a piece of the pie.Plus, as with preventive care, I would rather give working families a couple hundred dollars a month to supplement their premium payments and keep them covered rather than have us pay for their emergency room visitsI love that it’s a start … but I’m not convinced it’s the answerFinally, I love that Obamacare is getting the conversation started. It’s not perfect by any means, but it has moved what is, quite frankly, a life and death issue to the forefront.That said, I am not convinced the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the answer to our health care problems. These are my concerns:Constitutionality. Despite the fact I was secretly rooting for the bill, I was shocked when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it constitutional. While I understand the reason for requiring everyone to get health insurance, the mandate seems like overreach of government authority. My hope would be that if affordable health insurance becomes widely available, everyone would be smart enough to take advantage of it without a government requirement.Government incompetence. My second concern is that the government may simply not be up for the challenge. Despite having three years’ advance notice, the online marketplace was and is a mess. It took at least 10 hours of my time to get my application in and, in the end, a technical difficulty preventing me from even being able to view my plan choices. Instead, I had to rely on a phone operator who had a questionable level of knowledge to explain the available plans. Couple that with all the people having trouble accessing their benefits, and I’m starting to wonder if the government is causing more harm than good.So the law isn’t perfect in my mind, but at least it’s moving our health care system in the right direction — a direction that ensures we don’t leave marginalized people to die.There you have it: That’s why I’m Republican and love Obamacare. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong Maryalene Laponsie....
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Wayne Bertsch, a veteran GOP consultant told the Tampa Bay Times that
targeting Democrats was always the goal in curbing early voting. "In the
races I was involved in in 2008, when we started seeing the increase of
turnout and the turnout operations that the Democrats were doing in
early voting, it certainly sent a chill down our spines."
Another
tactic, favored in Texas and Florida, is to target nonprofit groups that
conduct voter-registration drives (the League of Women Voters, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). This is
achieved by imposing onerous new training, registration and/or liability
burdens on the groups' volunteers. The proportion of African-American
and Latino voters who register through third-party drives is about twice
what it is for whites.
Republican campaign consultant Scott Tranter
"A lot of us are campaign officials -- or campaign professionals -- and
we want to do everything we can to help our side. Sometimes we think
that's voter ID, sometimes we think that's longer lines -- whatever it
may be," Tranter said with a laugh.
Franklin County (Columbus) GOP
Chair Doug Preisse.. "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't
contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read
African-American—voter-turnout machine." Preisse is not some rogue
operative but the chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio's
second-largest county and a close adviser to Ohio Governor John Kasich.
Pa House majority leader Mike Turzai, said his state's voter ID law "is
gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania,"
U.S.
District Judge Stephen J. Murphy ordered Michigan election officials to
immediately halt and attempt to rectify one of the two practices --
canceling voter registrations for those whose voter identification card
is returned as undeliverable. Murphy ordered the state to remove the
"rejected" marking in the qualified voter file for all persons whose
original voter ID cards have been returned to the state as undeliverable
since Jan. 1, 2006. About 1,500 people have been removed from the voter
list in that manner this year, according to evidence presented in the
case.
Voter hours were extended in white distrcits of Ohio while voting hours were cut in the Black districts....
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In September 2014, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp expressed concern
that too many minority voters were registering to vote for the November
midterms and so he found it necessary to subpoena the records of at
least one group working to register more Black and Latino voters.
Now he has gone and "lost" 40,000 voter registration forms handed in by one group.
The Root:
According
to an Al-Jazeera report, it’s a sentiment that the staffers at Third
Sector Development are expressing. The nonprofit organization was on a
mission to register as many black and Hispanic people in the state of
Georgia as possible so that voter turnout for the upcoming midterm
elections in November would be high. And they were successful at it,
until they received word that about half of the applications they
submitted for processing have gone missing in action.
“Over the
last few months, the group submitted some 80,000 voter-registration
forms to the Georgia secretary of state’s office—but as of last week,
about half those new registrants, more than 40,000 Georgians, were still
not listed on preliminary voter rolls. And there is no public record of
those 40,000-plus applications, according to state Rep. Stacey Adams, a
Democrat,” Al-Jazeera explained.
But Secretary Kemp says, hey, we're not doing anything differently. Sure they're not.
Georgia
Secretary of State Brain Kemp explained that his office is not doing
anything differently from how it usually processes applications. But
some people aren’t buying his story, seeing as how he’s a Republican,
and black and Hispanic people tend to vote for Democrats.
Georgia
Republicans have been raising eyebrows for some time now with regard to
early voting and voter-ID issues. One state Republican didn’t like how
black and Hispanic voters had easy access to early-voting opportunities.
They
cut early voting, they've got horrible Voter ID laws, and now the
Secretary of State has 40,000 less voter registration forms than were
submitted. Jim Crow is alive and well in Georgia and surrounds, isn't
it?
Of course there are many other incidents of GOP voter suppression....that's why the GOP will not get support from Black voters....too much racism...
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“Through an objective assessment, we have seen no evidence that your
Administration acted on our calls for action, and we have in fact
witnessed steps that will affirmatively hurt Black communities,” Rep.
Richmond wrote. While we agreed to explore possible future discussions
when we first met, it has become abundantly clear that a conversation
with the entire CBC would not be entirely productive, given the actions
taken by your Administration since our first meeting.”
The caucus is also refusing to meet with Trump because of the “lack
of response” to at least eight letters of concern written to Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and other
officials.
“Based on the actions taken by you and your
Administration since that meeting, it appears that our concerns, and
your stated receptiveness to them, fell on deaf ears,” the letter said.
fuck adolf trump
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+Supersmashist Why would Liberals be afriad of Black conservatives....Black conservative can't even get mire themn 2-3 Blacks in the GOP congress...The only thing Black conservatives are good for is being anti-Black...At least that's what mosr Black conservatives do....not "Brotheres' like Colin Powell..or this brother....
·
"The environment inside the Republican
Party today is a treacherous moral swamp for African-Americans. No black
conservative figure has yet managed to remain in a position of influence inside
the GOP while speaking honestly about racial questions.
When an NAACP chairman derided
Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott recently as a “ventriloquist’s dummy”
he touched a deep nerve. Going all the way back to Reconstruction, black
conservatives have fought to justify their emphasis on economic progress against
those who sought more direct resistance to injustice.
That is a fine line to walk and it
has never been easy. When black leaders allow themselves be used as tokens,
they will deserve the suspicion they retain in the black community no matter
what other sincere goals or opinions they may hold. This is an unfair dilemma
that white political figures seldom face, but history has made it unavoidable.
Black leaders cannot expect to be
taken seriously so long as they quietly acquiesce to rhetoric and policies openly
hostile to minority communities. For black conservatives, the price of
credibility is courage.
Standing in front of a white audience
and validating their racist assumptions is a fast track to popularity and
political opportunity. Few things thrill a white nationalist more than a black
man who agrees with him. Every racist has ‘lots of black friends’ and being one
of those black friends offers benefits.
With the GOP in thrall to an ugly
Neo-Confederate resurgence, the 2012 Republican Convention featured its lowest
percentage of black delegates in modern history. Interestingly, while there
were only 46 black delegates, the convention featured eight minority speakers
on the main stage alone. Being a black Republican willing to toe the line
without question is an outstanding way to gain access to a platform.
It is entirely reasonable to expect
that Sen. Scott’s position as a Senator was paid for by his willingness to be
used. He has done nothing yet in his career that would be inconsistent with
that characterization. Recite the party’s talking points and he gets to be a
Senator. Acknowledge the existence of racism in any credible matter and he will
be escorted to the exit, where he will be greeted by Colin Powell and Michael
Steele.
One of the GOP’s other black friends,
former Rep. Allen West, learned that lesson the hard way when he accidentally
said something honest about the Trayvon Martin case. He quickly backed down,
explained that Martin had it coming because he wasn’t a “respectful young man.”
West recognized the value of being a “respectful young man” in the GOP and now
he has a nice gig with Fox News.
This dilemma complicates the appeal
of black conservatives, making it extremely difficult to communicate a
credible, persuasive message without losing access to the political process. To
speak honestly about race means being ostracized from the Republican Party. To
speak honestly about the role of values and culture in the plight of the black
community means being ostracized from the Democratic Party. Black conservatives
can accept a humiliatingly subservient role in a Republican Party that wants
them to perform like circus animals or sit outside the process, alienated and
disempowered.
Not everyone in the black community
sees this dilemma. In particular, many black religious fundamentalists do not
perceive this problem at all. It is from their ranks that figures like Tim
Scott and former Rep. Allen West have emerged. If you believe in a
6000-year-old universe it isn’t so hard to believe that Obama is a Socialist
Anti-Christ or that he cheered the attack on the American Consulate in
Benghazi.
Black religious fundamentalists feel
comfortable walking shoulder to shoulder with Tea Party activists bent on
destroying minority voting rights and ending “income redistribution” to black
urban moochers in hoodies. They are marching with the far-right far-white in
pursuit of higher, apocalyptic goals. If gay marriage is the single greatest
threat to civilization then perhaps an alignment with the GOP’s farthest
ideological fringe makes sense.
For non-white conservatives with
their feet planted firmly in the reality-based community the rhetoric being
spewed by Republicans in recent years is more than a little frightening. Some
hard-right black evangelicals may have made peace with the Tea Party, but their
numbers are very small. That’s why most if not all of the African-Americans at
your local Tea Party rally will be speaking onstage.
Whether he likes it or not, Sen.
Scott is becoming a national mascot for the efforts of Tea Party Republicans to
whitewash the movement’s glaring racism. The dilemma he faces may be unique to
black political figures, but as the Republican Party becomes more and more an
engine for white nationalism, that burden spreads more broadly to all conservatives,
regardless of race.
The same credibility problem faced by
black conservatives is becoming a dangerous threat to conservatism at large. If
Sen. Scott is a token set up to distract us all from the GOP’s racism, then
what is Karl Rove? At what point should all conservatives face the same duty to
speak about racism that we justly place on Sen. Scott’s shoulders?
If conservatism is going to survive,
conservatives should all take a close look at the dilemma faced by Sen. Scott.
The movement badly needs an update to avoid atrophying into a tool of racial
and political anachronisms. Conservatism will not survive if it fails to
represent something more compelling than the stubborn preservation of white
cultural supremacy. A handful of well-placed black friends may obscure the
party’s problems, but they are not going to save conservatism from
itself."
Chris Ladd - a Black republican
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andrew1970able Nice try Adolf but you seem to forget a lot of facts here....so let's try this again...
Republicans admit voter suppression...
Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday blasted his own party for making it tougher for minorities to vote.
The Kentucky Republican, a likely presidential candidate, has long argued that drug laws disproportionately affect minorities and has also championed restoring voting rights for some non-violent felons. He laid out those views in a speech at the Liberty PAC conference, a gathering tied to his father, libertarian icon Ron Paul.
“So many times, Republicans are seen as this party of, ‘We don’t want black people to vote because they’re voting Democrat, we don’t want Hispanic people to vote because they’re voting Democrat,’” he said. “We wonder why the Republican Party is so small. Why don’t we be the party that’s for people voting, for voting rights?”
Kiara Pesante, the Democratic National Committee’s director of African-American media, replied to the speech in a statement, saying: “While Rand Paul chides the GOP for outreach to people of color, Paul supports voter ID laws that make voting harder, dismissed the need for the Voting Rights Act and voiced opposition to the Civil Rights Act. If Rand Paul wants [to] criticize Republicans, he should start by looking in the mirror.”
--------
7th District Court of Appeals Conservative Judge Richard Posner last month called voter fraud “essentially nonexistent.”
There are indeed correlations between Republican governors and the “voting mechanism,” the conservative judge found. Specifically, new voter identification laws are “highly correlated with a state’s having a Republican governor and Republican control of the legislature.” Unfortunately, Posner went on to say, “such laws appear to be aimed at limiting voting by minorities, particularly blacks.” He continued: “There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud, and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.”
----------------
As his own party pushed through the Wisconsin Senate the latest in a series of measures to make it harder to vote in the state, Sen. Dale Schultz (R) blasted the efforts as “trying to suppress the vote” last week.
Schultz, who is not seeking re-election and was the lone Republican to oppose a bill last week to limit the hours of early voting in every jurisdiction in the state, was a guest on The Devil’s Advocates radio program on Madison’s 92.1 FM last Wednesday. Asked why his party pushed the bill, Schultz responded, “I am not willing to defend them anymore. I’m just not and I’m embarrassed by this.”
Schultz argued that this and dozens of similar bills before the Senate this were based on “mythology” that voter fraud is a serious concern: “I began this session thinking that there was some lack of faith in our voting process and we maybe needed to address it. But I have come to the conclusion that this is far less noble.”
Noting that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower championed the 1957 civil rights law, Schultz said that he could not “find any real reason” for his party’s effort to make it harder to vote:
SCHULTZ: It’s just, I think, sad when a political party — my political party — has so lost faith in its ideas that it’s pouring all of its energy into election mechanics. And again, I’m a guy who understands and appreciates what we should be doing in order to make sure every vote counts, every vote is legitimate. But that fact is, it ought to be abundantly clear to everybody in this state that there is no massive voter fraud. The only thing that we do have in this state is we have long lines of people who want to vote. And it seems to me that we should be doing everything we can to make it easier, to help these people get their votes counted. And that we should be pitching as political parties our ideas for improving things in the future, rather than mucking around in the mechanics and making it more confrontational at the voting sites and trying to suppress the vote.
Schultz added that the suppression was “just plain wrong,” adding, “It is all predicated on some belief there is a massive fraud or irregularities, something my colleagues have been hot on the trail for three years and have failed miserably at demonstrating.” The GOP-controlled Assembly has already passed a similar bill.
A 2011 study by the non-partisan Brennan Center found just seven cases of voter fraud in Wisconsin’s 2004 election, out of three million votes cast — a fraud rate of just 0.0002 percent.
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andrew1970able Next time do your homework Adolf....
WASHINGTON, DC – Sources confirmed today that hundreds of thousands of military absentee ballots were delivered hours after the deadline for them to be counted, with preliminary counts showing that they would have overturned the vote in several states and brought a victory for Governor Mitt Romney.
Officials say the ballots were delivered late due to problems within the military mail system. Tracking invoices show the ballots sat in a warehouse for a month, then they were accidentally labeled as ammunition and shipped to Afghanistan. At Camp Dwyer, Marine Sergeant John Davis signed for them and was surprised at the contents.
“I told Gunny we got a bunch of ballots instead of ammo,” Davis told investigators earlier today. “He told me to file a report of improper delivery and that the chain of command would take care of it. We didn’t hear anything for three weeks. While we were waiting we came under fire so we dumped a bunch of them in the Hescoes. We didn’t dig those ones back out.”
The first clue that this may not have been real news might be the author’s name, simply listed as “Drew.” Past contributions from Drew to the Duffel blog include “Blasting Shrill Whistle Throughout Ship Great For Morale, Navy Study Finds” and “Army Launches ‘Eat Right, Don’t Eat At The Chow Hall’ Campaign.’” The military absentee ballot story is peppered with over-the-top lines that should also have served as red flags, particularly a cavalier kicker at the end about care packages. But comments attached below the story — and emails we received – suggest there were a number of people who didn’t get the joke.
Just to be clear, here’s how The Duffel Blog describes itself on its “About Us” page:
The Duffel Blog serves the men and women of the US Military with a daily dose of military humor, funny military pictures, and faux news. We take an interesting and funny look at military life. We focus on veterans, military stories, defense, politics (sometimes) and life on base — with a comedic twist. We are in no way, shape, or form, a real news outlet. Just about everything on this website is satirical in nature.
The folks at Duffel Blog kept the joke going on Twitter, including this tweet:
Obama: “We will not allow these military votes to count. It does not matter, now that I am supreme Ayatollah of America.” #MilitaryForRomney
For the record, we got this official response from the Department of Defense, which as you can imagine takes this stuff awfully seriously.
“The Military Postal Service Agency dispatched to the U.S. Postal Service all military absentee ballots,” Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Melinda F. Morgan told us via email. “We are not aware of any lost ballots at DoD [Department of Defense] overseas military locations.”
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+Whitney Pyant....Over 90% of white peope are killed by white people and they are not killed by racist Black cops....Now the question seem to not want to answer is do you have a problem with unarmed Black people killed by racist white cops.....By the way , I don't deny any problems but you seem to deny what white racist cops are doing....Here's a sample of what Black cops deal with...
New dashcam footage is backing up the claims of four African-American
parole officers who were violently detained by local upstate
New York police officers.
The police in the City of Ramapo , NY claim that they did nothing wrong in how they handled the incident.
But the parole officers say differently. Mario Alexandre, Sheila Penister,
Annette Thomas-Prince, and Samuel Washington just filed a lawsuit against the city. They say that they were terrified and feared for their lives after officer pulled them over and held them at gun point, with assault rifles
pointed at them.
The footage from the dashcam video, obtained by CNN, shows a police
cruiser swerve to the wrong side of the road to get to the
vehicle where the four African American officers were sitting.One officer pulls a gun on the four plaintiffs. Another blocks traffic, using his SUV.
One of the four emerges from the car with his hands up, even though he had done nothing wrong.Five police officers were present, including ones aiming assault rifles.
Mario Alexandre explains that he was “violently assaulted” when pulled from the
vehicle, and “slammed against the car.”
Police claim they were in the right, however, because of a 911 call on the
four officers, “concerned about four individuals observed in bulletproof vests in an unmarked vehicle.”
Those were in fact department-issued bulletproof vests. They also had gold badges around their neck: a common image of officer that is familiar to virtually everyone.
The officers even had an official sign placed on the dashboard that read:
“State of New York – Executive Department – Division of Parole.”That apparently wasn’t enough to identify them as police officers to the
racist cops who pulled them over.The racist officers involved in the incident were: Lt. Robert Lancia, Capt.,
Sgt. Margaret Sammarone, Thomas Cokely, and Suffern Sgt. Edward Dolan, according to The Journal News…Now I don't know what town you live in but am sure you can find some activists that are actually doing something in the community instead of whining about it....
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+Whitney Pyant "We" are not in charge of the racist court system and "we" are not placed in grand Jurys that can convict racist cops..."We" do not move a trial to a "friendly lily white area"...And I;m not blaming whites for all our problems but when so many unarmed Black people are killed by racist white cops then yes it is a problem....This is what some Black cops say about your lovely and innocent racist cops....Reuters interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. All but one said that, when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime. The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.Desmond Blaize, who retired two years ago as a sergeant in the 41st Precinct in the Bronx, said he once got stopped while taking a jog through Brooklyn’s upmarket Prospect Park. "I had my ID on me so it didn’t escalate," said Blaize, who has sued the department alleging he was racially harassed on the job. "But what’s suspicious about a jogger? In jogging clothes?"Blacks made up 73 percent of the shooting perpetrators in New York in 2011 and were 23 percent of the population.A number of academics believe those statistics are potentially skewed because police over-focus on black communities, while ignoring crime in other areas. They also note that being stopped as a suspect does not automatically equate to criminality. Nearly 90 percent of blacks stopped by the NYPD, for example, are found not to be engaged in any crime. The black officers interviewed said they had been racially profiled by white officers exclusively, and about one third said they made some form of complaint to a supervisor. All but one said their supervisors either dismissed the complaints or retaliated against them by denying them overtime, choice assignments, or promotions. The remaining officers who made no complaints said they refrained from doing so either because they feared retribution or because they saw racial profiling as part of the system.Here's a question for you...Why don't we hear about Black cops running killing unarmed citizens...of any color...????
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+Shazbotacus What law did Tamir Rice break....what law did Oscar Grant break , what law did Micheal Brown break , what law did Trayvon Martin break , what law did Jonathan Ferrell break , what law did Runain Brisbon break , what law did Akai Gurley break , what law did Ezel Ford , what law did John Crawford break , what law did Eric Garner break , what law did Yvette Smith break , what law did Jorban Baker break , What law did Carlos Alcis break , what law did Kimani Gray break , what law did Reynaldo Cuevas break , what law did Amandu Diallo break , what law did Kendrec McDade break , what law did Rekia Boyd break...???...You stupid racist nazis always you are so fucking wonderful and do nothing wrong..It's useless assholes like you that keep hatred and racism alive..AND Black cops also complain about white racist cops...? "No snitching" has nothing to do with these racist cops killing unarmed innocent Black people...fucking nazi
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+Andrew Draxlar This also apploies to you...."What law did Tamir Rice break....what law did Oscar Grant break , what law did Micheal Brown break , what law did Trayvon Martin break , what law did Jonathan Ferrell break , what law did Runain Brisbon break , what law did Akai Gurley break , what law did Ezel Ford , what law did John Crawford break , what law did Eric Garner break , what law did Yvette Smith break , what law did Jorban Baker break , What law did Carlos Alcis break , what law did Kimani Gray break , what law did Reynaldo Cuevas break , what law did Amandu Diallo break , what law did Kendrec McDade break , what law did Rekia Boyd break...???...You stupid racist nazis always you are so fucking wonderful and do nothing wrong..It's useless assholes like you that keep hatred and racism alive..AND Black cops also complain about white racist cops...? "No snitching" has nothing to do with these racist cops killing unarmed innocent Black people...fucking nazi"Here's a thought....why don't you ever hear about Black cops harrassing off duty white cops...???
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+Andrew Draxlar Finally ....a republican that has ther courage to tell the truth....Marco Rubio on Black Lives Matter.... "This is a legitimate issue," Rubio said. "It is a fact that in the African-American community around this country there has been, for a number of years now, a growing resentment toward the way law enforcement and the criminal justice system interacts with the community. It is particularly endemic among young African-American males — that in some communities in this country have a much higher chance of interacting with criminal justice than higher education. We do need to face this. It is a serious problem in this country."Rubio also gave a personal anecdote: "I have one friend in particular who's been stopped in the last 18 months eight to nine different times. Never got a ticket for being stopped — just stopped. If that happened to me, after eight or nine times, I'd be wondering what's going on here. I'd be upset about it. So would anybody else." If you're arrested, if you're a 19-year-old, young minority male — African American or Hispanic — you're arrested, if you don't have any money, you're going to get public defenders. And they're going to push you toward a plea deal, because they're handling a thousand cases. You now have a record, which means you are now stigmatized — in the eyes of your employer, in the eyes of your future, etc. …And once you incarcerate someone, their chances of repeating offenses in the future begin to climb, because you're now basically housing them with criminals that they're learning the tools of the trade [with].We do need to address that. And it is particularly troubling among young African-American males."
Part of the problem is also cultural. One reason police are more likely to use force on and arrest black Americans is because they're more likely to perceive black people as threats due to what's known as “implicit bias“ Studies show, for example, that officers are quicker to shoot
black suspects in video game simulations .Part of this can be addressed through better training for cops, but some of it is simply rooted in how a person is raised, the kind of media he's exposed to, and other cultural influences.So Rubio is right in acknowledging not just that racial disparities in the criminal justice system
are a big problem, but how the problem presents itself. That's a big contrast
to a Republican field that has ranged from ignorant to hostile toward Black
Lives Matter....That includes Ben Carson....
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+freein2339
On a
national radio show [on Aug. 27], Carson said that the country need to
re-examine how it cares for veterans but also how to cut back on government
bureaucracy.
The
retired neurosurgeon said, “We don’t need a Department of Veterans Affairs.
Veterans Affairs should be folded in under the Department of Defense.”
As
regular readers probably know, plenty of Republican presidential candidates
support incorporating a voucher sytstem into the VA, effectively privatizing
parts of veterans’ care, but Carson is the first national candidate, at least
in recent memory, to suggest eliminating the cabinet agency altogether.
John
Biedrzyck, head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, isn’t impressed. “To suggest
that disabled veterans could be sent out into the economy with a health savings
account card overlooks the fact that civilian health care has waiting lists of
their own … and presupposes that civilian doctors have the same skill sets as
VA doctors, who see veterans of every age and malady every day,” Biedrzyck said
in a statement.
As the Military
Times’ report added, Paralyzed Veterans of America Deputy Executive
Director Sherman Gillums Jr. called Carson’s recommendation “a misguided notion
born from ignorance of what each department does.”
“Those who
insist ‘we don’t need a Department of Veterans Affairs’ are likely people who
in fact do not need VA care because of good health or cannot access VA care due
to ineligibility, as is the case with Dr. Carson,” he wrote.
“However,
frustration in reaction to problems in VA combined with ignorance about what VA
does and how it works are not the ingredients for a recipe of success where
fixing the department is concerned.”
Former Gen. Paul Eaton
stating that the separate department was necessary and Carson’s idea was
misguided.
Rather than think of ways to nickel and dime our veterans Dr. Carson
should be thinking of other areas of fat in government – particularly in
defense contracts – that can be cut, so we can hire more doctors and
caregivers, to provide returning veterans with the kind of care they earned.”
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+Timothy O'B Actually it's spelled Cain and the "mark" was actually leprosy...Depending on who you ask that is why certain people fled to the Caucas mountains which are located in Europe....Some historians claim that the caucasian was created there...I only know that devils do what devils do , therefore when a group of people seem to always act like devils then I have to call it like I see it...Face it man and be honest....western culture has done a lot more harm to the world than any other culture...Thats a fact....So where does all the hatred from people of color come from....did the devil make you do it..??ps...Africans are an old race.while whites are really mutations of a mutation.sorry to burst your bubbles , science doesn’t lie....Scientists said that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation
that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of
thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most
enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.
The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person's offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to give rise to the lightest of the world's races.
Leaders of the study, at Penn State University, warned against interpreting
the finding as a discovery of "the race gene." Race is a vaguely defined
biological, social and political concept, they noted, and skin color is only
part of what race is -- and is not. Like I said...it depends on who you ask....
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+Sam Sbogh You take a situation where you have a group of people - namely white people -
who have actually taken philosophy, religion, education, science, liberal arts,
everything that you can associate with the word "culture" from Black people.
They have taken it, distorted it, adopted it and used it against the very people
from whom they received it as a justification for slavery. So, it was convenient
to enslave Blacks in Africa under the guise of spreading Christianity when it
fact the religion as developed in Africa (there were 27 bishops and seven Popes
of the North African Church before the first one in Rome - this is documented in
the book Libers Pontificals, which, when translated into English, is Book of the
Popes). I should also point out here that few references are made to the fact
that three of the earliest fathers of the Christian church were Blacks. St.
Augustine (born at Tagaste, Numida, North Africa in 354 A.S.), who set the moral
doctrine of the Christian Church; Tutillian and Cyprian. How could white people
tell Blacks that they had no history or culture other than that which Europeans
gave them and at the same time tell them that Christianity was not only
developed by Blacks, but that its master, Jesus, was a Black man? This could not
be done.
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+freein2339 Marco Rubio on Black Lives Matter...."This is a legitimate issue," Rubio said. "It is a fact that in the African-American community around this country there has been, for a number of years now, a growing resentment toward the way law enforcement and the criminal justice system interacts with the community. It is particularly endemic among young African-American males — that in some communities in this country have a much higher chance of interacting with criminal justice than higher education. We do need to face this. It is a serious problem in this country."Rubio also gave a personal anecdote: "I have one friend in particular who's been stopped in the last 18 months eight to nine different times. Never got a ticket for being stopped — just stopped. If that happened to me, after eight or nine times, I'd be wondering what's going on here. I'd be upset about it. So would anybody else."If you're arrested, if you're a 19-year-old, young minority male — African American or Hispanic — you're arrested, if you don't have any money, you're going to get public defenders. And they're going to push you toward a plea deal, because they're handling a thousand cases. You now have a record, which means you are now stigmatized — in the eyes of your employer, in the eyes of your future, etc. …And once you incarcerate someone, their chances of repeating offenses in the future begin to climb, because you're now basically housing them with criminals that they're learning the tools of the trade [with].We do need to address that. And it is particularly troubling among young African-American males."
Part of the problem is also cultural. One reason police are more likely to use force on and arrest black Americans is because they're more likely to perceive black people as threats due to what's known as “implicit bias“ Studies show, for example, that officers are quicker to shoot
black suspects in video game simulations .Part of this can be addressed through better training for cops, but some of it is simply rooted in how a person is raised, the kind of media he's exposed to, and other cultural influences.So Rubio is right in acknowledging not just that racial disparities in the criminal justice system
are a big problem, but how the problem presents itself. That's a big contrast
to a Republican field that has ranged from ignorant to hostile toward Black
Lives Matter....That includes Ben Carson....
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bokdol A smart conservative....
There’s no shortage of high-profile Republicans gearing up for the 2016 presidential race, but there’s one name that probably should be in the mix, but isn’t.
Imagine a popular Republican governor, easily elected twice in a battleground state President Obama won twice. Imagine he’s Hispanic, young, won re-election last year by a ridiculous 46 points, and has seen his state’s unemployment rate drop quickly in recent years.
I’m referring to Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R), who seems like an almost-perfect presidential candidate for his party, but who hasn’t even considered testing the White House waters.
To understand why, consider Sandoval’s perspective on the pending Supreme Court case that may gut the Affordable Care Act.
“I made a decision early on that we would be a state-based exchange because I felt it was in Nevadans’ best interest to run their own,” Sandoval said, even boasting that twice as many Nevadans enrolled this year over the first round. “I’m just pleased,” he added, “that we don’t have the anxiety of the outcome King v. Burwell.”
At first blush, this may not seem striking at all – a governor embraced a sensible policy that helped his constituents have access to basic medical care. It’s the sort of thing most Americans might expect every well-intentioned governor to do as a matter of course.
But in political terms, we’re talking about a Republican governor who embraced the dreaded “Obamacare” – including Medicaid expansion – and is “pleased” he implemented the Affordable Care Act in a way that may help protect his state from his party’s Supreme Court justices.
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Republicans punk ass reprisal...Ok you "step-n-fetch-it" useless asshole...Here's some facts about voter suppression...
Wayne
Bertsch, a veteran GOP consultant told the Tampa Bay Times that
targeting Democrats was always the goal in curbing early voting. "In the
races I was involved in in 2008, when we started seeing the increase of
turnout and the turnout operations that the Democrats were doing in
early voting, it certainly sent a chill down our spines."
Another
tactic, favored in Texas and Florida, is to target nonprofit groups
that conduct voter-registration drives (the League of Women Voters, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). This is
achieved by imposing onerous new training, registration and/or liability
burdens on the groups' volunteers. The proportion of African-American
and Latino voters who register through third-party drives is about twice
what it is for whites.
Republican campaign consultant Scott Tranter
"A lot of us are campaign officials -- or campaign professionals -- and
we want to do everything we can to help our side. Sometimes we think
that's voter ID, sometimes we think that's longer lines -- whatever it
may be," Tranter said with a laugh.
Franklin
County (Columbus) GOP Chair Doug Preisse.. "I guess I really actually
feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the
urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine." Preisse is not some
rogue operative but the chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio's
second-largest county and a close adviser to Ohio Governor John Kasich.
Pa House majority leader Mike Turzai, said his state's voter ID law "is
gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania,"
U.S. District Judge Stephen J. Murphy ordered Michigan election
officials to immediately halt and attempt to rectify one of the two
practices -- canceling voter registrations for those whose voter
identification card is returned as undeliverable. Murphy ordered the
state to remove the "rejected" marking in the qualified voter file for
all persons whose original voter ID cards have been returned to the
state as undeliverable since Jan. 1, 2006. About 1,500 people have been
removed from the voter list in that manner this year, according to
evidence presented in the case.
Voter hours were extended in white distrcits of Ohio while voting hours were cut in the Black districts....
In
September 2014 , Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp expressed concern that
too many minority voters were registering to vote for the November
midterms and so he found it necessary to subpoena the records of at
least one group working to register more Black and Latino voters.
Now he has gone and "lost" 40,000 voter registration forms handed in by one group.
it’s a sentiment that the staffers at Third
Sector Development are expressing. The nonprofit organization was on a
mission to register as many black and Hispanic people in the state of
Georgia as possible so that voter turnout for the upcoming midterm
elections in November would be high. And they were successful at it,
until they received word that about half of the applications they
submitted for processing have gone missing in action.
“Over
the last few months, the group submitted some 80,000 voter-registration
forms to the Georgia secretary of state’s office—but as of last week,
about half those new registrants, more than 40,000 Georgians, were still
not listed on preliminary voter rolls. And there is no public record of
those 40,000-plus applications, according to state Rep. Stacey Adams, a
Democrat,” Al-Jazeera explained.
But Secretary Kemp says, hey, we're not doing anything differently. Sure they're not.
Georgia
Secretary of State Brain Kemp explained that his office is not doing
anything differently from how it usually processes applications. But
some people aren’t buying his story, seeing as how he’s a Republican,
and black and Hispanic people tend to vote for Democrats.
Georgia
Republicans have been raising eyebrows for some time now with regard to
early voting and voter-ID issues. One state Republican didn’t like how
black and Hispanic voters had easy access to early-voting opportunities.
They
cut early voting, they've got horrible Voter ID laws, and now the
Secretary of State has 40,000 less voter registration forms than were
submitted. Jim Crow is alive and well in Georgia and surrounds, isn't
it?
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republicans "uncle tom who better get back on time for plantation roll call"
The environment inside the Republican Party today is a treacherous moral
swamp for African-Americans. No black conservative figure has yet
managed to remain in a position of influence inside the GOP while
speaking honestly about racial questions.When an NAACP chairman derided
Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott recently as a "ventriloquist's
dummy" he touched a deep nerve. Going all the way back to
Reconstruction, black conservatives have fought to justify their emphasis
on economic progress against those who sought more direct resistance to
injustice.That is a fine line to walk and it has never been easy. When
black leaders allow themselves be used as tokens, they will deserve the
suspicion they retain in the black community no matter what other
sincere goals or opinions they may hold. This is an unfair dilemma that
white political figures seldom face, but history has made it
unavoidable.Black leaders cannot expect to be taken seriously so long as
they quietly acquiesce to rhetoric and policies openly hostile to
minority communities. For black conservatives, the price of credibility
is courage.Standing in front of a white audience and validating their
racist assumptions is a fast track to popularity and political
opportunity. Few things thrill a white nationalist more than a black man
who agrees with him. Every racist has ‘lots of black friends’ and
being one of those black friends offers benefits.With the GP in thrall
to an ugly Neo-Confederate resurgence the 2012 Republican Convention
featured its lowest percentage of black delegates in modern history.
Interestingly, while there were only 46 black delegates, the convention
featured eight minority speakers on the main stage alone. Being a black
Republican willing to toe the line without question is an outstanding
way to gain access to a platform.It is entirely reasonable to expect
that Sen. Scott’s position as a Senator was paid for by his willingness
to be used. He has done nothing yet in his career that would be
inconsistent with that characterization. Recite the party’s talking
points and he gets to be a Senator. Acknowledge the existence of racism
in any credible matter and he will be escorted to the exit, where he
will be greeted by Colin Powell and Michael Steele.One of the GOP’s
other black friends, former Rep. Allen West, learned that lesson the
hard way when he accidentally said something positive about Trayvon
Martin case. He quickly backed down, explained that Martin had it coming
because he wasn’t a “respectful young man.” West recognized the value
of being a “respectful young man” in the GOP and now he has a nice gig
with Fox News.This dilemma complicates the appeal of black
conservatives, making it extremely difficult to communicate a credible,
persuasive message without losing access to the political process. To
speak honestly about race means being ostracized from the Republican
Party. To speak honestly about the role of values and culture in the
plight of the black community means being ostracized from the Democratic
Party. Black conservatives can accept a humiliatingly subservient role
in a Republican Party that wants them to perform like circus animals or
sit outside the process, alienated and disempowered.Not everyone in the
black community sees this dilemma. In particular, many black religious
fundamentalists do not perceive this problem at all. It is from their
ranks that figures like Tim Scott and former Rep. Allen West have
emerged. If you believe in a 6000-year-old universe it isn’t so hard to
believe that Obama is a Socialist Anti-Christ or that he cheered the
attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi.Black religious
fundamentalists feel comfortable walking shoulder to shoulder with Tea
Party activists bent on destroying minority voting rights and ending
“income redistribution” to black urban moochers in hoodies. They are
marching with the far-right far-white in pursuit of higher, apocalyptic
goals. If gay marriage is the single greatest threat to civilization
then perhaps an alignment with the GOP’s farthest ideological fringe
makes sense.For non-white conservatives with their feet planted firmly
in the reality-based community the rhetoric being spewed by Republicans
in recent years is more than a little frightening. Some hard-right black
evangelicals may have made peace with the Tea Party, but their numbers
are very small. That’s why most if not all of the African-Americans at
your local Tea Party rally will be speaking onstage.Whether he likes it
or not, Sen. Scott is becoming a national mascot for the efforts of Tea
Party Republicans to whitewash the movement’s glaring racism. The
dilemma he faces may be unique to black political figures, but as the
Republican Party becomes more and more an enigma for white
nationalism that burden spreads more broadly to all conservatives,
regardless of race.The same credibility problem faced by black
conservatives is becoming a dangerous threat to conservatism at large.
If Sen. Scott is a token set up to distract us all from the GOP’s
racism, then what is Karl Rove? At what point should all conservatives
face the same duty to speak about racism that we justly place on Sen.
Scott’s shoulders?If conservatism is going to survive, conservatives
should all take a close look at the dilemma faced by Sen. Scott. The
movement badly needs an update to avoid atrophying into a tool of racial
and political anachronisms. Conservatism will not survive if it fails
to represent something more compelling than the stubborn preservation of
white cultural supremacy. A handful of well-placed black friends may
obscure the party’s problems, but they are not going to save
conservatism from itself........
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Hispanic republicans are tired of GOP racism....
Former state Rep. Aaron Peña, chairman of the Hispanic Republican Conference of Texas
“As conservatives grounded in principles of decency and respect for all people, it is our responsibility to openly denounce demeaning statements,” he wrote in a letter to the editor published in the San Antonio Express-News.
“Our state is changing in many ways, demographically and otherwise,” Peña added. “If we are to move forward cohesively and productively as the great state we are, we must put these ugly vestiges of our past behind us.”
What upsets him most is that — though no political party has a monopoly on racism — most bigoted comments are from Republicans or conservatives, Peña told me. And Iowa’s U.S. Rep. Steve King epitomizes the party’s problems reaching out to Hispanics.
The Republican lawmaker told an interviewer for every undocumented immigrant who becomes a high school valedictorian there are 100 “re-hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
Over the years, King has also compared immigrants to dogs and proposed an electrified fence along the border with Mexico.
Back in Texas, Dallas tea party leader Ken Emanuelson said recently Republicans don’t want blacks to vote because they overwhelmingly support Democrats.
“Our party doesn’t need those people and we should denounce them as strongly as we can when they make or post those ugly comments,” Peña said.
Other Hispanic Republicans share his frustration.
“The problem is that those at the top, the leaders, don’t know how to deal with these people (the bigots),” said former Rep. Raul Torres of Corpus Christi.
“They have failed us miserably, hoping the problem will go away.” Torres said of GOP leaders who say little or nothing when a racist remark triggers a public uproar. “The frustration Aaron expressed is what many of us feel when we read or hear those ugly comments,”
For Peña, Torres and other Hispanic Republicans the party must be more proactive not only in denouncing racist comments but reaching out to minorities.
Their biggest concern is what happened to Republicans in last year’s presidential election could happen in Texas as early as 2018. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received only 29 percent of the Hispanic vote, a poor showing largely attributed to his controversial proposal for self-deportation of illegal immigrants and the secretly videotaped “47 percent” comments.
Due to rapidly changing demographics, Hispanics are projected to become the majority group in Texas as early as the next decade and if they keep voting mostly Democratic, the GOP will be the minority party again, just like it was for 135 years, experts predict.
This is why Peña, Torres and others are sounding off the alarm and it is a question I intend to ask again to Republican Party of Texas chairman Steve Munisteri for a future column.
Earlier this year Munisteri told me, “there is no debate that we need to reach out to Latinos.”
But Peña, Torres and other Hispanic Republicans wonder if their party is trying hard enough.
------------
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his autobiography:
"The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism."
That was his description of the 1964 Republican National Convention. He also referred to the Republican convention as "the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right."
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President Biden inherited an immigration system in tatters. The Trump administration cut off legal pathways to citizenship, leaving would-be migrants with fewer lawful methods of entering the country. They cut funding to Central American countries in 2019 as they splurged on an ineffective, costly wall.
It was the Trump administration that tightened sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, exacerbating the macroeconomic crises that have led hundreds of thousands to flee and arrive at the southern border. When they pulled the rug out from various, essential assistance programs, they made the problem worse.
But our immigration system has been broken for many decades — long before Joe Biden or Donald Trump took the oath of office. Time and again, Democrats have proposed solutions to fix the immigration system in a reasonable, humane way. And time and again, Republicans have opposed these efforts at every turn.
One might recall that in 2013, House Republicans thwarted comprehensive immigration reform after an agreement was reached in the Senate. Many of those same House Republicans who prevented that legislation from passing are now intent on blaming irregular migration, an issue our country has dealt with for over a century, solely on the Biden administration.
There’s only one problem with their affinity for blaming Democrats — it doesn’t hold up to basic scrutiny. In fact, between December 2022 and January 2023, the Biden-Harris administration halved the number of encounters at the border and reduced the number of Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Haitian migrants by 97 percent.
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@smacdonald5142 Trump was given far more leeway than most Americans, experts told us, and could have avoided the search with full cooperation.
"There's no legal requirement for the FBI to proceed via subpoena or to ask nicely. It's well within their rights to go to a judge and get a search warrant," said Neama Rahmani, a former prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers in California, who described Trump as "partially cooperative at best" with the government.
"Trump and his associates have not been cooperative," said Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, who said the argument made by Trump and Crenshaw "makes no legal sense" because items the government was seeking were ultimately found in Trump’s possession.
A federal judge on Aug. 26 released a heavily redacted affidavit that explained the Justice Department’s request for the search warrant.
But the National Archives, or NARA, has been seeking documents that Trump removed from the White House and took to his Florida home after he left office in January 2021.
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@passingthroughtime3033 Trump “has tuned into every hearing” and has grown increasingly irate – to “the point of about to scream at the TV”, according to a close adviser – with what he views as the “lack of defense by his Capitol Hill allies”, the Washington Post reported.
He is possibly aware that, while the hearings come too late to force his resignation and may or may not cause the justice department to press criminal charges, they seem to be inflicting greater political damage than anyone imagined.
Thursday’s fifth hearing served up more of the same in the Cannon Caucus Room which, somewhat reminiscent of a grand ornate ballroom with curtains closed and lights on, is bringing a gravitas to the nailing of Trump that no trickle of media revelations or tell-all memoirs can.
Photographers crowded around the witnesses just as the panel’s chairman, congressman Bennie Thompson, brought down the gavel, a now ominous sound for Trump, and spoke of “a brazen attempt to use the justice department to advance the president’s personal political agenda”.
Trump’s consternation is likely to have only intensified when Republican Liz Cheney summed up his central role in the conspiracy to overturn the election, then another Republican, Adam Kinzinger, questioned former justice department officials. “Today President Trump’s total disregard for the constitution and his oath will be fully exposed,” Kinzinger said.
Once again, all went smoothly and efficiently. There were no interruptions, objections, points of order or spoiling tactics. And that is said to have made Trump furious. He is especially critical of Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House, for boycotting the committee instead of giving pro-Trump Republicans a voice on it.
Trump told Punchbowl News, “In retrospect, I think it would have been very smart” to put more Republicans on the committee. “The Republicans don’t have a voice. They don’t even have anything to say.”
McCarthy apparently gambled that this would allow Republicans to write off the hearings as illegitimate, partisan and an attempt to distract from more pressing issues such as inflation. But the presence of Cheney, Kinzinger and more than a dozen Republican witnesses has undermined that argument.
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Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to illegally entering the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 and who testified at a January 6th Committee hearing, provides a powerful lesson for Republican Party leaders and the obvious start to solving our country’s painful division: Tell the truth.
Stephen Ayres has to rebuild his life, but at least now, he will know that his actions in life will be built on the wisdom gained through his pain: "The biggest thing for me is to take the blinders off and make sure you step back and see what's going on — before it's too late."
Why is that lesson so hard for Republican leaders to process? They have seen the tragic consequences of their lies on the lives of people like Stephen Ayres, and they know they are lies. So, stop. It is really that simple.
The lies of Republican leaders have not only hurt people like Steven Ayres, they have fed the hate of right-wing extremists — both individuals and para-military groups. Charlottesville, Buffalo, South Carolina, Oklahoma City, etc., all stand as tragic demonstrations of their hate and its fatal impact on innocent Americans. Reports make it clear that those groups are only gearing up for more violence in the future, egged on by Trump’s massive 2020 election lie.
Here is the simple truth: There was no measurable fraud in the 2020 election. No one stole it. Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly.
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@stevieraveon7006 Alan Hostetter was “in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas” when he hit the record button. It was late November, a few weeks after what the former police chief and more recent Orange County yoga instructor called the “stolen” 2020 election.
Hostetter, who founded a group called the American Phoenix Project in the spring of 2020 to oppose government restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was on his way to D.C. for the “Million MAGA March” in support of then-President Donald Trump. He had some thoughts he wanted to record “for posterity.”..In the darkened interior of his vehicle, he went on a “little bit of a rant.” He regurgitated the unfounded mass voter fraud conspiracy theories he had read on the internet and heard from Trump, the ones that law enforcement officials were worried would get someone killed. Ballot dumps! Computer algorithms! It was all being revealed, he said. “The charade is about to end,” he said, and people would end up in jail.
Then it was time for executions.
“Some people, at the highest levels, need to be made an example of: an execution or two or three,” Hostetter told his audience. “Tyrants and traitors need to be executed as an example so nobody pulls this shit again.”..The 56-year-old Hostetter and five other men from the Orange County area ― Russell Taylor, 40, Erik Warner, 45, Felipe Martinez, 47, Derek Kinnison, 39, and Ronald Mele, 51 ― were accused of entering into a conspiracy to “corruptly obstruct, influence, and impede the Congressional proceeding at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
The 20-page indictment is the first conspiracy indictment involving multiple defendants the government says are affiliated with the Three Percenters, the right-wing group that derives its name from the (mistaken) belief that just three percent of colonialists stood up against the British during the American Revolution.
The indictment alleges that, along with about 30 others, the men coordinated their actions in a Telegram chat that Taylor created and named “The California Patriots-DC Brigade,” intended for “able bodied individuals” headed to D.C. on Jan. 6.
“Many of us have not met before and we are all ready and willing to fight,” Taylor wrote in the description, the feds said. “We will come together for this moment that we are called upon.”
In one message to the group, Taylor wrote that they wanted “to be on the front steps and be one of the first ones to breach the doors!”
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@ASRMN27 Faced with the pandemic, Trump suppressed scientific data, delayed testing, mocked and blocked mask-wearing, and convened mass gatherings where social distancing was impossible. Despite the mounting threats of COVID-19 and global warming, he pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord. He installed industry insiders in regulatory posts tasked with protecting Americans from environmental and occupational hazards; their regulatory rollbacks resulted in 22,000 excess deaths from such hazards in 2019 alone. He pushed through a $1.9 trillion tax cut for the wealthy, creating a budget hole that he then used to justify cutting food and housing assistance for the needy. He tried, but failed, to repeal the ACA, then bent every effort to undermine it, pushing up the number of uninsured Americans by 2.3 million. He denied entry to refugees fleeing violence, abused immigrant detainees, and penalized immigrants for accessing basic social services.
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@jenwerqthatazzout7639 Mike Broomhead talks for a living, but for a moment last week, all he could do was sigh.
With that flash of wordless exasperation behind him, he continued with his work: delivering the latest update on the Maricopa County election recount to listeners of his eponymous morning talk radio show. That day’s news was of a forthcoming conspiracy-theory-riddled documentary on what organizers call an audit — but Broomhead soon turned his attention to the officials overseeing this unfolding spectacle.
“You’re turning this into the clown show that you’ve been accused of. ... You’re turning this into the sideshow at the state fair,” he said...Broomhead is a two-time Trump voter, a staunch conservative and a onetime supporter of this recount. In recent weeks, he has fashioned himself as a reality check for fellow Republicans.
As the recount of 2.1 million ballots cast seven months ago drags on, Broomhead and others are contemplating just how this saga will end. The recount’s most ardent supporters believe former President Trump will be reinstated in the White House (despite there being no legal mechanism for that to occur). Its fiercest critics predict a damaging precedent that will embolden others to baselessly challenge results of elections they don’t like.
An increasingly vocal share of Arizona Republicans see the recount as an act of self-sabotage, creating an albatross for statewide candidates in the run-up to a pivotal election year. Broomhead is in this camp, with another lingering concern.
“No matter where you stand, the one thing we can all agree on is it has put a great big wedge in this community,” he told listeners earlier in the week. “That to me is the worst part of this. It’s one more reason for us to stand on opposite sides of the streets and complain about each other.”
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@jenwerqthatazzout7639 The more the effort veered away from expert-sanctioned best practices and toward groundless speculation, the less Broomhead had faith in its integrity. He tried to imagine if the parties were reversed, if liberal Democrats were pushing an identical process. It’s only fair to admit, he said in an interview, that “Republicans would lose their minds.”
Senate GOP President Karen Fann has said the recount is not intended to overturn the 2020 election results but to simply put to rest any question about the results and perhaps find ways to improve elections. (Broomhead said his initial support for the recount was similarly to restore voters’ faith in the system, and that he never believed the election was stolen from Trump.)
“Whether they are legitimate concerns or not, our voters — our constituents — deserve to have answers,” Fann told The Times in February. Her spokesman did not respond to an interview request last week.
Bill Gates, a Republican Maricopa County supervisor, said the shambolic nature of the proceedings has thoroughly undermined that purported goal.
“I don’t see how anyone in their right mind can argue what’s been going on at the coliseum is instilling any voter confidence,” he said.
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@Bydun4prison Ukrainian officials on Saturday said they were offered $5 million (4 million pounds) in bribes to end a probe into energy company Burisma’s founder, but said there was no connection to former board member Hunter Biden whose father is running for the U.S. presidency.
The Ukrainian company was thrust into the global spotlight last year in the impeachment inquiry into whether U.S. President Donald Trump improperly pressured Kiev into opening a case against his rival for the November election race.
Trump wants an investigation into the Democrats’ 2020 candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son.
Artem Sytnyk, head of Ukraine’s national anti-corruption bureau (NABU), said three people had been detained, including one current and former tax official, over the bribe offer.
The money was the largest cash bribe ever seized in the country, NABU said. It was put on display during a press briefing, brought by masked men in see-through plastic bags.
Burisma said in a statement it had nothing to do with the matter. It did not respond to a request for comment from the company’s founder Mykola Zlochevsky, a former ecology minister now living abroad.
“Let’s put an end to this once and for all. Biden Jr. and Biden Sr. do not appear in this particular proceeding,” Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of anti-corruption investigations at the prosecution service, told Saturday’s briefing.
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Some cities in the US even get it....
Rock Port, Missouri is a tiny town the north-west of the U.S with a population of just 1,300. The town is located just in the right place to receive some of the nation’s best wind resources. With Rock Port making the most of its location, it runs entirely off of wind power. The wind farm is a private-public partnership, with the well-known company John Deere joining forces with local entrepreneurs and town leaders to create the Wind Capital Group. They have 4 wind turbines which are connected to the grid and they provide about 125% of the towns energy needs, meaning that they can sell any unused power. “We’re farming the wind, which is something that we have a lot of up here. The payback on a per-acre basis is generally quite good when compared to a lot of other crops, and it’s as simple as getting a cup of coffee and watching the blades spin”, said Jim Crawford, a natural resource engineer at the University of Missouri Extension in Columbia. “Anybody who is currently using Rock Port utilities can expect no increase in rates for the next 15 to 20 years,” Crawford said. Jerry Baker, an MU Extension community development specialist, added that the turbines could also increase tourist attraction to the area. For a town which is quite a drive from any major cities, the potential of bringing a bit of tourism to the area would be a good little boost for their local economy, without them needed to do much more than just have a cup of coffee, according to Jim Crawford, and with the town located on the road down to Kansas City, it makes it accessible for the tourists to stop off at. Rock Ports wind farm is a good example to small towns that it is easy to generate a lot of their power from a renewable source that works for them.
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@echo5226 Trump lied about covid.....When: Thursday, February 27
The claim: The outbreak would be temporary: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”
The truth: Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned days later that he was concerned that “as the next week or two or three go by, we’re going to see a lot more community-related cases.” He was right—the virus has not disappeared.
When: Multiple times
The claim: “Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere,” and cases are “coming way down.”
The truth: When Trump made these claims in May, coronavirus cases were either increasing or plateauing in the majority of American states. Over the summer, the country saw a second surge even greater than its first in the spring
When: Wednesday, June 17
The claim: The pandemic is “fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
The truth: Trump made this claim ahead of his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when the country was still seeing at least 20,000 new daily cases and a second spike in infections was beginning.
When: Thursday, July 2
The claim: The pandemic is “getting under control.”
The truth: Trump’s claim came as the country’s daily cases doubled to about 50,000, a higher count than was seen at the beginning of the pandemic, and as the number continued to rise, fueled by infections in the South and the West.
When: Saturday, July 4
The claim: “99%” of COVID-19 cases are “totally harmless.”
The truth: The virus can still cause tremendous suffering if it doesn’t kill a patient, and the WHO has said that about 15 percent of COVID-19 cases can be severe, with 5 percent being critical. Fauci has rejected Trump’s claim, saying the evidence shows that the virus “can make you seriously ill” even if it doesn’t kill you.
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@echo5226 More lies from adolf trump concerning covid....When: Monday, July 6
The claim: “We now have the lowest Fatality (Mortality) Rate in the World.”
The truth: The U.S. had neither the lowest mortality rate nor the lowest case-fatality rate when Trump made this claim. As of July 13, the case-fatality rate—the ratio of deaths to confirmed COVID-19 cases—was 4.1 percent, which placed the U.S. solidly in the middle of global rankings. At the time, it had the world’s ninth-worst mortality rate, with 41.33 deaths per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University.
When: Multiple times
The claim: Mexico is partly to blame for COVID-19 surges in the Southwest.
The truth: Even before Latin America’s COVID-19 cases began to rise, the U.S. and Mexico had jointly agreed in March to restrict nonessential land travel between the two countries, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection says illegal border crossings are down compared with last year. Health experts say blaming Mexican immigrants for surges is misguided, especially when most of the individuals crossing the border are U.S. citizens who live nearby.
When: Multiple times
The claim: Children are “virtually immune” to COVID-19.
The truth: The science is not definitive, but that doesn’t mean children are immune. Studies in the U.S. and China have suggested that kids are less likely than adults to be infected, and more likely to have mild symptoms, but can still spread the virus to their family members and others. The CDC has said that about 7 percent of COVID-19 cases and less than 0.1 percent of COVID-19-related deaths have occurred in children.
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@echo5226 When: Thursday, August 27
The claim: Trump “launched the largest national mobilization since World War II” against COVID-19, and America “developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world.”
The truth: These claims are incorrect and misleading. The federal government’s coronavirus response has been roundly criticized as a failure because of flawed and delayed testing, entrenched inequality that has amplified the virus’s effects, and chaotic federal leadership that’s left much of the country’s response up to the states to handle. Trump vacillated on fully invoking the Defense Production Act in March, set off international panic when he mistakenly said he was banning all travel from European nations, and was slow to support social-distancing measures nationwide. Widespread use of the DPA was still rare in July, despite continued shortages of medical supplies.
When: Multiple times
The claim: America is “rounding the corner” and “rounding the final turn” of the pandemic.
The truth: Trump made these claims before and after the country registered 200,000 coronavirus deaths. As the winter approaches, the number of coronavirus cases is increasing in almost every state; in the last week of October, cases rose faster than reported tests in 47 of the 50 states, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
When: Multiple times
The claim: The media is overblowing fears about the virus ahead of Election Day.
The truth: There is no media conspiracy to hype up the virus threat. Cases and hospitalizations are rising across the country, and America set and broke multiple daily case records during the last week of October, nearing 100,000 cases in a single day on Friday.
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@echo5226 adolf trump was a failure....In the absence of a vaccine, experts agree that widespread testing is a crucial means to control the spread of the coronavirus, but the Trump administration has undercut and politicized efforts to make enough tests available.
The president has repeatedly expressed a desire to suppress reported coronavirus infection numbers, even declaring at a Tulsa rally that testing should be slowed to stop new cases from being discovered. Although a White House adviser later claimed the president was joking, the administration has worked to block legislation that would fund testing and contact tracing. One of the president’s top advisers on the coronavirus, Dr. Scott Atlas, who lacks expertise in infection diseases or epidemiology—he is a radiologist by training—also advocated against widespread testing. Some government experts have accused him of peddling junk science. Dr. Atlas resigned as Trump’s pandemic adviser after feuding with health experts and repeatedly promoting various unproven theories related to the pandemic.
Additionally, in August 2020, Trump administration officials from the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop recommending coronavirus testing for people without symptoms, despite scientific research showing that asymptomatic people can infect others with the virus. The news broke later that HHS and White House staffers wrote the recommendation, rather than CDC scientists; it bypassed the CDC’s standard scientific review process and was published despite objections from CDC staff. Local health departments and experts condemned the change, and some CDC scientists told health officials to ignore the agency’s official guidance. The CDC ultimately reversed the guidance and again recommended that asymptomatic people who might have come into contact with the coronavirus should seek testing.
The administration has also failed to spend billions of dollars Congress allocated for expanded testing and contact tracing. Lawmakers have been unable to obtain a clear explanation from the administration as to why.
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@echo5226 The Trump administration has repeatedly censored and attacked preeminent government scientists, whose research and analysis would normally be leading the national response to a public health crisis like Covid-19.
The administration has implemented new policies to block government scientists from communicating with the public. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped holding media briefings and instituted a restrictive media policy for agency scientists receiving inquiries for information about Covid-19 — even though these scientists have traditionally been allowed to speak to the press. The Trump administration also prevented National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and other senior health officials from communicating with the public, instead requiring that all communications be controlled by Vice President Mike Pence (who was accused of politicizing another public health crisis as governor of Indiana). A top political aide at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) instructed Dr. Fauci’s press team that Fauci was to refrain from advising that children wear masks. The White House also prevented Fauci from testifying before the House of Representatives, because (in the president’s words) the chamber was full of “Trump haters.” He blocked other experts from testifying before Congress at all, including the CDC director, who was invited to testify about how to reopen schools safely. (Fauci and others eventually testified before a House committee.)
Officials who do speak out have faced retaliation. In February 2020, for instance, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, warned that the coronavirus would be severely disruptive to daily life. Her comments reportedly infuriated the president; she was sidelined from further coronavirus briefings and nearly fired. Dr. Rick Bright, a federal health official with many years of experience at HHS, was reassigned after suggesting that the Trump-touted drug hydroxychloroquine should be tested before being used to treat Covid-19 patients. He maintains that he continues to face retaliation in his new role.
In July 2020, the White House embarked on what appears to be a new and disturbing campaign to sideline Dr. Fauci. A White House official characterized as “concern[ing]” assessments and guidance that Dr. Fauci provided early in the pandemic that were later revised after experts developed a better understanding of Covid-19. In an unusual move, White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro published an op-ed — which the White House denies clearing — claiming that Fauci had been “wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.” The president stated publicly that Fauci was an "alarmist” and had “made a lot of mistakes.” When Trump resumed public briefings on the coronavirus in late July, he did not include Dr. Fauci.
President Trump also attacked Dr. Deborah Birx, the government’s coronavirus response coordinator, as “pathetic” and made a baseless accusation that she changed her scientific assessment due to political pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when Dr. Birx accurately noted that the United States faced broad community spread of Covid-19 in August 2020.
President Trump claimed that the “deep state” at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was intentionally delaying research on Covid-19 treatments until after election day, and a politically-appointed HHS spokesperson accused career government scientists of “sedition” in their response to the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming without evidence that the CDC was operating a left-wing “resistance unit” dedicated to undermining President Trump. In September 2020, Trump directly contradicted the director of the C.D.C. by promising that a vaccine would be developed in a matter of weeks and “go to the public immediately” while also casting doubts on the value of wearing masks.
At the height of the presidential election campaign in October 2020, Trump attacked Dr. Fauci as a “disaster” and complained that “people are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots.” He also suggested that he would have fired Dr. Fauci were it not for the negative press coverage that would result. (At the time, Trump lacked the power to fire Dr. Fauci, although he recently issued an executive order that may allow him to do so.) Even as Trump was attacking Dr. Fauci, however, his campaign used a misleading clip of Dr. Fauci — without his permission —in a campaign advertisement, falsely suggesting that Fauci had praised Trump’s response to the coronavirus.
These abuses are only the latest in a long history of Trump administration efforts to ignore, censor, and punish government scientists who contradict its political messaging. These attacks on science deprive lawmakers, healthcare workers, and the American public of critical information about Covid-19, undermine trust in government, and ultimately hamper the administration’s ability to effectively manage this public health crisis.
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@echo5226 Complete failure....Throughout the pandemic, President Trump has made repeated false and unsupported statements about Covid-19, contradicting scientific research and the advice of government experts. His statements have caused confusion, sown distrust of government, and politicized commonsense public health measures, making it difficult to control the spread of the coronavirus and stabilize the economy.
As the first coronavirus cases were reported in the United States and top government health officials expressed concern that the virus would spread throughout the country for months, President Trump claimed that the number of infections would soon "be down to close to zero" and that the virus would disappear "like a miracle." He has also falsely claimed that the mortality rate for Covid-19 is like that for the flu, that 99 percent of cases are “totally harmless,” and that the United States has “one of the lowest mortality rates [for the disease] in the world.” The Trump administration has encouraged state officials to disseminate false information. Vice President Mike Pence told governors to spread the president’s misleading claim that the uptick in coronavirus cases is due to an increase in testing.
Trump reportedly acknowledged that he had intentionally downplayed the threat of the virus during interviews with journalist Bob Woodward in February and March 2020, stating that although he recognized the deadly nature of the disease, “I wanted to always play it down . . . I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
In late March 2020, with cases growing exponentially, and less than two weeks after many states and localities instituted lockdowns, Trump called for the reopening of the American economy by Easter based on the advice of business associates, and contrary to the counsel of health officials. Skeptical of models created by public health experts to predict the spread of the coronavirus, the president and his advisers instead relied on an econometric “cubic model” created by former Council of Economic Advisers Chair Kevin Hassett, who has no background in infectious diseases. Hassett’s model, which projected that Covid-19 deaths would stop completely by mid-May, was a preset Microsoft Excel curve-fitting function rather than a science-based analysis of coronavirus infection data.
The president has also misled the American public about preventative measures, cures, and treatments for the disease. He made the baseless projection that a vaccine would be available within three to four months after the outbreak began, which Dr. Fauci later explained was not possible. President Trump has pressured health officials to expedite the timeline for development and told reporters that a vaccine may become available before the November presidential election. The president has also repeatedly promoted the use of the antimalarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 — going so far as to announce that he was taking the latter as a preventative measure — despite a lack of scientific evidence of their effectiveness and against the advice of government experts. And most notoriously, President Trump suggested that Covid-19 could be cured by injecting disinfectants or by "hit[ting] the body with a tremendous" light, a patently unscientific — and dangerous — claim that led to an uptick in calls to poison control centers due to exposure to cleaning agents.
In September 2020, as the death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 200,000 in the United States, Trump again claimed that the coronavirus would “go away” and that the United States was “rounding the corner” — statements contradicted by Dr. Fauci. Trump also falsely claimed that Covid-19 affects “virtually nobody” younger than 18, despite reports from the CDC and the WHO that young people play a significant role in spreading the virus and reports of children being hospitalized in rising numbers. He later continued to mock others for wearing masks and, just hours before announcing his own diagnosis, claimed that "the end of the pandemic is in sight, and next year will be one of the greatest years in the history of our country." Trump later repeated at a rally, held at the White House, that the pandemic would “disappear.” In October 2020, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a press release that listed “ending the Covid-19 pandemic” as one of President Trump’s greatest accomplishments during his first term in office.
President Trump’s false and unsupported statements regarding the spread of and treatments for the disease have contributed to the United States’ failure to manage the crisis effectively. The president’s comments, as well of those of his allies in government and the media, have an impact on how seriously Americans view the threat of Covid-19 and the degree to which they adhere to guidance from public health experts. Opinion polls show a large and growing partisan gap in beliefs regarding the health threat of Covid-19. Consequently, public health measures like wearing masks and maintaining social distance have become divisive partisan issues, notwithstanding their grounding in scientific research. A Cornell University study of global English-language media found that President Trump was by far the most important single source of coronavirus misinformation — linked to almost 38 percent of misinformation.
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@echo5226 The cause of tens of thousands to die .....President Trump’s promotion of the antimalarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as Covid-19 treatments, despite scientific studies showing their ineffectiveness, has extended to federal agencies spending money on and officially recommending the drugs.
The president pressured government officials to push for use of the drugs as treatment. Dr. Rick Bright, an expert at the Department of Health and Human Services, was reassigned after he objected to the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 patients without first testing its effectiveness. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) purchased $208,000 worth of hydroxychloroquine to treat veterans, despite VA hospital data showing that veterans treated with the drug died at a 17 percent higher rate than others. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidance promoting the prescription of hydroxychloroquine, citing only anecdotal evidence. The CDC later removed the guidance, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) withdrew its emergency authorization for use of the drug to treat Covid-19, based on studies showing that hydroxychloroquine does not improve health outcomes. Political officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) delayed the publication of a subsequent CDC report showing the ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine.
Additionally, in defiance of the emergency FDA authorization limiting the use of hydroxychloroquine to hospitals and clinical trials, the White House ordered the distribution of 23 million tablets of the drug from a federal stockpile, including to retail pharmacies. Although FDA guidance dictated that stockpile supplies should only have been released at the request of state governments, the Trump administration did not notify state officials about the large-scale distribution of hydroxychloroquine in their jurisdictions. The administration also provided a $765 million loan to Kodak to produce precursor ingredients for hydroxychloroquine, although it later put the deal on hold following criticism of Kodak’s suitability for a loan and allegations of associated insider trading.
In the meantime, however, the administration’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine and similar drugs as an appropriate Covid-19 treatment resulted in prescriptions increasing by a factor of 46, leaving patients who needed the drugs to treat other conditions unable to find supplies.
In a similar fashion, President Trump created confusion about another potential Covid-19 treatment, convalescent blood plasma, when he made misleading statements about its effectiveness and accused the FDA of delaying access to therapeutics shortly before the start of the Republican National Convention. Immediately thereafter, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for plasma, even though senior government scientists had cautioned against doing so. As part of the rushed rollout, FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn exaggerated the demonstrated benefits of blood plasma treatment, for which he later apologized. FDA spokeswoman Emily Miller, a conservative media personality filling a role that normally goes to a career agency staffer, also circulated the inaccurate information about blood plasma before Dr. Hahn fired her.
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@echo5226 Complete failure...adolf trump..
President Trump’s defenders are expressing anguish that his convulsive exit has tarnished his supposedly respectable record. Here is another oft-repeated deception demanding correction. Trumpism failed as much as Trump did. Not only was the now-former president a threat to the norms necessary for healthy democratic governance, his incompetent management of the federal government produced a remarkably thin legacy—and for that the country should be grateful.
Trump’s failures on policy are wide and varied. Much focus is, for understandable reasons, on the administration’s bungled response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But to appreciate the failure of Trumpism as a political program, the former president should be assessed on what he did to address the two issues central to his political ascent: immigration and trade.
His two immediate predecessors tried to fix the nation’s immigration laws, which have long needed reform. They failed to secure reform legislation largely because of the growing, and misguided, determination among some Republicans to embrace the most restrictive immigration stance possible, as evidenced in their refusal to support a humane and realistic resolution for persons already residing in the United States unlawfully. There are millions of people in this circumstance, and yet the implication of the hardline Republican position—which Trump amplified to great political effect in his 2015-2016 campaign—is that all of them should be deported.
That was never a realistic option, for good reason. The vast majority of people who would be affected by a mass deportation policy are law-abiding, have jobs and families, and pay taxes. Americans have no stomach for seeing millions of their neighbors deported to countries that the affected immigrants left long ago, or had never even seen before.
Podcast episode cover image
PODCAST · JULY 23 2021
Laura K. Field: What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute?
On today's podcast Charlie Sykes talks with Laura K. Field about her recent Bulwark article: "What The Hell Happened To ...
And yet, even after embracing such an absolutist and unrealistic policy, Trump was still in a strong position to deliver a legislative resolution if he played his cards right. Both the House and Senate were under Republican control in 2017 and 2018. He campaigned on “fixing” immigration, and won. But getting a bill through Congress would have required compromising with congressional Democrats, and jettisoning “no amnesty” as a battle cry for political rallies and cable television. Cutting a deal, and embracing some version of a realistic resolution, would have enraged a small portion of the president’s political coalition, but it also would have produced a defining and lasting shift in immigration policy for which the president could have claimed credit.
So the opportunity was there for the taking—and Trump whiffed. He and his allies decided it was too politically risky—or substantively unattractive because at least some immigrants would receive legal status—to walk back his many ill-advised hardline statements committing themselves to no compromises. They preferred to implement what they could through administrative action.
And where did that get them? Nowhere. Led by his aides, Trump was able to implement harsh revisions to some policies, and in the process cause much harm to immigrant families and to desperate refugees. That should not be minimized or forgotten. He also modestly accelerated the replacement of a portion of the structure on the southern border—with construction of a grand total of 47 miles of entirely new barrier occurring since 2017—but he never built the entirety of his promised 2,000-mile “wall” and he certainly never got Mexico to pay for any of it, as he claimed he would.
Legal immigration has fallen during Trump’s term, but that is due mainly to the deep downturn in the U.S. economy that coincided with mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite all the talk, illegal immigration has not stopped or changed appreciably over the past four years. That Trump never implemented a “round them up” plan is a relief, but it also means the immigration revolution he promised his supporters never took place.
And because none of Trump’s immigration policies were passed as laws, most will be reversed by the Biden team, although some may take longer to unwind than others. In one prominent instance, the decision to overturn President Obama’s DACA program, the Trump administration’s actions have already been rejected by the Supreme Court.
The images associated with Trump’s immigration policies—especially the images of children separated from their parents and placed in cages—will remain in the public mind long beyond the policies themselves. By sometime in mid-2021, it will be hard to detect what effect Trump had on national immigration policy.
On trade, Trump was just as ineffectual. He misled his supporters by claiming, falsely, that his predecessors had purposefully agreed to unbalanced trade deals that favored foreign goods over American products. In particular, he railed against America’s trade deficit, and promised to eliminate it. He said the new deals he would negotiate would bring back millions of manufacturing jobs to America.
The trade deficit is not a meaningful metric of effective trade policy, but it is what Trump highlighted when inciting populist resentment toward previous agreements and thus is relevant for assessing his policies. Three years into Trump’s term, the trade deficit had barely changed, and it widened in 2020 as the economy fell into recession. The bilateral trade deficit with Mexico also widened under Trump’s watch, and, as of 2019, the trade deficit with China was essentially unchanged. At the end of 2020, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States was level with where it was when President Obama left office.
President Trump’s defenders counter that he reset the conversation with China by imposing large tariffs—something his predecessors were too timid to do. That’s true. So give him credit for blowing past the ill-advised caution that led others to be overly soft with China.
Unfortunately, Trump reduced U.S. leverage by more than what was gained through the tariffs by unilaterally withdrawing from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) at the beginning of his term. TPP would have further isolated China economically by bringing the United States and eleven trading partners closer together. Instead, Trump has tried to go it alone and take on China without any meaningful coordination with our traditional allies. The result is that China has been able to slow-walk its commitments, such as they were, in the bilateral deal struck with Trump, even as it has cut a more meaningful agreement with the European Union, and thus further undermined U.S. leverage.
On trade deals more generally, Trump and his team railed against the multilateral system that the United States built over seven decades, and yet they never articulated an alternative vision. Displacing current global rules with exclusively bilateral agreements is a nonstarter; there are no takers for such an approach, even among U.S. allies. Which is why the overall global trading system operates today much as it did before Trump took office..
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@echo5226 Trump’s failures on policy extend to many other spheres:
He never produced the oft-promised replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act.
He never implemented a sustainable policy for lowering the costs of prescription drugs (his last-minute gambit to tie some pricing to international benchmarks is highly likely to be blocked in court, and he abandoned the idea of $200 discount cards in his final days in office).
He never proposed, much less secured, an infrastructure plan.
And he ran up federal spending and left the country more vulnerable than ever to a debt crisis—this after promising in his 2016 campaign to pay off the entire national debt by 2024.
The president’s defenders contend his tax and regulatory policies jumpstarted economic growth. As with immigration, most of the cited regulatory changes are reversible, and thus fleeting, and will be changed quickly by the new administration. And the tax cuts were passed in 2017 despite the government’s growing fiscal problems and the GOP’s abandonment of spending restraint. Lower taxation is a fine idea if it can be implemented in the context of a sustainable fiscal plan. But Trump cut taxes in a way that has only strengthened the case for a countervailing tax hike to head off fiscal calamity. Significant parts of the 2017 law are set to expire automatically, and it would not be a surprise if its centerpiece, the reduction in the corporate tax, were partially reversed within the next two years.
And then, of course, there is the pandemic, and Trump’s catastrophic response to it. Trump’s positive policy legacy was nearly nonexistent even before the country was hit with the worst public health emergency in a century. It was a moment that called out for steady national leadership, and thus was an opportunity for the president to rise to the occasion and navigate an unforeseen and serious threat to human health and the nation’s economic well-being. He failed this test in every possible way. In a matter of months, he lost interest in trying to manage the immense fallout. The calamity he partially caused is still unfolding.
Trump’s apologists and defenders want the media and the public to focus on what they say were his policy achievements. There were some, of course. But they do not come close to outweighing the damage the president inflicted on the country. Trump was a failure in every way, substantively and morally.
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@echo5226 The evidence is clear: identification requirements for voting reduce turnout among low-income and minority voters. And the particular restrictions imposed by Republican lawmakers—limiting the acceptable forms of identification, ending opportunities for student voting, reducing hours for early voting—certainly do appear aimed at Democratic voters...Indeed, in a column for right-wing clearinghouse WorldNetDaily, longtime conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly acknowledged as much with a defense of North Carolina’s new voting law, which has been criticized for its restrictions on access, among other things. Here’s Schlafly:..“The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama’s ground game. The Democrats carried most states that allow many days of early voting, and Obama’s national field director admitted, shortly before last year’s election, that ‘early voting is giving us a solid lead in the battleground states that will decide this election.’
“The Obama technocrats have developed an efficient system of identifying prospective Obama voters and then nagging them (some might say harassing them) until they actually vote. It may take several days to accomplish this, so early voting is an essential component of the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote campaign.”
She later adds that early voting “violates the spirit of the Constitution” and facilitates “illegal votes” that “cancel out the votes of honest Americans.” I’m not sure what she means by “illegal votes,” but it sounds an awful lot like voting by Democratic constituencies: students, low-income people, and minorities.
Schlafly, it should be noted, isn’t the first Republican to confess the true reason for voter-identification laws. Among friendly audiences, they can’t seem to help it.
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@echo5226 Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai told a gathering of Republicans that their voter identification law would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” That summer, at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, former Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund conceded that Democrats had a point about the GOP’s focus on voter ID, as opposed to those measures—such as absentee balloting—that are vulnerable to tampering. “I think it is a fair argument of some liberals that there are some people who emphasize the voter ID part more than the absentee ballot part because supposedly Republicans like absentee ballots more and they don’t want to restrict that,” he said.
After the election, former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer told The Palm Beach Post that the explicit goal of the state’s voter-ID law was Democratic suppression. “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told the Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only ... ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’” he said. Indeed, the Florida Republican Party imposed a host of policies, from longer ballots to fewer precincts in minority areas, meant to discourage voting. And it worked. According to one study, as many as 49,000 people were discouraged from voting in November 2012 as a result of long lines and other obstacles.
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@echo5226 Republicans and the broader conservative movement have been trashing democracy and pushing voter suppression for decades — because they know that their oligarchic project is unpopular and they can’t win fair and square.....While it’s become commonplace since 2016 to cast Trump and his disregard for democracy as “unprecedented,” the conviction that the “wrong” people should not be allowed to vote — and, crucially, that Republicans cannot win if they do — has been central to the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement for decades.
As Bill Kristol, one of the many conservatives to attempt a late-in-life “never Trump” reinvention, admitted recently, “We [Republicans] lost faith in democracy. We lost faith that we could compete for votes and win elections. Therefore, you’ve got to start restricting the electorate, and that’s very bad for democratic principles and very bad for a political party.”
But, despite Kristol’s insistence otherwise, this “loss of faith” was no recent occurrence.
From civil rights opponents in the 1950s to the participants in the Miami-Dade protest to Trump Republicans sitting on the Supreme Court today, the GOP has been represented for decades by a parade of well-dressed, superficially respectable conservatives dismissing voter disenfranchisement with the absurd refrain of “We’re a republic, not a democracy.”
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@coolramone Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to illegally entering the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 and who testified at a January 6th Committee hearing, provides a powerful lesson for Republican Party leaders and the obvious start to solving our country’s painful division: Tell the truth.
Stephen Ayres has to rebuild his life, but at least now, he will know that his actions in life will be built on the wisdom gained through his pain: "The biggest thing for me is to take the blinders off and make sure you step back and see what's going on — before it's too late."
Why is that lesson so hard for Republican leaders to process? They have seen the tragic consequences of their lies on the lives of people like Stephen Ayres, and they know they are lies. So, stop. It is really that simple.
The lies of Republican leaders have not only hurt people like Steven Ayres, they have fed the hate of right-wing extremists — both individuals and para-military groups. Charlottesville, Buffalo, South Carolina, Oklahoma City, etc., all stand as tragic demonstrations of their hate and its fatal impact on innocent Americans. Reports make it clear that those groups are only gearing up for more violence in the future, egged on by Trump’s massive 2020 election lie.
Here is the simple truth: There was no measurable fraud in the 2020 election. No one stole it. Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly.
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@earlofmar7987 Wake up....grow up...then shut up.
Twice-impeached former President Donald Trump on Sunday praised his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
“These were peaceful people, these were great people,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
Recalling the events of Jan. 6, Trump claimed “there was love in the air” at his rally earlier that day at the White House, and falsely said there was a “lovefest between the Capitol Police and the people that walked down to the Capitol.”
“They are military people, and police officers and construction workers,” he added. “They are tremendous. In many cases, tremendous people.”
The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was a shocking and horrifying event, as captured by countless testimonials from lawmakers who fled the scene and Capitol Police officers who faced off with the insurrectionists in hand-to-hand combat. Trump supporters assaulted Capitol Police officers and hurled racist insults at them as they forced their way into the building.
Approximately 140 police officers were injured during the attack. Dozens of people have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.
“Is this America? They beat police officers with Blue Lives Matter flags. They fought us, they had Confederate flags in the U.S. Capitol,” Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn later recalled in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
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@MajorAnthonyNelson This is "another" misguided case of how the media HACKS feather their own nest by keeping Trump in the forefront of your attention!
It's beyond DISGUSTING! 🤮
It's enabling Trump to perpetuate himself as a publuc figure when, in fact, he is a TRAITOR.
One of the reasons I and others like me in our Forum have insisted AG Garland arrest, indict, and prosecute Trump, is the continuing presence of his influence that cannot contribute anything but further undermine our great country.
Articles and continual T-V coverage that focuses on anything other than the Criminality of January 6 and the LEADERS who planned and fostered it,
Is "craven". As such, it's contemptable and subverts the "accountability" Garland promised when he addressed the nation; which he has FAILED to deliver. 🤭
Put Donald J. Trump on Trial with the
Self-Serving Conspirators who joined him in SEDITION against the Constitutin. This includes Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, Mark Meadows, Guiliane, Powell, and the rest of his Discilpes from the Pitt. 👹
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Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to illegally entering the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 and who testified at a January 6th Committee hearing, provides a powerful lesson for Republican Party leaders and the obvious start to solving our country’s painful division: Tell the truth.
Stephen Ayres has to rebuild his life, but at least now, he will know that his actions in life will be built on the wisdom gained through his pain: "The biggest thing for me is to take the blinders off and make sure you step back and see what's going on — before it's too late."
Why is that lesson so hard for Republican leaders to process? They have seen the tragic consequences of their lies on the lives of people like Stephen Ayres, and they know they are lies. So, stop. It is really that simple.
The lies of Republican leaders have not only hurt people like Steven Ayres, they have fed the hate of right-wing extremists — both individuals and para-military groups. Charlottesville, Buffalo, South Carolina, Oklahoma City, etc., all stand as tragic demonstrations of their hate and its fatal impact on innocent Americans. Reports make it clear that those groups are only gearing up for more violence in the future, egged on by Trump’s massive 2020 election lie.
Here is the simple truth: There was no measurable fraud in the 2020 election. No one stole it. Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly.
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@mikesmith5600 The spectacular violence in the Capitol on January 6th was the outcome of Donald Trump’s yearslong dalliance with the white-supremacist right. Trump all but promised an attack of some kind as he called for his followers to descend on Washington, D.C., for a “wild” protest to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. In a speech inciting his supporters to lay siege to the Capitol, he told them, “We will never give up. We will never concede.” He encouraged them to “fight like hell,” saying that otherwise they would lose their country, and dispatched them to the Capitol. He promised that he would be with them. But, like a lazy coward, Trump went home to watch the show on TV.
The white right-wing assault on the Capitol, with a Confederate flag in the building and gallows on the lawn, was alarming yet wholly predictable as Trump’s frantic efforts to hold on to power faltered. Not only did Trump clearly incite violence with his speech, but his Administration also paved the way for the violence through its deliberate neglect of the rising threat of white extremism. The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that attacks by far-right perpetrators more than quadrupled between 2016 and 2017. Yet even as the threat of white-supremacist violence grew, it commanded little interest or acknowledgment from the Trump Administration. The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, which was restructured and renamed in 2019, is dedicated to investigating extremism and domestic terrorism. Between 2017 and 2019, its operating budget was cut from twenty-one million dollars to less than three million, and the number of its full-time employees dwindled from forty to fewer than ten.
Instead of investigating white supremacists, the Trump Administration has surveilled the Black Lives Matter movement and other minority activists. According to New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, eighty-five percent of “countering violent extremism” grants under Trump have targeted marginalized and oppressed minority groups. In April of 2019, the F.B.I. announced a reduction in the number of categories used to catalogue acts of racially motivated violence, eliminating the specific category for white supremacists and introducing a vague one called “racially motivated extremism.”
Not only have white supremacists largely averted being disrupted or even investigated, but they also have had the comfort of seeing their racial fantasies expounded through the bully pulpit of Donald Trump and the wider mouthpiece of the Republican Party. Trump’s election clearly activated the white-racist fringe, sparking record numbers of hate crimes in 2017. A month after Trump was inaugurated, an Indian engineer named Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed in a bar in Olathe, Kansas, by a white man who shouted racial epithets. On May 20, 2017, Richard Collins III, a twenty-three-year-old Black man, was stabbed to death in College Park, Maryland, by a white man who was a member of a Facebook group called Alt-Reich: Nation. This initial wave of violence peaked with the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017, which brought white-racist thugs from around the country to stop the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue and resulted in the murder of the activist Heather Heyer.
Every step of the way, Trump and the Republican Party have either ignored the threat of racism and violence from the hard right or egged it on. Consider how the G.O.P. rallied around Kyle Rittenhouse, who took a semi-automatic rifle to anti-police-brutality demonstrations in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer and killed two people. He was celebrated not only by the fringe right, which applauds violence in hopes of sparking a race war, but also by members of Congress. Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin and the chair of the homeland-security committee, refused to condemn Rittenhouse and spoke about the importance of “citizen soldiers.” In a surreal scene, Trump defended the seventeen-year-old killer from a lectern adorned with the Presidential seal, lending legitimacy to white vigilantes attacking B.L.M. protests. The misrepresentation of B.L.M. as an insurgency as opposed to a social movement has also validated the militarized response of radicalized police officers and the intrusion of white “citizen soldiers” like Rittenhouse to defend “their” America from anti-racist activists.
The convergences between the Republican Party, white supremacists, and white militias grew more numerous and more threatening the closer we came to Election Day. Republican officials evinced a growing proclivity for authoritarianism, actively trying to suppress African-American access to the ballot and insisting that their Party was the legitimate victor in the recent elections. It is only a short hop from one form of political hostility to another, including the threat of political violence. Last December, Representative Madison Cawthorn, who has used white-nationalist symbols and rhetoric, told conservatives to “call your congressman and feel free—you can lightly threaten them.” Representative Mo Brooks introduced Trump at the rally that incited the riot. “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking some ass,” Brooks said. “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”
Such acts reflect the growing unity between establishment Republican Party and white supremacists, as well as between those groups and the police. In the past two elections, the Fraternal Order of Police, which claims to represent three hundred and fifty-five thousand police officers, has endorsed Trump. Last week, John Catanzara, the president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police lodge, said that he believed that the election had been stolen and defended the rampage at the Capitol, saying that “there was no arson, there was no burning of anything, there was no looting, there was very little destruction of property.” He said that Wednesday’s events were “very different than what happened all across this country all summer long in Democratic-ran cities and nobody had a problem with that.”
Catanzara later apologized and said that his statement was “poorly worded.” But these are not fringe politics. They emanate from the center of the Republican Party.
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@mikesmith5600 Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to illegally entering the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 and who testified at a January 6th Committee hearing, provides a powerful lesson for Republican Party leaders and the obvious start to solving our country’s painful division: Tell the truth.
Stephen Ayres has to rebuild his life, but at least now, he will know that his actions in life will be built on the wisdom gained through his pain: "The biggest thing for me is to take the blinders off and make sure you step back and see what's going on — before it's too late."
Why is that lesson so hard for Republican leaders to process? They have seen the tragic consequences of their lies on the lives of people like Stephen Ayres, and they know they are lies. So, stop. It is really that simple.
The lies of Republican leaders have not only hurt people like Steven Ayres, they have fed the hate of right-wing extremists — both individuals and para-military groups. Charlottesville, Buffalo, South Carolina, Oklahoma City, etc., all stand as tragic demonstrations of their hate and its fatal impact on innocent Americans. Reports make it clear that those groups are only gearing up for more violence in the future, egged on by Trump’s massive 2020 election lie.
Here is the simple truth: There was no measurable fraud in the 2020 election. No one stole it. Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly.
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Wake up....grow up...then shut up.
Twice-impeached former President Donald Trump on Sunday praised his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
“These were peaceful people, these were great people,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
Recalling the events of Jan. 6, Trump claimed “there was love in the air” at his rally earlier that day at the White House, and falsely said there was a “lovefest between the Capitol Police and the people that walked down to the Capitol.”
“They are military people, and police officers and construction workers,” he added. “They are tremendous. In many cases, tremendous people.”
The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was a shocking and horrifying event, as captured by countless testimonials from lawmakers who fled the scene and Capitol Police officers who faced off with the insurrectionists in hand-to-hand combat. Trump supporters assaulted Capitol Police officers and hurled racist insults at them as they forced their way into the building.
Approximately 140 police officers were injured during the attack. Dozens of people have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.
“Is this America? They beat police officers with Blue Lives Matter flags. They fought us, they had Confederate flags in the U.S. Capitol,” Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn later recalled in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
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Stephen Ayres, who has pleaded guilty to illegally entering the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 and who testified at a January 6th Committee hearing, provides a powerful lesson for Republican Party leaders and the obvious start to solving our country’s painful division: Tell the truth.
Stephen Ayres has to rebuild his life, but at least now, he will know that his actions in life will be built on the wisdom gained through his pain: "The biggest thing for me is to take the blinders off and make sure you step back and see what's going on — before it's too late."
Why is that lesson so hard for Republican leaders to process? They have seen the tragic consequences of their lies on the lives of people like Stephen Ayres, and they know they are lies. So, stop. It is really that simple.
The lies of Republican leaders have not only hurt people like Steven Ayres, they have fed the hate of right-wing extremists — both individuals and para-military groups. Charlottesville, Buffalo, South Carolina, Oklahoma City, etc., all stand as tragic demonstrations of their hate and its fatal impact on innocent Americans. Reports make it clear that those groups are only gearing up for more violence in the future, egged on by Trump’s massive 2020 election lie.
Here is the simple truth: There was no measurable fraud in the 2020 election. No one stole it. Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly.
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For those who need no rehearsal......A 24-year-old Georgia man who contracted COVID-19 and required a double lung transplant, and who remains hospitalized, has expressed his regret he did not get vaccinated for the virus, which has so far killed more than 607,000 Americans.
Blake Bargatze had told his parents he was putting off receiving a COVID-19 vaccine because he felt uncertain about its possible side effects, WSB-TV in Atlanta reported.
“He wanted to wait a few years to see, you know, if there’s any side effects or anything from it,” said Paul Nuclo, his stepfather. “As soon as he got in the hospital, though, he said he wished he had gotten the vaccine.”
Bargatze was the only member of his family who passed on getting vaccinated, Cheryl Nuclo, his mother, told Fox 5 Atlanta. Once hospitalized, however, he asked to be inoculated.
“The night before he was intubated, he wanted it,” Nuclo said. “So it was a little bit too late then.”
Bargatze, who had no preexisting medical conditions and has endured prolonged intensive care stays at hospitals in three different states over the last three months, believes he contracted COVID-19 during an April visit to Florida.
“He had called me that Friday when he got the results,” Bargatze's mother told WSB-TV, “and he’s like, ‘Mom, you’re going to be mad. I got COVID.’”
A GoFundMe page set up by Bargatze’s friends is raising money to help cover his medical bills.
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Republicans continue to blame vulnerable migrants fleeing violence, hunger, and natural disasters for illicit drug smuggling, but facts are stubborn things. Over 90 percent of fentanyl, and over 80 percent of total illegal narcotics, arrive at legal points of entry—not between them—and are smuggled largely by Americans—not undocumented migrants. In fact, migrants accounted for less than 9 percent of fentanyl trafficking convictions in FY 21, compared to more than 86 percent for American citizens.
In December 2022, CBP seized 4,500 pounds of fentanyl, the largest amount ever recorded. Incredibly, just five of those 4,500 pounds were seized at the border by U.S. Border Patrol. Republicans are focused on 1 percent of the problem, 100 percent of the time.
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@robbiegunkel2356 From the FBI....In our system, the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.
Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.
In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.
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depends on who you ask ....The climate crisis is becoming a financial crisis.
This month, the largest homeowner insurance company in California, State Farm, announced that it would stop selling coverage to homeowners. That’s not just in wildfire zones, but everywhere in the state.
Insurance companies, tired of losing money, are raising rates, restricting coverage or pulling out of some areas altogether — making it more expensive for people to live in their homes
“Risk has a price,” said Roy Wright, the former official in charge of insurance at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and now head of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a research group. “We’re just now seeing it.”
In parts of eastern Kentucky ravaged by storms last summer, the price of flood insurance is set to quadruple. In Louisiana, the top insurance official says the market is in crisis, and is offering millions of dollars in subsidies to try to draw insurers to the state.
And in much of Florida, homeowners are increasingly struggling to buy storm coverage. Most big insurers have pulled out of the state already, sending homeowners to smaller private companies that are straining to stay in business — a possible glimpse into California’s future if more big insurers leave.
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