Words cannot explain…
Year: 2015
Remember the halcyon days of 2009, when the country was embroiled in the first racial controversy of the brand new Obama presidency? You know, when the Cambridge, Massachusetts police thought that the world-renowned Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested for essentially breaking into his own house because the front door was stuck?
Those were the good old days when it was possible to accuse the president of playing the race card (as if racism was ever a gentlemanly card game), when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 still had some teeth, and when accusing the policeman of “acting stupidly” made Obama the butt of jokes and the target of righteous anger because he didn’t support law enforcement. The best thing we can say about that epsiode?
At least nobody was shot dead.
Little did the country know that the innocuous “Beer Summit” would be the last time that civility entered the conversation. Conservatives, and even a few liberals, thought that Obama had breached the wall of silence too quickly in his term. That he had to tread lightly and be careful because as the nation’s first African-American president, he had to stay above the fray and not remind polite society that we have a bit of a complicated history when it comes to race. And guns. And law enforcement behavior. Seems quaint, yes?
I believe that police officers, perhaps more than any other public service job, have the most difficult environment in which to work. The police have to be correct almost 100% of the time. I support effective, proactive, respectful, sometimes forceful police work. Recent events have shown, however, that many police officers, and the criminal justice systems in towns and cities across this country, have not been held accountable for their actions or have lied about what’s actually happened at traffic stops and crime scenes. This must stop.
I’m hoping that the Republican candidates in this week’s debates will address the issue and that we’ll hear more from the Democrats as well. But this needs to be done rather quickly because the real issue is trust. Right now, that level is dangerously low.
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A string of unfortunate events have hit the Brown family. Right after Bobbi Kristina’s funeral, Bobby Brown’s new wife, Alicia, suffered seizures in her hotel room, as reported by Yahoo News.
Mere hours after saying goodbye to his daughter at her funeral, Bobby’s wife, who had given birth to their daughter Bodhi, earlier this month, had to be taken to hospital via ambulance as paramedics rushed to help her.
Thankfully, Alicia was able to make a recovery and Bobby is expected to attend Bobbi Kristina’s burial in New Jersey tomorrow.
The young starlet’s funeral was held at the St James United Methodist Church, which is where she often used to go to pray with her late mother, Whitney Houston, and it has been said that Whitney’s picture was present at the altar.
Republicans are known for criticizing climate and climate change. They call climate change and the science that backs it up a liberal conspiracy. And now this, the Republican savior for the 2016 election, Jeb Bush, is signaling that he too believes in climate change.
Oh the calamity!
Bush (R) acknowledges human activity contributes to climate change but cautioned against actions that would harm the U.S. economy. In written answers to Bloomberg BNA, Bush said the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan is “irresponsible and ineffective” and “oversteps state authority.” He also tells Bloomberg BNA reporter Anthony Adragna that phasing out the renewable fuel standard “over time” is the “proper thing to do.” Bush, who served as Florida governor from 1999 to 2007, also called approving the proposed Keystone XL pipeline a “no brainer.”
Bloomberg BNA:Is climate change occurring? If so, does human activity significantly contribute to it?
Bush: The climate is changing; I don’t think anybody can argue it’s not. Human activity has contributed to it. I think we have a responsibility to adapt to what the possibilities are without destroying our economy, without hollowing out our industrial core.
Now with Alex Wagner is no more. The show has came to a drastic end. MSNBC has cancelled the show and it has now joined a slew of other shows the liberal leaning network has taken off air. Some of these shows include The Cycle and The Ed Show. But before Alex Wagner said her final goodbye, she was heard on air saying “woo shit” as her final show came to an end.
Wagner is seen on set with all the necessary hands that helped produced her show. She uses the last moments to name some of the people who helped made the show what it was and after she called the last name, Wagner is heard saying, “Oh my God. That was massive.” And then came the infamous “woo, shit.”
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They are Satan worshippers, so in a sense that have already signed away their soul to the devil. But what happened in Detroit over the weekend required members to put it on paper.
The organizers of a ceremony to unveil a statue to Satan asked everyone attending the ceremony to sign the contract giving the devil their soul. According to the organizers, the contract was to make sure that secret Christian protesters wouldn’t attend.
“I agree that by signing this document under any name, given or adopted, actual or pseudonymous, I am hereby avowing my soul to Satan (aka Abbadon, aka Lucifer, aka Beelzebub, aka The Antichrist),” the contract read.
“I do so knowing that He (aka The Fallen One, aka The Father of Lies) or any of His representatives may choose to collect my eternal soul at any time, with or without notice. I understand that my signature or mark representing any name, real or made up, upon these papers constitutes a lasting and eternal contract, and that there will be no further negotiations on the matter of my eternal soul.”
What is this world coming to?
At a recent Netroots Nation conference, Democratic candidate for President Bernie Sanders was criticized for suggesting combating economic inequality as an answer to institutional racism in America. “Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50 percent of young African-American kids are unemployed,” Sanders said at the conference. “It is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.”
He was booed by some in attendance for not directly addressing the question of racism.
On Sunday, Sanders doubled down, stating that economic inequality must be dealt with in addition to institutional racism.
“We have to end institutional racism, but we have to deal with the reality that 50% of young black kids are unemployed, that we have massive poverty in America, that we have an unsustainable level of income and wealth inequality,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“We have to address both,” he added, referencing the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. to combat poverty in America.
Sanders was lambasted by some black activists last weekend at progressive conference Netroots Nation, where critics accused him of focusing on economic issues over racial inequality.
“My view is that we have got to deal with the fact that the middle class in this country is disappearing, that we have millions of people working for wages that are much too low impacts everybody, impacts the African American community even more,” he said on Sunday. “Those are issues that do have to be dealt with, and just at the same time as we deal with institutional racism.”
It’s the usual argument from these NRA gun-loving Republicans. Adding more guns to the equation will result in less gun violence. They said it when there was a mass shooting in a Colorado movie theater, they said it when there was a mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut, they said it when there was a mass shooting at a church in South Carolina and now that there’s yet another shooting at another theater in Louisiana, they’re calling for more guns again!
On Sunday, one of the Republican’s professional presidential candidate Rick Perry, went on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday and proclaimed their usual mantra – if there were more people with guns in the movie theater in Lafayette Louisiana, then the mentally deranged man who opened fire last week killing two movie goers and then killing himself, would have never happened.
“I think that it makes a lot of sense to send a message across this country,” Perry said. “If we believe in the Second Amendment, and we believe in people’s right to protect themselves and defend themselves, and their families.”
He added,
“I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there’s as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette.”
Meanwhile, the Republican governor in the state where the last shooting occurred, Bobby Jindal, refused to admit that guns or the lack of adequate gun laws could have contributed to the last shooting in his state. “There will be an absolute appropriate time for us to talk about policies and politics,” Jindal says, as he secures the approval of the NRA in his quest to become president.
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She held on and fought as long as she could, but on Sunday, Bobby Kristian Brown, daughter of Bobby and Whitney Houston, died according to representative of the Houston family. She was 22 years old.
“Bobbi Kristina Brown passed away Sunday, July, 26 2015, surrounded by her family,” the statement said. “She is finally at peace in the arms of God. We want to again thank everyone for their tremendous amount of love and support during these last few months.”
She was treated in a hospital and then a hospice facilityin the nearly six months since she was found unresponsive and not breathing in the bathtub at her Roswell home on January 31 — nearly three years to the day after her mother accidentally drowned in a bathtub in Beverly Hills, a victim of the vices she had fought for much of her career.
Poor Chris Christie.
After five years of berating people on YouTube, telling teachers, members of the armed services and other assorted citizens of New Jersey who just want their voices to be heard to essentially shut up, and after creating this persona of a man who tells the facts as they are (not just as he sees them, but as the ARE), and furiously trying to cash in every available political, economic and questionable chip at his disposal, this guy can’t even poll 5% of registered Republican voters ahead of next month’s National Night Out Against Crime GOP Presidential Debate.
And he’s not even the loudest guy in the room. Donald Trump has taken care of that. And he’s still polling near or at the top of the Republican field despite having little, if any, chance at winning any of the primaries. Of course, many have said the same thing about Christie. The main difference is that Governor Christie also has a record he’s trying to run on, while Trump will make his headlines, fulminate on FOX come 8/6, then go back to making piles of money in real estate.
Meanwhile, the good governor will run on…what? The stagnant New Jersey economy? Remember that Christie thought he could buff his conservative bona-fides by cutting income taxes only to be met head-on by an economy that was still shedding jobs and a citizenry that still needed social services he had cut during his first years in office. He’s also trying to run on the idea that he hasn’t raised taxes, but if you live in the Garden State and try to access government services, you know that fees have gone through the roof from everything from new license plates to getting state certification for public jobs.
Now he’s being called to task for not approving the railroad tunnels that would have eased the congestion between New Jersey and New York, and in a week where train service was severely affected by the weather (the heat made the power lines sag, so the trains couldn’t run), the state’s media is again reminding voters what a terrible decision that was. Yes, the governor did say that the project might have cost taxpayers a lot of money, but he then took that same money and used it to fix the state’s roads so he wouldn’t have to raise the gas tax. Because Republicans cannot ever raise taxes. Even when it’s a pretty good idea. Like when gas prices are low. Like now.
Christie’s response? Absolutely laughable. He said that if he got elected president, he would push to have the tunnels built as long as all stakeholders paid an even share. Can you see the right wing GOP House approving such a measure? Neither can I. The hypocrisy is thick around here.
And if you thought Bridgegate was the only scandal in Trenton, here comes another one. It seems that a whistleblower has won his case that will force the government to unseal secret grand jury testimony alleging that Christie quashed an investigation into some of his political buddies. It’s really a small town issue, but the governor has made it into a potentially problematic case for his campaign. I’m sure the other 86 people running for the GOP nomination will remind voters of Christie’s clouds.
If he’s in the debates in August, and I’m assuming he will qualify, Christie thinks that policy will win the day. The reality is likely that he’ll get a few questions, but most of the attention will go to Bush, Rubio, Walker, Paul and Trump. Christie will be able to tell us all about how we need to slash Social Security and Medicaid, but that won’t separate him from the field.
He won’t even be the biggest big mouth in the room.
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Sure Bobby. After all, you are running for president and getting the approval of the NRA and the gun nuts of America is better for you than talking about ways to stop the mass shootings in America, like the latest mass shooting at the Grand Theatre in your state of Louisiana.
“We are less than 24 hours out, we’ve got two families that need to bury their loved ones. We’ve got families waiting for their loved ones to leave the hospital and are praying for their recovery,” Jindal said at a Friday press conference, according to The Hill. “There will be an absolute appropriate time for us to talk about policies and politics, and I’m sure that folks will want to score political points of this tragedy, as they’ve tried to do on previous tragedies.”
Jindal told reporters that he might be more open to talking about the politics surrounding guns at a later time.
“You can ask me these questions in a couple of days. I’m not going anywhere. I’m happy to talk about this, we’re happy to talk about politics, but not here,” he said according to The Hill.
Since Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley felt the need to apologize for saying “black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter” when confronted by a group from the “BlackLivesMatter” movement, his apology has caused much talk and headlines. Jeb Bush is just one of a few presidential candidates urged to emphasize that yes, white lives matter, but BlackLivesMatter is nothing more than a political slogan.
When a reporter asked him to respond to O’Malley’s apology, an apparent irate Jeb Bush is seen rolling his eyes before offering his response.
“We’re so uptight and so politically correct now that we apologize for saying ‘lives matter?'” asked Bush. “Life is precious. It’s a gift from God. I frankly think that it’s one of the most important values that we have. I know in the political context it’s a slogan, I guess. Should he have apologized? No. If he believes that white lives matter, which I hope he does, then he shouldn’t have apologized to a group that seemed to disagree with it. Gosh.”
The annoyed Jeb Bush still doesn’t get it! When week after week black lives are gunned down and beaten and killed by those entrusted with their protection, saying “all lives matter”, although true, minimizes the need to fix an obvious problem between the black or minority community and the police. Yes, we all know white lives matter, because those lives are not being hunted by police the way black ones are, but what’s wrong with admitting that black lives matter too and deserve the same protection as white lives?
Jeeze!
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