The threat came after five police officers were shot and killed in Dallas. The Kansas cop apparently trolled Facebook, found the woman’s profile and proceeded to threaten her and her little daughter. “We’ll see how much her life matters soon,” the officer said. “Better be careful leaving your info open where she can be found 🙂 Hold her close tonight it’ll be the last time.”
The Overland Park police officer was fired Friday after the Texas woman reported the threat made the night before, shortly after a gunman opened fire on law enforcement officers during a Black Lives Matter demonstration, reported the Kansas City Star.
The comment was made from the officer’s personal Facebook account on photos of the woman’s daughter she had posted in 2014.
The woman has no idea how the officer found her Facebook profile or why he targeted her and her daughter.
“I had no clue who this guy was,” said the woman, LaNaydra Williams. “I was angry, and then I was scared.”
The police department launched an investigation Friday morning after Williams reported the comments, and the officer was fired hours later.
If we need anything now, it’s to stop talking and let the investigations into the tragedies of the past week move forward. After all, in the overwhelming number of big news stories, the early information is usually the least reliable, but that’s the information that becomes the narrative. Then when we get contradictory evidence, it’s much more difficult to alter our thinking and change our views because it doesn’t reinforce the narrative.
So let’s calm down and stop talking across each other. We should mourn, grieve, cry, reflect, breathe, consider, reconsider, and learn. This country is divided enough and social media isn’t helping. As a matter of fact, it’s hurting us right now. My conservative friends are full of bile and contempt for President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Black Lives Matter. My liberal friends have turned up the hate, if that’s even possible, on Donald Trump, the NRA and racist police officers.
Please stop.
This is our collective problem and we all share the blame for creating a society that has no patience for different perspectives. I abhor racism and justice denied, but I also detest making scapegoats out of police officers and people who legally carry firearms. I despise what Donald Trump and his supporters have said about women, Hispanic groups and African-Americans, but I also loathe the dismissal of Hillary Clinton’s email server and her misjudgement and rationalizations for setting one up at her house.
Enough.
In the absence of someone who can bind up the nation’s wounds or appeal to a vast majority of Americans, we will need to get through this ourselves, so we’ll need to be a little more rational about this. The first step is to reach out to people you know who don’t share your political philosophy and to engage them in discussion without calling them an idiot or a Neanderthal or a mouth-breather. When you talk to them, describe what you feel and ask questions, as opposed to labeling and accusing them of being part of the problem. We are all part of the problem, and to deny that is to deny reality. Neither side has a monopoly on the truth.
Try it now while we wait for information that might make today’s news headlines obsolete and wrong. This is too important to let emotions rule the day.
It is sickening to think that there are people in this nation who supported Sarah Palin. And it is even more sickening to think that someone like Sarah Palin was considered to be our vice president. Oh wait! We now have Donald Trump and he wants to be President!!!
Black people in this country have been lynched, beaten, stoned and murdered since the days of slavery. There have been advancements in race relations since those days but thanks to cellphone videos and the Black Lives Matter movement, the rest of the world is getting a look at what black people go through every day in America… land of the free…!
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin however, says the Black Lives Matter movement is a “farce” and said Americans who hyphenate their racial backgrounds — such as African-Americans and Asian-Americans — “further divide our nation.”
#BlackLivesMatter is a farce and hyphenating America destroys us,” the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee wrote on her Facebook page. “Shame on our culture’s influencers who would stir contention and division that could lead to evil such as that in Dallas.”
“Shame on politicians and pundits giving credence to thugs rioting against police officers and the rule of law in the name of “‘peaceful protests.’ It is a farce. #BlackLivesMatter is a farce.”
The former vice presidential candidate said black lives matter more than activists “can grasp.”
“Black Lives Matter? Yes – more than BLM “protestors” can grasp, as evidenced by their self-destructive provocateurism,” she wrote. “Doesn’t it go without saying that Native lives matter, too? And Asian; and Eskimo; and Hispanic; and Indian… and every other race comprised of people who see clearly the agenda at play to weaken America through disunity.”
In his conversation with Van Jones, former Republican House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, came to the shocking truth that black Americans live with every day – black lives do not matter to white America and white Americans could care less about blacks being gunned down every day by police.
“It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years to get a sense of this. If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk,” Gingrich said.
He continued, speaking about his childhood: “It was still legally segregated, which meant the local sheriff and National Guard would impose, by force, the taking away of rights of Americans. We’ve come a fair distance, now we have a black mayor of Atlanta, and have had a series of them in fact. We have John Lewis who went from marching on Selma to a Democratic whip in Congress. But we’ve stalled out on the cultural, economic, practical progress we needed.”
That lack of progress, Gingrich said, “creates the kind of alienation where it begins to become legitimate to think about, whether it’s in songs or slogans or whatever, the shooting of policemen. If we were to continue in this direction of alienation on both sides, you could really be a very coarse and dangerous society in 10 or 15 years.”
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, called the shooting aftermath of yet another black man gunned down by police and live-streamed on Facebook, “heartbreaking.”
“My heart goes out to the Castile family and all the other families who have experienced this kind of tragedy,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.
“The images we’ve seen this week are graphic and heartbreaking, and they shine a light on the fear that millions of members of our community live with every day,” he wrote.
While cellphone video of police-involved shootings has become more prevalent in recent years in addition to security camera or dashboard footage, the aftermath of Wednesday’s shooting of Castile in Minnesota was live-streamed by his fiancee.
Diamond Reynolds streamed the moments after the shooting, as Castile slumped next to her in the front of the car, his white shirt soaked with blood and the officer standing a few feet away outside, his gun still drawn. The woman’s 4-year-old daughter sat in the back seat. Castile later died.
“While I hope we never have to see another video like Diamond’s, it reminds us why coming together to build a more open and connected world is so important — and how far we still have to go,” Zuckerberg said
Members of Donald Trump’s family have EUGE rolls in his Republican presidential bid. For example, Donald’s son Eric is responsible for picking his VP for crying out loud.
No one in the political world ever heard of Eric because until now, Eric kept whatever political views he had to himself…if he had any views at all. But since dad is running for president, Eric Trump has suddenly become the political deal maker of the Republican party, choosing his father’s Vice President – a person who is a heartbeat away from becoming the president of the United States.
And according to this interview, Eric has his sister Ivanka in mind as a possible running mate for his father.
The Trump scion appeared on Thursday morning’s edition of “Fox & Friends,” telling host Steve Doocy, “She’s got the beautiful looks, right? She’s got — she’s smart, she’s smart, smart, smart. … She’s certainly got my vote.”
Donald Trump has been mocked for raving about his daughter’s beauty and even saying he would date her if they weren’t related.
Doocy wanted to know if Ivanka Trump would be 35 years in age, the cut-off to legally serve as vice president.
“She’ll just be 35,” Eric Trump responded, and said her 35th birthday is Oct. 30, “so she’d just makes that by about by, you know, seven, eight days.”
Host Ainsley Earhardt said Ivanka Trump has the “business sense” for the position, to which her brother responded, “She’s amazing.
Yahoo News is reporting that former Republican presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, has decided to skip the Donald Trump led Republican Convention.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Marco Rubio says the Florida Republican is skipping the GOP Convention in Cleveland. That makes Rubio the latest high-profile Republican to decide not to attend the convention that is preparing to nominate Donald Trump for president.
Rubio spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas says Rubio wants to spend his time campaigning for re-election to his Senate seat. She says Rubio had planned to go to the convention when he wasn’t seeking re-election but now that he’s decided to seek another term he’s focusing on that.
Donald Trump is a prolific tweeter. He has mastered the art of sitting behind a computer screen and attacking people in 180 characters. The conservative trolls love him for that and have anointed him the chosen one to be the next president.
But apparently being good at Twitter is not a constitutional requirement to be president. The current president made that point during his first campaign appearance for presumptive Democratic presidential nomineeHillary Clinton, Obama said Trump is just as qualified to serve as president as his 15-year-old daughter Sasha.
“Everybody can tweet, but nobody actually knows what it takes to do the job until you’ve sat behind the desk,” Obama told a crowd in Charlotte, N.C.
“I mean, Sasha tweets, but she doesn’t think that she’s thereby should be sitting behind the desk.”
In contrast, Obama said Clinton is more than ready to take his place. He cited her work on healthcare and education, as well as her performance under pressure during the lead up to the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.
“There has never been a man or woman more qualified for this office than Hillary Clinton. Ever. And that’s the truth,” the president saidf the United States. But being good at twitter is apparently not a constitutional requirement to be president.
The president explains during his first campaign appearance for presumptive Democratic presidential nomineeHillary Clinton, Obama said Trump is just as qualified to serve as president as his 15-year-old daughter Sasha.
“Everybody can tweet, but nobody actually knows what it takes to do the job until you’ve sat behind the desk,” Obama told a crowd in Charlotte, N.C.
“I mean, Sasha tweets, but she doesn’t think that she’s thereby should be sitting behind the desk.”
In contrast, Obama said Clinton is more than ready to take his place. He cited her work on healthcare and education, as well as her performance under pressure during the lead up to the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.
“There has never been a man or woman more qualified for this office than Hillary Clinton. Ever. And that’s the truth,” the president said
NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 16: Donald Trump attends the "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice" Red Carpet Event at Trump Tower on April 16, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
How exactly can you “Make America Great Again” when you build your products in other countries?
“Trump has a unique way of showing his love for America,” the ad says.
The ad shows a recent campaign speech during which Trump calls for Americans to “have more pride buying made in the USA,” and then pivots to news clips of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee defending his decision to manufacture products overseas.
The DNC railed against Trump’s “made-anywhere-BUT-the-USA business practices.”
“A lie from Donald Trump? Shocking,” the ad says.
“Trump’s dangerous and divisive campaign is as un-American as the products he manufactures anywhere but the USA,” added DNC spokesperson Luis Miranda. “His deceptive campaign against the very business practices he uses is exactly why the American people should reject him in November, and a reminder he lacks the temperament to serve in our nation’s highest office.”
A Loras College poll released Thursday had the Iowa lawmaker in a statistical dead heat against Patty Judge, his Democratic challenger. Grassley led by only one point, 46-45, against the former lieutenant governor. That nominal advantage was well within the poll’s four-point margin or error.
Public Policy Polling, a left-leaning firm, released a survey earlier last week showing Grassley with a 7-point lead. But even that margin hardly suggests safety for the incumbent.
“When I see a poll like the Loras poll or the [Public Polling Policy] poll, if I’m Grassley that makes me nervous. …That’s trouble,” said David Peterson, a political science professor at Iowa State University and editor of the academic journal Political Behavior. “I think he’s clearly more vulnerable than he’s been in past elections.”
Democrats and outside groups pounced on the polling.
Judge’s campaign blasted out the Loras College poll, noting Grassley “is consistently polling in the 40s for the first time since his election to the Senate in the 1980s.”
“We’re obviously excited about that poll,” Sam Roecker, Judge’s campaign manager, told The Hill. “This is unprecedented for Chuck Grassley.”
I sort of forgot that Chris Christie was still the Governor of New Jersey and an active politician until this week, so quiet was he on policy and bombast.
But now he’s back.
His first foray was to emerge with a set of checks made out to suburban school district students for $6,599 each. This was his way of solving the school funding problem that has vexed governors for the better part of 40 years. Christie’s solution was, in essence, to tell the students who live in New Jersey’s cities to either go to a Charter School, move, get different parents, or suck it up and try to learn in a class with 34 other students because Christie’s plan would mean a bunch of school closures.
To the suburban districts, the message was much less harsh: Your property taxes will go down and you can continue to have fine schools. What I really like is that the amount of aid isn’t a round number. In fact, I think if Christie had consulted Donald Trump, the price would have been $6,599.99. The pennies add so much class.
And speaking of Christie and Trump, the other information that emerged this week is that the Governor is being vetted for the Vice-Presidency. Yes, I’m still scared of ISIS, but this potential pairing comes in a close second (and tied, by the way, with the thought of Newt Gingrich being VP). Christie has evidently been giving Trump political advice ahead of the GOP’s Cleveland Convention, weighing in on the recent firing of Trump’s campaign manager and moderating Trump’s speeches so they include more substance and less invective. OK, that last one isn’t working out too well, but Christie is taking his job as manager of Trump’s transition very seriously.
Which brings us to this weekend’s crisis in New Jersey over the Transportation Trust Fund which, I am told, is out of money because the Legislature hasn’t raised the gas tax to fund it. Of course, it’s really Christie’s problem because instead of agreeing to the gas tax increase in return for an end to the inheritance tax, which Christie has been running on forever, he tried to make a different deal to agree to the gas tax, but lower the sales tax by 1%. That would create a huge hole in the state budget. When the state Senate balked at the deal (both Republicans and Democrats opposed it), Christie threatened to shut down road projects over the weekend. Which would throw a bunch of people out of work. And seriously compromise driver safety. And make him less popular than he already is.
In years past, even though I didn’t agree with much of what the Republican politicians wanted to do, I could at least see their arguments and follow their thinking. Not this year. The party’s done blowed itself up. And Chris Christie has his hand on the dynamite plunger.
If only Donald Trump would Trexit. Before November, when he’ll likely Trexit anyway.
Yes, I know that the British vote to leave the European Union is being interpreted as a warning that the angry, anti-immigrant, anti-trade, build-an-entire-sea-around-the-country (which the British actually did at minimal cost), xenophobic population in England is heading towards the United States, but I don’t necessarily believe it. The forces that created the European Union to begin with were far more elitist than the Democrats and Republicans who supposedly rigged the country with unfair trade deals and lower taxes on the wealthy in the United States. After all, we actually got to vote to lower taxes and everything else that the angry electorate wants to undo. The Europeans didn’t get to vote on the Union. And by the by, don’t let the fact that it was the Conservative government of David Cameron, in an effort to mollify the far-right, that brought on this vote. There really is a lesson about giving ultra-conservatives a referendum on their beliefs. Will we learn?
Clearly, change is in the air and has been for a few years. The United States economy has stalled, the middle class, and what used to be called the working middle class has seen its income stagnate, bankers and Wall Street types got bailout while others were losing their homes, and public workers have been vilified for having too much in the way of collective bargaining rights, pensions and benefits. Mix in terrorism, mass shootings and a sense of unease because of technological change, and the brew is getting quite yeasty.
It’s at this time that we need to be very careful about the electoral choices we make. I understand anger, but I do not want an angry person, or a person who is leading an angry movement to become powerful in this country. I want someone who is going to be able to manage that anger and make it productive. Someone who can lead us to a safer place where we do not turn on each other. President Obama is such a level-headed leader and I applaud his attempts at calming the waters and asking Americans to think before they act. I also see Hillary Clinton as the best choice in November to lead a country who is one demagogue away from violence, recrimination, blame and disaster.
This is why we need a Trexit. Donald Trump is exactly the wrong person to get anywhere near the White House short of a tourist pass. He has certainly tapped into much of the anger and frustration that many people in this country feel, but he has yet to harness it. He continues to scratch the raw wound and is enabling Americans to suffer from the pain without actually administering some medicine that will cure what ails us.
And he continues to utter what I consider the most destructive phrase in the political lexicon: We need to take back our country.
This is a potent saying, but one that is built on hatred, mistrust, creating “the other,” separating us from each other, and overtly saying that there are anti-Americans in our midst who should either not be here or should be dealt with harshly. And we all know who he is talking about. The British were able to render a decision peacefully and without blame because the question they were being asked to vote on did not have a name attached to it. In some ways it was a referendum on David Cameron, but this was an idea. What Trump is doing is giving a face to the fears we have and tapping into our worst stereotypes. All Muslims. All Hispanics. There is no nuance. That’s dangerous.
Besides, although the reporting will continue to follow the day-to-day effects of the British vote, the real issue is not that they voted to leave, but whether that was actually the right decision. Donald Trump thinks it was. That’s all I need to know.
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