The projection in these types of people is funny: Law and order types are surrounded by crooks Sanctity of marriage types are caught with mistresses Anti-gay types hire gay lovers Etc.
Well, to be fair, crooks are surrounded by crooks too. Look at Trump...
Yeah but didn't he campaign on law and order.
Yes he did. I clearly remember him saying "law and order" at the one debate with Hillary and he then was like waiting for applause that never came. He's totally pretended to be law and order guy and everyone else is a crook.
Allegedly the government is going to open as Trump agreed to a 2 to 3 week deal.
This is
A) a distraction from Stone being arrested. B ) a way to blame democrats for the shutdown in two-three weeks once he shuts it down again C) all Trump is going to do until he gets his funding D) all of the above.
In among the problems there was a significant piece of good news in Europe where it looks like there's a good chance that the dispute between Greece and Macedonia over naming rights will be solved - after a mere 28 years. Though it may seem like a joke it has been a significant source of tension in the Balkans and an issue for both NATO and the EU for many years. Now, if someone can just sort Cyprus out ...
We are going to fund the government 2 to 3 weeks at a time. Sounds like a really stable plan. How many times do we have to play out the exact same scenario?? Of course, one of the reasons Trump is giving in for the moment is simple. The stress on the country is clearly becoming too great for his poll numbers to bear. It was NEVER sustainable after the 30 day mark. And it won't be if it happens again either. I'm guessing he might have gotten word about the SECOND poll in two days that has him at 37/58 in approval disapproval, and I don't care how stacked the electoral college is, you aren't getting reelected with those kinds of numbers. No way in hell.
The Stone indictments have been expected for a LONG time. Stone (according to the charging documents) was ordered by a senior campaign official to coordinate with Wikileaks about the stolen emails. Just DAYS after this took place, Trump was asking Russia in a press conference to literally commit espionage against his political opponent. Was Trump giving the orders to Stone?? Who knows, but if he wasn't, I'd bet a ton of money the person who WAS was Don Jr., though Marcy Wheeler seems to think it may have been Rick Gates. Regardless, at what point is the cat out of the bag on this?? Since this whole thing started unraveling we have:
Michael Flynn, Nation Security Adviser: Guilty plea George Papadopoulos, Foreign Policy Adviser: Guilty plea Rick Gates, Deputy Campaign Manager: Guilty plea Paul Manafort, Campaign Chairman: Convicted of multiple felonies Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer: Guilty plea and cooperating witness for multiple investigations Roger Stone, longtime Trump political adviser: Indicted on 7 counts, including witness tampering
Now, in what universe is this not only smoke, but a raging, out of control forest fire that you can see from space?? At what point does even the most hardened skeptic have to get over the idea that Trump isn't involved in ANY of this?? At a certain point, it will be easier to count the people in Trump's inner-circle who HAVEN'T been indicted than the ones who have.
Allegedly the government is going to open as Trump agreed to a 2 to 3 week deal.
This is
A) a distraction from Stone being arrested. B ) a way to blame democrats for the shutdown in two-three weeks once he shuts it down again C) all Trump is going to do until he gets his funding D) all of the above.
E) A way Trump gets to give the State of the Union address.
I don't think we should discount Trump's desire for attention and adulation in front of a large TV audience as a major motive for this deal.
Allegedly the government is going to open as Trump agreed to a 2 to 3 week deal.
This is
A) a distraction from Stone being arrested. B ) a way to blame democrats for the shutdown in two-three weeks once he shuts it down again C) all Trump is going to do until he gets his funding D) all of the above.
E) A way Trump gets to give the State of the Union address.
I don't think we should discount Trump's desire for attention and adulation in front of a large TV audience as a major motive for this deal.
Yep. As I said, Pelosi went directly after the only thing that matters to him, his ego. And she (at least for now), beat him. And it wasn't even close. She took away his TV privileges, he pouted for awhile in the corner, and then he gave up. Art of the Deal indeed. He is a child. She treated him like a child. Don't underestimate the role motherhood played in this.
Now Trump just threatened to invoke emergency powers again at the end of his speech (no other way to read it). He won't shut the government down again, but he will keep making autocratic threats. At least that's his position as of 1:30 this afternoon. Could change within the hour.
So in end, we have to ask ourselves, considering he walked away with absolutely jack-shit from all this, is just what in the hell was the last 5 weeks supposed to accomplish?? This will forever remain one of the stupidest incidents in the history of US politics.
Thank God we at least have a reprieve. Hopefully he won't try to shut down the government again. But I'm not really sure what's going to happen once this 3-week period is over.
Allegedly the government is going to open as Trump agreed to a 2 to 3 week deal.
This is
A) a distraction from Stone being arrested. B ) a way to blame democrats for the shutdown in two-three weeks once he shuts it down again C) all Trump is going to do until he gets his funding D) all of the above.
E) A way Trump gets to give the State of the Union address.
I don't think we should discount Trump's desire for attention and adulation in front of a large TV audience as a major motive for this deal.
Hahahah yeah that's it lol. Hahahah so sad.
The President, with numerous cronies being charged and convicted of criminal activities, is threatening to bypass Congress and declare a fake national emergency.
Just this week we have: - Roger Stone indicted. - Jared Kushner was denied a security clearance for obvious reasons but overruled by a Trump appointment in a win for nepotism but a huge blow to national security. - Michael Cohen was subpoenaed by the Senate Intel committe -After Trump and Guilliani threatened his family (!) - And Republicans presided over the longest US government shutdown in history that started when they had control of all three branches of government.
What an utter failure elected Republicans are. What a shitshow. At this rate, they should never ever never be allowed to run a PTA board much less any state of federal office. True conservatives need to clean house and kick the criminals, grifters, and crazy people out of their party. There's so many of them right now it won't be easy.
Thank God we at least have a reprieve. Hopefully he won't try to shut down the government again. But I'm not really sure what's going to happen once this 3-week period is over.
The Super Bowl will be over by then for one thing. I heard that the NFL Commissioner might have given Trump a little jingle and let him know that a lot of rich people were worried that folks might not be able to fly to the festivities...
The Trump Administration Will Let Adoption Agencies Turn Away Jews and Same-Sex Couples. Thank SCOTUS.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/01/trump-adoption-same-sex-couples-jews-miracle-mill.html The path of Wednesday’s decision began when Miracle Hill Ministries, a Christian foster care agency, refused to work with multiple applicants who did not share its beliefs. Miracle Hill turned away a Jewish woman eager to mentor children in foster care because she was not Christian. It also rejected same-sex couples because their sexual orientation did not align with its religious values. In response, the South Carolina Department of Social Services warned Miracle Hill that it could lose its license if it “intends to refuse to provide its services … to families who are not specifically Christians from a Protestant denomination.”
Mueller indicts Roger Stone, says he was coordinating with Trump officials about WikiLeaks' stolen emails
Trump ends government shutdown after realizing unpaid FBI agents can still arrest people
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2019/01/trump-ends-government-shutdown-after-realizing-unpaid-fbi-agents-can-still-arrest-people/ From a humor site... “It turns out, ‘shutdown’ doesn’t mean what many people thought it meant,” stated Trump in a press conference today. “It’s not the same as when you shut down a university or an airline or a steak company.” The president explained that he thought that the FBI could not make arrests during a shutdown due to advice from his legal team, consisting of Rudy Giuliani, a personal injury bus shelter ad and a man named Knuckles.
PETA put up a banner on a crane near the White House
Nobody is saying hiring a tutor for your kid makes you racist. I don't know where you get that from.
To reiterate, you stated that the subject of this particular piece, Hagerman, is more or less correct. The entire point of her piece was indeed that hiring a tutor or going to private school or giving your kids advantages perpetuates racism.
So where I got it from was what you said was more or less correct, and what I was talking about in the first place. I assumed you supported Hagerman on this position given your statement.
Simply put, it means the playing field is uneven, and the axis is aligned with skin color. A whole population of people has been prevented from participating in the social and economic activities that lead to professional and economic success and wealth-building. For many,many generations, Americans created the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen, and through many public and private policies, specifically excluded black Americans from taking part. Remember a decade or so ago when people were talking about "the millionaire next door?" How "regular Joe" working people were sitting on a massive store of wealth? Those millionaires were all white. (And a lot of that wealth disappeared or shifted into the hands of richer folks in 2008, but that's a different story.)
It doesn't mean that every white person did benefit from those policies; it means that only white people could benefit from them. And in the aggregate, over many generations, white Americans benefited to a HUGE degree, while black Americans did not. So, it's wonderful and not racist at all that you might want to hire a tutor for your kid; but the average black American's inability to hire a tutor for their kid is down to centuries of policies that prevented them form building the kind of wealth that would allow that sort of thing.
This is a MASSIVE problem, specifically for black Americans (!) but also for the country as a whole. People who can't afford the tools to reach their full potential, definitionally, will not reach their full potential. The whole country suffers for that, socially and economically. People who cannot escape poverty are more likely to turn to crime, and crime is bad for everyone. If we could flip a switch and make every single American into a liberal free-love hippy with no iota of racial animus - make racism go away with a snap of Thanos' fingers? This problem would persist. Not being racist is great, but it doesn't solve the problems of racism. That's the point. You could stop putting money in a savings account but your balance will still grow, due to compounding interest. Similarly, even if we stamp out all racism, the inequities that are the result of several centuries of racism will continue to compound, heedless of our personal enlightenment.
I don't disagree. Economic inequality exists and can be explained by historically racist factors. Society tries to undo those by various legal means like anti discrimination laws and college aid and other programs but that doesn't mean they don't still exist.
But this is an entirely different set of ideas than what I was talking about. The premise of the article was that you should actively *not* work to give your kids advantages in life because that "solidifies and perpetuates their power" (presumably the power of white people), and that "by giving your kids advantages, you are actively disadvantaging others".
That is a patronizing and racist view, wouldn't you agree?
Even beyond the whole racism angle, the very idea that you would deny your kids advantages in life "for the greater good" is just downright unethical. If you care so much, take advantages out of your own damn life to make room for other people.
Even beyond the whole racism angle, the very idea that you would deny your kids advantages in life "for the greater good" is just downright unethical. If you care so much, take advantages out of your own damn life to make room for other people.
So, don't pay taxes, because it might accidentally help someone else. Don't stop and call an ambulance at a car crash because it might deny your advantages. Right. Nice. Very Christian.
But seriously this sounds like an excuse for some bad behavior. "I only murdered her to get an advantage for me."
Even beyond the whole racism angle, the very idea that you would deny your kids advantages in life "for the greater good" is just downright unethical. If you care so much, take advantages out of your own damn life to make room for other people.
So, don't pay taxes, because it might accidentally help someone else. Don't stop and call an ambulance at a car crash because it might deny your advantages. Right. Nice. Very Christian.
But seriously this sounds like an excuse for some bad behavior. "I only murdered her to get an advantage for me."
So don't give my child every advantage within my power just on the off-chance it might somehow help somebody more unfortunate (which is debatable anyway)? What if my child uses those advantages to cure cancer? What if she uses those advantages to invent a cheaper, more environmentally friendly energy source? What if she decides on her own to use her skills to better the lives of many children? What if she becomes a doctor and helps thousands? Sorry if I don't believe that holding my child back on purpose will somehow make the world a better place. I just don't, and i don't think anybody with a child would think that either...
The three-week spending deal reached with congressional leaders, quickly passed by the Republican-led Senate and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives without opposition and signed by Trump, paves the way for tough talks with lawmakers about how to address security along the U.S.-Mexican border.
The Republican president's agreement to end the shuttering of about a quarter of the federal government without securing wall money - an astonishing retreat - came three days after he had insisted, "We will not Cave!"
"Trump is a broken man," tweeted commentator Mike Cernovich, a popular conservative personality on social media with a passionate following of Trump voters.
Cernovich said Trump had been outmaneuvered by Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her an "alpha."
Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter wrote on Twitter: "Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States."
The influential conservative news website Drudge Report in a banner headline made a point of saying the deal contained "No Wall Funds."
News site Breitbart, once run by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, simply posted "Government Open. No Wall." The Daily Caller, another conservative news website, ran the headline, "TRUMP CAVES."
"Trump is a broken man," tweeted commentator Mike Cernovich, a popular conservative personality on social media with a passionate following of Trump voters.
Cernovich said Trump had been outmaneuvered by Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her an "alpha."
Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter wrote on Twitter: "Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States."
The influential conservative news website Drudge Report in a banner headline made a point of saying the deal contained "No Wall Funds."
News site Breitbart, once run by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, simply posted "Government Open. No Wall." The Daily Caller, another conservative news website, ran the headline, "TRUMP CAVES."
Screw those idiots. For once Trump did the right thing...
Not for nothing, but the result today is the EXACT reason Republicans have tried to make Nancy Pelosi a national caricature for the better part of decade and didn't want her to retake the Speakership. And those on the far left who thought someone else should take the spot just for the sake of having "new blood" also look kind of foolish. If we are going to get into Godfather metaphors, Nancy Pelosi is a wartime consigliere. She may be the first person in decades who was in a position to deny Donald Trump ANYTHING and actually force him to take no for an answer. Her refusal to even entertain his demands and her constant ribbing by saying federal workers "can't ask daddy for more money" was something he was in no position to even know how to respond to. Again, look at how Trump reacts to her. It isn't Cryin' Chuck, or Crooked Hillary, or Lyin' Ted, or Little Marco. He just calls her "Nancy". And for a guy who makes his living humiliating his enemies, this is something more than just a tell. He knows now that the last two years have been a complete cakewalk, and that those days are over and he is outgunned, both mentally and in terms of experience. She destroyed him. DESPITE the fact that she herself, nationally, is not a popular figure. She is not John Boehner or Paul Ryan. She knows what she is doing, and whether you like her or not, she is a master of her element.
Not for nothing, but the result today is the EXACT reason Republicans have tried to make Nancy Pelosi a national caricature for the better part of decade and didn't want her to retake the Speakership. And those on the far left who thought someone else should take the spot just for the sake of having "new blood" also look kind of foolish. If we are going to get into Godfather metaphors, Nancy Pelosi is a wartime consigliere. She may be the first person in decades who was in a position to deny Donald Trump ANYTHING and actually force him to take no for an answer. Her refusal to even entertain his demands and her constant ribbing by saying federal workers "can't ask daddy for more money" was something he was in no position to even know how to respond to. Again, look at how Trump reacts to her. It isn't Cryin' Chuck, or Crooked Hillary, or Lyin' Ted, or Little Marco. He just calls her "Nancy". And for a guy who makes his living humiliating his enemies, this is something more than just a tell. He knows now that the last two years have been a complete cakewalk, and that those days are over and he is outgunned, both mentally and in terms of experience. She destroyed him. DESPITE the fact that she herself, nationally, is not a popular figure. She is not John Boehner or Paul Ryan. She knows what she is doing, and whether you like her or not, she is a master of her element.
I'll give you an agree here, but I don't personally think you have to be a master chess player to outmaneuver Trump. It's been pretty obvious how to deal with him for a very long time. The Democrats added a new wildcard called the House of Representatives and played it well. Thank the Lord for checks and balances! Honestly, I think the Republicans have been sitting on their hand for two years because they didn't want to play it.
Question: How do you control all branches of government and not get what you want?
Answer: You don't really want what you say you want...
"Hagerman's book is a careful, painful and convincing argument that when white people give their children advantages, they are often disadvantaging others. Racism is so hard to overturn, in part, because white people prop it up when they work to make sure their children succeed."
I think Hagerman is more or less correct ... [she] is talking about systemic racism. It's not personal bigotry or prejudice; it's the societal result of generations of bigotry and prejudice.
Well here in the UK we haven't got so many "generations of bigotory and prejudice". Black people were invited here to work as recently as the 1950's.
I don't know what "invited to work here" means but my short answer is that what happens in the UK is irrelevant to discussion of the experience of race in America. Race and racism have unique places in America's history and culture. I'll post again the link to the Atlantic article mentioned by @jjstraka34 since it seems not everyone might have read it. Set aside the inveighing for reparations, in whatever form, and forget for the time being notions of left-vs.-right politics; the piece is most useful for simply being very informative about the history of race relations in America. With that history as backdrop...
I would be extremely interested in knowing your justification for classifying the hiring of tutors for your kids or sending them to private schools or allowing them to do community service as true examples of systemic racism.
Nobody is saying hiring a tutor for your kid makes you racist. I don't know where you get that from. Or anyway, maybe somebody might say it (there's always somebody saying anything in a country with 1/3 of a billion citizens and guaranteed free speech rights), but it is entirely, wildly unfair for you to glom onto the statement of a nutcase and suggest that 180 million people on "the Left" subscribe to the idea. "Systemic racism" means what it says on the tin: that the system, not necessarily any particular actor within it, is racist.
Simply put, it means the playing field is uneven, and the axis is aligned with skin color. A whole population of people has been prevented from participating in the social and economic activities that lead to professional and economic success and wealth-building. For many,many generations, Americans created the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen, and through many public and private policies, specifically excluded black Americans from taking part. Remember a decade or so ago when people were talking about "the millionaire next door?" How "regular Joe" working people were sitting on a massive store of wealth? Those millionaires were all white. (And a lot of that wealth disappeared or shifted into the hands of richer folks in 2008, but that's a different story.)
It doesn't mean that every white person did benefit from those policies; it means that only white people could benefit from them. And in the aggregate, over many generations, white Americans benefited to a HUGE degree, while black Americans did not. So, it's wonderful and not racist at all that you might want to hire a tutor for your kid; but the average black American's inability to hire a tutor for their kid is down to centuries of policies that prevented them form building the kind of wealth that would allow that sort of thing.
This is a MASSIVE problem, specifically for black Americans (!) but also for the country as a whole. People who can't afford the tools to reach their full potential, definitionally, will not reach their full potential. The whole country suffers for that, socially and economically. People who cannot escape poverty are more likely to turn to crime, and crime is bad for everyone. If we could flip a switch and make every single American into a liberal free-love hippy with no iota of racial animus - make racism go away with a snap of Thanos' fingers? This problem would persist. Not being racist is great, but it doesn't solve the problems of racism. That's the point. You could stop putting money in a savings account but your balance will still grow, due to compounding interest. Similarly, even if we stamp out all racism, the inequities that are the result of several centuries of racism will continue to compound, heedless of our personal enlightenment.
I'm a bit confused that you have cast this as a right-vs.-left issue, because it is mostly an indictment of white liberals, who for a few generations have enjoyed patting themselves on the back for being inclusive and multicultural, all the while allowing these problems to compound. To whatever extent this implicates people on the right wing, it is only because they tend to be more willing to let economic inequities persist in general. To the extent that conservatives have tended to be, or be aligned with, actual racism in the past (which I think is unavoidable truth, but largely irrelevant these days) and new generations of conservatives are more enlightened and disavow and even scorn racism (which I think is also true), this operates as something of a signpost along that journey: "don't make the same mistake that liberals made when they made their journey to non-racism. Just not being racist will not fix the many problems that have been wrought by racists. If conservatives take as long to figure that out as the stupid liberals did, then real solutions will continue to elude us, and our society will suffer for it, for decades to come."
Unfortunately, conservatives' economic philosophy likely mean this message will not be well-received...
For the record (if anyone is interested) Coates (the author of the reparations piece) also wrote what was essentially a follow-up, which is "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration", which traces the current situation back to a paper written by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democratic Senator who laid out a case for what supposedly ails the "negro family" in the '60s. The guy eventually completely turned to the right, advising Nixon on his crime policy and being in favor of Reagan's foreign policy. But Moynihan's work in the fulcrum of where all our modern tropes and stereotypes about black culture being fundamentally at fault comes from. It predates him, as Coates makes quite clear, he was just dressing an age old argument in new clothing. But this overall viewpoint exists until right up until the Obama years, when Democrats FINALLY started addressing these systematic issues, and Bill Clinton is as guilty as any Republican President for the state our incarceration system is in (though he now is on the record as saying her very much regrets many of those policies). And, frankly, even though I really like Kamala Harris, the #1 issue she is going to have to address in the primary is her job as a prosecutor having to enforce some of these draconian policies. So, if anyone bothered to read the first article about reparations (and they really, really should), then it only makes sense to read this one as well. These two pieces are indispensable if you are serious about looking into these issues on a broad scale:
"Hagerman's book is a careful, painful and convincing argument that when white people give their children advantages, they are often disadvantaging others. Racism is so hard to overturn, in part, because white people prop it up when they work to make sure their children succeed."
I think Hagerman is more or less correct ... [she] is talking about systemic racism. It's not personal bigotry or prejudice; it's the societal result of generations of bigotry and prejudice.
Well here in the UK we haven't got so many "generations of bigotory and prejudice". Black people were invited here to work as recently as the 1950's.
I don't know what "invited to work here" means but my short answer is that what happens in the UK is irrelevant to discussion of the experience of race in America. Race and racism have unique places in America's history and culture. I'll post again the link to the Atlantic article mentioned by @jjstraka34 since it seems not everyone might have read it. Set aside the inveighing for reparations, in whatever form, and forget for the time being notions of left-vs.-right politics; the piece is most useful for simply being very informative about the history of race relations in America. With that history as backdrop...
I would be extremely interested in knowing your justification for classifying the hiring of tutors for your kids or sending them to private schools or allowing them to do community service as true examples of systemic racism.
Nobody is saying hiring a tutor for your kid makes you racist. I don't know where you get that from. Or anyway, maybe somebody might say it (there's always somebody saying anything in a country with 1/3 of a billion citizens and guaranteed free speech rights), but it is entirely, wildly unfair for you to glom onto the statement of a nutcase and suggest that 180 million people on "the Left" subscribe to the idea. "Systemic racism" means what it says on the tin: that the system, not necessarily any particular actor within it, is racist.
Simply put, it means the playing field is uneven, and the axis is aligned with skin color. A whole population of people has been prevented from participating in the social and economic activities that lead to professional and economic success and wealth-building. For many,many generations, Americans created the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen, and through many public and private policies, specifically excluded black Americans from taking part. Remember a decade or so ago when people were talking about "the millionaire next door?" How "regular Joe" working people were sitting on a massive store of wealth? Those millionaires were all white. (And a lot of that wealth disappeared or shifted into the hands of richer folks in 2008, but that's a different story.)
It doesn't mean that every white person did benefit from those policies; it means that only white people could benefit from them. And in the aggregate, over many generations, white Americans benefited to a HUGE degree, while black Americans did not. So, it's wonderful and not racist at all that you might want to hire a tutor for your kid; but the average black American's inability to hire a tutor for their kid is down to centuries of policies that prevented them form building the kind of wealth that would allow that sort of thing.
This is a MASSIVE problem, specifically for black Americans (!) but also for the country as a whole. People who can't afford the tools to reach their full potential, definitionally, will not reach their full potential. The whole country suffers for that, socially and economically. People who cannot escape poverty are more likely to turn to crime, and crime is bad for everyone. If we could flip a switch and make every single American into a liberal free-love hippy with no iota of racial animus - make racism go away with a snap of Thanos' fingers? This problem would persist. Not being racist is great, but it doesn't solve the problems of racism. That's the point. You could stop putting money in a savings account but your balance will still grow, due to compounding interest. Similarly, even if we stamp out all racism, the inequities that are the result of several centuries of racism will continue to compound, heedless of our personal enlightenment.
I'm a bit confused that you have cast this as a right-vs.-left issue, because it is mostly an indictment of white liberals, who for a few generations have enjoyed patting themselves on the back for being inclusive and multicultural, all the while allowing these problems to compound. To whatever extent this implicates people on the right wing, it is only because they tend to be more willing to let economic inequities persist in general. To the extent that conservatives have tended to be, or be aligned with, actual racism in the past (which I think is unavoidable truth, but largely irrelevant these days) and new generations of conservatives are more enlightened and disavow and even scorn racism (which I think is also true), this operates as something of a signpost along that journey: "don't make the same mistake that liberals made when they made their journey to non-racism. Just not being racist will not fix the many problems that have been wrought by racists. If conservatives take as long to figure that out as the stupid liberals did, then real solutions will continue to elude us, and our society will suffer for it, for decades to come."
Unfortunately, conservatives' economic philosophy likely mean this message will not be well-received...
For the record (if anyone is interested) Coates (the author of the reparations piece) also wrote what was essentially a follow-up, which is "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration", which traces the current situation back to a paper written by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democratic Senator who laid out a case for what supposedly ails the "negro family" in the '60s. The guy eventually completely turned to the right, advising Nixon on his crime policy and being in favor of Reagan's foreign policy. But Moynihan's work in the fulcrum of where all our modern tropes and stereotypes about black culture being fundamentally at fault comes from. It predates him, as Coates makes quite clear, he was just dressing an age old argument in new clothing. But this overall viewpoint exists until right up until the Obama years, when Democrats FINALLY started addressing these systematic issues, and Bill Clinton is as guilty as any Republican President for the state our incarceration system is in (though he now is on the record as saying her very much regrets many of those policies). And, frankly, even though I really like Kamala Harris, the #1 issue she is going to have to address in the primary is her job as a prosecutor having to enforce some of these draconian policies. So, if anyone bothered to read the first article about reparations (and they really, really should), then it only makes sense to read this one as well. These two pieces are indispensable if you are serious about looking into these issues on a broad scale:
Good read. I may not agree with you about reparations, but something should definitely be done about our idiotic criminal justice system. It pains me to say this, but the very people who should the most forgiving (the Christian right) are pretty much the worst when it comes to turning the other cheek. They also tend to project the whole spare the rod, spoil the child crap to mean that any mercy shown to criminals is worthless and that only draconian punishment will lower the crime rate. I guess it's understandable to folks who think their God will throw them into a lake of fire for eternity if they don't tow the line. The funny thing is that the whole Hell for eternity thing doesn't seem to reduce the rate that Christians themselves engage in some of the more heinous crimes (rape, child molestation and suicide to name a few - didn't check out murder, theft, or other crime rates, nor things that are not crimes but are against general Christian beliefs such as homosexuality and adultery).
One of the weird things about Trump's speech today was the picture he painted of human trafficking, saying that human traffickers would put duct tape on a woman's face and tie her up when transporting her to the United States.
But that's not how human traffickers keep their victims silent. If you read accounts from survivors of human trafficking, their captors didn't rely on duct tape and physical restraints; they relied on a combination of psychological abuse, rape, death threats, indentured servitude (treating them as employees and arbitrarily adding to a victim's "debt" to their captor) and in some cases language barriers to keep their victims from seeking help or escaping. Human trafficking doesn't depend on a single day of secrecy when crossing a border--it takes years of abuse and oppression to keep a victim from escaping. The cages are not physical; they're mental. The restraints are not rope and duct tape; they're terror and despair. Human traffickers will very often transport their victims in public, at the airport, after terrorizing them into silence.
It bothers me that Trump will make up vivid scenarios out of whole cloth. The portrait he paints looks terrifying, but that's simply not what human trafficking looks like--he's just making up a story to justify the wall. Distorting the truth is one thing, but there's something about completely fabricating stories that especially bothers me.
One of the weird things about Trump's speech today was the picture he painted of human trafficking, saying that human traffickers would put duct tape on a woman's face and tie her up when transporting her to the United States.
But that's not how human traffickers keep their victims silent. If you read accounts from survivors of human trafficking, their captors didn't rely on duct tape and physical restraints; they relied on a combination of psychological abuse, rape, death threats, indentured servitude (treating them as employees and arbitrarily adding to a victim's "debt" to their captor) and in some cases language barriers to keep their victims from seeking help or escaping. Human trafficking doesn't depend on a single day of secrecy when crossing a border--it takes years of abuse and oppression to keep a victim from escaping. The cages are not physical; they're mental. The restraints are not rope and duct tape; they're terror and despair. Human traffickers will very often transport their victims in public, at the airport, after terrorizing them into silence.
It bothers me that Trump will make up vivid scenarios out of whole cloth. The portrait he paints looks terrifying, but that's simply not what human trafficking looks like--he's just making up a story to justify the wall. Distorting the truth is one thing, but there's something about completely fabricating stories that especially bothers me.
Don't forget getting their victims addicted to drugs. That's one of the best ways to control somebody...
One of the weird things about Trump's speech today was the picture he painted of human trafficking, saying that human traffickers would put duct tape on a woman's face and tie her up when transporting her to the United States.
But that's not how human traffickers keep their victims silent. If you read accounts from survivors of human trafficking, their captors didn't rely on duct tape and physical restraints; they relied on a combination of psychological abuse, rape, death threats, indentured servitude (treating them as employees and arbitrarily adding to a victim's "debt" to their captor) and in some cases language barriers to keep their victims from seeking help or escaping. Human trafficking doesn't depend on a single day of secrecy when crossing a border--it takes years of abuse and oppression to keep a victim from escaping. The cages are not physical; they're mental. The restraints are not rope and duct tape; they're terror and despair. Human traffickers will very often transport their victims in public, at the airport, after terrorizing them into silence.
It bothers me that Trump will make up vivid scenarios out of whole cloth. The portrait he paints looks terrifying, but that's simply not what human trafficking looks like--he's just making up a story to justify the wall. Distorting the truth is one thing, but there's something about completely fabricating stories that especially bothers me.
Don't forget getting their victims addicted to drugs. That's one of the best ways to control somebody...
It sort of seems to me like this is some sort of fantasy Trump had- women silenced with blue tape, and whatnot. It's kind of disturbing how often that shows up when he talks about this subject. It makes me feel a little bit sick and kinda wibbly in the insides.
One of the weird things about Trump's speech today was the picture he painted of human trafficking, saying that human traffickers would put duct tape on a woman's face and tie her up when transporting her to the United States.
But that's not how human traffickers keep their victims silent. If you read accounts from survivors of human trafficking, their captors didn't rely on duct tape and physical restraints; they relied on a combination of psychological abuse, rape, death threats, indentured servitude (treating them as employees and arbitrarily adding to a victim's "debt" to their captor) and in some cases language barriers to keep their victims from seeking help or escaping. Human trafficking doesn't depend on a single day of secrecy when crossing a border--it takes years of abuse and oppression to keep a victim from escaping. The cages are not physical; they're mental. The restraints are not rope and duct tape; they're terror and despair. Human traffickers will very often transport their victims in public, at the airport, after terrorizing them into silence.
It bothers me that Trump will make up vivid scenarios out of whole cloth. The portrait he paints looks terrifying, but that's simply not what human trafficking looks like--he's just making up a story to justify the wall. Distorting the truth is one thing, but there's something about completely fabricating stories that especially bothers me.
Don't forget getting their victims addicted to drugs. That's one of the best ways to control somebody...
It sort of seems to me like this is some sort of fantasy Trump had- women silenced with blue tape, and whatnot. It's kind of disturbing how often that shows up when he talks about this subject. It makes me feel a little bit sick and kinda wibbly in the insides.
Well if it makes you feel any better, at least Trump is not saying that human trafficking isn't a problem. Nor is he saying that it's only white women that are being trafficked. We can all agree that this is a despicable problem akin to slavery. Now we just have to find an effective way to put a stop to it. A wall is a simplistic solution that appeals to his supporters. It won't work though, and that's the issue. What will work?
Comments
This is
A) a distraction from Stone being arrested.
B ) a way to blame democrats for the shutdown in two-three weeks once he shuts it down again
C) all Trump is going to do until he gets his funding
D) all of the above.
The Stone indictments have been expected for a LONG time. Stone (according to the charging documents) was ordered by a senior campaign official to coordinate with Wikileaks about the stolen emails. Just DAYS after this took place, Trump was asking Russia in a press conference to literally commit espionage against his political opponent. Was Trump giving the orders to Stone?? Who knows, but if he wasn't, I'd bet a ton of money the person who WAS was Don Jr., though Marcy Wheeler seems to think it may have been Rick Gates. Regardless, at what point is the cat out of the bag on this?? Since this whole thing started unraveling we have:
Michael Flynn, Nation Security Adviser: Guilty plea
George Papadopoulos, Foreign Policy Adviser: Guilty plea
Rick Gates, Deputy Campaign Manager: Guilty plea
Paul Manafort, Campaign Chairman: Convicted of multiple felonies
Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer: Guilty plea and cooperating witness for multiple investigations
Roger Stone, longtime Trump political adviser: Indicted on 7 counts, including witness tampering
Now, in what universe is this not only smoke, but a raging, out of control forest fire that you can see from space?? At what point does even the most hardened skeptic have to get over the idea that Trump isn't involved in ANY of this?? At a certain point, it will be easier to count the people in Trump's inner-circle who HAVEN'T been indicted than the ones who have.
I don't think we should discount Trump's desire for attention and adulation in front of a large TV audience as a major motive for this deal.
Now Trump just threatened to invoke emergency powers again at the end of his speech (no other way to read it). He won't shut the government down again, but he will keep making autocratic threats. At least that's his position as of 1:30 this afternoon. Could change within the hour.
So in end, we have to ask ourselves, considering he walked away with absolutely jack-shit from all this, is just what in the hell was the last 5 weeks supposed to accomplish?? This will forever remain one of the stupidest incidents in the history of US politics.
It is however giving people pay cheques so thank god for that.
Two weeks time, the narrative can be shifted to “This is the Democrats shutdown, Trump fixed it for two weeks, build the wall.”
The President, with numerous cronies being charged and convicted of criminal activities, is threatening to bypass Congress and declare a fake national emergency.
Just this week we have:
- Roger Stone indicted.
- Jared Kushner was denied a security clearance for obvious reasons but overruled by a Trump appointment in a win for nepotism but a huge blow to national security.
- Michael Cohen was subpoenaed by the Senate Intel committe
-After Trump and Guilliani threatened his family (!)
- And Republicans presided over the longest US government shutdown in history that started when they had control of all three branches of government.
What an utter failure elected Republicans are. What a shitshow. At this rate, they should never ever never be allowed to run a PTA board much less any state of federal office. True conservatives need to clean house and kick the criminals, grifters, and crazy people out of their party. There's so many of them right now it won't be easy.
Food Banks Brace For Shortages Resulting From Government Shutdown
http://gothamist.com/2019/01/23/food_bank_shortage_shutdown.php?fbclid=IwAR2MMuCSADHb0p9A9dHVsXljIiBH6VQLjBfZ13NY4sJdzzzCGR-5oVFvblEDemocratic Sen. Michael Bennet Erupts at Ted Cruz’s ‘Crocodile Tears’ Over Shutdown on the Senate Floor
https://www.thedailybeast.com/democratic-sen-michael-bennet-erupts-at-ted-cruzs-crocodile-tears-over-shutdown-on-the-senate-floor?fbclid=IwAR1bHsaFnBJqSB4AArA1Kf3Uf_woA3tPv7bZ3F4IjKWK4oji2UaBhIh0OoATed Cruz, Face of 2013 Shutdown, Gets Crushed Over “Crocodile Tears” Shutdown Remarks
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/ted-cruz-michael-bennet-shutdown/?fbclid=IwAR2_jHoxWqOaUiB_g5mCJMbJD9MY0ol1fw_3irW5HaMPQCwwVCn4ab4IkYgTSA staffers sleep in cars and skip medication just to survive Trump’s shutdown
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/24/1829170/-TSA-staffers-sleep-in-cars-and-skip-medication-just-to-survive-Trump-s-shutdown?detail=emaildkre&fbclid=IwAR1eKphFnEEZ_jjHxWHb8LZ1AFJ60SWlQNHtIhfQ928kmiwaXrixGTI5WYcNobody should have to do this. Nobody.
A little known group is making decisions about which Orange County lives are worth living
https://www.ocregister.com/2019/01/21/a-little-known-group-is-making-decisions-about-which-orange-county-lives-are-worth-living/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=Patients Rising&utm_content=A little known group is making decisions about which Orange County lives are worth livingDeath Panels, anyone?
It's Now Clear None of the Supposed Benefits of Killing Net Neutrality Are Real
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyab5m/its-now-clear-none-of-the-supposed-benefits-of-killing-net-neutrality-are-real?utm_source=mbfb&fbclid=IwAR2qJQlr9jM8C8SeQqjwiN_zlhUqQggjZEulF2npairZH6XGMs9VR44mKqEIn the months leading up to the FCC assault on net neutrality, big telecom and FCC boss Ajit Pai told anybody who’d listen that killing net neutrality would boost broadband industry investment, spark job creation, and drive broadband into underserved areas at an unprecedented rate.
As it turns out, none of those promises were actually true.
Flight Attendants President Calls for General Strike to End Government Shutdown - The Fierce Urgency of Now
https://portside.org/2019-01-24/flight-attendants-president-calls-general-strike-end-government-shutdown-fierce-urgency?fbclid=IwAR3Jv2WR0yD1jsgsQTyX_2b7rR29_FD463n4E6KLDMwxFZWtnUqvAKg3obkSara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants is calling on "conference activists from across the Labor Movement" to conduct a "general strike to end the government shutdown."
Steve Bannon implicated in Roger Stone indictment: report
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/steve-bannon-implicated-roger-stone-indictment-report/?fbclid=IwAR0Iu0n7AzlK3B_rjf4i5ttHtgA2IuMPSYe_Q6ZIZgVfJVWGdxT19i6VesYLara Trump blames the media after criticism over comments about unpaid federal workers amid shutdown
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lara-trump-blames-the-media-after-criticism-over-comments-about-unpaid-federal-workers-amid-shutdown/ar-BBSHWOG?fbclid=IwAR3m1lZ_55OiBfVUU0lM9z45tpxiy5ZQBh0qu7hU-Y31dkJgNvh7fAfEG8oSure, blame the media, and not your Dad.
Furloughed IRS employees defy order to go back to work without pay
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-shutdown-furloughed-irs-employees-defy-order-to-go-back-to-work-without-pay/?fbclid=IwAR1tqvvoUqp37rnYDAcH1K-TH_mbdjx9oUm13cf_HncJ-UNZIFd3taJxRg4As well they should forcing people to work without pay is like slavery!
Brennan: Next Mueller Indictments May Include Trump’s Children
https://www.politicususa.com/2019/01/25/brennan-next-mueller-indictments-may-include-trumps-children.html?fbclid=IwAR1aZJFESTR2gqjI584WltPPn6jeuPbfYiRwApESlzLxx7bpc_NUUrRurmkLaGuardia Airport flights – live updates: Major delays in New York as Trump's government shutdown continues
https://uk.style.yahoo.com/laguardia-airport-flights-live-updates-151800291.html?fbclid=IwAR3ZcA2I6DEl5H_9vNmwOz-Boh_CjHv8uw832AYgUBVBnjtieVDMQFS3_eA&guccounter=1The Trump Administration Will Let Adoption Agencies Turn Away Jews and Same-Sex Couples. Thank SCOTUS.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/01/trump-adoption-same-sex-couples-jews-miracle-mill.htmlThe path of Wednesday’s decision began when Miracle Hill Ministries, a Christian foster care agency, refused to work with multiple applicants who did not share its beliefs. Miracle Hill turned away a Jewish woman eager to mentor children in foster care because she was not Christian. It also rejected same-sex couples because their sexual orientation did not align with its religious values. In response, the South Carolina Department of Social Services warned Miracle Hill that it could lose its license if it “intends to refuse to provide its services … to families who are not specifically Christians from a Protestant denomination.”
Mueller indicts Roger Stone, says he was coordinating with Trump officials about WikiLeaks' stolen emails
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/25/politics/roger-stone-arrested/?no-st=1548452114Trump ends government shutdown after realizing unpaid FBI agents can still arrest people
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2019/01/trump-ends-government-shutdown-after-realizing-unpaid-fbi-agents-can-still-arrest-people/From a humor site...
“It turns out, ‘shutdown’ doesn’t mean what many people thought it meant,” stated Trump in a press conference today. “It’s not the same as when you shut down a university or an airline or a steak company.” The president explained that he thought that the FBI could not make arrests during a shutdown due to advice from his legal team, consisting of Rudy Giuliani, a personal injury bus shelter ad and a man named Knuckles.
PETA put up a banner on a crane near the White House
To reiterate, you stated that the subject of this particular piece, Hagerman, is more or less correct. The entire point of her piece was indeed that hiring a tutor or going to private school or giving your kids advantages perpetuates racism.
So where I got it from was what you said was more or less correct, and what I was talking about in the first place. I assumed you supported Hagerman on this position given your statement.
I don't disagree. Economic inequality exists and can be explained by historically racist factors. Society tries to undo those by various legal means like anti discrimination laws and college aid and other programs but that doesn't mean they don't still exist.
But this is an entirely different set of ideas than what I was talking about. The premise of the article was that you should actively *not* work to give your kids advantages in life because that "solidifies and perpetuates their power" (presumably the power of white people), and that "by giving your kids advantages, you are actively disadvantaging others".
That is a patronizing and racist view, wouldn't you agree?
EDIT: added quotes because I don't believe people can be objectively divided thus
But seriously this sounds like an excuse for some bad behavior. "I only murdered her to get an advantage for me."
Backing down, Trump agrees to end shutdown without border wall money
https://news.yahoo.com/backing-down-trump-agrees-end-shutdown-without-border-001012004--business.html?.tsrc=notification-brknewsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump agreed under mounting pressure on Friday to end a 35-day-old partial U.S. government shutdown without getting the $5.7 billion he had demanded from Congress for a border wall, handing a political victory to Democrats.
The three-week spending deal reached with congressional leaders, quickly passed by the Republican-led Senate and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives without opposition and signed by Trump, paves the way for tough talks with lawmakers about how to address security along the U.S.-Mexican border.
The Republican president's agreement to end the shuttering of about a quarter of the federal government without securing wall money - an astonishing retreat - came three days after he had insisted, "We will not Cave!"
'Broken man': Right wing rips Trump over no-wall shutdown deal
https://news.yahoo.com/broken-man-wing-rips-trump-over-no-wall-224825914--business.htmlOn Friday, as federal government operations grew more disrupted, the president did just that.
"Trump is a broken man," tweeted commentator Mike Cernovich, a popular conservative personality on social media with a passionate following of Trump voters.
Cernovich said Trump had been outmaneuvered by Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her an "alpha."
Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter wrote on Twitter: "Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States."
The influential conservative news website Drudge Report in a banner headline made a point of saying the deal contained "No Wall Funds."
News site Breitbart, once run by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, simply posted "Government Open. No Wall." The Daily Caller, another conservative news website, ran the headline, "TRUMP CAVES."
Question: How do you control all branches of government and not get what you want?
Answer: You don't really want what you say you want...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/
But that's not how human traffickers keep their victims silent. If you read accounts from survivors of human trafficking, their captors didn't rely on duct tape and physical restraints; they relied on a combination of psychological abuse, rape, death threats, indentured servitude (treating them as employees and arbitrarily adding to a victim's "debt" to their captor) and in some cases language barriers to keep their victims from seeking help or escaping. Human trafficking doesn't depend on a single day of secrecy when crossing a border--it takes years of abuse and oppression to keep a victim from escaping. The cages are not physical; they're mental. The restraints are not rope and duct tape; they're terror and despair. Human traffickers will very often transport their victims in public, at the airport, after terrorizing them into silence.
It bothers me that Trump will make up vivid scenarios out of whole cloth. The portrait he paints looks terrifying, but that's simply not what human trafficking looks like--he's just making up a story to justify the wall. Distorting the truth is one thing, but there's something about completely fabricating stories that especially bothers me.