Beautiful.

Oct 21, 2016; Miami, FL, USA; National Anthem singer Denasia Lawrence kneels as she sings the anthem prior to the game between the Miami Heat and the Philadelphia 76ers at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports.

Oct 21, 2016; Miami, FL, USA; National Anthem singer Denasia Lawrence kneels as she sings the anthem prior to the game between the Miami Heat and the Philadelphia 76ers at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports.

A singer knelt while performing the national anthem at a Miami Heat basketball game on Friday and opened her jacket to reveal a shirt that read “Black Lives Matter,” a variation on a protest that has punctuated many U.S. sporting events since the summer.

[…]

Lawrence, a social worker, wrote on Facebook that the opportunity at the preseason Heat game “was bigger than me.”

“Right now, we’re seeing a war on Black & Brown bodies – we’re being unjustly killed and overly criminalized,” she continued. “I took the opportunity to sing AND kneel; to show that we belong in this country AND that we have the right to respectfully protest injustices against us. I took the opportunity to sing AND kneel to show that, I too, am America.”

Well done, Ms. Lawrence, you’re a light in the world.

Full story here.

God’s Alpha Male.

Donald Trump in Cleveland prayer huddle -- (YouTube screen grab)

Donald Trump in Cleveland prayer huddle — (YouTube screen grab)

Over at The Oak Initiative (never heard of it before today, yet another dominionist Christian joint), a case is being made for God’s Alpha Male, which is, of course, Trump.

Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Trump could be a modern-day Cyrus and as President a great defender of the Christian religion and the church. Only time will tell.

I suppose it would be a plus if Mr. Trump had the external character of President Jimmy Carter, who had one marriage, was a Southern farmer and Baptist Sunday School teacher. But then again, Mr. Carter as President didn’t work out too well, remember?

The Carter/Trump comparison is an excellent example of the two-fold nature of a man’s character. Jimmy Carter was the first well-known “born again” Christian in our modern era to run for the Presidency, yet was one of the worst Presidents. Carter had impeccable outward character of speech, fidelity, and humility, yet he greatly lacked in the internal character traits of what God intended for men. Trump on the other hand is often flawed in visible outward character, but excels in his internal manly attributes. By internal standards, he exhibits tremendous alpha male characteristics of courage, fearlessness, and aggressiveness blended with a natural ability to lead people. These internal God-given traits are what would make Trump an exceptional President leading and protecting a nation.

Let me end this letter to encourage you in faith and practice to understand that God’s ways are not our ways and He often does things and works His plan with vessels we cannot understand. For who can know the mind of God?

Oooh, he’s just bristling with internal manly manliness! If anyone can whip those beta males in line, it would be him, oh yes. Sure, he’s crude, and toxic, nastier than all hells, and shallow as pond scum, but the manly, you cannot ignore the manly! Trump’s being a con-man, fraud, and criminal? Oh, just manliness at work!  I think we need more nasty women. Also standing up for the poor maligned Alpha Male of all Males is Jesse Lee Peterson, who is not content with ‘nasty women’, oh no. No, women are Accusers, which he is at pains to point out, is a kenning for…Satan! Oooh. Yeah, I’m just shakin’ here. Apparently, like all women, I have lived my whole life for no other purpose than to falsely accuse every single man I have run across. I’ve been busier than I thought.

“Every man is guilty now, every man, and these accusers pour that out at will,” Peterson said on his radio program yesterday. “They get angry about something, you don’t return their call or text, they can just accuse you, because generation after generation of young girls have been taught to do this.”

In a clip from the show that Peterson posted on his YouTube channel, which he labeled “Trump’s ‘Sexual Assault’ Accusers Are Literally Satan’s Daughters,” he accompanied this assertion with an image of Bill Cosby.

“Did you know that Satan was called ‘the Accuser’?” he asked. “That was his primary name. Satan’s primary name was ‘the Accuser.’ Just let that sink in. Satan’s primary name is ‘the Accuser.’ And that’s what we have in our country now, accusers.”

Peterson lamented that boys today go out and “in their minds they are having a good time not realizing that the accuser is lurking.”

Sigh. And here I thought this was going to be yet another busy day of painting, but no. I am going to have to go seek out men to destroy. A woman’s work, never done.

Via RRW, here and here.

Happy Halloween to You, Too.

LSU political science junior Clarke Perkins tweeted Wednesday night that her door decoration was damaged and “go back 2 Africa N— monkeys” was written on its side.

Perkins said she noticed that the decoration was damaged when she was leaving her apartment at University House at 6 p.m.

She shared a photo of the decoration online on Twitter Wednesday night. The tweet gained traction, being retweeted more than 2,200 times by Thursday afternoon, prompting LSU President F. King Alexander to release a statement.

“I am sorry this happened to you,” Alexander tweeted. “If the culprit is not a student, we will contact the district attorney for swift action. Let me be clear: LSU will not tolerate this behavior.”

Perkins said she met with Alexander in person Thursday. She said he plans to put pressure on University House and demand that the apartment complex takes steps to protect students.

University House is an off-campus complex on West Chimes Street just north of LSU’s campus. A spokesperson for University House said that they will release a statement Thursday.

Perkins said that she does not know whether she or her four other roommates were specifically targeted. She said she has lived at the apartment since Fall 2015 and has never had an issue before. She is now considering her other housing options.

For me, it’s early, and I have not had tea yet, so not much to say here. What is there to say? This sort of garbage is happening more and more, with bigots feeling happy and smug, wallowing in their poison troughs.

Via KTBS.

All the Black and Brown People Have to Leave.

A group of high-school boys pose for a picture with a campaign sign for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outside the Mohegan Sun Arena before a rally, October 10, 2016, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images.

A group of high-school boys pose for a picture with a campaign sign for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outside the Mohegan Sun Arena before a rally, October 10, 2016, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images.

Melissia Hill was eating crepes with her 5-year-old son, Phoenix, at a Brooklyn cafe this summer when he asked her, “Is Donald Trump a bad person? Because I heard that if he becomes president, all the black and brown people have to leave and we’re going to become slaves.”

Next he wanted to know, “What is a slave?” and, “Where are we gonna go?”

Hill was taken aback, and well aware of the wide-eyed interest Phoenix’s questions attracted from neighboring tables. She asked him where he’d heard these things. His answer: from another child at his local YMCA day camp.

[…]

And kids like Phoenix aren’t waiting to see what happens on November 8 before they absorb these views, repeat them, and integrate them into the set of perspectives that combine to make up how they see themselves and others. Many, according to a recent survey of teachers’ perceptions of their students, are using them as fodder for bullying. Others are anxious and scared as a result of the taunts and the real-life threats to their families.

Nobody — not even those who study the development of racial attitudes in kids or the impact of racial trauma — can say with certainty what the long-term effects of this unprecedented dose of high-profile animosity will be on the young people who are steeped in it.

This spring, Teaching Tolerance, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s education arm, took an informal poll of educators to gauge how this campaign had affected schools so far.

Maureen Costello, the director of Teaching Tolerance, said the organization’s interest in the election’s effect on school-age kids was piqued by news reports about high school sporting events where chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump” and “Build a wall” were used against predominantly Latino teams.

“We wondered, is this the tip of an iceberg? Is there something beneath this?” she said.

The organization sent queries to the teachers who subscribed to its weekly newsletter. “We weren’t trying to be scientific. We were trying to find out, ‘Is there anything going on?’ I compare it to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] asking doctors to report if there are measles outbreaks,” Costello said.

The organization’s conclusion from the thousands of comments it received: Yes, something is going on. More than two-thirds of teachers reported that students — mainly immigrants, children of immigrants, and Muslims — had expressed concerns or fears about what might happen to them or their families after the election:

Teachers used words like “hurt” and “dejected” to describe the impact on their charges. The ideas and language coming from the presidential candidates are bad enough, but many students — Muslim, Hispanic and African-American — are far more upset by the number of people, including classmates and even teachers, who seem to agree with Trump. They are struggling with the belief that “everyone hates them.”

There were reports of tears shed in classrooms from second grade to high school. Concerns about being “sent back” transcended immigration status, as in Phoenix’s case, to affect African-American kids:

African-American students aren’t exempt from the fears. Many teachers reported an increase in use of the n-word as a slur, even among very young children. And black children are burdened with a particularly awful fear that has been reported from teachers in many states — that they will “be deported to Africa” or that slavery will be reinstated. As an Oklahoma elementary teacher explains, “My kids are terrified of Trump becoming [p]resident. They believe he can/will deport them — and NONE of them are Hispanic. They are all African American.

According to the report, even children who did not face, or did not believe they faced, direct threats as a result of Trump’s policies, perceived the same pattern as the white supremacists who support Trump: that the candidate’s vision for a return to a “great’ version of America was dismissive of people of color.

I highly recommend reading the whole article at Vox. This is heartbreaking, to say the very least. Institutionalized, systemic racism is bad enough in uStates, what with it being the very core and framework of this country, now there’s the storm of ugly Americanism breaking right over the heads of these children. I remember growing up under the cold war and the constant threat of nuclear war, you heard about it constantly, and it was a very real fear. Even that pales in comparison to the depth of fear facing non-white children now. Do people truly want to claim this legacy? A legacy of hate, fear, and bigotry? A legacy of gleeful traumatization? There is already a deep divide in schools when it comes to white children and non-white children. I was reading an article about Seattle teachers donning BLM t-shirts, and there was mention of children of colour not seeing themselves in curriculum or histories. No kidding. And if people think that’s bad for Black and Hispanic children, think about what it’s like for Indigenous children. I have mentioned, so many times, just how white-washed uStates ‘history’ is – if you aren’t white, you’re definitely going to be the villains in one way or another, if you are represented at all. About the only people who actively campaign to have special history modules taught in school are various Indigenous tribes, who are damn tired of the lack of representation, combined with ugly, racist, inaccurate representation. There’s not been any concerted effort to have accurate history texts, and with Texas in charge of school textbooks, it’s not likely that will ever happen.

Now, with Trump opening up Ugly Americanism, with way too many people diving into that ugly headfirst, we’ll have at least one generation of children who, already standing at the edge of a deep divide, will be traumatized and living in fear of their very lives. Way to go, America.

Full story at Vox. Via Black Lives Matter.

Do Not Resist.

(AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan).

(AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan).

Officers with assault rifles, backed by a huge armored grenade launcher, square up to a crowd furiously denouncing the killing of a young black neighbor.

It is a scene which could have been taken from archive footage of Mogadishu in 1990s Somalia or countless other battles, but this conflict is closer to home — the streets of small-town America.

The images, captured in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, open “Do Not Resist” — a disturbing documentary charting the transformation of police across the US into forces that look like military units.

The explosive film is set to fuel an already bitter debate raging in America over heavy-handed law enforcement, following a litany of police killings of black men that have sparked protests from Ferguson and Charlotte to Chicago.

Director Craig Atkinson, whose movie is opening across the US having won best documentary feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, says the American law enforcement ethos has changed “from a mentality of peacekeepers to that of an occupying army.”

Another eye-opening scene shows officers in black fatigues firing volley after volley of automatic rounds at cardboard targets, as if they were preparing for war rather than to “protect and serve.”

A khaki-clad instructor explains that security forces must prepare for all kinds of attacks, “including the Islamic State.”

MRAPs, the armored trucks that protect troops from roadside bombs planted along the dusty roads of Iraq and Afghanistan, are now ubiquitous across the US.

[…]

In another shocking scene, a SWAT team arrives in an MRAP at a tree-lined street in Columbia, South Carolina, to execute a search warrant in a drug case.

The officers, whose equipment looks barely distinguishable from that of an infantry division, end up badly damaging a family home in a raid that nets a small amount of loose cannabis.

Atkinson’s father, a retired policeman from Detroit, Michigan, spent over a decade in one such SWAT team, the New York-based filmmaker explains.

“In his time, his team intervened 29 times in 13 years. Now they are taking part in 200 raids a year,” Atkinson tells AFP.

[…]

Campaigners against police militarization accept that SWAT teams and their heavy-duty hardware have a vital role in combatting the rare instances of terrorism in the US.

But they point out that, due to prolonged mission creep, this is no longer how these resources are used.

Peter Kraska, a criminology professor at the University of Eastern Kentucky, says there are now at least 50,000 SWAT raids a year, up from 3,000 in the 1980s.

Most of the activities of these highly specialized units have little to do with the reasons for their inception, such as dealing with hostage situations, terrorist attacks and drug cartels.

According to Atkinson, one of the architects of the “warrior culture” is a hugely successful police trainer named Dave Grossman, head of a consulting firm called the Killology Research Group.

“We are at war and you are the frontline troops in this war. What do you fight violence with? Superior violence,” Grossman hollers at an audience of mesmerized police in one session filmed for the documentary.

The retired army lieutenant colonel has lectured throughout the US, according to his website, and Atkinson believes his influence has spread to every American law enforcement agency.

For those who are woke, none of this will come as a surprise, but I’d say this is necessary viewing for us all, and this ongoing militarization not only must be stopped, it needs to be revoked. It’s time to take all those shiny toys away from all the bully boys out there. If cops want to continue playing military, I suggest they quit being a cop, and join up.

Via Raw Story.

The Only Way Out.

A drawing by a 16-year-old girl from Iran on Nauru. CREDIT: Amnesty International.

A drawing by a 16-year-old girl from Iran on Nauru. CREDIT: Amnesty International.*

Most people will have a passing awareness of what’s been happening to refugees attempting to reach Australia. To say the Australian government has a lot to answer for is one hell of an understatement. This is open, unapologetic torture, and right now, it doesn’t look like anyone much cares that the main effect of this “open air camp” is suicide. When death becomes a preferable option, you get an idea of just how bad things are. These people, already carrying heavy burdens of trauma, are being treated as untouchable, nasty things, and as Esme Weatherwax pointed out, all the ills in the world begin there, with treating people like things. Although reading, it seems to me they are more being treated like inconvenient garbage that someone littered about. This is a terribly ugly story, filled with terribly ugly people, who cannot manage to dredge up the smallest sliver of concern. All around the world, we human beings are failing at being human, in a most spectacular way.

Refugees and asylum seekers who attempt to reach Australia by boat are turned away and detained in refugee processing centers on the Pacific island of Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. The Australian government has argued that the policy acts as a good deterrence against human smugglers and people who might choose to undertake the journey to its shores. But those who wind up on these offshore detention sites face indefinite and unlawful detention, an ordeal so disastrous that refugees and asylum seekers are turning to self-harm to cope, according to a new human rights organization report released Monday.

The Amnesty International report found that it was not uncommon for detainees to try and kill themselves, based on field and desk research that happened between July and October 2016. One man failed to kill himself twice in a span of ten weeks. Another Iranian refugee who tried to kill herself multiple times every week was eventually put in a medical ward. And a man found his pregnant wife in the bathroom with rope marks on her neck.

[…]

Some service-providers at the detention center described practices that made refugees and asylum seekers feel less than human. One guard forcibly took away candy from a girl. Some asylum seekers were taken from showers after two minutes, with shampoo in their hair. Others had to wait weeks or months for basic necessities like underwear and shoes.

In a conversation with a seven-year-old boy from Iran, a service-provider told Amnesty International that the child would keep asking him questions. “He’d say ‘I don’t understand this place. Prisons are for bad people, right? Bad people are the men who hurt my father [in Iran]. Why am I in prison? Does that mean I am a bad person?’”

Nauru’s refugee processing center is described as an “open” center meaning that once people are recognized as refugees, they are moved into accommodation outside the refugee processing center on the same island, roughly one-third the size of Manhattan. But much of the island is uninhabitable, now environmentally ravaged by generations of phosphate mining.

Even refugees and asylees living outside detention grounds face Nauru police who fail to adequately investigate their complaints. One father, who told the police about a man who tried to rape his daughter, was told that the judge was “off duty.” An Iranian refugee who tried to report a robbery got the run-around from police who said that “their computer was broken.” When he offered to give handwritten testimony, he was told that they didn’t have paper.

[…]

Many of the abuses that Neistat found are consistent with previous accounts of abuse detailed by other refugees and asylum seekers. In late April, at least two refugees tried setting themselves on fire. One died from the self-immolation, while the other refugee suffered critical injuries. In August, The Guardian reported on 2,000 reports of abuse and neglect, which found that children were “vastly overrepresented in the reports.”

People set themselves on fire. On fire, for fuck’s sake. If this does not break your heart, if this does not make you ask questions, if this does not make you angry, something is very, very wrong.

The Australian government spends $419,425 per person, per year on offshore processing. In comparison, the U.S. government spends about $59,860 per person, per year on detention. Yet as the allegations show, the costs do not reflect the care that refugees and asylum seekers receive.

After clicking all the links, and doing all the reading, I would really like to know just where in the hell all that money is going, because it most certainly is not going into care of and for refugees and asylum seekers. The stench of corruption is wafting about.

* I probably have nothing to worry about here, but if  you’re the type of asshole who thinks it would be pertinent to comment about how your two year old could draw better than that 16 year old, you’ll be banned so fast you’ll end up with whiplash.

The full story is at Think Progress.

American Creativity.

Americans, so gosh darn fun and creative, right? Yes, well, they certainly excel at being nasty, hateful, awful asshole bigots, who often wouldn’t be able to figure their way out of a wet paper bag. Isn’t much room for thought when you have a head full of toxic hate. I have no doubt whatsoever that every person involved would describe themselves as good, patriotic, Christian Americans, who aren’t at all bigoted, oh no. There’s yet another black mark on the blight that is Christianity. How these fucking people can even claim it, I don’t know. It does continue to confirm that their god is every bit as horrible as they are. Let’s see what these gosh darn fun and creative Americans are up to, shall we?

Shirts with a rifle scope trained on Colin Kaepernick selling for $10 outside of Ralph Wilson stadium. [One shirt has Wanted Notorious Disgrace to America on it, with a photo of Kaepernick and a rifle scope superimposed; the other shirt pictured has a stylized Kaepernick kneeling, with the text Shut Up and Stand Up! Kaeperdick.]

Isn’t that just wacky and adorable? Those are such wonderful American ideals to show off to your family, friends, and all the children everywhere, especially those little brown children, because they had best know to grow up and keep their damn proper place, right? Might as well be sure you let them know they have absolutely no business whatsoever going around thinking they are full human beings, with full human rights or anything. Without making sure they won’t be uppity, why one of them might grow up to think the constant and continual extrajudicial killings of people of colour are something to protest and fight against. Those damn uppity…well, you know.

We have not yet plumbed the depths of said American creativity. Let’s have a look at what else is available:

For $5, you can get a white T-shirt, with an image of Kaepernick kneeling, with the text “Hey Colin… While You’re Down There, in red. What’s more American than comparing a man to the absolute worst possible creature, a woman? Because it really wouldn’t be that exceptional American evil without tossing in some misogyny, and making sure there’s at least a slight diss towards all those women, y’know, the gay dudes. Also, in case you can’t make it out, one of the sellers of this garbage is wearing a Chick-fil-a T-shirt, so Christian LGBTIAQ hater confirmed.

This is not in the least unexpected. That does not lessen the absolute sickness of it, the evil of it, which so many Americans have happily embraced in these particularly troubled times. To say this is deplorable is not enough. To say this is disgusting is not enough. This is evil, in all its banality, proffered and taken by Americans who are more than ready to proclaim their goodness. I’d spit on them, but it would be a waste of spit. These people are worth less than shit on a shoe, and they are doing absolutely nothing except spreading shit everywhere they go, and with that shit, the disease of hatred.

If you read this, and bristle over being tarred with a broad brush, examine how complicit you are in the current wave of toxicity. Do you see such things and speak out? Do you hear friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances spilling this poison, and start to examine the floor? Do you turn away? Are you outraged because you are one of the good Christians? Once again, I ask, where are you? Why are you not speaking out? Where is the outcry of Not Acceptable?

Via Think Progress.

That Language Not Allowed in This Neighborhood.

Last Wednesday, a black man was walking down a street in suburban Edina, Minnesota, when a plain clothes officer grabbed him and refused to let go.

The officer’s conduct drew the attention of a bystander, who took out her phone and started filming.

As the officer forcibly pulls the man toward his police car, he yells, “For what?… You can’t just put your hands on me like this!”

The officer accuses the man of walking down a part of the street he shouldn’t have been walking on. The man insists he did nothing wrong. The man becomes agitated by the officer not letting go of him, repeatedly swears at the cop, and is arrested.

“You could’ve just shown him where to walk very kindly,” the bystander tells the officer as she continues to film. “You’re the one who incited this.”

“He’s scared,” she adds. “People die in these situations. It’s scary.”

On YouTube, the woman provided more context:

I witnessed and videoed this earlier today. I passed by a man who was walking on the white line of the shoulder of the street. There was construction and it was obvious that the sidewalk was not available right there so he was hugging the right side as far as he could go. I went around him and noticed in my rearview mirror that an unmarked SUV turned on police lights. The officer pulled in front of the pedestrian to cut him off and proceeded to accuse him of walking in the middle of the street.

Edina is about 18 miles from where Philando Castile was murdered by cops. The Edina cop shop has responded, but they have not done well in that regard “why of course that black man was wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong, and we have all manner of justifications, and it’s not what it seemed!” The cop in this video was not in uniform, but apparently, he just could not cope with the sight a black man walking, and not walking in just the precise manner he wanted. If this cop just had to have a control freak moment here, all that was necessary was to briefly stop, identify himself, and say “okay, can you walk over there, because the way you are doing now isn’t safe, okay?” and then took off to do whatever it is cops do. But no, there had to serious man handling and full court asshole cop behaviour, down to a reprimand that certain language wasn’t allowed in that neighborhood. Really? I’d like to know where Officer Asshole lives. Is it that neighborhood? Can he provide evidence that that specific neighborhood in Edina has an ordinance which states that no one can say the word fuck? Yet more evidence that the only thing cops care about is just how far you can get down on your knees, in absolute compliance. Hey, Officer Asshole, have a fuck you! from me.

Think Progress has the full story.

There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed…I would do whatever I can for my country.

Vendors sold shirts backing Trump outside the Portsmouth rally.

Vendors sold shirts backing Trump outside the Portsmouth rally. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff.

As most people will be aware, Trump has been whipping his fans into a furor over voter fraud and a rigged election. He has been openly encouraging his fans to hang out at voting stations to look for “illegals” attempting to vote. Certainly a bunch of fanatical white bigots won’t cause any trouble at all, right? That small bit of sarcasm aside, too many of Trump’s fanatics are most eager to dive into duty on this score, believing every word he says, and these people are fucking scary. Seriously scary.

[…] At a time when trust in government is at a low point, Trump is actively stoking fears that a core tenet of American democracy is also in peril: that you can trust what happens at the ballot box.

His supporters here said they plan to go to their local precincts to look for illegal immigrants who may attempt to vote. They are worried that Democrats will load up buses of minorities and take them to vote several times in different areas of the city. They’ve heard rumors that boxes of Clinton votes are already waiting somewhere.

And if Trump doesn’t win, some are even openly talking about violent rebellion and assassination, as fantastical and unhinged as that may seem.

“If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take. . . . I would do whatever I can for my country.”

He then placed a Trump mask on his face and posed for pictures.

This isn’t the first time people have spoken about assassination. Does this no longer matter? Or is it that people simply don’t take any of the Trump fans seriously? From what I’ve seen, too many of these people are dedicated fanatics, and I am worried about what they will do.

Cullen expects Trump’s warnings about a rigged election to get even uglier in coming weeks, and he fears they will incite violence if Trump loses.

“That’s really scary,” Cullen said, recounting the violence at Trump rallies around the country leading up to the Republican National Convention. “In this country, we’ve always had recriminations after one side loses. But we haven’t had riots. We haven’t had mobs that act out with violence against supporters of the other side.’’

“There’s no telling what his supporters would be willing to do at the slightest encouragement from their candidate,” he said.

It will be interesting to see how the cops react if this happens. Will they be as zealous in “handling” and arresting fanatical white bigots as they are when it’s peaceful protesters who happen to be Black or Indigenous? Perhaps such an event would help all those cops to understand just how dangerous white people are.

Trump has recently started encouraging his mostly white supporters to sign up online to be “election observers” to stop “Crooked Hillary from rigging this election.” He’s urging them to act as posses of poll watchers in “other” communities to ensure that things are “on the up and up.”

“Watch your polling booths,” he warned.

His supporters are heeding the call. “Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio.

“I’ll look for . . . well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

Right. Nothing creepy, unethical or legally dodgy about that, no sir! White people are already making me nervous as hell, and I’m camouflaged.

Some Trump supporters say that if he doesn’t win, they figure the United States government will be no better than dictatorships where elections cannot be trusted.

“We’re heading toward North Korea, without a doubt,” said Grant Reed, a Trump supporter wearing a shirt that said, “If you’re offended, I’ll help you pack.”

Joe Cecil, a 39-year-old restaurant manager, said he has never voted before but is newly inspired by Trump.

“If people are offended by the sexual stuff, what do they think is going to happen when Muslims come here, implement Sharia law, and start raping our women?” he asks.

And there we have a splendid example of white willful ignorance, hanging onto idiocy as if it were a treasure. Hey, Joe! Have you noticed Sharia law implemented lately? You haven’t? Wow, weird that, because of all the Muslims living in uStates, and somehow, your life has not been impacted in the least. Golly. What a dumbfuck, and proud of it, too. Also, Joe, “our” women? No. It must have escaped your notice that women are actual people who do not belong to you or anyone else. It must have also escaped your notice that recent cases of rape in headlines have been young white men, who were barely smacked on the wrist to spare them an awful time in the future. The victims? People such as yourself didn’t have much to say about them, you were too busy defending those young white rapists.

It’s a common strand among the Trump crowd. They say they have seen videos of Clinton supporters ripping up Republican registrations. They believe Obama is rushing to allow illegal immigrants to become citizens in order to vote.

“We’re going to have a lot of election fraud,” said Jeannine Bell Smith, 65-year-old longtime teacher in a red Trump shirt with a bucket of popcorn under her arm. “They are having illegals vote. In some states, you don’t need voter registration to vote.”

:Raises hand: I’m in a no registration state. I’m not in any way illegal.

After a prayer is said and the national anthem sung, she leans in.

“We can’t have that lying bitch in the White House,” she said.

Yeah, a delusional maniac who lies every 5 seconds is so much better. What. The. Fuck.

“If Hillary wins, it’s rigged,” said Judy Wright, who is from Illinois but took off work recently to come volunteer for Trump in Ohio.

Wright sighs at what seems to her an unfathomable outcome.

“All I know is our country is not going to be a country anymore,” she added. “I’ve heard people talk about a revolution. I’ve heard people talk about separation of states. I don’t even like to think about it. But I don’t think this movement is going away. We don’t have a voice anymore, and Donald Trump is giving us a voice.”

That old Chinese curse is working overtime here in uStates. Interesting times indeed.

The full story is at the Boston Globe.

Really, Walmart?

thug

Walmart is selling a Thug Life Mask with Bandana. FFS, whoever the people are who do the stock buying for Walmart all need to be rounded up and given a serious talk about ethics, sensitivity, and how not to demonstrate they are bigoted assholes. As bad as this is on the part of Walmart, it’s even worse on the part of all those who bought this damn thing. If you purchased this piece of bigotry, you really need to ask yourself, what in the fuck is wrong with me? and don’t move until you come up with an answer.

With all that is going on in the world with Black Lives Matter, police brutality, Donald Trump, and etc, you would think companies would have some sensitivity towards certain issues. Considering that innocent people have lost their lives, now is not the time to be “funny”.

But no, Walmart has decided to sell a Black Thug Life Mask. What message is this suppose to send? How are black people suppose to respond to this? Why is the mask sold out? I guess it is becoming clearer and clearer as to how white america feel about black people. However, I think it is time for black people to send a message back!

Whenever someone pose a threat or say something insensitive to the LGBT community, they unify and then affect that business. They will boycott them and other companies will support that movement. I think it is time for black people to unify and send a message to Walmart. The message should be we ain’t shopping there, PERIOD! If you are down with this movement, share this post and make this GO VIRAL!

I’d happily boycott Walmart, if I shopped there, which I don’t. I haven’t set foot in a Walmart store for over 10 years now. I know it simply isn’t that easy for a lot of people, but if you can’t boycott, then make your voice known, loud and proud. Write letters, send emails, spread the word! This is really beyond the pale.

Via Urban Intellectuals and Black Lives Matter.

Reno Truck Assault On Protesters: Update.

https://youtu.be/x0D-BgU82jI

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Detectives are preparing legal documents for possible criminal charges after an 18-year-old man drove a pickup truck through a crowd of protesters rallying in support of Native American rights in downtown Reno, Police Chief Jason Soto said Wednesday.

Soto made his remarks to the Reno City Council as a parade of American Indians, local clergy and others expressed their outrage over the fact no one’s been arrested after five protesters were struck Monday night by the truck on the street beneath the city’s famous arch with the slogan, “Biggest Little City in the World.”

Soto said an affidavit is in the works that could lead to prosecution. But he said he won’t discuss the possible charges or any other details because the investigation is ongoing.

In a different article, Soto was making noises about the protesters being in the street, rather than on the sidewalk, heavily implying they deserved to be run over, because street. It has been stated that people gathered in this spot to take photographs. It’s more than obvious that the police chief does not want to press charges in this case, and it’s also obvious he doesn’t think much of anything done was wrong. I’d like to see the Mayor address that little problem.

The Rev. Luther DuPree, an African-American bishop who oversees the Northern Nevada Churches of God in Christ, questioned whether the driver remains free because he is white.

“If it was any other culture, I believe an immediate arrest would have been made,” he said.

Kitty Colbert, 59, the most seriously injured woman who remained hospitalized Wednesday, was accompanied at the rally by her grandchildren who “saw her run over like a bag of beans,” said Ray Valdez, who was drumming and leading the group in prayer just before the incident.

Soto said the activists did not have a permit to protest in the street, but some had gathered in the travel lanes of Virginia Street on the main casino drag.

Jessica White, a local artist, said the activists were gathering in the crosswalk for a group photograph when “the driver began honking and revving his truck’s engine in an obvious attempt to frighten us.”

“I saw a driver purposely drive into a group of people and continue until there were injuries and terror,” she said Wednesday.

Tara Tran said the driver and passenger were yelling “racist” remarks before she was struck by the truck.

“I’ve heard a lot of people say the protesters deserved it… they were blocking traffic,” Tran told the council. “We were not blocking their direction. They were following us. They were not scared. I looked into their eyes. It was not a look of fear. It was a look that they were having fun.”

Grace Potorti, ex-leader of the Nevada Conservation League, said she was driving the opposite direction on Virginia Street when she saw the truck “plow into people, stop and — while people were lying on the road — continue to run over them.”

“This happened under the very symbol of Reno,” she said. “It happened under the arch!”

Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve said in a statement Tuesday Reno police “will hold anyone responsible accountable for their actions once the investigation has concluded.”

“The city does not condone hate,” she said Wednesday.

Full story at The Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Shailene Woodley Released.

Courtesy Morton County Sheriff's Office Shailene Woodley, charged with criminal trespass during peaceful civil action against the Dakota Access oil.

Courtesy Morton County Sheriff’s Office
Shailene Woodley, charged with criminal trespass during peaceful civil action against the Dakota Access oil.

Celebrity support flooded in for the actress after her arrest on Monday October 10 with other water protectors at a Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL) construction site. She paid a $500 fine and prepared for an October 24 court date, according to USA Today.

“Shailene Woodley has been released from the Morton County Jail in North Dakota,” her spokesperson told Us Weekly in a statement on Tuesday. “She appreciates the outpouring of support, not only for her, but more importantly, for the continued fight against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.”

The star of Snowden, Divergent and The Descendants, among other films, was among 28 unarmed people arrested by riot police for peacefully demonstrating at the site where Energy Transfer Partners is working on the 1,172-mile-long, $3.8 billion pipeline set to wend its way through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois, carrying as many as 550,000 barrels of crude daily from the Bakken oil fields. She livestreamed the arrest on Facebook.

Actor Mark Ruffalo also spoke out in support of Woodley, as did Maggie Q, her costar in the Divergent series.

“I stand with @shailenewoodley for standing with the Standing Rock Water Protectors. #NoDAPL,” tweeted Ruffalo, who is outspoken against climate change and walked with Indigenous Peoples alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2014 People’s Climate March in New York City.

“You can arrest someone but you CANNOT silence them,” wrote Maggie Q on Twitter.

Mainstream media picked up on the arrest and mentioned the pipeline controversy. But MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell took it a step further by noting the irony of date of the arrests, including Woodley’s, on criminal trespassing charges. It was for many (though not for all) a celebration of Christopher Columbus, who he dubbed “the greatest trespasser in human history.”

Via ICTMN.

Moron Bingo!

Photo courtesy starpulse.com

Photo courtesy starpulse.com

Everyone read Simon Moya-Smith’s 6 Banal Defenses of Columbus Day, And How You Should Respond to the Moron, right? Reading ICTMN today, specifically, an article about the fight for Indigenous Peoples Day at ground zero, Colorado. In that article is one Rita DeFrange, moron, and if this was an actual bingo game, I would have cleaned up. She managed to hit every single moron point. I think Ms. DeFrange needs about 100 copies of Simon Moya-Smith’s article, and must sit down and read it 100 times. Perhaps the points would sink in.

Rita DeFrange, president of the Columbus Day Parade Committee and a member of the Denver chapter of the Order Sons of Italy, said it’s “not fair” that city officials are taking away from one group to give to another.

“It’s a struggle for folks. The community itself is very disappointed. They don’t understand why they are being picked on,” DeFrange told ICTMN.

DeFrange said herself and her community just want to celebrate their history and heritage.

Although Indigenous Peoples’ Day supporters like McLean and Salazar say Columbus shouldn’t be celebrated because of the atrocities he brought to the Native American people, DeFrange however, believes Columbus shouldn’t be judged by today’s standards.

“Unfortunately, we’re evaluating a man by 2016 standards, when the events happened 500 years ago,” DeFrange said. “The community really needs to take a hard look at how we look at our history books.”

Members of the Columbus Day Parade Committee and Order Sons of Italy met with Salazar earlier this year to discuss resolutions that could make both parties happy.

No resolutions were met, DeFrange said.

She said she’s more than happy to celebrate the heritage of the Native American people, but just on a different day.

“It’s one day. It’s a group of individuals who value their Italian heritage,” DeFrange said. “We all value the cultures … that’s what’s so great about America. You know, let’s not take one over the other and that’s the perception that people have.”

Full story at ICTMN.