The American Gestapo

Most law enforcement organizations, at last in first world countries cling tightly to their non-political, non-partisan, and neural image. As well as that of being even-haded and fair. The reason being quite simply – trust.. As we have seen in some of the cases of Murder-by-Cop of black men – It doesn’t always work out that way No system is perfect.

The FBI massively violated that rule in supporting Trump during the election.

The release of information relative to Hillary Clinton’s emails was not only false

The FBI Is About To Get The Power To Hack Millions Of Computers

Congress had six months to debate granting President-elect Donald Trump’s FBI new legal powers to hack millions of computers, and Republican leaders objected to doing so on Wednesday.

That means that starting Thursday, a Department of Justice official will be able to go to a single judge, assert that a computer crime may involve millions of networked devices, and get a warrant that lets the FBI hack all of those devices.

According to three senators who tried to put the brakes on that new authority Wednesday so Congress could at least discuss it, there are no concrete assurances from law enforcement officials that privacy won’t be violated or that devices won’t be damaged. Nor was there any explanation of how authorities will hack Americans’ wired equipment.

“At midnight tonight, this Senate will make one of the biggest mistakes in surveillance policy in years and years,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who tried with Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) to offer three measures to delay or rein in the new FBI powers. “Without a single congressional hearing, without a shred of meaningful public input, without any opportunity for senators to ask their questions in a public forum, one judge with one warrant would be able to authorize the hacking of thousands, possibly
millions of devices, cell phones and tablets.”

In fact, very few Americans have any idea that the scope of online search warrants is about to get much broader. The push for the expansion stems from a case in Texas in which investigators were denied a warrant because they could not show that the computer they wanted to hack was in the federal district where the warrant was sought.

That prompted a long review by court officials of what’s known as Rule 41, a part of federal criminal procedure that defines search and seizure rules. They ultimately sent a proposal to the Supreme Court to expand the scope of the surveillance powers. The high court approved the expansion, and by law, Congress had six months to review and approve the change. The six months expire Dec. 1.

When Wyden and the two other senators asked for unanimous consent to bring up various measures to modify the new rules or just delay them for six more months, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) objected.

He said the changes were common-sense steps designed to allow law enforcement officials the ability to pursue new threats in the rapidly changing online world.

“There is a challenge when cybercriminals use the internet and social media to prey on innocent children, to traffic in human beings, to buy and sell drugs,” Cornyn said. “There has to be a way for law enforcement, for the federal government, to get a search warrant approved by a judge based on a showing of probable cause to be able to get that evidence so that the law can be enforced and these cybercriminals can be prosecuted.”

Wyden and the others do not dispute that criminals exploit all sorts of online devices ― from cameras to computers and connected appliances ― to commit crimes in ever-evolving ways.

But Wyden argued that the new powers are far too vague, and there are inadequate protections for innocent Americans whose property could be hacked legally by the feds if officials assert it is “damaged” by malware of some sort that may have been used in a crime.

He raised the specter of a mass FBI hack going wrong, and perhaps further damaging victims of a criminal hack, or even knocking vital systems offline, such as hospital computer networks.

“Legislators and the public know next to nothing about how the government
conducts the searches,” Wyden said. “The government itself is planning to use software that has not been properly vetted by outside security experts.”

The Oregon senator and a couple of dozen others have written to the Department of Justice about those and other concerns, but did not find the answers persuasive. (Read the exchanges here.)

Wyden predicted that when something inevitably goes wrong, the anger will be aimed a lawmakers who couldn’t be bothered to add checks on the new powers.

“I think when Americans find out that the Congress allowed the Justice Department to just wave its arms in the air and grant itself new powers under the Fourth Amendment without the Senate even being part of a single hearing, I think law-abiding Americans are going to ask, ‘So what were you people in the Senate thinking?’” Wyden said. “What were you thinking about when the FBI starts hacking the victims of a hack, or when a mass hack goes awry and breaks their device, or an entire hospital system in effect has great damage done?”

 

Federal Court Orders New Elections in North Carolina Due to Racial Gerrymandering

Looks like there was more than just vote tampering going on in North Carolina…

 

Federal court orders North Carolina to hold special 2017 elections after ruling “racial gerrymander” of districts unconstitutional

NC lawmakers must redraw legislative map that won the GOP veto-proof majorities despite losing 2012’s popular vote

North Carolina lawmakers have been ordered by a U.S. federal court to redraw 28 state House and Senate districts and to hold a special legislative election next year after the court struck down the state’s legislative map as an unconstitutional “racial gerrymander.”

A three-judge panel of the Middle District Court ruled Tuesday that the Republican-drawn legislative map had illegally packed African-American and Hispanic voters into a few districts, ruling that 28 of them were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. The judges found North Carolina’s legislative districts to be so racially biased that they are forcing the state to redo its elections next year.

In an 83-page ruling last summer, the same three-judge panel found that Republican lawmakers’ “new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” While the court ruled at the time that 28 of the General Assembly’s 170 districts were illegal racial gerrymanders, it decided it was too late in the election cycle to redraw new maps and hold elections in November. On Tuesday, the judges ordered lawmakers to redraw its own districts by March 15, meaning those elected to the state House and Senate a few weeks ago in districts ordered to be redrawn would serve just one year, not two as expected.

“This gives the state a total of seven months from the time the districts were held to be unconstitutional, which is longer than it took the 2011 legislature to redistrict the entire state,” read the order by Judges James Wynn, Thomas Schroeder and Catherine Eagles. The ruling also requires lawmakers to submit new maps to the court within seven days of passage.

This is a major blow to Republican control of the state legislature in North Carolina.

Democrats in North Carolina carried the popular vote for Congress and won a 7-6 majority in the state’s House delegation in the 2010 election, under the redistricting plan drafted by Democrats in 2001. As Executive Editor of the non-partisan, non-profit ReclaimTheAmericanDream.org, Hedrick Smith, explained, in 2012, Democratic House candidates again won a statewide popular vote majority for the House, but a new gerrymandered map drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature allowed the GOP to emerge with 9 seats to 4 for the Democrats. Republican state lawmakers  managed to win veto-proof majorities in North Carolina despite losing the popular vote in 2012, by drawing up such racially gerrymandered districts to dilute the power of voters of color.

 

Terrorist Trumpazoid Attacks Chinese Women in Restaraunt

Seems Trumpazoids are acting out on their racism and hate every single day…

Mike Pence Supporter Angry Over ‘Hamilton’ Protest Charged In Racist Attack On Asian Diner Patrons

The man called two Chinese women “c**ts* and “whores,” and told them to go back to Tokyo.

A supporter of Vice President-elect Mike Pence faces a court hearing next month after police said he called two women in a New York City diner racist names and pepper-sprayed a bystander who defended them.

Frank Camino, 56, is scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 19 on charges of assault with intent to cause physical injury, attempted assault, recklessly causing injury and harassment in the second degree, local news website Gothamist reported.

Police arrested him early Nov. 20 at a diner after he reportedly called two Chinese-American women “c**ts” and “whores” and said they should “go back to Tokyo,” the website reported. Then he pepper-sprayed a man who stepped up to defend the women and said he doesn’t “tolerate racism,” according to a witness. Gothamist couldn’t reach Camino for comment.

One of the women, Sally Wen Mao, said the “loud, angry” man tore into her and a friend after she asked him to lower his voice. He had been griping how “disgusting” and “racist” the cast of the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” was to issue an appeal to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, according to Mao, a 29-year-old Chinese-American poet.

Mao wrote about the experience on Twitter and Facebook.

Follow

Sally Mao @sallywenmao

1. Last night I was in an east village diner. a loud angry man complains abt Hamilton, how disgusting & “racist” they were to Pence.

9:41 AM – 20 Nov 2016

• 230230 Retweets

• 248248 likes

Follow

Sally Mao @sallywenmao

@sallywenmao 2. He was right behind me speaking to the diner owner, then started rambling loudly, complaining about “so-called minorities”

9:45 AM – 20 Nov 2016

• 5959 Retweets

• 8585 likes

Follow

Sally Mao @sallywenmao

@sallywenmao 3. At some pt listening to racist bile was intolerable, I said lower yr voice we are just trying to eat. Then we switched seats

9:46 AM – 20 Nov 2016

• 5858 Retweets
• 8484 likes

Camino reportedly entered the Lower East Side Coffee Shop alone after midnight and sat behind Mao and her friend, who had just come from an event celebrating Asian-American culture, Gothamist reported.

“When I was at the diner with my friend, we were talking directly about xenophobia in America and white male rage and how much it impacts us, our sense of humanity,” Mao, an Asian-American Studies educator for The City University of New York, told The Huffington Post.

Follow

Sally Mao @sallywenmao

@sallywenmao 4. Inevitably the Trump supporter got aggressive and told us to go back to Tokyo, then called us c**** and whores

9:47 AM – 20 Nov 2016

• 7373 Retweets

• 9090 likes

Camino began talking loudly to a diner employee about the “Hamilton” cast’s address to Pence the previous weekend and “how disgusting and ‘racist’ they were,” Mao wrote in a Facebook post. She said Camino also complained about “so-called minorities.”

Mao said the man turned his aggression toward her and her friend when she asked him to lower his voice. Even after the women switched tables, the man continued ranting, telling them to “go Back to Tokyo” and calling them misogynistic slurs, Mao said.

Mao said she stood and splashed water from her cup into his face.

“His spite and his malice and his loudness reinforced how we were feeling,” Mao said. “I had no patience for that kind of tirade. In that moment, I really needed to take a stand.”

Follow

Sally Mao @sallywenmao

@sallywenmao 5. At which point I wasn’t having it with his racism and misogyny — I splashed my water across his face

9:48 AM – 20 Nov 2016

• 6363 Retweets

• 188188 likes

Follow

Sally Mao @sallywenmao

@sallywenmao 6. He escalates, whining, and calls the police and says he will have me arrested all the while calling us derogatory slurs

9:52 AM – 20 Nov 2016

• 5353 Retweets

• 8080 likes

Camino threatened to have the women arrested, called the police and blocked the diner entrance so no one could leave, according to Marie Solis, a Mic.com staff writer who witnessed the confrontation and wrote an essay about it.

“My friends and I asked Mao and [her friend] to sit with us because we had all been genuinely fearful that this man, who was clearly angry and dangerous, would hurt them,” Solis wrote.

As Camino continued his racist rant, Mao threw a second cup of water at him.

Police soon arrived and took statements from those involved. Officers told Mao she wouldn’t be charged and allowed her and her friend to leave. After the officers walked outside, another customer approached Camino and told him, “I don’t tolerate racism,” according to Solis.

Solis described Camino’s response in her essay:

The man didn’t take well to this comment. “I wasn’t being racist,” he insisted. “I just told them to go back to Tokyo.”

I could sense things were going to escalate…

At that moment, though, a lot of things happened very quickly: I heard shouts and then turned to see the man stand up, reach into his pocket and pull out pepper spray, which he sprayed directly into the eyes of the patron who had called him out on his racism.

Solis ran outside to alert the police officers. Mao said she later learned the man hit with pepper spray was treated at a hospital.

“The rage and venom of these men know no limit now that this regime has been voted into place,” Mao wrote on Facebook, referring to the Trump administration.

“It was always there,” Mao added, “but now many like this man feel the need to inflict their rage over everyone around them, even in public spaces.”

 

Ohio State “Terrorist Attack” Really a Response to Trump Terrorism?

It is my belief we can expect substantially more terrorist style attacks under the Chumph due to his racist language and appointments. The Police will likely misidentify it, when the attacker happens to be a Muslim, as some sort of foreign terrorist organization inspired attack.

It isn’t. It is quite simply…Self Defense and reaction against racist Trumpazoid America and their attacks on Muslim women ans Mosques.

I don’t mean to be cold blooded here, but if you are protesting racism in America and hate against Muslims…Shouldn’t your target be the racists? Blow up some Trumpazoids…Go to your local Republican Party headquarters…Attend a pro-Trump rally…

Good for you… And it improves the country, making it a bit safer for all minorities.

Ohio State attack: Police identify suspect as business student

Local law-enforcement officers have confirmed the name of a man who they say injured as many as 11 people on the Ohio State University campus this morning by running a car into a group of people, then slashing others with a butcher knife.

Less than a minute after the attack, an OSU police officer shot and killed the man.

The suspect has been identified as Abdul Razak Ali Artan, who was a Logistics Management major in the College of Business at Ohio State. Police said they believe he was 18 years old. Records show he lived in western Franklin County. Records also show that he graduated with honors, with an associate’s degree, from Columbus State Community College in May before transferring this semester to Ohio State.

Police said the officer who shot and killed Artan is Ohio State University Police Officer Alan Horujko, 28, who has been with the police department since January 2015. He wasn’t injured.

Neighbors in the Havenwood Townhome complex where Artan lived said police and the sheriff’s office bomb squad have been there since shortly before 11 am., not long after the situation on campus occurred. Police crime-scene tape surrounds the complex and officers reportedly are awaiting federal officials to search his apartment.

For a time, officials believed a second suspect might have been in the Lane Avenue garage, but they searched it and found no one. They have since said there was only one suspect.

Andrew Thomas, chief medical officer of Ohio State University’s Wexner Center, said that 11 people were hurt in the incident, two of whom were not transported but sought medical care on their own later.

Of five transported to Wexner, two had stab wounds, two were hit by the car and one had a laceration, Thomas said. One who came later said he had injuries from the car.

Two more went to OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital, both hit by the car. One had orthopedic injuries and one had a skull fracture and appeared to be in stable condition, Thomas said. At OhioHealth Grant Medical Center, two people were treated for lacerations and one went later with injuries from the car.

One woman was transported to a hospital by a Columbus fire medic with a gunshot wound to her foot, Fire Chief Kevin O’Connor said. Officials haven’t yet said how that happened, but the woman told medics she was running from the incident and called for help after reaching a safe place.

The attack happened outside of Watts Hall, at West 19th Street west of College Road, shortly before 10 a.m. Earlier in the morning, the building had been evacuated because of a report of a gas leak. Authorities now say the leak likely had nothing to do with the attack.

At a news conference, officials said that Horujko had just cleared the scene from the gas-leak alarm when, at 9:52 a.m., he saw a car strike several pedestrians who had been evacuated into the courtyard outside. He issued a radio alert that seven to eight pedestrians had been struck.

He said the driver got out of the car with a large knife and began attacking people, and he ordered the man to drop the knife.

The man refused and, by 9:53 a.m., he had been shot and killed.

Those who knew Artan say they’re shocked.

Jack Ouham owns the Hometown Market, which is just around the corner from where Artan lived with his family. He said that Artan came in there once or twice a day and had lived in an apartment with his mother and six or seven siblings.

“I don’t know what made him act like that,” Ouham said. “He don’t drink. He don’t smoke. He don’t use narcotics. They’re very nice people.”

Ohio State’s student newspaper interviewed Artan in August. During that time, he talked about moving from Columbus State to such a large school, and being Muslim and the importance of prayer.

“This is my first day. This place is huge and I don’t even know where to pray,” he said. “I wanted to pray in the open, but I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media…I was kind of scared right now. But I just did it. I relied on God. I went to the corner and just prayed.”

OSU President Michael Drake said training by university personnel kept things from being worse.

“We live in an unstable world unfortunately,” he said.

 

Hillary Vote Lead now 2.2 million

Hillary won the popular vote by over 1.7%. Which actually is in line with a number of the polls prediction. Something which makes the Chumphs “win” in several key states even more questionable.

Clinton has registered 64,654,483 total votes, compared to 62,418,820 for Trump, according to a Cook Political Report analysis Monday. That represents a margin of 2,235,663 in the popular vote. Clinton garnered 48.2 percent of the popular vote, while Trump earned just 46.5 percent, good for a 1.7 point margin. Trump, however, picked up wins in key battleground states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan, earning 306 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232.

What stands out is the Margin shift in the so-called swing states – massively in Trumps direction.

The Russians do good work.

State	Clinton (D)	Trump (R)	Others	Clinton %	Trump %	Others %	Dem ’12 Margin	Dem ’16 Margin	Margin Shift	Total ’12 Votes	Total ’16 Votes	Raw Votes vs. ’12
6
7	U.S. Total	64,680,874	62,437,545	7,235,983	48.1%	46.5%	5.4%	3.9%	1.7%	-2.2%	129,075,630	134,354,402	4.1%
8	13 Swing States	21,356,299	22,183,644	2,298,207	46.6%	48.4%	5.0%	3.6%	-1.8%	-5.4%	43,939,918	45,838,150	4.3%
9	Non-Swing States	43,324,575	40,253,901	4,937,776	48.9%	45.5%	5.6%	4.0%	3.5%	-0.5%	85,135,712	88,516,252	4.0%

 

‘Voting for Trump would dishonor God’: GOP Electoral College member resigns to avoid backing Trump

A Republican Electoral College member from Texas has decided to step down because his conscience will not allow him to back Donald Trump for president.

Politico reports that Art Sisneros, a GOP elector who has been critical of Trump in the past, has resigned his position in the Electoral College because he simply believes Trump is not fit for the presidency.

“If Trump is not qualified and my role, both morally and historically, as an elected official is to vote my conscience, then I can not and will not vote for Donald Trump for President,” Sisneros wrote in a blog post late last week. “I believe voting for Trump would bring dishonor to God.”

The now-former elector went on to say that he’s stepping down from his role because he did not want to violate his pledge to support whoever won the popular vote in his home state.

“The people will get their vote,” he wrote. “I will sleep well at night knowing I neither gave in to their demands nor caved to my convictions. I will also mourn the loss of our republic.”

 

The Chumph Dysfunction

All over the country racist Trump voters are expecting special treatment…Because they are white.

This one spends an hour of her life ranting and raving over paying for a $1.00 bag.

Hate to be the first to tell the Trumpazoid racist POS…But the only color that matters to a retailer…Is Green.

 

‘I voted for Trump — so there’: White shopper melts down after black workers ask her to pay for bag

A shopper erupted in fury and claimed anti-white discrimination after she was asked to purchase a $1 reusable bag at a Chicago-area arts and crafts store.

Another customer began recording when she overheard the woman insulting the store’s black employees and shouting about Donald Trump, reported Patch.

“I voted for Trump — so there,” the woman shouted. “You want to kick me out for that? And look who won.”

The angry shopper claimed she had been discriminated against because she was white and had voted for Trump in the lengthy rant recorded Wednesday at Michael’s in the city’s Lakeview neighborhood.

The woman, who has not been identified, noticed other customers had pulled out their phones to record her harangue, which witnesses said went on for more than a half hour, and she angrily confronted the woman whose video went viral.

“I don’t know what you think you’re videoing, lady,” the woman says. “I was just discriminated against by two black women, and you being a white woman, you’re literally thinking that that’s okay? You standing there with your baby thinking that’s okay.”

The angry shopper accuses the other woman’s 2-year-old child of stealing and then records video of the mother and child before turning her wrath back on the store’s employees.

“You’re a liar, I don’t care, because I’m a consumer,” she shouts at an employee. “I’m a customer.”

The video is the latest in a series of white people justifying their obnoxious behavior and demanding special treatment because they voted for Trump.

 

Black White Wealth Gap in DC…Likely to Get Worse Under the Chumph

Black workers are more likely to be employed in the public sector than are either their white or Hispanic counterparts. In 2011, nearly 20 percent of employed Blacks worked for state, local, or federal government compared to 14.2 percent of Whites and 10.4 percent of Hispanics.

Blacks are 30 percent more likely than nonblacks to work in the public sector, according to the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. And roughly 21 percent of black workers are public employees, compared with 16.3 percent of nonblacks.

So when Putin’s bitch says he is going to “reduce government” who exactly gets hurt here?

George W. Bush (AKA the Bushit) “privatized” significant swaths of the Federal Government by outsourcing jobs to the private sector resulting in “whitening” Government.

More than a third (36.2%) of the Military are Minorities. Depending how you count (multiracial, other, etc) something between 17 and 20% of the US Military is black.

Partially as a result, the “wealth gap” between black and white is very bad in Washington, DC.

In D.C., White Families Are on Average 81 Times Richer Than Black Ones

Other major cities aren’t much better

The wealth discrepancy between blacks and whites is one of the most stark examples of inequality in America. White American families have, on average, around $142,000 in savings and assets, minus debt. Black families’, meanwhile, amounted to only $11,000, according to a 2014 Pew Research study. The gulf between black and white wealth is the worst it has been since the 1980s. Put differently, an average white family has 13 times the wealth of an average black family.

But as though the median numbers for the country as a whole weren’t bad enough, things look much worse in America’s cities, according to a new paperfrom the Urban institute—even cities such as D.C. where the prevalence of public-sector jobs, a large black population, and a high share of black business owners might make it seem like a place that black families could thrive. But in Washington D.C., the median white family has a staggering 81 times as much wealth as the median black family.

D.C. is not an outlier: In general, urban areas have much more severe racial inequalities, in part because of the concentration of white wealthy people, and the fact that their wealth has not “trickled down” to poor and middle-class black families. According to a 2015  National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Colors, D.C.’s racial wealth gap falls just behind Los Angeles’s, where median wealth for whites was closer to 89 times as much as blacks’. In Miami it was 30 times as high; in Tulsa, 18 times.

Darrick Hamilton, a professor at the New School and one of the authors of the Urban Institute’s study—along with fellow economists Kilolo Kijakazi, Rachel Marie Brooks Atkins, Mark Paul, Anne Price, and William A. Darity Jr.—says that while many ethnic groups might do poorly in one city and thrive in another, that’s not the case for black Americans. “No matter what the geographical context is, black Americans are a low-wealth group,” he told me. “I think the disparities are going to be dramatic wherever we look.”

Hamilton says that while the statistics about magnitude are useful for distilling the gap in balance sheets, they do little to capture what the wealth gap means for black families. In practice, less wealth means diminished access to the education and opportunities that help many Americans reach the middle class. Less wealth decreases opportunities for savings, homeownership, and economic security. And limited wealth accumulation also means that parents and grandparents have little to pass along to the next generation—from paying for school to helping with down payments—which dampens opportunities for intergenerational mobility.

D.C.’s wealth inequality stems from a combination of factors. According to the study, homeownership plays a significant role: Whites living in the District are much more likely than blacks to own homes—something that’s true around the country. In the District, whites with less than a high school education were more likely to own their homes than blacks at any education level, even those with college degrees. And for those who do own their own place, home values for black owners were around $250,000, about 30 percent less than the average value for white owners. Blacks in the District have a much higher unemployment rate, lower education rates, and are much more likely to have received a subprime mortgage.

The District’s racial wealth divide has old and deep origins in centuries of racist policies. The authors highlight a few in particular: the “black codes” of the 1840s, which prevented black people from owning successful stores or working in certain professions; the return of land in the District to the South in the 1870s, which decreased opportunities for ownership among newly freed blacks;  the demolition of Barry Farms—a black enclave founded by freed blacks—in the 1940s to make way for public housing and highway projects; the wave of “urban renewal” projects that swept out black businesses and residents in the 1960s and 70s. The effects of these policies have never been adequately dealt with. “Black people in D.C. have faced more than two centuries of deliberately constructed barriers to wealth building, and some of the highest barriers were embedded by design in law,” the study says….More…

 

American Flag…Take It Down

As a small act of resistance against the illicit residency of Putin’s bitch, I refuse to fly the American Flag, or allow it to be flown on my properties.

I’m sorry veterans, but this ain’t America anymore, Your service and sacrifice has been sold.

Veterans protest Hampshire College decision to stop flying U.S. flag

I’m sorry vets – but our flag, Constitution, and country have been disgraced by the traitor Trump in selling out to the Russians. Take it down until the POS is gone.

Veterans protested Sunday at a western Massachusetts college facing criticism from around the country for its decision to stop flying U.S. flags after students allegedly burned a flag in protest of Donald Trump’s presidential election.

Dozens of veterans and other demonstrators held American flags and chanted “U.S.A.” at Hampshire College in Amherst on Sunday, in what organizers called a “peaceful demonstration of freedom.”

Local veterans and others intended to place hundreds of U.S. flags on the streets around the college.

College officials decided to indefinitely stop flying flags earlier this month after the main flag in the center of campus was burned after students lowered the banner to half-staff. Officials replaced the flag, but it was lowered again.

School officials say they welcome peaceful discussions about the flag decision.

In a statement about their decision to remove the flag, college officials said: “This decision is not and was never a commentary on the presidential election.”

Clarifying the statement, Hampshire College President Jonathan Lash told CBS Boston he knows it’s a controversial decision to remove the flag, but he wanted to create a dialogue among those with differing opinions about the symbol.

“There were a range of views on campus, including people whose experience growing up have made the flag a symbol of fear, which was strengthened by the toxic language during the campaign, and people for whom the flag is the symbol of all that’s best throughout the country,” said Lash.

He said the trouble started with a gesture meant to help provoke “meaningful and respectful dialogue” on campus–a stance he outlined in a post on the college’s Facebook page. In that post, he said the Board of Trustees decided to fly the flag at half-staff due to the “environment of escalating hate-based violence” in the wake of the election.

Lash said the gesture was also meant to be an “expression of grief” over deaths around the world, including those of U.S. service members.

But, the move didn’t work as planned and many–especially veterans and families of veterans in the Hampshire College family–saw it as being disrespectful of the tradition of expressing mourning on a national level.

“Frankly, doing that, it didn’t help,” he said. “Flying the flag at half-mast just created more controversy.”

On Veterans Day, someone removed the flag and burned it.

“In the middle of the night, we have no idea who did it or even why,” said Lash.

So that’s why they decided to take down the U.S. flag–and all flags–on campus.

“The flag had become a heated symbol that was making that more difficult,” Lash said. “We really feel our community needs a conversation in which both sides listen to each other, and we wish the nation would have that kind of dialogue. We felt that if we could stop arguing about the symbol, we could get to the underlying issues.”

Of course, that decision has created even more backlash, and Lash said there “certainly is” a lot of anger about the decision.

 

Voting Race Instead of Sex – The Failure of Feminism

Learned this lesson a long time ago in supporting the promotion of white women in the corporate environment. Racism trumps (literally in this case) both feminism and any partnership with any other oppressed group. That is the reason why Obama beat Hillary in ’08 – that many folks didn’t see any difference in electing a racist white man versus a white woman who would ignore everyone else.

Feminism is a zero sum game for black folks, as well as for black women.

Fooled…Again

The colorblind sisterhood fantasy: Black women voted for white women — and white women voted for themselves

A Clinton victory would have been most symbolic for white women. Why did so many not vote for her?

From the time she officially announced her candidacy, I had been adamant that I would not vote for Hillary Clinton. Whatever common experiences we shared because of our womanhood were not enough to make me overlook my legitimate concerns over her political positions and history. That admission was usually met with berating hostility, as her supporters assumed that my disdain for Clinton meant I supported the racism, sexism and xenophobia embraced by her strongest competitor. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

I’m a black woman. There was no amount of resentment for Clinton that would have made me vote for Donald Trump. No, I was not with her, but I wasn’t even on the same planet as him.

Still, I was positive that she’d win. White women had been championing Clinton since the start of election season, and after a failed bid eight years ago, I believed they were determined to use their political power to redeem her. So as I sat watching the results of the election, stunned doesn’t begin to describe my reaction.

That Donald Trump, with no prior political experience, was elected to the highest office of the most powerful country on earth was shocking. What exit poll data revealed was utterly astounding. More than half of the white women who voted — 53 percent — had voted for Donald Trump.

Yes, just over four in 10 (43 percent) of those who were the de facto face of #ImWithHer had championed a female president in the voting booth. Conversely, black female voters, many of whom had declared #GirlIguessImWithHer, stayed true to that unenthusiastic declaration and voted at a nearly exclusive 94 percent for Clinton. How were white women, for whom a Clinton victory would have been most symbolic, Trump’s second-strongest supporting demographic?

That question is best answered by what black women and other women of color have been saying for years: White women can be, and too often are, just as racist as their male counterparts, rendering colorblind sisterhood nothing more than a fantasy.

This elephant didn’t just enter the room. More than 120 years ago, in the last decade of the 19th century, pioneering black journalist Ida B. Wells took on suffragette Frances E. Willard who, in her capacity as a leading activist for women’s rights, freely employed the violent racist rhetoric of the time. Wells declared that after the 15th Amendment giving all men the right to vote was ratified, Willard had “unhesitatingly slandered the entire Negro race in order to gain favor with those who are hanging, shooting and burning Negroes alive.” More plainly, Willard, like many of her colleagues, was content to manipulate the racism at the core of this country’s existence to win rights for white women who were still denied the vote black men were guaranteed on paper, saying in a speech, “It is not fair that a plantation Negro who can neither read or write should be entrusted with the ballot.”

Much of the white feminist struggle since has taken the same strategy with the same goal. For many women of color, white feminism feels less like a unified fight for the liberation of all women, and more like a campaign to ensure white women have the same status, rights and privileges as white men, and thus the corresponding power to oppress black and brown people. This election was a painful reminder, and statistical illustration, of that.

White women had everything to gain, or at least maintain, by electing Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Beyond the historical significance of electing the first woman — a white woman — president of the United States, Clinton’s policies would have no doubt been more female-friendly than Trump’s, who has said he would appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices in a signal of support for overturning Roe v. Wade, and has even argued that women should suffer punishment for having abortions. Trump has an unabashedly misogynist constituency to appease. That appeasement will most likely come at the cost of women’s rights.

But beyond the low-hanging fruit, white women are still viewed by our culture at large as the embodiment of womanhood. Much of the vile sexism peddled and promoted by Trump was inflicted upon white female bodies. When Trump retweeted a tweet calling Fox News personality Megyn Kelly a “bimbo,” that was not a blow to black women like me. “Bimbo” is an insult reserved almost exclusively for white women. When Trump bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy,” it was safe to assume those women had been white, given his three wives and the descriptions of the woman he admitted he “did try to fuck.” Trump didn’t interrupt a black or Asian woman dozens of times during the debates — he talked over a white woman indisputably more qualified to lead this country than he is.

Yes, his campaign fostered a real climate for racist attacks on women of color. Absolutely, his “birther” campaign aimed at Barack Obama helped further embolden racists to lob misogynoir at Michelle Obama. No question his Islamophobia bred more contempt for Arab Muslim women in hijab, thus placing them at greater danger for violence in this country. But the harm inflicted upon melanated women has been more proxy than direct. Trump himself caused harm directly to white women instead.

People look at Megyn Kelly and see a white woman. They look at Hillary Clinton and see a white woman. They think of Trump groping white women.

But still, white women, across borders of income and education, supported him. It’s Frances Willard for 2016. Racist white women held firm to the fact that they may be women — oppressed, marginalized and preyed upon — but at least they’re still white. Trump, in coded language, promised to preserve that whiteness. He promised them that even fighting for the right to make choices for their own bodies and paid less, they’d still have the power of their whiteness.

And as has been the case for more than a century; the majority decided that their comfort was in the arms of white men rather than in locking arms with black and brown women. Black women did their part. They kept up their end of the bargain, however begrudgingly, voting for a white woman who would benefit them at most marginally with trickle-downs, as white women cut off their own noses to spite their own faces.

 

Speaking of White People Acting Stupidly – CVS Employees Hide When Black Customer Arrives

This has to be the epitome of stupid. The CVS in my area have a refrigerated food section where they sell not only milk, but eggs, bacon, and …sliced cheese in a small Dairy case So asking for the product isn’t unreasonable.

CVS employees lock themselves in backroom and call police after black customer asks to buy cheese

A late night trip to a local CVS store by two black men to buy some sliced cheese turned into a run-in with police after panicked store employees hid in a locked backroom and called the cops, reports WATE.

According to Ricky Berry, he and his roommate Philip Blackwell went to a CVS store in Carytown, Virginia in search of cheese.

After asking an employee if the store carried cheese, and being told it did not, Berry said the staffer and other employees who had been on floor disappeared.

“We looked around for probably 30, 45 minutes and we couldn’t find anybody,” Blackwell said, adding that they discovered another customer, attempting to purchase Oragel for a bad tooth, who also couldn’t find anyone to help him.

Berry stated that a police officer showed up and helped them search the store only to discover the employees huddled in a back room behind locked doors.

“He was laughing with us because, like, this is how weird, apocalyptic movies start,” Berry said, before adding that the officer made a few calls after which he told them they’d have to leave.

“We’re being kicked out because they were scared of us and hiding,” Berry said, “He just told us that we need to leave premises or else we would be arrested for trespassing and that flipped the script on all of us. We had no idea what was going on.”

The two men said they attempted to contact the store manager and were unsuccessful, but did receive an apology from a CVS spokesperson who said the employee who called the police was being counseled and retrained.

 

 

Willie Rogers – Last Tuskegee Airman

Rest in peace, Mr Rogers…

Willie Rogers, the last member of the original Tuskegee Airmen, dead at 101

Rogers was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007

The last member of the original Tuskegee Airmen, Willie Rogers of St. Petersburg, Florida, died Monday. He was 101 years old. The Airmen were members of the first African-American military aviation squadron in U.S. armed forces history.

“He didn’t like a lot of fuss,” said Clinton Glover, Rogers’ nephew. “He was humble. That’s who he was.”

Rogers was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 and served as a member of the logistics team in the 100th Air Engineer Squad and the Red Tail Angels. During a mission in Italy, Rogers was shot in the stomach and leg by German soldiers in January 1943. He spent three months in a London hospital recovering from his wounds.

On April 29, 1945, following Germany’s surrender and the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, Rogers, along with other American troops, took inventory of the camp.

Former President George W. Bush welcomed the Tuskegee Airmen’s 300 surviving members to the White House in 2007 and awarded each of them the Congressional Gold Medal. Neither Rogers nor his daughters, Felicia Rogers and Veronica Williams, attended the ceremony, and they didn’t even know about their father’s participation with the group until 2012.

The Tampa Bay Times reported that “part of the reason for that silence, he’d tell his family, was because his work was on the ground in logistics and administration, not in the sky where the heroics took place.”

Six years later in November 2013, Rogers received his Congressional Gold Medal. Besides that award, Rogers’ portrait was placed in the St. Petersburg Museum of History, and he received the keys to the cities of Lakeland and St. Petersburg, Florida.

“He would always say there were many who deserved attention more, but were not here to receive it,” Williams said.

Rogers lived in St. Petersburg after the war and opened his own business — Rogers Radio Sales and Services. He was born in Apalachicola, Florida, in 1915.

From 1942 to 1946, approximately 15,000 men and women participated in the Tuskegee Institute during World War II. The U.S. military trained civilians as part of the Tuskegee Experience, starting in May 1940 when students completed their pilot training program.

The Tuskegee Airmen would turn out to be one of the most successful fighter units in U.S. history — fighting in more than 200 combat missions and never losing a single bomber to enemy fire. No other group can claim that achievement.

Although African-Americans were often discriminated against while serving in the military, Rogers was still able to put that into perspective.

“He could give dates, names, locations of events from the war,” Williams said. “But he didn’t like to give specifics about what occurred to him. He saw things that were bad. And he experienced treatment because he was African-American that wasn’t fair.

“He recognized that we as a people, and he as a black man, have come a long way, but that there is still more to go. But in God’s eyes, there is no color, he’d say. We are all one and he lived by the greatest commandment — to love one another.”

 

Cops Tired of White Folks Calls on Black Neighbors

 

These cops are tired of white people getting freaked out by their black neighbors

“People, please stop making my job so difficult.”

That’s the opening of a discussion in “ProtectAndServe,” reddit’s community of law enforcement officers. The poster, who goes by the handle “sf7” and has been verified as a law enforcement officer by the forum’s moderators, goes on:

So I’m working last week and get dispatched to a call of ‘Suspicious Activity.’ Ya’ll wanna know what the suspicious activity was? Someone walking around in the dark with a flashlight and crow bar? Nope. Someone walking into a bank with a full face mask on? Nope.

It was two black males who were jump starting a car at 930 in the morning. That was it. Nothing else. Someone called it in.

People. People. People. If you’re going to be a racist, stereotypical jerk…keep it to yourself.

Other forum users sympathize. One tells a story about someone asking the cops to investigate a middle-aged black man fishing in his own community. Another was asked to respond to a report of two Middle Eastern guys sitting in the same car. Another laments that “we frequently get calls about black men and woman and kids, yes [expletive] kids, walking. Like WWB [walking while black] was actually a crime and not a Twitter joke.”

The stories pile on. A white security officer tells of the year he and his black wife lived in an apartment complex. “She got cops called a total of 9 times in the year we lived there I got zero,” he says. A retired cop recalls the time a “lady called scared to death because some black guy was sitting in his truck across from her house” — it was the water meter reader.

These are simply anecdotes on a public website. But they illustrate an aspect of the relationship between cops and minority communities that doesn’t get much attention.

In stories like Ferguson and Baltimore, we tend to focus on the relationship between police and minority communities as if it were purely binary and took place in a vacuum. But the Reddit thread shows that cops can become frustrated by the frequency with which some members of a community — most likely white people — call the authorities.

This issue can be particularly acute in gentrifying communities. According to local D.C. news site HillNow.com, in the H Street region of Washington D.C. last year, police held a community forum to discuss concerns about racial profiling. “You have a lot of people here who haven’t lived in an urban neighborhood who are calling police for a lot of new things,” police chief Cathy Lanier said.

One of the community residents agreed. “A couple of guys walk through an alley like they’ve done their whole lives, and the newly arrived neighbors think something untoward is happening,” he said.

But it can happen in new communities too. NPR reported last year on the case of the Mueller community near Austin Texas, a new and racially diverse development where tensions between black and white neighbors arose.

The problem? White residents were viewing many of their black neighbors with suspicion. One black homeowner noticed people would snap pictures of his car as he drove around. Another had the cops called on him after he picked up an office chair in an alley that another resident had left out for free.

Plenty of African Americans, particularly men, can tell harrowing stories of times they’ve done something normal that somebody else interpreted as “suspicious.” President Obama’s had experience with this himself.

From the reddit thread, it’s clear that many cops hate the thought of racially profiling their community members. They’re embarrassed by having to check in on behavior that they know is almost certainly 100 percent innocuous.

Sf7, the cop who started the thread, says he has a strategy for dealing with these calls. He’ll approach the “suspicious person,” and “I will roll up and ask them if they need any help. If they need help, I will help them start their vehicle. If they don’t, I will leave. I am not going to waste their time because some random ***** is being racist. Nope.”

It’s a good reminder that the problem of American race relations goes far beyond the interactions between police and black communities.

For the story behind the three pictures go here.

 

Racism Makes You Stupid: Datapoint – Trumpazoid Jackass # 2,322,001, Bank VP Fired

On the subject of “poor career decisions”. Some of the Trumpazoids apparently believe the “White Reich” is already here. Leading to some really, really stupid career ending decisions.

Alabama bank VP canned over racist Facebook post bragging Trump could ‘buy and sell’ Obamas

Racist Trump Jackass of the Week…Now Unemployed

An Alabama woman lost her job after her bigoted, inaccurate and grossly misspelled Facebook rant earned her the title of “racist of the week.”

June Pridmore, a senior-level employee with Regions Bank, welcomed the election of Donald Trump in a social media post that alluded to slavery and suggested President Barack Obama was Muslim, reported AL.com.

“I voted him in,” Pridmore wrote. “I like him. He has a beautiful wife unlike the ugly and embarrassing woman (for lack of a better word), in the White House now. Ms. Trump’s face would make Michele (sic) O’Bama (sic) a Sunday face.”

“I’m certainly glad [Trump] he has a lot of money because she he (sic) won’t be bought out like Barack (sic), socialist Muslim O’Bama (sic) or his wife or all those host of relatives they have in the whitehouse (sic) for US to support.”

Pridmore inaccurately claimed the Obama family had flown their dog to vacations in a separate plane and invited several relatives to live with them at taxpayer expense.

“If any idiot out there thinks that is justified, you deserved him as president,” Pridmore wrote. “I prefer a man who can buy Michele (sic) and Barack and sell them several times over.”

The post was widely shared on Facebook, under the label “racist of the week,” and Pridmore’s employer launched an investigation — which resulted in her termination.

“We appreciate the concerns shared about offensive social media comments that were made through an associate’s personal Facebook account,” said Jeremy King, a spokesman for the bank. “We want you to know that we share those concerns. Those comments do not reflect our values as a company or the way we do business. The associate is no longer an employee of the company.”

The spokesman said Pridmore, whose LinkedIn profile showed she had served as senior vice president of loan operations since 2008, was not in a position where she could approve or deny loans.

Pridmore has deleted her social media profiles since her racist post cost her job.

 

Recount Scheduled for Wisconsin

The ugly truth is there were a good half dozen States whose election systems were rigged for Trump. So far, they won’t let cyber-scientists look at the data and systems of the others. More than likely they are busily trying to destroy the evidence. The Chumph didn’t “win” this election, it was won with help from his Russian masters, the “usual suspects” of Republican hackers, and an unwillingness of the MSM to challenge the results.

The reason they picked the three (was four) states to request a recount, is the vote tally’s already show that votes were manufactured for Chumph. What has been uncovered so far is a number of counties in Wisconsin reporting more votes for the Chumph…Than they had voters. That is a fairly easy hack. All it requires is for the County Elections Supervisor to add votes to the tally which is sent up to the State and Federal level. What has been discovered in an initial forensic analysis of the electronic votes tallied (Wisconsin has a paper voting system, so there is actually an easy way to audit the real vote) is the blocks of as many as 10,000 votes were added to the electronic tallies. So we wind up in position where there are significantly more votes …Than voters.

Jill Stein as a Third Party candidate doesn’t want to say that publicly…Yet.

Now…Unless they get to the paper votes – and this turns out the way the cyber-scientists believe…

This will set off a firestorm.

Wisconsin agrees to statewide recount in presidential race

Wisconsin’s election board agreed on Friday to conduct a statewide recount of votes cast in the presidential race, as requested by a Green Party candidate seeking similar reviews in two other states where Donald Trump scored narrow wins.

The recount process, including an examination by hand of the nearly 3 million ballots tabulated in Wisconsin, is expected to begin late next week after Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s campaign has paid the required fee, the Elections Commission said.

The state faces a Dec. 13 federal deadline to complete the recount, which may require canvassers in Wisconsin’s 72 counties to work evenings and weekends to finish the job in time, according to the commission.

The recount fee has yet to be determined, the agency said in a statement on its website. Stein said in a Facebook message on Friday that the sum was expected to run to about $1.1 million.

She said she has raised at least $5 million from donors since launching her drive on Wednesday for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – three battleground states where Republican Trump edged out Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by relatively thin margins.

Stein has said her goal is to raise $7 million to cover all fees and legal costs.

Her effort may have given a ray of hope to dispirited Clinton supporters, but the chance of overturning the overall result of the Nov. 8 election is considered very slim, even if all three states go along with the recount.

The Green Party candidate, who garnered little more than 1 percent of the nationwide popular vote herself, said on Friday that she was seeking to verify the integrity of the U.S. voting system, not to undo Trump’s victory.

While there was no evidence of tampering or voting errors in the election, only a thorough review of results from the three states at issue will reassure Americans, Stein said.

“This was a hack-riddled election,” she told CNN, pointing to various cyber-attacks on political organizations and individual email accounts before Election Day and media reports citing concerns raised by computer security specialists.

Experts urged extra scrutiny of the three states, Stein said, because their voting systems were seen as vulnerable. They also cited “unexplained high numbers of undervotes,” the close finish between the two nominees and “discrepancies between pre-election polling and the official result,” she said.

According to Stein, the Wisconsin commission confirmed receipt of her recount petition at 3:45 p.m. local time, just over an hour before the deadline for filing. The filing deadline is Monday in Pennsylvania and Wednesday in Michigan.

The Wisconsin board said Stein was joined in her petition by another third-party candidate, Rocky Roque De La Fuente.

Although Trump won narrowly in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the margins make it highly unlikely any recounts would end up giving Clinton a win in all three states, which would be needed for the overall election result to change. Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania by 70,010 votes, in Michigan by 10,704 votes and in Wisconsin by 27,257 votes.

The presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, based on a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the popular national vote. The Electoral College results are expected to be finalized on Dec. 19.

Trump surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win, although Clinton will have won the national popular vote by more than 2 million ballots once final tallies are in.

A representative for Trump’s transition team on Thursday had no comment on Stein’s effort, and Clinton has not commented on Stein’s effort.

 

 

 

Ain’t It Funny How…

Conservatives in this country cheer the death of Castro, a communist dictator, but love and elect the pawn of a neo-communist dictator, Vladimir Putin because of racism.

Fidel Castro and Russian President Nikita Khrushchev

Vladimir Putin and his new bitch…Trump

 

Cuba hardliners: Castro’s death is no time to go soft

 

Two of the fiercest congressional critics of Fidel Castro are rejoicing after his death, and laying down a marker for President Barack Obama and his successor: Don’t go soft on Cuba now.

“The day that the people, both inside the island and out, have waited for has arrived: A tyrant is dead and a new beginning can dawn on the last remaining communist bastion of the Western hemisphere,” Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American lawmaker and a longtime foe of Cuba’s communist dictator, said in a statement early Saturday.

Ros-Lehtinen added a warning to Fidel Castro’s brother Raul, who has ruled in his stead since 2006 and announced his death on Cuban state television last night.

“Those who still rule Cuba with an iron grip may attempt to delay the island’s liberation, but they cannot stop it,” she said. “Castro’s successors cannot hide and must not be allowed to hide beneath cosmetic changes that will only lengthen the malaise of the Cuban nation. No regime, no matter who leads it, will have a shred of legitimacy if it has not been chosen by the people of Cuba in free and fair elections.”…

All that hypocrisy from the descendants of one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships which Castro overthrew. A group of people whose own ugly racial history has planted them frmly on the Republican plantation, and voting for the Chumph.