Stuck on Stupid – Democrats Roll Out Same Old Failed Plan

The Democrats are well on their way to losing the 2018 election, chasing the wrong voters – for the wrong reason.

They want to win, the program is real simple.

• The first step being to execute complete and total war on conservatives.
• First platform statement – Should the Chumph still be in office, the first bill passed  – will be his impeachment, and removal from office any of his appointees
• Bring the progressives back into the party – cut the mamby-pamby shit and stand for something.
• Tie Republicans to grandma losing her Social Security check.
• Tie Republicans to those sick relatives dying with no medical care.
• Pass a law, criminalizing “Fake News” and bring back the “Fairness Doctrine”
• Tie Republicans to jobs loss.
• Use the fear factor that the POS and the Republicans will get us into nuclear war.
• Tie Putin’s Bitch to the loss of America’s standing in the world.
• Talk about efforts to develop jobs in Middle America – the billions going into small business incubators and investment.
• Get back to talking about Green Jobs in transforming the country
• Put the DOJ back together and working for the people instead of the KKK
• Restore all decisions made by the POS’s appointed in the various government agencies to the state they were when the POS had the Russians steal office for him.

And that is just a start.

 

 

On Black Lives Matter and Israel

WhatTF is going on at BLM?

While Israel isn’t anyone but Israel’s friend – why take this on?

I seems to be a diversion which does more damage than good.

I am an old-timer – so let me put it this way. WhereTF has ANY Arab/Muslim Country stood up for any oppressed minority other than fellow Muslims ANYWHERE in the world? During the First Civil Rights struggle (we are now in the second) which of same countries said a damn thing?

I mean, the first thing every Arab group did immigrating to this country was have themselves declared “white” by law. That scheme fell apart badly with the response to International terrorism, and it has only been in the last 15 years or so that anyone from the Arab world gave a fuck about black and brown people dying in the streets here…After racism and bigotry made them “other”, and the same guns and bullets began killing them as unwanted brown people.

I mean…Thank You for the efforts over the last 15 years, by those who have immigrated here and become Americans.

The rise of the Chumph and his right wingdizzies is in part a full-on effort to rescind Jewish people’s “white cards” as part of their scheme to “Make America White Again”.

So why step toe in that foreign water full of sharks – none of whom give a single fuck about American black folks.

This one was written by Alan M. Dershowitz, who besides having been one of the top Lawyers in the country,  is professor emeritus of law at Harvard University and author of “Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law.’’

Black Lives Matter must rescind anti-Israel declaration

It is a real tragedy that Black Lives Matter — which has done so much good in raising awareness of police abuses — has now moved away from its central mission and has declared war against the nation state of the Jewish people. In a recently issued “platform,” more than 60 groups that form the core of the Black Lives Matter movement went out of their way to single out one foreign nation to accuse of genocide and apartheid.

No, it wasn’t the Syrian government, which has killed tens of thousands of innocent people with barrel bombs, chemicals, and gas. Nor was it Saudi Arabia, which openly practices gender and religious apartheid. It wasn’t Iran, which hangs gays and murders dissidents. It wasn’t China, which has occupied Tibet for more than half a century. And it wasn’t Turkey, which has imprisoned journalists, judges, and academics. Finally, it wasn’t any of the many countries, such as Venezuela or Mexico, where police abuses against innocent people run rampant and largely unchecked. Nor was it the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where the police are a law unto themselves who act as judge, jury and executioner of those whose politics or religious practices they disapprove.

It was only Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people and the only democracy in the Middle East. The platform accuses the US of being “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people” by providing aid to “an apartheid state.”

To be sure, Black Lives Matter is not a monolithic organization. It is a movement comprising numerous groups. Many of its supporters have no idea what the platform says. They cannot be faulted for supporting the movement or its basic mission. But the platform is the closest thing to a formal declaration of principles by Black Lives Matter. The genocide paragraph may well have been injected by radicals who are not representative of the mainstream. But now that it has officially been published, all decent supporters of Black Lives Matter — and there are many — must demand its removal.

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic. Like other democracies, including our own, it has faults. Criticizing Israel’s settlement and occupation policies is fair game. But singling Israel out and falsely accusing it of “genocide” can be explained in no other way than blatant hatred of Jews and their state.

In defending its citizens against terrorism since before its establishment as a state in 1948, Israel has killed fewer Palestinians than did Jordan and Syria in two much shorter wars. The relatively low number of civilian deaths caused by Israeli self-defense measures over the past 68 years compares favorably to the number of civilian deaths in other conflicts. This is because, as Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, put it: There has been “no time in the history of warfare when an Army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties…than [the Israel Defense Forces].” Though Kemp was specifically referring to the wars in the Gaza Strip — which are also the apparent focus of the Black Lives Matter Platform — his conclusion is applicable to all wars Israel has fought.

Genocide means the deliberate extermination of a race, such as done by Nazi Germany to Jews and Sinti and Roma or by the Hutu against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It has no application to deaths caused by self-defense measures taken to protect citizens against terrorism. To falsely accuse Israel of “genocide” — the worst crime of all, and the crime whose very name was coined to describe the systematic murder of 6 million Jews — is anti-Semitic.

Until and unless Black Lives Matter removes this blood libel from its platform and renounces it, no decent person — black, white, or of any other racial or ethnic background — should have anything to do with it. We should continue to fight against police abuses by supporting other organizations or forming new ones. But we must not become complicit in the promotion of anti-Semitism just because we agree with the rest of the Black Lives Matter program.

To support an organization or movement that promotes anti-Semitism because it also supports good causes is the beginning of the road to accepting racism. Many racist groups have also promoted causes that deserve support. The Black Panthers had breakfast programs for inner-city children, while advocating violence against whites. And the Ku Klux Klan organized summer camps for working-class families, while advocating violence against blacks.

There must be zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, regardless of the race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation of the bigots who promote, practice or are complicit with it. Being on the right side of one racial issue does not give one a license to be on the wrong side of the oldest bigotry.

To give Black Lives Matter a pass on its anti-Jewish bigotry would be to engage in racism. Black anti-Semitism is as inexcusable as white anti-Semitism or white racism. There can be no double standard when it comes to bigotry.

I write this column both in sorrow and in anger. In sorrow because I support the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement — I have long been involved in efforts to expose and prevent police abuses — and worry that this obnoxious and divisionary platform plank may destroy its credibility with regard to police abuse in America by promoting deliberate lies about Israel. It is also alienating Jewish and other supporters who could help them achieve their goals here at home — as many such individuals have historically done in actively supporting all aspects of the civil rights movement.

I write it in anger because there is never an excuse for bigotry and for promoting blood libels against the Jewish people and their state. It must stop. And those who engage in it must be called out for condemnation.

Black Lives Matter should rescind the portions of the platform that falsely accuse Israel of genocide and apartheid. If it does not, it risks ending in the dustbin of history, along with other discredited bigoted groups.

It would be sad if the good work done by Black Lives Matter were now to be sidetracked by the mendacious and irrelevant accusation of “genocide” and “apartheid” against one foreign democracy — Israel.

 

BLM and the Political Conventions

This article believes that BLM will be the driving counter-force at both conventions. I believe it is wrong…

I believe what we are going to see this election season, particularly at the Republican Convention is the emergence of Hispanics as a powerful demographic, and political voice.

And if Hispanics carry through with that threat, and actually get the sort of turnout that black folks have traditionally had – then the Chumph, and the Republican Party is going to learn just how bad it is to have pissed off both major minority groups in the US. Since Hispanic turnout is traditionally low (around 40%), up until now, using Hispanics as whipping boys for the right really hasn’t cost Republican anything. Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials, projects 13.1 million Hispanics will vote nationwide in 2016, compared to 11.2 million in 2012 and 9.7 million in 2008.

The Black Lives Matter Movement’s Political Moment

The party conventions provide an opportunity for protesters to reassert themselves on a national stage.

Political conventions have always attracted political protests, and the history of black organizers protesting at major party conventions stretches back decades. Mass protests led by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, then-Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader and current Representative John Lewis, and activist Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 Democratic Convention helped bring the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into existence and hasten the exit of white conservatives from the Democratic Party. The 1968 Democratic Convention was upended by mass protests and riots from a collection of counterculture and civil rights groups, including anti-war demonstrators, black nationalists, and the nonviolent remnants of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign. The surveillance, protests, and a political plot at this convention captured the fraught racial climate of the United States in the wake of King’s death and the ensuing riots.

With the 2016 Democratic and Republican conventions approaching, America’s mood is perhaps not quite as tense as it was after the anti-black violence of the 1964 Freedom Summer or the fear and destruction of the 1968 King riots. But it is still characterized in part by anger from black activists. Donald Trump’s campaign has fomented protests from black organizers across the country, and his racist posturing has led to renewed calls for protests against the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Black Lives Matter, a movement that dominated headlines last year in protests against police violence, has always been political, but the conventions provide much more direct avenue to electoral politics. Black activism could be a major force in shaping or disrupting the agendas of both parties.

Will the Democrats’ gathering in Philadelphia look anything like its 1964 or 1968 predecessors? Prominent activist and member of Campaign ZERO DeRay Mckesson stated that he expects organizing in Philadelphia to reflect young black disillusionment over Clinton’s candidacy and the Democratic platform, as well as the precedent set by a recent sit-in in Congress led by Lewis. Philadelphia activists affiliated with Black Lives Matter have confirmed their intent. Erica Mines of the Philadelphia Coalition for REAL Justice—known for challenging Bill Clinton about his crime bill at a rally in April—says her group and other black activists in the area will have a presence at the convention in late July. “We definitely plan on having a protest,” Mines told me…

…But will that same spirit of protest also spur black activists at the Republican Convention in Cleveland? The people planning it certainly think so. Planners in Cleveland have used much of the $50 million event grant from Congress on surveillance of black protesters and have purchased a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) for use in crowd control. The original anti-protest rules for the Cleveland convention were so strict that liberal and conservative grassroots joined forces to defeat them in court. But Cleveland-area groups affiliated with Black Lives Matter would not go on the record about any specific plans.

Their reticence to go on record reflects a fear of surveillance among black organizers. After numerous protests in Cleveland in 2015, FBI officials intimatedthat they were closely surveilling the city’s activists. The Secret Service has also rolled out a muscular intelligence apparatus in Cleveland in advance of the convention. While most of their efforts are dedicated to addressing threats of terrorism, law-enforcement officials are also monitoring the social-media activity of Black Lives Matter activists.

Despite the increased security, black protesters will almost surely show up. Cleveland became a center of black organizing against police brutality after police killed Tamir Rice in 2014. The city has also been the target of a Justice Department probe into police brutality. The first major Black Lives Matter conference was held in Cleveland last year, marred by an incident in which a transit officer pepper-sprayed demonstrators.

Not all black protesters who show up in Cleveland or Philadelphia will be working for the same exact goals. Shanelle Matthews, the director of communications for the Black Lives Matter network, said the organization does not publicize direct action in advance, and the conventions do not have a blanket significance nationally. “Because we’re decentralized and all of the chapters work autonomously, to each of the chapters in their regions [conventions] mean something different,” Matthews said. Some chapters or affiliates that choose to protest might focus on police violence. Others may focus on economic justice. Still others may focus on environmental justice.

This is a critical summer for Black Lives Matter as an organization and a broader movement—as Matthews notes, it is “still in its infancy.” Local activists are seeking to build their advocacy networks and figure out what causes and methods make sense for them. Both conventions will provide opportunities for black activists to make their mark on electoral politics, if they are so inclined. “I think this is a time for us as black and brown people in this country to really understand what it means to be part of the democratic process,” Mines told me. “It is a pivotal time for us especially for the DNC and Philadelphia historically. Understanding this is the birthplace of democracy and this is a once in a lifetime thing, we have to get our issues addressed.”

While these activists will undoubtedly draw from the legacies of 1964 and 1968, the thoroughly decentralized, intersectional Black Lives Matter movement may well add something new to the history of protests and conventions. After months of being overshadowed by the election, black protesters will likely make headlines again in July.

 

 

DeRay for Mayor!

It appears that DeRay Mckesson, one of he mainstream players in Black Lives Matter is a serious politician, with a solid platform on what he would do as Mayor of Baltimore. I think most people have been underestimating his understanding and grasp of what the job entails because of his youth. Baltimore, just like any major city, is an ugly beast to run with many conflicting interests and embedded issues. The people who are successful at big city leadership tend to be part Gandhi and part Hitler. However…

He has done his homework.

Is DeRay Mckesson for real?

When DeRay Mckesson, a 30-year-old Black Lives Matter activist, filed at the last moment for Baltimore mayor, the city’s political establishment was well justified in asking, is this guy for real? Is he going to run a legitimate campaign, or is he going to tweet a bunch and lap up the love in the national media?

Tweet a bunch, he has done, though one gets the impression that’s like saying he’s breathed a bunch in the last couple of weeks. Love in the national media? Check. Starting with a story in the New York Times and, an hour later, a beyond-fawning profile of his decision to run by a Washington Post reporter who had embedded with his proto-campaign, and then including accounts in The Atlantic, Slate, NPR, The Guardian etc., he’s been everywhere.

But he’s done something else, too, and that’s issue an extensive set of policy proposals on education, economic development, public safety, health, the environment, arts and more that at least rival — and in some cases easily surpass — those from so-called mainstream candidates in their depth and scope. They are ambitious and leave gaps in some key points, particularly in terms of how the city is going to pay for them or get lawmakers in Annapolis and Washington to support them where necessary, though Mr. Mckesson is hardly the only candidate to be guilty of that sin. But what’s surprising about the platform, given how recently Mr. Mckesson has arrived on the scene, is the depth of knowledge it displays about how things have been done in this city and how they could be done differently. His ideas aren’t always the right ones or necessarily better than those proffered by other candidates, but they’re no joke either.

Though Mr. Mckesson is running as an outsider, his proposals are in certain respects less radical than what other candidates are proposing. City Councilman Carl Stokes, for example, wants to require that all developments awarded incentives like a payment in lieu of taxes or tax increment financing include a community benefits agreement. Mr. Mckesson, by contrast, wants to encourage such agreements, not require them, while “rigorously” evaluating TIFs and PILOTs to ensure they are necessary and that their costs and benefits are clearly spelled out. He notes the limitations presented by the city-state co-appointment of city school board members, but unlike businessman David Warnock, he doesn’t call a hybrid elected/appointed board, nor full mayoral control of the schools, asstate Sen. Catherine Pugh suggests. Mr. Mckesson wants a $15 minimum wage — but on the state level, not just in the city.

As might be expected based on his activism since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Mr. Mckesson goes farther than other candidates in some of his ideas for police accountability. For example, he advocates eliminating the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights altogether — a goal that is unnecessary and probably counter-productive, in that it could foreclose the possibility of meaningful reforms. But in other respects, he doesn’t. Like several other candidates, Mr. Mckesson advocates for beefing up Baltimore’s Civilian Police Review Board, but he does not go so far as Councilman Nick Mosby to propose making seats on it elected positions. Mr. Mckesson wants to decriminalize certain nuisance crimes like spitting and open-container violations, and to shift the war on drugs to one centered on public health principles rather than criminal justice. But he doesn’t suggest ending arrests for simple possession of marijuana, as attorney Elizabeth Embry does.

Mr. Mckesson’s plans reveal a grasp of the minutiae of city government. His ideas for using city contracting to generate more jobs for city residents rest on detailed knowledge of how City Council PresidentBernard C. “Jack” Young‘s local hiring ordinance works. He is clearly versed on the latest problems that have cropped up for Baltimore — for example, the unexpected impact of tax incentives for development on state school funding formulas — and on innovative strategies from other cities, such as an effort in San Francisco to seed college savings accounts for children….Read The Rest Here…