In What Way Was It Different???

 

What "Blue Lives Matter "Has Really Meant

 

Not Gonna Stress Them Out!

 I STAND WITH THESE BLACK WOMEN IN THE OLYMPICS!

The Hard Way

 George P. Bush, Grandson and  Nephew of two former Presidents ( George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush) and son of the former Florida Governor, Jeb Bush had to learn about the disgraced former President, Donald J. Trump the hard way...

In the end, George P. Bush was left with nothing..Not a damn thing!

George P. , a candidate for Texas attorney general — worked hard to get Donald Trump's endorsement for his race against the incumbent, Ken Paxton. He did so even though his family, which also includes former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and his father,Jeb Bush  famously disdains Trump and his influence on the party they once dominated. He did so even though Trump had insulted his own mother on Twitter in 2015.

 And he did so by selling merch amplifying the fact that Trump had pitted him against his family. All in all, it was a nakedly amoral performance: If you'll sell out your loved ones in pursuit of power, why on earth would voters trust your integrity in office?

Makes me shake my head...Whatever his plan, 

It didn't work. On Monday night, Trump endorsed Ken Paxton. "Ken has my Complete and Total Endorsement for another term as Attorney General of Texas," the former president said in a statement. "He is a true Texan who will keep Texas safe — and will never let you down!" 

 What happened to young Bush is a microcosm of the Republican Party's failures during the Trump era. GOP leaders prostrated themselves before a cruel and coarse man in hopes of gaining power, only to emerge with their dignity and power diminished. 

The more the party has bound itself to Trump's grievances and lies over the years, the more it has lost the confidence of voters — surrendering the House of Representatives in 2018, then the Senate and the White House in 2020. 

George P. Bush isn't even the only Republican to surrender their family loyalty to the former president: Trump insulted the wife of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and accused his father of participating in JFK's assassination, but Cruz remains doggedly loyal. It's both ominous and pathetic. Yet Republicans continue to follow Trump's lead. 

What — besides feeding his ego — have they accomplished? "I can tell you the president enjoys the prospect of knowing how much it kills Jeb that his son has to bend the knee and kiss the ring," a source told Politico in May. "Who's your daddy? Trump loves that." George P. Bush learned the hard way you lose more than you gain by throwing yourself at Trump's feet. I'm still waiting for the Republican Party to do the same.

My Favorite Barack Obama Moment.

 There were many moments that I enjoyed our first Black president..Barack Obama, but my favorite Obama moment had to be the night he eviserated Former President Trump, then , Reality star Trump, before anybody thought he had a chance of being the next President.

Let's go back a few weeks ago.. legendary quarterback Tom Brady celebrated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' 2021 Super Bowl victory with President Joe Biden, Brady cracked some jokes at the expense of a guy widely perceived his friend — at least until now. Along with ridiculing one of Donald Trump's disparaging nicknames for Biden, Brady also mocked Trump's claims that he didn't really lose the 2020 election by quipping, "Not a lot of people think that we could have won. In fact, I think about 40% of the people still don't think we won."

 It's not likely that Donald Trump enjoyed being mocked as a sore loser by one of America's most famous sports winners. Tom Brady, who had not visited the White House to celebrate a Super Bowl victory since 2005, may have very well put the final nail in his controversial relationship with Trump. He also reminded us of one of the most underrated speeches in American political history — the one delivered 10 years ago by Barack Obama at Trump's expense. 

 There were many moments in Barack Obama's historic presidency that could be described as his "finest hour," but my personal favorite has always been Obama's roasting of Trump during the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner. Not just because Obama was funny (although he really was), but because he wound up foreshadowing Donald Trump's ensuing presidency with uncanny accuracy. 

The history surrounding that speech also imbues it with deeper meaning. And since President Obama got in his digs at Trump while retaining his dignity and basic courtesy, his words come across not so much as insults but wry meditations about the sensibilities that could catapult the unlikeliest of all presidents into the White House. 

 Before President Obama's speech, Donald Trump had been working the media to promote the debunked conspiracy theory that America's first black president had not actually been born in the United States. Back Then a mere reality TV star, Trump was testing the waters for a possible 2012 presidential campaign and thought "birtherism" might be a winning issue. Not only did it none-too-subtly play on racist fears of a Black president, it also sent the message that President Obama was somehow disloyal to American interests. (ie White American interests) 

This was the backdrop to April 30, 2011, when President Obama and Donald  Trump wound up in the same room for a night of unflinching comedy. The other was that as President Obama skewered Mr. Trump in front of the world, he was also secretly working on the raid that would achieve what Republicans President George W. Bush had not — killing al-Qaida leader and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. 

Of course President  Obama couldn't say that to the audience, of course, but he did throw his American bona fides in Donald Trump's face. He opened the evening by displaying a copy of his birth certificate against a montage of hyper-America iconography, all as the Hulk Hogan theme song "Real American" played in the background. After that, he showed the opening scene from "The Lion King" while joking that it was his own birth video. (The most prominent conspiracy theory held that Obama had been born in Kenya, as his father unquestionably had been.) All of this took on the birther issue directly, deflating what Donald Trump hoped might be his signature talking point for the 2012 election cycle.

But Obama didn't stop there. He moved on to ribbing other public figures at the event, but eventually returned to Trump with an even sharper wit. Pivoting with a joke about how Trump could work to discredit Mitt Romney, then the future 2012 Republican presidential nominee (and later, coincidentally, Trump's most high profile Republican critic), Obama landed a devastating blow by mocking the six-times-bankrupt businessman for embracing ludicrous conspiracy theories: 

 "Now, I know that he's taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac? "

I died laughing...

 This section of the speech is the most prescient because it anticipated Donald Trump's greatest shortcoming as president. Despite his numerous scandals and policy failures, Trump was reasonably well positioned to be re-elected in 2020 because he had inherited Obama's booming economy. His downfall, from a strategic standpoint, was in failing to listen to scientists about the COVID-19 pandemic and embracing pseudoscience instead. If he had heeded early warnings and embraced bold policies to help Americans get through this traumatic period, he could have saved many thousands of lives, done less damage to the economy intact and quite likely cruised to a second term. Instead he played down the pandemic, ignored basic science and even got sick himself. Americans suffered far more than they had to, turning his policy failure into an inevitable political one. And all that could have been avoided had he not been exactly the type of person Obama described in 2011 — a fool. 

 President Obama's lampooning of Donald Trump continued: 

 "But all jokes aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example — no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of "Celebrity Apprentice" — at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil' Jon or Meat Loaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well handled."   

SHOTS FIRED!

There's a lot to unpack in those sentences. It is easy enough to see that in  President Obama's sarcastic praise for Donald Trump's "credentials and breadth of experience," He was referring to the fact that Donald Trump had no political or military experience. (He became the only president elected without at least one of the two.) 

Historical context, however, reminds us that President Obama was himself accused of being too inexperienced to serve as president when he ran in 2008, even though he had served as an Illinois state senator and then a U.S. senator for nearly a dozen years. 

It seems almost certain that this double standard — which would become only more conspicuous after Donald Trump was elected in 2016 — wasn't on Obama's mind. Then there is President Obama's quip about Donald Trump's main job at the time, hosting the reality show "The Celebrity Apprentice." Once again, there was obvious commentary on Donald Trump being held to a different standard than President Obama, who was dismissively compared to a celebrity throughout his political career even though Donald Trump literally was a celebrity, with no visible professional or political qualifications.

 There is also deeper meaning in the way President Obama singled out Trump's fetish for firing people. The man had built his brand around the TV catch phrase, "You're fired!" As president, Trump got in trouble for the circumstances around his firing of FBI Director James Comey and his willingness to turn on or terminate even the most loyal aides if they wouldn't break the law for him (Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Vice President Mike Pence and Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr come to mind).

 After his fear of losing to Joe Biden turned to reality, Donald Trump became the first president to lose an election and refuse to accept the result, assaulting George Washington's legacy in the process. Indeed, he had telegraphed his willingness to be a historic sore loser before that election, making clear that he would never accept being fired by the American people. No other president has reacted as badly to electoral disappointment, with the possible exception of James Buchanan, who allowed the Civil War to break out after the 1860 election didn't go his way — but he wasn't even on the ballot that year. President Obama wrapped up that section of his speech with the one lame joke in his repertoire against Trump (a visual gag about Trump's tacky architectural aesthetic that simply didn't land). He moved on, but the world of comedy fondly remembers his performance.

"Every time a politician cracks a few easy jokes they didn't even write, headline writers will rush to call them a 'comedian' which diminishes what we do," comedian Steve Hofstetter told Salon via Twitter. "That's like calling someone the president because they voted once. But Obama had something I've never seen from another president: He had timing. When most politicians deliver a joke, they seem surprised when it gets a laugh. But Obama was familiar with the material and he knew how to deliver it. While I'm sure he had writers, he executed as if he'd written the jokes himself." 

 It was a speech reporters would later claim left  Donald Trump fuming — but that seems to be a legend invented after the fact. If you watch the actual video of the event, you see that Donald Trump went along with President Obama's jokes cheerfully enough, even waving at the crowd. Whether or not he was just putting on a polite show, he didn't act like a man whose ego had been severely stung. His reactions are, dare I say, even a little humanizing: He appears for all the world like he's having a good time, smiling and enjoying himself like he did during a Comedy Central roast a few weeks earlier. Indeed, he later directed his anger not at Obama but at comedian Seth Meyers (whose barbs were much more pointed). Trump said he'd had a "great time" listening to Obama, was "honored" to be singled out by him and thought he had delivered his jokes well. Meyers, by contrast, he described as "too nasty, out of order." This matters because it showed that if Obama drew blood, the target didn't realize he had been pricked. Obama had deftly struck a balance, drawing attention to the ways Trump is ridiculous while also remaining respectful. It wasn't until after the dust had settled that Trump began to feel aggrieved, eventually refusing as president to attend the annual correspondents' dinners.

President Obama certainly made other negative remarks concerning Donald Trump, but his 2011 monologue stands out because it feels like a prologue to the history we've been living since 2016. 

In that sense, it can be placed next to the "Economic Bill of Rights" section of Franklin Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union address or Jimmy Carter's 1979 "Crisis of Confidence" address as a prophetic work of oratory. 

It's also the only historically significant presidential speech that was primarily meant to be funny (and largely was). Arguably, that's the one sense in which it was misguided. Ten years ago it was easy to laugh at Donald Trump. Now that his Big Lie about the 2020 election is fueling a fascist insurgency, it is a lot harder to find him funny at all!

How It Started

 "THOSE WHO DON'T LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT !!!!

Get Vaxxed!

 

It's Killing People

 

Not Critical Race Theory, But History

 

Either your grandparents were sitting at the counter, having milkshakes poured on them and cigarettes flicked at them for trying to intergrate a segregated restaurant or they are the ignorant members of this crowd that's pouring the milkshakes on them and flicking the cigarettes at them.... This is NOT Critical Race Theory, This is Black History aka as American History... (In 1961 it was News...)

They Called FDR A Socialist Too!

 

Herd Immunity

 

A Critical Race Theory Lesson

 

Texas Democrats Are Fighting For Democracy (Why Won't Washington Democrats do the same?)

 My first time in Texas was when I served in the U.S. Air Force....When you get to Texas they say "Everything is bigger in Texas." Yes Everything’s bigger in Texas, including Democrats’ political courage. Yesterday Morning, Texas Democrats stopped playing by the GOP’s rules in a state Republicans control and threw a wrench into Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to ram through a slew of voter suppression laws. How did Democrats manage to actually stall the Republican war on voting? They stopped compromising and started fighting. Republican style.

Fifty-eight Democratic members of the state’s House packed their bags and fled the state on Monday afternoon, just enough to paralyze legislative business in Austin. House rules required two-thirds of the chamber’s 150 members to be president for business to be conducted, which means none of the nightmares in the Texas GOP’s bag of tricks can find their way to Abbott’s eager pen. The Democrats will likely need to remain on the lam for weeks in order to wait out the legislative clock.

But House rules also say that if there’s not a quorum, a majority vote to “secure and maintain” one would mean that “All absentees for whom no sufficient excuse is made may, by order of a majority of those present, be sent for and arrested, wherever they may be found, by the sergeant-at-arms or an officer appointed by the sergeant-at-arms for that purpose, and their attendance shall be secured and retained.” I guess that's the code of the West or something of that order.

So these free-range Texas House Dems may be fugitives soon, but their bold act in defense of voting rights has activists asking when U.S. Senate Democrats, who control that chamber, will pack up the bipartisanship and start acting with the same boldness?

 The national party can and should learn a valuable lesson from their colleagues in Texas. It’s fitting that many of the Texas Democrats flew to Washington, D.C., where they plan to pass their time away rallying their federal colleagues around the importance of passing comprehensive voting rights legislation.

 Senate Democrats desperately need an injection of fighting spirit after all but abandoning the For the People Act, once their signature piece of voting rights legislation as Republicans are furiously pushing state laws intended to roll back voting. 

 “Texas Democrats are putting on a master class for Washington on what it looks like to defend our democracy,” Texan and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro told The Daily Beast on Monday. “Congressional Democrats would be wise to follow their lead by using every tool in the toolbox to protect voting rights, including addressing the filibuster.” Castro isn’t alone in hoping a stalled-out Democratic Washington might borrow some urgency from the Lone Star State.

 “Ending the filibuster would be a great way to celebrate Texas Dems for courageously protesting voter suppression,” a frustrated Robert Reich tweeted. “Preserving our democracy is what we elected you to do.” They’ve failed to do that in Washington, and party morale has never been lower. 

Earlier this month, Senate Republicans successfully filibustered Democratic efforts to bring the For the People Act to the floor. When asked about the future of voting rights on The Mehdi Hasan Show over the weekend, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki could only find the energy to say she’s “not gonna accept that it died,” all but confirming For the People is, in fact, dead. 

 The lack of urgency on display in the Senate is infuriating to activists and voters who have watched Democrats squander the better part of a year offering compromises to a GOP that has repeatedly made clear its categorical unwillingness to work with Democrats on anything. 

 In Texas, Democrats trapped in the minority are thinking outside the box to prevent Republicans from gutting voting rights. In Washington, Mitch McConnell’s Republicans are in the minority but still seem to have near-total control of the legislative agenda. What gives? One factor at play is how close state lawmakers are to the real effects of voter suppression. Whether in Texas, Georgia, Arizona, or any of the states where Republicans introduced over 380 voter suppression bills this year, state lawmakers are hearing from angered and terrified voters desperate to protect their right to representative government. Working in Congress can have an insulating effect on lawmakers, blinding them to the threats unfolding in their communities. There is no better example of dangerous blindness than Arizona’s Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Earlier this month, Business Insider uncovered a 2010 video in which Sinema, then an Arizona state representative, savaged the very idea of the filibuster as a “false pressure to get to 60” votes, and advocated using reconciliation to work around Republican opposition. 

Ten years later, Sinema’s position at the extreme end of filibuster protectionism is utterly unrecognizable from the progressive she once was. Another issue is Senate Democrats’ fixation on institutionalism at the expense of functioning government. 

Here’s a Washington insider secret: When a Democratic lawmaker says they believe in “protecting the institution” of the Senate—as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin often does—what they’re really saying is, “I’m afraid Republicans will say I’m not being bipartisan.” And believe me, nothing frightens Democrats more than the threat of being labeled uncooperative. That fear is how Minority Leader McConnell and his Senate Republicans have held on to what is essentially a veto on any business Senate Democrats want to bring forward. Mitch and his crew were never worried about ideas like “institutionalism” or “norms” when they pulled historic stunts like jamming through the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the dying days of the Trump administration. 

 The lawmakers who fled Austin in protest captured the imagination of rank-and-file Democrats because they seem to understand better than Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that the modern GOP is not an entity that can be compromised with. The modern Trumpist GOP is a party that only understands the language of domination and coercion, as Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks reminded us at this week’s CPAC carnival of crazy. Trump’s GOP is not a compromise machine; it’s a sledgehammer. What the Texas Democrats did was certainly not “institutionalist” by any definition. Their disrespect for “the process” likely makes Manchin and other rules-fetishists gag. 

But fighting an irregular adversary can often be messy business. Texas Democrats chose a wild but powerful play to try and prevent a GOP-driven calamity for voting rights across their state. It’s a strategy that could work, provided the Texas Democrats stick to their guns and ignore the name-calling sure to flow from the right-wing media swamp. Senate Democrats should take the fight to protect voting rights as seriously as their Lone Star counterparts, even if that means abandoning their obsession with bipartisanship and advancing some form of voting-rights protections alone. Fleeing their own legislative session may be a desperate measure, but it will take no less to thwart a Republican Party determined to take apart our democracy to maintain its own hold on power. 

Right on and Fight on Texas Democrats...Hopefully your counterparts in the U.S. Senate can learn from this.

Disclaimer

 

Odds Are (You've Been Gas lighted)

 

See How This Works?

 

First Amendment Platforms

 

Antifa

 

Dying In Broad Daylight