This is a running commentary on contemporary social, political and religious issues. From the Introduction of James Comey's book "A Higher Loyalty -- Truth, Lies and Leadership" "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary" Reinhold Niebuhr
For story click on the link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-chief-staff-john-kelly-defends-confederate-monuments-n815886
MY COMMENT: I'm sure Europe would look kindly on statues in Germany of Hitler and Goebbels because it's, well, history.
Yes, General Kelly, I am SURE if you were born black you would have thought compromising your status as a slave to work for free from dawn until night in 98 degree heat of the south would be the way to go. I am sure you, General Kelly, would be fine to keep slavery in certain states as a "COMPROMISE!" I'm also sure, General Kelly, you have ZERO empathy and I can only WISH you were born a person of color. But alas it cannot be so.
I have a great idea to build empathy: Why don't you, General Kelly, get up at dawn, work until dusk in 98 degree heat with no shoes and rags for clothes no matter if you feel well or not and pick cotton like sticking your fingers on rose bush thorns and worse worry about the congeniality of your white masters that they don't take a whip to your broken body because you looked to the left and not the right. Then tell me you think compromise with that would have been a DANDY thing.
Excuse me, General Kelly, for not showing the proper respect for a general but you, sir, are a horse's ass!
Trump
said during his campaign that we will experience winning. In fact, he
said that there will be so much winning people will not want to "win"
anymore. This was, of course, one of the more ridiculous lies among many
he would continuously tell and those who make up his adoring base cheer
the lies because few can discern them and most do not want to know the
truth.
The truth is Trump tax reform is not winning but it is
winning for Trump himself and the top 2% wealthiest of the nation. The
enormous "win" according to Trump means that the top 2% will get a
significant tax cut .... bully for them ... but the rest of us in this
game of thrones will pay for it. We lose because he will be raising our
tax rates to pay for the ones he lowers for the top 2% wealthiest. For someone to win at the game of taxes someone else must lose and
that would be, under Trump, us. He is leaving the Republicans in
Congress to sort out the details because, in truth, our president
although according to him has the greatest smartest Ivy League brain
ever knows nothing about nearly everything. Through various schemes and
loopholes like an elimination of the Estate Tax for those making $10
million or more the Trump tax cut for the rich will be a win for the
richest among us but everyone else will lose -- to quote a Trumpism --
"bigly!"
Winning
for Trump and his zero ethics administration is lowering the tax rate
for them but raising it for everyone else. He will lower it by, well,
simply lowering it but also, in part, by taking away certain state
deductions on which the middle class of many states have come to rely.
They will not be happy. Beyond that decreasing Medicare for the elderly
and surely taking a hatchet to Medicaid for the white and black poor
will be in the Republican cross hairs with Republican eyes, in the long
run, ultimately eliminating them. Prescient gerrymandering by
Republicans over decades while Democrats slept have carved out voting
districts to allow them to win as well as allowing Republican state
majorities all over the nation to suppress votes for persons of color
about whom Republicans do not give a whit. It is the political slimy
swamp Trump said he would eradicate but instead he and his cronies
became the swamp and made it swampier.
Republicans
have set their erasures on ultimately removing Medicare, vital for
saving lives of the elderly, and Medicaid too, for saving the lives of
the poor, who in the Republican heart of stone are expendable. The prime
plum for Republicans would, of course, be the erasure of Social
Security into which most of us throughout our working lives have paid.
Thanks a lot. I rather enjoy breathing, need Medicare and double need
Social Security. Trump also talks about lowering contributions to
401K's from a high of $20,000 to a low of $2500. With Medicare rates
lowered, Medicaid for the poor erased, and tax cuts for the richest 2%,
tax increases to the middle class and the poor those who make America
run will be relegated to a journey to the bottom of the earth a metaphor
for death. Worse it will increase the debt trillions Republicans claim
to care about so much but in fact will fall on the shoulders of their
posterity to pay.
If
these Republican excuses for humanity with no empathy erase Social
Security which is their ultimate goal then a life of poverty awaits but
this misfit Trump and his Republican deplorables will get their tax
cuts. That would be a so called "WIN" for this president of
Vesuvian ignorance but a loss for the middle, working classes, the poor
and immigrants who make this country run, who cut the grass of the 2%,
iron the clothes of the 2%, take care of the children of the 2%, clean
the homes of the 2%, cook the meals of the fat cat 2%. If Republicans
and Trump get their way it will be a gargantuan loss for the middle
class sightless who put them in office. Death is the true beneficiary.
A Trump tax cut win for himself and the richest 2% will NOT bring back jobs.More
jobs will still be outsourced to foreign workers who will take payments
of $1.35 an hour from those who own them. Trickle down is the same
trickle up of this tired story that screws the middle class but is
Nirvana for the rich. Trump's so called base is duped by Trump and his
cronies. A tax cut for the 2% richest will be a "win" for the top 2% but
the national debt, Republicans claim to care about so much, will be in
the stratosphere for future generations to pay or worse endure an
economic collapse. A win according to Trump and Republicans will be
another loss for the middle class and the poor creating trillions in
debt and ultimately the loss of jobs. With the eventual budget scoring
of this tax cut you will NOT talk about "winning." You WILL be talking
about losing. If Trump gets what he wants it will be a huge loss for the nation to quote a know nothing president "BELIEVE ME!
I
am flummoxed by the story above but I do not know why I am. How
long has humanity been around? Quoting The Universe Today: "While our ancestors have been around for about six million years, the
modern form of humans only evolved about 200,000 years ago." Men worldwide for thousands of years
have had physical and spousal power over women. The physical strength of women is hampered by
their biological and physiological construct. Thousands of years of
evolutionary construction of the sex that bears the toll of
obstetrically having children has seen to it, however, to make woman internally
stronger then men. We know women usually live longer but evolution has
given men stronger muscular strength, narrower hips and wider
more muscular chests with much stronger arms. Maybe this was done to
hunt or build things for survival but in our time now men can use
their advantage of physical strength to hunt and even hurt women.
Still,
in a
contemporary sense, I cannot, for the life of me, understand how men
can force
themselves on a woman who does not want them, rejects them and says no.
If someone says no to their ovations men should run embarrassed head
lowered for
the nearest exit. Now that sexual harassment may cost men of power
barrels of
money, loss of position and ruination of their lives not to mention
their marriages perhaps now, finally, in this nation men (often old and
unattractive to young women but young men's onslaughts as well too) will
require reciprocal desire from the person they approach before they
think about violating them simply to
please themselves.
Every time I watch the news and another man like
Cosby, O'Reilly, the living Roger Ailes, Weinstein, now Halperin, our
obnoxious sexual predator Trump accused of sexual misconduct and
O'Reilly blaming --
not kidding -- God I feel like I need to either throw up or take a
shower and wash my brain of each cerebral synapse that thinks about the
sex acts that
occurred between these women and the obnoxious men who assault them.
Republican
Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona is refusing to seek re-election,
Republican Senator Bob Corker is leaving the Senate, Senator John McCain's lethal diagnosis of brain cancer, means now that I
am afraid yet again. I am afraid there is nowhere for the moderate Republicans to go so
the Party will morph into the Trump fascist-like Party of hate.
It
would seem the middle class who support these Trumpian misfits will be
stepping on their own toes if they ultimately vote Trump because the
Party of Trump is not about them. Trump did not drain the swamp. Trump
is the swamp. His entire cabinet is filled with billionaires
and contains an ex-Goldman Sachs hierarchy. A Trump tax cut is for
Trump and the 2% wealthiest. There is, however, a Trump appeal, sadly
and incredulously, to the white working class even including white
working class women.
The
question for me becomes how can we stop this Nazi-like progression of
heil Trump with their Tiki torch carrying Nazi-like extremists within
the Republican base who are some of the most violent in our nation.
I
know those who share my political views and I believe even most true
conservative Republicans are loathe to the crudity and violence of
Trumpian politics. In the face of moderate Republican abdication from
the Senate what are the progressives and humane of this nation, who I
believe are the majority of this country, to do with the entrails of
the meanest, cruelest, most mendacious, Fascist-like remnants of the
Republican Party who have captured the halls of power with a madness
sidecar of Trumpian crude to grease the lift off?
It is obvious to say that Democrats
MUST win elections over Republican extremists that have filled the base of the Republican Party. Democrats must stop bickering
and UNITE our Party under a new banner filled with candidates of youth
as well as counting on older Democrats to fill the historical wisdom of
its chalice. We must show why we are truly in the majority and why in
2008 Obama, in truth, really did, according to the Washington Post of
that time, "fill
the Washington Mall with portions of the Mall standing room only, and
latecomers directed to an overflow area." This was the America for
which, over a lifetime, I had hoped.
Paraphrasing Republican conservative candidate for the presidency in 1964, Barry Goldwater: "... let me remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." That
phrase makes sense now for the progressives of our time. We must face
Fascist-like right wing totalitarian religious extremism, gay bashing,
health care destroying, Medicare and Medicaid obliterating, climate
destroying, Nazi-like Tiki Torch wielding white supremacist extremists
by countering them with strong, unyielding, unapologetic, humane,
progressive economic fairness and with justice for all minorities. We
must carry that mantra proudly and never give up.
Is
Republican Jeff Flake's leaving the political arena simply a fluke or
does it represent the future of a rabid and sick Republican Party
destroying the essence of Madisonian democracy? We will find out but
this much I know is true: we must fight injustice like we are fighting
for our lives because, in the final analysis, we are.
My Comment:
Even
worse than climate change costing billions is the fact that
firefighters fighting massive fires in the west caused by climate change
droughts are coming down with
vicious cancers -- brain, kidney, blood and many more. It is horrific
and we are stuck with this immoral sick science denying excuse for a
human being in the oval
office calling climate change a hoax and pulling out of the Paris
climate agreement. More than 190 countries entered into the Paris
agreement with only 1 (Syria) not signing and 1 (the United States) --
signed by President Obama but pulled out by the murderous Trump.
Nicaragua just signed it. If I were a "Last Days"
Armageddon Evangelical fanatic I could see where End Times Revelations
would appeal.
In the end it does not matter, though, as nature does not care what man thinks. It will do what it will do. In evolutionary fashion if human beings do nothing on climate change
those who ignore it will die out and hopefully will NOT take those of us who are science
oriented with them.
NB:
(Latin for nota bene or note well): 98% of scientists
involved in climate change research see the link between the smothering
of the earth with filthy fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal as some
of the major causes of climate change.
This is not in dispute but is only in dispute with 2% of oil and gas
scientists and
those in the Trump administration like Scott Pruitt, Trump's cabinet
secretary head of the EPA he loathes, who do the bidding of the fossil
fuel industries because the fuel industries fill their pockets with cash
and spend billions in efforts to dispute its causal connection to
climate change. The
congressmen and women who dispute this science like those before them
beholden to the tobacco industry who said the causal relationship of
cigarettes to human health and cancer was inconclusive until they could
not deny it anymore while hundreds of thousands died from their
poisonous products. Today the Congressmen and women who dispute fossil
fuel's direct causation of climate change and its deleterious effects
enjoy their pockets bulging with fossil fuel money. Sad!
WASHINGTON — Climate change is costing
taxpayers billions of dollars in disaster relief and the tab will only
increase as extreme weather events become more common, according to a
new government study.
The federal government has spent an estimated
$350 billion over the past decade responding to extreme weather and fire
events, which are exacerbated by climate change, according to the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. It comes as Congress
moves to approve billions of dollars in extra funding for hurricane
relief.
"Climate change impacts are already costing
the federal government money, and these costs will likely increase over
time as the climate continues to change," the report found.
Why Many Major Hurricanes in 2017?
It is impossible to put a precise price tag on
climate change, the report noted, but said research shows "the impacts
and costs of extreme events — such as floods, drought and other events —
will increase in significance as what are considered rare events become
more common and intense because of climate change."
A bipartisan pair of senators, Susan Collins,
R-Maine, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., requested the report from the GAO,
an arm of Congress that helps provide research and oversight of the
executive branch.
This year's unusually destructive hurricane
season has already been a drain on Federal Emergency Management Agency
coffers, and California’s historically deadly fires are likely to cost
the government even more.
The Senate on Tuesday is expected to approve
an additional $36.5 billion in disaster relief, which has already passed
the House. That’s on top of the $15 billion in supplemental disaster
funds Congress approved last month, suggesting this year's tab will be unusually high.
In addition to the $205 billion spent directly
on disaster relief over the past decade, the government has spent $90
billion for crop and flood insurance, $34 billion for wildland fire
management and $28 billion for repairs to federal facilities, according
to the report.
Kids
bike in an area without grid power or running water about two weeks
after Hurricane Maria swept through the island on October 5, 2017 in San
Isidro, Puerto Rico. Mario Tama / Getty Images
The report says the government should take
more preparations to deal with climate-related weather events, noting
that previous GAO studies had found "the federal government had no
comprehensive, strategic approach" to disaster resilience, nor did it
have "strategic government-wide priorities related to climate change."
The government has taken some steps to address climate risks, the report notes, but President Donald Trump signed an executive order
in March to rescind some of the planning efforts, a move that "created
uncertainty about whether other planning efforts would continue or take
their place."
The report acknowledges that its conclusions
are imprecise and incomplete, since it requires linking complicated
climate and economic models, but the GAO is known for being conservative
in its estimates, especially on controversial issues.
A blogger friend of mine who has a gift for poetry and profundity, Thomas Sutherland, said "Success is not an outer but an inner state of being. To find your strengths and still embrace your weaknesses, to know you are whole and worthy no matter your circumstances. Be love. Be joy." ts My Comment: I agree. If only we could do that easily in the conspicuous consumptive nation that we are. It is hard to not personally measure your own worth by all those unimportant yardsticks that our culture uses to judge your value because in the end it will not matter. When and if one can reject that I think the truth of existence will be attained and it is not I believe by how much money you have, how gorgeous you are, if you have an Ivy League degree and Wall Street connections or if you married the "right" person.
In the end none of that to me should matter. What matters to me is if through whatever medium I can use I am an advocate for the poor, the elderly, the handicapped, the dispossessed, the lonely and for those who have not attained what society says they should have to judge one's worth. I want to do so in a way that is possible for me.
The earth, we persons of truth through the evidence of science know, is 4.5 billion years old. Think on that and see the vastness of life and as the Hubble telescope has seen how infinite the universe is as well. We are but an ink spot in tapestry of time. Our sun will die out as all suns do. The only things left for me in the cosmos will be the atoms of kindness I sow here on the gorgeous planet earth for those who feel left out.
GAINESVILLE,
Fla. ― About five hours before his companion allegedly fired a bullet
toward several protesters, and a day before police charged him with
attempted homicide, Colton Fears, in an interview with HuffPost, laid
out the grievances that had brought him to town. “Basically, I’m just
fed up with the fact that I’m cis-gendered, I’m a white male, and I lean
right, towards the Republican side,” said Fears, 28, wearing a pin of
the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf of the Waffen-SS. “And I get
demonized if I don’t accept certain things.”
According
to the Anti-Defamation League, Colton Fears is the “least active” of
the three Texas men charged in Thursday’s shooting, which happened after
Richard Spencer’s speech at the University of Florida. Fears’ brother,
William, 30, and Tyler Tenbrink, 28, were also charged. It was Tenbrink
who allegedly jumped out of a silver Jeep after an argument with
protesters and produced a handgun. “I’m going to fucking kill you,”
Tenbrink reportedly yelled at the protesters, while the Fears brothers
encouraged him to shoot.
Tenbrink
popped off a single round that missed his targets and hit a building
behind them, then got back in the Jeep and fled. One of the victims
reported the Jeep’s vehicle tag number to police. Officers from three
different law enforcement units caught up with the trio later that
evening on Interstate 75 and took them into custody.
Even
before their arrest, the trio were known quantities ― Tenbrink and
William Fears in particular. They are fairly representative specimens of
the sort of flotsam that drifts through the the so-called “alt-right”
and, increasingly, trails in the wake of any white nationalist
chieftain, even one as snooty as Spencer. They are, in short, surly
groupies for whiteness. Here’s what we know about them.
Tyler Tenbrink
Tenbrink, the man who fired the gun, is a white supremacist from Richmond, Texas. He told
the Washington Post that he came to Spencer’s Gainesville speech
because he received threats from the “radical left” after he was spotted
at the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. But Tenbrink
had been active in the white nationalist scene long before the August
gathering.
Chris McGonigal/HuffPost
Tyler Tenbrink is photographed during protests.
In June, Tenbrink participated in a white supremacist rally at the Texas State Capitol building in Austin, according to the ADL.
The ADL also identified Tenbrink at another Richard Spencer speech at
Texas A&M University last December, a white supremacist protest in
front of the Houston ADL offices last October, a private event organized
by the neo-Nazi Aryan Renaissance Society last September, and a white
supremacist protest in front of the Houston NAACP office last August.
Tenbrink
told the Post that all he cares about are the “14 words,” a reference
to the popular white supremacist slogan: “We must secure the existence
of our people and a future for white children.”
Tenbrink
pled guilty to a felony assault charge in Texas in 2014. That means he
now faces additional charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted
felon, the Gainesville Police Department wrote in a statement.
William Fears
William
Fears, from Pasadena, Texas, claims he didn’t even know about the
alt-right until Hillary Clinton condemned the movement in a campaign
speech last August, at which point his radicalization journey began. By
December, he was turning up at Spencer’s speaking events, including one
at Texas A&M where Fears described himself as ”mainly an Internet troll.”
But
Fears was more than a troll. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to aggravated
kidnapping after he abducted an 18-year-old female University of Texas
at Tyler student at knifepoint and “wounded her several times.”
He has also been convicted of criminal trespassing and possession of a
controlled substance. It was while he was incarcerated, he told the
Post, that he had become racially aware.
“I
don’t think any race experiences racism in the modern world the way
that white people do in a jail,” he said. “In jail, whites come last.”
In
May, Fears, who now works in construction, crashed a May Day rally with
other neo-Nazis and reportedly assaulted a man. In June, he antagonized
members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia movement, at a rally
in Houston until one of them put him in a chokehold.
In August, he showed up in Charlottesville to brawl in a helmet, gas
mask and goggles, waving a white nationalist flag and shouting, “Shoot! Fire the first shot of the race war!” In September, he and other neo-Nazis tried to provoke anarchists at a Houston book fair to violence.
“Nazi is like the N-word for white people,” says Fears. “And I just embrace it.”
Colton Fears
Before
coming to Spencer’s Gainesville speech, Colton Fears participated in
the Charlottesville rally and an April counter-protest of a Houston
Socialist Movement event as part of a group of white supremacists, which
included neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right, the ADL said.
After
the Charlottesville rally, Fears posted a 13-minute-long statement on
YouTube. He congratulated himself for attending the event, lamented the
mainstream media’s attack on Southern heritage, and complained bitterly
about being doxxed. He made no mention of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old
protester who was killed at the rally.
Chris McGonigal/HuffPost
Colton Fears was interviewed by HuffPost before the protests started.
In
his interview with HuffPost, Fears tried to distance himself a little
from the scene around him. He said of Richard Spencer, “I agree with
like 75 percent of his ― he’s not ― he’s kind of a scam artist, in my
opinion.” Asked if he identified as alt-right, he said: “I try and deny
identity politics. That’s why I’m not wearing a white polo and all that
stuff.” But he also served up a word salad of white grievance: “Like,
OK, for one thing, say, you know, gay marriage, that’s cool, whatever,
you know, except — that’s fine, I’m cool with it — well, then, what’s
after that? The next step? This whole transgender movement, right? Well,
if you don’t accept that, you’re a bigot, this and that. Well, that all
goes hand in hand with being a white person.”
Asked
about the pin he was wearing during the interview, Fears said “it’s
basically just like an SS thing.” Explaining the significance of the pin
would require an extensive conversation about World War II, he said.
“And it’s my heritage, I’m German.”
SUPPORT IF YOU CAN THE DEMOCRAT DOUG JONES FOR US SENATE FROM ALABAMA. DOUG JONES ACTUALLY HAS A VERY GOOD CHANCE OF WINNING!! Here is a web page: https://dougjonesforsenate.com/ Doug Jones, the Democrat, winning this would be a STUNNING defeat for the Republican ugly and cruel theist Roy Moore. Surely some donation for Doug Jones can be spared. If so I implore you to give. Either hit the link I provided or Google Doug Jones for Senate! I live in hope. Pass this on to anyone you choose.
Moore was given $1000 donation from a Nazi Group. The Foundation to Defend the First Amendment was founded by avowed white supremacist Willis Carto. By Paul Blumenthal
WASHINGTON ― In 2005, the foundation run by Judge Roy Moore, now the Republican nominee for a Senate seat in Alabama, accepted a $1,000 donation from a group founded by Willis Carto, a white supremacist, Nazi supporter and World War II vet who famously said he regretted fighting for the U.S instead of Germany.
The Foundation to Defend the First Amendment is one of several nonprofit groups Carto used to shuffle money around to his anti-Semitic and racist conspiracy publications, to fund Holocaust deniers, and, apparently, to donate to Moore’s nonprofit. The Carto-founded group touts its support for Moore and his Foundation for Moral Law on its web site. The contribution to Moore’s group stands out as one of just a handful it has made to organizations not explicitly involved in Holocaust denial.
The people who run the Foundation to Defend the First Amendment have an ideology that is, “Total Nazi; and notice I didn’t say neo-Nazi,” Todd Blodgett, the former head of the white supremacist record label Resistance Records — and later an FBI informant — told HuffPost.
The contribution to Moore’s nonprofit from Carto’s group was found after a HuffPost review of public tax documents. There is no evidence that the nonprofit returned the check.
Moore’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. His foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Scott Olson via Getty Images Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, is shown at a campaign stop before the primary election that he won.
Carto, who died in 2015, was one of the most notable leaders of the racist and anti-Semitic far right in the U.S. after World War II. Through his Liberty Lobby political advocacy group and its attendant publications ― including American Free Press and SPOTLIGHT magazine ― he spread racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to his readership.
Carto supported former Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s segregationist presidential campaign in 1968 before founding the Populist Party, which gave a political platform for noted racists like David Duke. In 2004, he signed the Duke-penned New Orleans Protocol, which advocated for the mainstreaming of white supremacist ideology. Carto’s publications included those where the white supremacy was watered-down in an effort to target paleo-conservative supporters of Pat Buchanan. Other publications explicitly promoted Nazism and fascism.
In addition to donating to Moore’s group, the Foundation to Defend the First Amendment provided tax-exempt donations to Carto publications including The Barnes Review, an explicitly white supremacist magazine that in 2004 ran an article stating that Adolf Hitler should have won the 1938 Nobel Peace Prize.
But most of the nonprofit’s donations went to support Holocaust deniers, in particular those who faced prosecution in Europe or Canada. In 2005, the same year the foundation donated to Moore’s nonprofit, it also gave $1,000 to Ingrid Rimland, a Holocaust denier married to Ernst Zundel, who himself had been imprisoned in Germany for promoting Holocaust denial. The foundation also gave $1,000 that year to Germar Rudolf, whom the U.S. extradited to Germany to face Holocaust denial charges in 2005. The Canadian Association for Free Expression, a white supremacist group headed by Paul Fromm, also received $1,000 from the foundation in 2005. Two other $1,000 donations in 2005 went to a 9/11 truther group called Reopen911.org and to Police & Military Against New World Order, a far-right wing conspiracy organization. The latter group, however, returned the $1,000 donation in 2006.
At the time the Foundation to Defend the First Amendment donated to support Moore’s nonprofit, the group was headed by a Carto protege named Jim Tucker Jr. Tucker, who died in 2013, was a writer for both SPOTLIGHT and American Free Press with a specialty in conspiracy theories related to the Bilderberg Group, an international collection of leaders in business and government. Other individuals who sat on the board of the nonprofit at that time included Christopher Bollyn, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who claims Israel was behind the attacks, and American Free Press author Pat Shannan, who believes both 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing were committed by the U.S. government with Israeli help.
“The basic goal of every editorial board meeting for Carto was to find out what’s upsetting people and find ways to blame it on Israel,” said Blodgett, who frequently sat in on editorial meetings at both SPOTLIGHT and The Barnes Review.
Moore, a controversial figure even within Alabama, has emerged as a favorite of the far-right wing in the U.S. and earned the endorsement of former White House chief strategist and Breitbart head Steve Bannon. A former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Moore was kicked off the court in 2003 for refusing a court order to remove a statue of the Ten Commandants that he placed at the state courthouse. After winning election to serve as chief justice again in 2013, Moore was suspended in 2016 for refusing to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling that legalized same-sex marriage across the nation.
Moore has called for the criminalization of homosexuality; said that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress; believes, without any evidence, that some parts of the U.S. live under Sharia Law; claimed, like President Donald Trump, that former President Barack Obama is not an American citizen; blamed the 9/11 attacks on gays and abortion; and lamented the divisions between “reds” and “yellows,” an apparent reference to Native Americans and Asian-Americans. Scott Olson via Getty Images Former adviser to President Donald Trump and executive chairman of Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, speaks at a campaign event for Roy Moore. Moore is “much closer to our ideal Alt-South candidate: Southern, Christian, populist and nationalist, slashing and willing to defy the federal government,” Shannan, the 9/11 truther who sat on the board of the Foundation to Defend the First Amendment when it donated to Moore’s nonprofit, wrote in an endorsement of Moore published last month. “The White vote in the South, which was splintered during the late 20th century, has reconsolidated like it was in the Jim Crow South.”
Shannan added that he declined to endorse Moore until after the primary, because “it would have been fodder for a media narrative that ‘white supremacists support Roy Moore’ and would have been an unnecessary distraction in the race.”
The receipt of a contribution from a bonafide pro-Nazi organization is far from the first controversy surrounding Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law. The nonprofit paid more than $1 million to Moore between 2007 and 2012, far more than the group reported on its tax disclosures, according to the Washington Post. Moore’s group also hosted two events at its offices by neo-Confederate, pro-secession groups, according to a CNN report.
The foundation’s largest known donor is Michael Peroutka, a Maryland county commissioner who used to sit on the board of the League of the South, a white Christian separatist group, according to Talking Points Memo. The League of the South was one of the organizers of the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended with the killing of a counter-protester.
When HuffPost called the Foundation to Defend the First Amendment, the phone was answered by an operator who stated the location as American Free Press. HuffPost’s call was then directed to Chris Petherick, the editor-in-chief of American Free Press and current head of Carto’s foundation.
When asked to explain the group’s 2005 donation to the Foundation for Moral Law, Petherick responded, “That’s Roy Moore.” Then he hung up.
My Comment: Trump's comment was DESPICABLE. My thoughts are
that Trump had NO idea or certainly did not think about the four
soldiers (green berets) who were killed in Niger until the pressure of
the press forced him to think about it and make those four calls to the
families of the soldiers killed in action.
Before the issue blew up in the press I believe this know nothing excuse
for a president did not even know WHERE Niger was on a map. What he said to the widow of one of them was
unthinkable. My link to a book yesterday says it all "The
Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" by Bandy Lee, M.D. M. Div Organizer of
the Yale "Duty to Warn" Conference. To encapsulate what these 27
eminent psychiatrists think: -- Trump is diagnosed by them a "malignant
narcissist" and has empathy for no one. Attention good or bad must be
placed in his mind only on him.
My diagnosis is he is sick! What he said to the soldier's pregnant widow was unthinkable. Adding
salt to Trump's serious self inflicted wound he said that President
Obama never called the family of a solider killed in action or so he's
been told. That is, of course, a lie and a massive one, something this
president finds it usual to tell.I hate to answer that
statement thereby giving it the attention it does not deserve. As so
many know President Obama called an infinite number of families of
soldiers KIA, wrote personal letters to families and greeted those flag
draped caskets of the fallen as they returned home to their final rest.
Shame on you, Donald Trump, you are our nation's curse!
The article below:
Trump Told the Army Widow Her Husband Knew ‘What He Signed Up For,’ Congresswoman Says
“I said this man has no feelings for
anyone. This is a young woman with child who is grieved to her soul,”
Rep. Frederica Wilson says.
A Florida congresswoman described President Donald Trump’s phone call to the widow of a soldier killed during an ambush in Niger as “insensitive” after the president reportedly said the man “must’ve known what he signed up for.”
Rep.
Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) was in the car with Myeshia Johnson, the
pregnant widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, when Trump called her
Tuesday and spoke for about five minutes, according to South Florida’s NBC affiliate.
“Sarcastically
he said: ‘But you know he must have known what he signed up for,’”
Wilson recounted to NBC6. “How could you say that to a grieving widow? I
couldn’t believe... and he said it more than once. I said this man has
no feelings for anyone. This is a young woman with child who is grieved
to her soul.”
Sgt. La David Johnson is a hero. @realDonaldTrump does not possess the character, empathy or grace to be president of the United States.
Wilson, speaking to CNN, said her community was angry about the comments and described Johnson as a local hero.
“We
don’t have many heroes in our young men in Miami-Dade County, but he
was a hero for us,” the congresswoman told host Don Lemon. When asked
what her immediate reaction was, she said: “I asked them to give me the
phone, because I wanted to speak with him. And I was going to curse him
out. That was my reaction... I was livid.”
The White House declined to comment on the account in statements given to The Washington Post and an ABC affiliate.
“The
president’s conversations with the families of American heroes who have
made the ultimate sacrifice are private,” an unnamed official said in
the statement.
Four Green Berets were killed in an ambush
in Niger earlier this month, and two others were wounded. Following a
question about why he hadn’t spoken about their deaths publicly or
called troops’ families, Trump said Monday that he had written personal
letters and that he planned to call later. He then used the opportunity
to falsely assert that his predecessors “didn’t make calls” themselves.
Former President Barack Obamafrequently called the families of soldiers killed in action and visited those wounded during his administration. President George W. Bush visited troops at the Walter Reed medical center 16 times before he left office.
White
House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed on Twitter late
Tuesday that Trump had called all four families of those killed, saying
he offered “condolences on behalf of the country.”
Trump returned to the subject Tuesday, using the death of Chief of Staff John Kelly’s son
in 2010 to illustrate Obama’s record on calling bereaved families,
saying his predecessor did not call in that instance. Obama invited
Kelly and his wife, Karen, to a breakfast in 2011 for Gold Star families
who have lost children in combat. They were seated at a table with
first lady Michelle Obama.
Wilson on Tuesday described Trump’s call as “insensitive” in an interview to a local ABC affiliate. She was with Myeshia Johnson and her two children, ages 2 and 6, as she watched the casket carrying her husband arrive at Miami International Airport.
“He should have not have said that,” Wilson told ABC 10, before repeating, “He shouldn’t have said it.”
I
am going to be 69 in a few days. I can say that admitting who I am was
the singular most difficult process in my life. I "figured" things out
decades ago and the trajectory of my life changed in an instant. It is
one (among many) reasons I so despise Trump and all right wing extremist
zealots who lack thought, kindness, empathy and understanding; who
refuse to offer, at minimum, help to those who so desperately need it.
It should be the mandate of government to provide it.
For
those in our generation who were homosexual suicide was then an option.
But it got better -- much better. Now for this instant in time we
secured many rights including everyone's basic right to marry whom they
love but those rights can be, in a nanosecond, taken away. Freedom from
religion not of religion should be etched in stone as our Founders knew
and it is why the separation of church/state clause is Constitutionally
mandated
.
Believe what you want but let others believe what they may; looking to
social change and not to a 5000 year old document written
in cement by those who knew nothing about a lot science has debunked and much less of human sexuality nor its variation.
I
never on planet earth thought it could get so much better for me. My
relationship of 32 years, I can unequivocally and proudly say, sets an
example and should be the envy of so many whose relationships and
marriages are/were so destructive. It was not I who had the problem it
was our culture and what it said we should be during those excruciating
Leave it to Beaver times.
Trump
and his minions are poison to those of us who are different and do not
conform -- no strike that -- CANNOT conform to what those Cretans say we
must. They want to turn back the clock to an age where we had zero
rights and suicide was the only option for so many of us who could not
live a lie. Trump's minions are ignorant and like Trump have no desire
to understand and to learn.
Howard
Zinn said to me long ago it matters not what those in power who oppose
us say. We must fight with the grass roots and never give in because
power emanates from the bottom up! If right wing extremism
wins
we
all lose in more ways than simply the right to marry. Those of us who
are not among the richest 2% will and some are now losing health care.
Worse, the possibility of nuclear war post 1960 is again in the
conversation. No one can win that. In the end if Trump and his
minions
have their way
many will die. The right we all deserve is the right to live.
Trump is fatally wounding the Affordable Healthcare Act by eliminating the CSR (cost sharing reduction) payment to carriers. It is sickening -- pardon the pun -- (see link posted below for the story.) It will affect particularly the poor millions whose healthcare payments will skyrocket as insurance companies raise rates to satisfy their bottom line. The poor because of Trump's evil deed will again be without healthcare potentially killing the millions who need it.
Trump is the cruelest of men, a mean and mendacious juvenile who simply wants the man he secretly would love to be as smart as knocked down by eliminating every piece of legislation perfected by his predecessor president. Trump does it for spite no mater how inhumane and/or dangerous what he is doing is. It matters not to him how many he will hurt and even kill by his actions. If I were an Evangelical Christian I would call Trump the anti-Christ for his eradication of everything humane created and/or passed for the least of these our brethren. What President Obama has in his fingernail Trump knows Trump does not posses in his entire body. He is, in the end, a mean, stupid, incurious man who knows something about building Trump Towers but knows little else. Worse he does not want to learn the many things he does not know.
Yes, President Obama used the Executive Order. The difference between Obama and Trump's Executive Order is that Obama used it to try to help the middle class and the poor with access to healthcare they never had by creating the Affordable Healthcare Act. Trump uses it to hurt millions especially the poor by taking it away and exacting revenge against the former president whose intellect Trump knows Trump cannot match.
Trump is a danger to civilization with his combustive small hands on the nuclear codes. He must be removed from office post haste. God knows there is enough to impeach and convict him for the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors he has committed. If we are lucky we can "lock him up" for Russia-connected treason! He cares about one thing -- himself. He is, in the final analysis, a traitor to this nation.
This multiplied by many is what we have placed in a mentally disturbed man's hands; a man who cares nothing for anyone but himself. I have posted before both the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but like the Holocaust we MUST be reminded of its devastation lest it happen again. This time we are thirty seconds to midnight. This is not a game played by youths in their backyard. This is real life, real culture, real innocent human beings who will yet again be blasted into oblivion if the impulsive and sick evil that is Trump gives an order no one can reject.
This time more nations than simply the US have the bomb. Some are friendly and some adversarial. What could possibly go wrong? Everything! I urge you not only to watch the Youtube below but send it to everyone you know. Let them decide if this presidency of a severely sick utterly immoral mendacious man is worth saving at the risk of the elimination of hundreds of thousands and maybe millions more innocents. 35,000 or more US troops are in S. Korea, Japan and Guam. They will bear the impact too. Once a blast levied at North Korea is made a response will be demanded by China and even Russia its allies. No one will survive a nuclear war. It is unwinnable.
