Category: Never My President

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What Have the Protests Accomplished?

eowyntheavenger:

5/26 4 officers fired for murdering George Floyd
5/27 Charges dropped for Kenneth Walker (Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, who police accused of killing her)
5/28 University of Minnesota cancels contract with police
5/28 3rd precinct police station neutralized by protesters
5/28 Minneapolis transit union refuses to bring police officers to protests or transport arrested protesters
5/29 Activists commandeer Minneapolis hotel to provide shelter to homeless
5/29 Former officer Chauvin arrested and charged with murder
5/29 Louisville Mayor suspends "no-knock" warrants
5/30 US Embassies across Africa condemn police murder of George Floyd
5/30 Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison takes over prosecution of the murdering officer
5/30 Transport Workers Union refuses to help NYPD transport arrests protesters
5/30 Maryland lawmakers forming work group on police reform, accountability
5/31 2 abusive officers fired for pulling a couple out of their car and tasing them – Atlanta, GA
6/1 Minneapolis public schools end contract with police
6/1 Confederate monument removed after being toppled by protesters – Birmingham, AL
6/1 CA prosecutors launch campaign to stop DAs from accepting police union money
6/1 Tulsa Mayor agrees to not renew Live PD contract
6/1 Louisville police chief fired after shooting of David Mcatee
6/1 Congress begins bipartisan push to cut off police access to military gear
6/1 Atlanta announces plans to create a task force and public database to track police brutality in metro Atlanta area
6/2 Minneapolis AFL-CIO calls for resignation of police union president Bob Kroll, a vocal white supremest
6/2 Pittsburgh transit union announces refusal to transport police officers or arrest protesters
6/2 Racist ex-mayor Frank Rizzo statue removed in Philadelphia
6/2 6 abusive officers charged for violence against residents and protesters – Atlanta, GA
6/2 Civil rights investigation of Minneapolis Police Dept launched
6/2 San Francisco resolution to prevent law enforcement from hiring officers with history of misconduct
6/2 Survey indicates that 64% of those polled are sympathetic to protesters, 47% disapprove of police handling of the protests, and 54% think the burning down of the Minneapolis police precinct was fully or partially justified
6/2 Trenton NJ announces policing reforms
6/2 Minneapolis City Council members consider disbanding the police
6/2 Confederate statue removed from Alexandria, VA
6/3 Officer fired for tweets promoting violence against protesters – Denver, CO
6/3 Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art cut ties with the MPD
6/3 Chauvin charges upgraded to second degree murder, remaining 3 officers also charged and taken into custody
6/3 Richmond VA Mayor Stoney announces RPD reform measures: establish "Marcus" alert for folks experiencing mental health crises, establish independent Citizen Review Board, an ordinance to remove Confederate monuments, and implement racial equity study
6/3 County commissioners deny proposal for $23 million expansion of Fulton County jail
6/3 Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board unanimously votes to sever ties with MPD
6/3 Seattle withdraws request to end federal oversight/consent decree of police department
6/3 Breonna Taylor's case reopened
6/3 Louisville police department (Breonna Taylor's murderers) will now be under review from an outside agency, which will include review on training, bias-free policing and accountability
6/3 Colorado lawmakers introduce a police reform bill that includes body cam laws, repealing the "fleeing felon" statute, and banning chokeholds
6/3 Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announces plans to reduce funding to police department by $150M and instead invest in minority communities
6/4 Virginia governor announces plans to remove Robert E. Lee statue from Richmond
6/4 Portland schools superintendent discontinues presence of armed police officers in schools
6/4 MBTA (Metro Boston) board orders that buses wont transport police to protests, or protesters to police
6/4 King County Labor Federation issues ultimatum to police unions: admit to and address racism in Seattle PD, or be removed
6/5 City of Minneapolis bans all chokeholds by police
6/5 Racist ex-mayor Hubbard statue removed – Dearborn, MI
6/5 NFL condemns racism and admits it should have listened to players' protests
6/5 California Governor Gavin Newsom calls for statewide use-of-force standard made along with community leaders and ban on carotid holds
6/5 2 Buffalo officers suspended within a day of pushing 75 year old protester to the ground, and lying about it
6/5 2 NYPD officers suspended after videos of violence to protesters
6/5 The US Marines bans display of the Confederate flag
6/5 Dallas adopts a "duty to intervene" rule that requires officers to stop other cops who are engaging in excessive use of force
6/5 Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax releases an 11-point action plan for immediate police reforms
6/6 Statue of Confederate general Williams Carter Wickham torn down – Richmond, VA
6/6 2 Buffalo officers charged with second-degree assault for shoving elderly man
6/6 San Francisco Mayor London Breed announces effort to defund police and redirect funds to Black community
6/7 Frank Rizzo mural removed, to be replaced with new artwork – Philadelphia, PA
6/7 Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband the police department, invest in proven community-led public safety
6/7 Protesters in Bristol topple statue of slave trader Edward Colston, throw it in the river
6/7 NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio vows for the first time to cut funding for NYPD, redirect to social services
6/7 A Virginia police officer faces charges after using a stun gun on a black man
6/8 NY State Assembly passes the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act
6/8 Democrats in Congress unveil a bill to rein in bias and excessive force in policing
6/8 Black lawmakers block a legislative session in Pennsylvania to demand action on police reform
6/8 France bans police use of chokeholds
6/8 Seattle council members join calls to defund police department
6/8 Boston reevaluates how it funds police department
6/8 Honolulu Police Commission nominees voice support for more transparency, reforms
6/8 Rights groups and Floyd's family call for a UN inquiry into American policing and help with systemic police reform

No, it's not enough, but this is only the beginning. Keep fighting!!!

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Quote of the Day

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, and the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people." ~ Edward James Olmos as Admiral William Adama, Battlestar Galactica

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This Gives Me Hope

In a show of solidarity, a massive tribute to Black Lives Matter has been painted on the street leading to the White House in Washington, D.C. Completed in permanent street paint, the message features bold, yellow letters that span more than a block of 16th Street and marks a historic moment in the United States after weeks of protests.

Mayor Muriel Bowser commissioned the banner-style piece, which city workers and volunteers began at 3 a.m. Friday morning ahead of weekend demonstrations. The new message is just two blocks north of Lafayette Square, where police charged peaceful protestors and released tear gas and flash-bang shells to clear the crowd for a photo-op for Trump earlier this week. It sits at the foot of St. John's Church.

[Source]

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Trump's Presidency is Over

From Robert Reich:

You'd be forgiven if you hadn't noticed. His verbal bombshells are louder than ever, but Donald J. Trump is no longer president of the United States.

By having no constructive response to any of the monumental crises now convulsing America, Trump has abdicated his office.

He is not governing. He's golfing, watching cable TV, and tweeting.

How has Trump responded to the widespread unrest following the murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes as he was handcuffed on the ground?

He has incited more police violence. Trump called the protesters "thugs" and threatened to have them shot. "When the looting starts, the shooting starts," he tweeted, parroting a former Miami police chief whose words spurred race riots in the late 1960s.

The following day he encouraged more police violence, gloating about "the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons" awaiting protesters outside the White House, should they ever break through Secret Service lines. On Sunday he again resorted to incendiary tweets, instructing "Democrat Mayors and Governors" to "get tough" on the "ANARCHISTS."

Trump's response to George Floyd's murder has debased the presidency and squandered whatever moral authority remained. 

Trump's response to the last three ghastly months of mounting disease and death has been just as heedless. Since claiming Covid-19 was a "Democratic hoax" and muzzling public health officials, he has punted management of the coronavirus to the states.

Governors have had to find ventilators to keep patients alive and protective equipment for hospital and other essential workers who lack it, often bidding against each other. They have had to decide how, when, and where to reopen their economies.

Trump has claimed "no responsibility at all" for testing and contact-tracing – the keys to containing the virus. His new "plan" places responsibility on states to do their own testing and contact-tracing.

Trump is also AWOL in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

More than 41 million Americans are jobless. In the coming weeks temporary eviction moratoriums are set to end in half of the states. One-fifth of Americans missed rent payments this month. Extra unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of July.

What is Trump's response? Like Herbert Hoover, who in 1930 said "the worst is behind us" as thousands starved, Trump says the economy will improve and does nothing about the growing hardship. The Democratic-led House passed a $3 trillion relief package on May 15. Mitch McConnell has recessed the Senate without taking action and Trump calls the bill dead on arrival.

What about other pressing issues a real president would be addressing? The House has passed nearly 400 bills this term, including measures to reduce climate change, enhance election security, require background checks on gun sales, reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and reform campaign finance. All are languishing in McConnell's inbox. Trump doesn't seem to be aware of any of them.

There is nothing inherently wrong with golfing, watching television and tweeting. But if that's pretty much all that a president does when the nation is engulfed in crises, he is not a president.

Trump's tweets are no substitute for governing. They are mostly about getting even.

When he's not fomenting violence against black protesters, he's accusing a media personality of committing murder, retweeting slurs about a black female politician's weight and the House speaker's looks, conjuring up conspiracies against himself supposedly organized by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and encouraging his followers to "liberate" their states from lockdown restrictions.

He tweets bogus threats that he has no power to carry out – withholding funds from states that expand absentee voting, "overruling" governors who don't allow places of worship to reopen "right away," designating anti-fascism activists as terrorists, and punishing Twitter for fact-checking him.

And he lies incessantly.

In reality, Donald Trump does not run the government of the United States. He doesn't manage anything. He doesn't organize anyone. He doesn't administer or oversee or supervise. He doesn't read memos. He hates meetings. He has no patience for briefings. His White House is in perpetual chaos.

His advisors aren't truth-tellers. They're toadies, lackeys, sycophants and relatives.

Since moving into the Oval Office in January 2017, Trump hasn't shown an ounce of interest in governing. He obsesses only about himself.

But it has taken the present set of crises to reveal the depths of his self-absorbed abdication – his utter contempt for his job, his total repudiation of his office.

Trump's nonfeasance goes far beyond an absence of leadership or inattention to traditional norms and roles. In a time of national trauma, he has relinquished the core duties and responsibilities of the presidency.

He is no longer president. The sooner we stop treating him as if he were, the better.

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Asked and Answered

Via I Should Be Laughing:

AN ANGUISHED QUESTION FROM A Trump SUPPORTER: 'Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?'

THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here's what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:

That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine." USA Today

That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay." The Daily Beast

That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem." ABC News

That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue." Washington Post

That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you exclaimed, "He sure knows me." USA Today

That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to Trump replied: "'Oh my God, that's disgusting,' and I turned away. I couldn't—you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn't want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red." You said, "That's cool!" GQ

That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw. NBC News

That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?" The Atlantic

That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense." USA Today

That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!" LA Times

That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!" The Independent

That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!" The Atlantic

That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be." Huffington Post

That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!" Politico

That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!" US News

That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense." Washington Post

That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!" CNN

That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas – he explains that they're just "animals" – and you say, "Well, OK then." NBC news

That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise. American Progress

What you don't get, Trump supporters, is that our succumbing to frustration and shaking our heads, thinking of you as stupid, may very well be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also…hear me…charitable.

Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.

(To all who agree with its content, I ask that you PLEASE SHARE IT on your own post, and ENCOURAGE OTHERS to do the same.)

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#Mood

And it's not because it's my birthday. That has very little to do with my current mood. I'm in this headspace because of all the awful going on in this country right now and our seeming inability to remove the cancer that's metastasizing from from the White House.

It seems COVID-19 and the very reasonable recommendations about staying home, closing non-essential businesses, and wearing masks and practicing social distancing when you do have to go out have brought out the absolute worst in a certain (i.e. racist, Trump rimming, MAGA-hat-wearing) portion of the population.

My heart goes out to my non-white brothers and sisters who are bearing the brunt of this behavior. It's as if the United States is finally vomiting up 244 years of suppressed hate, and instead of it blocking out the sun as it did in the I Am The Night—Color Me Black episode of The Twilight Zone from 1961, the country—or at least Minneapolis—is going up in flames. I have feared all along it will take just one more incident to touch off a conflagration that will consume this country like none seen in our lifetimes. And George Floyd's murder seems to be the spark thrown into that dry tinder.

And you know what? I say burn it to the ground. The horseshit treatment of minorities has gone on more than long enough. It needs to be stopped, by any means necessary. Being nice and playing fair only leads to genocide. Racists are bullies just like Trump, and the only way to put them in their place is to smack them back into the 1860s where they belong.

I fear that even if Minneapolis does not spread to the rest of the country, the rage of the minority Reich Wing  when Trump is removed from office will reignite a whole new set of fires because you know that after months of Citrus Calignula's sowing seeds that the election will be rigged or the results illegitimate when he loses that his followers will not acquiesce to a peaceful transfer of power. He is, after all, their GOD.

And regarding the Orange Russian Wig Stand's threats to shut down his Twitter account?  Be serious. Trump cut off his only conduit to his brain-dead sheep? Oh PLEASE.

And his promise to muzzle social media? BRING IT, BITCH.

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Sure, Jan

As you all well know, I'm no fan of Twitter, but…

It's a national embarrassment that this imbecile is the President but it is a national shame that he has NO UNDERSTANDING of the Constitution

The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It is freedom, generally speaking, from the government interfering with you saying anything you want, whenever and wherever you want to say it but there is no First Amendment right to use Twitter or have a Facebook page.

Social media companies are private enterprises and therefore free to adopt policies relating to user content and to remove users who violate such policies without implicating the First Amendment.

The moron in chief keeps declaring that he is directing his administration to "explore all regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech and the free speech rights of all Americans" & that they will "strongly regulate or close them down" by which he only means people that agree with him or encourage him.

Any regulatory or legislative action taken by the government, which obviously includes the current corrupt AF administration, would constitute a threat to the free speech rights of all Americans.

It's upside down world in the Cheetohinchief's head but it's a reminder to the rest of us never to give so much power to someone so ill informed on the Constitution.

Source.

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Oh Sah-NAP!

From The Palmer Report:

There is still no one who has any idea what Donald Trump's "Obamagate" scandal is about – least of all Trump himself. But that hasn't stopped Trump's most embarrassing sycophants from trying to prop up the imaginary scandal. That includes Ted Cruz, who never misses an opportunity to humiliate himself.

It all started when Trump incoherently tweeted "OBAMAGATE MAKES WATERGATE LOOK LIKE SMALL POTATOES!" This prompted pundit John Heilemann to ask, "Could you explain again exactly what it is? We'll wait." That's when Ted Cruz decided to get involved, much to his own detriment.

Cruz thought he was being clever when he fired back at Heilemann with "I thought that was a reporter's job?" At that point Heilemann finished him off: "Sorry, I'm still busy reporting out Trump's accusation that your father was involved in the killing of JFK."

Ouch.

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And that's exactly why I won't be able to wear a red cap for the rest of my life.