Racism is alive and well, Thanks Trump and his supporters!

[psiberzerker]

Polling, and similar questionairre studies are pretty hard to quantify, but people MAy (Not a conclusion) be more self-conscious of their "I don't want to sound racist, but" racism.

Trump’s horrific racism spurs backlash among those polled.   

Trump is the racist backlash from having a black president. 

[Athos_131]

REPORT: US is Less Racist Under Trump Than Obama

*looks at title of "article" and source*





#Resist

[Athos_131]

Pence’s squirmy ‘Send her back!’ interview lays bare the GOP’s dilemma

After President Trump’s crowd chanted “Send her back!” about an immigrant congresswoman last week, Vice President Pence led the charge to get Trump to publicly “disagree” with it.

But even Pence isn’t so sure what that’s worth, as his squirmy interview this weekend betrayed.

CBS News’s Major Garrett tried to pin down Pence on just how firm Trump’s opposition to the sentiment is. Given Trump’s soft, fact-challenged disavowal and then his refusal to repeat it — not to mention his long history of toying with and egging on his crowds’ provocations — Pence was at pains to say Trump would do anything to actually stop a recurrence.

The video is above, and below is the transcript, in which Garrett does yeoman’s work guiding Pence off his talking points:

PENCE: ... No, Major, the president wasn’t pleased about it. Neither was I. The president’s been very clear about that. But what we’re also not pleased about is the fact that there are four members of Congress --

MAJOR GARRETT: Yes, but you know that this president’s --

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: -- who are engaging in the most outrageous statements --

MAJOR GARRETT: -- relationship with his supporters is as close as anyone has ever had in American politics. This could all go away with one simple word or a phrase or something. You have a chance to say it right now --

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Well --

MAJOR GARRETT: -- don’t do it again.

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Major --

MAJOR GARRETT: Is that your message?

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Major, the president was very clear --

MAJOR GARRETT: Was he?

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: -- that he wasn’t happy about it. And that if it happened again he -- he might -- he might make an effort to speak out about it.

MAJOR GARRETT: He will make an effort to speak out about it?

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: That’s what he’s already said.

“. . . If it happened again he — he might — he might make an effort to speak out about it.”

“Might.” “Might.”

The interview highlighted something I pointed out Friday when writing about Ivanka Trump’s reported role in all of this. It’s great to find out exactly who was urging Trump to condemn his crowd’s behavior, but what happens when the crowd chants it again?

Trump claimed when he said he “disagreed” with the chant that he started speaking quickly to put a halt to it. Except he didn’t. He seemed to revel in it, in fact, and he actually waited a full 13 seconds until the chant was finished.

There’s also the “Lock her up!” history. When those chants started, Trump also disavowed them, saying that “I didn’t like it” and that “I think it’s a shame that they said it, but a lot of people would say that should happen.” Eventually, he embraced “Lock her up!” and told Hillary Clinton in a debate that, if he were president, she would be “in jail.”

What’s happening today bears stark similarities to both that situation and when Trump vacillated on his response to the murder of a counterprotester by a white supremacist in Charlottesville in 2017. In both cases, Trump was apparently persuaded to condemn the actions, but then reversed himself. Regarding Charlottesville, Trump blamed the violence “on many sides” before offering a more forceful condemnation of the racists in the crowd. But then he returned to his equivocation, citing “very fine people on both sides” of the protests.

According to The Post’s Bob Woodward, Trump regards that middle response — the one in which he did what those around him wanted — as the “worst speech I’ve ever given” and “the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made."

Given all of that, it seems the most likely response from Trump is a muted one. Even if you accept the argument that Trump wasn’t necessarily aiming for this kind of provocation when he first urged Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), an immigrant, and three U.S.-born congresswomen to “go back” to their countries — which is difficult to swallow — his inclination to toy with racial provocations and let his base play its part is just too strong. He also has had Stephen K. Bannon put the fear of God into him when it comes to alienating his base. The most likely outcome would seem to be a somewhat jokey “you guys shouldn’t do that, you’ll get me in trouble” — something that provides him some plausible deniability that he actually tried to shut down the chants, even if he didn’t really.

We’ll see what happens, but Pence clearly doesn’t want to wager his credibility on Trump actually following through on his advice. And if Trump doesn’t, it will make everyone around him who counseled him against this kind of incitement — including Pence and Trump’s own daughter — look pretty inept.

And to be clear, this is Trump’s own vice president not being certain Trump has the desire to repudiate a racist chant. That’s a remarkable lack of faith.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump’s racist tweets were not a ‘love it or leave it’ argument

One of President Trump’s political gifts is his ability to cobble together parachutes after pushing his allies out of airplanes. A campaign-trail attack on Arizona Sen. John McCain for not being a hero was retrofitted into disparagement of McCain’s purported weakness on veterans’ issues. Any number of personal comments about other opponents get reworked into more palatable critiques as the ground rushes ever closer.

The most recent and perhaps most significant example? Trump’s effort to cast last weekend’s racist attacks on four Democratic congresswoman: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.).

On Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) appeared on CNN, where that attack — and the ensuing week of fallout — came up. Shortly before the interview aired, Trump tweeted that he didn’t believe that the congresswomen “are capable of loving our country.” Johnson was asked whether he agreed with that sentiment.

"You know, I would say, in general, the whole America love-it-or-leave it is not — not a new sentiment. Back in the '60s, that wasn't considered racist,” he replied. “I just find it very unfortunate that so many parts of our public debate right now are getting immediately stuck inside a racial framework, when what I would like to see is us moving toward that colorblind society.”

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was mentioned in the next sentence.

Johnson’s response didn’t really answer the question but, instead, the question he came prepared to answer: How did he feel about Trump’s racist tweets? And he deployed the parachute the president had generously provided: Actually, this is just an update to the “love it or leave it” argument from the 1960s.

It wasn’t, no matter how often Trump has tried to make that case over the past seven days. What Trump wrote, specifically, was:

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

Nothing here about not loving the United States. The objection is to congresswomen from places with “the worst, most corrupt and inept” governments “viciously telling the people of the United States ... how our government is to be run.” Those congresswomen — three of whom, as you’ve no doubt heard, were born in the United States — should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places” of their births.

Trump wasn't saying “love it or leave it.” He was saying “you're not welcome here.”

The “go back where you came from” line is one with a long, fraught, racist history. The connotations of “love it or leave it” are somewhat less problematic, given the veneer of patriotism it includes. The effect is similar, though: Conform or leave.

In this case, the thing to which one must conform isn’t a love of country but, instead, an embrace of Trump’s politics.

Trump spent much of last week trying to argue that the Democrats at issue were hostile to the United States, a necessary precondition for his claim that he was saying “love it or leave it” (which, again, was itself the parachute he was building to save people from plummeting in defense of his racist tweets). His sweeping claim that the women were hostile to America is heavily based on out-of-context quotes, guilt by association or just making things up.

He claims, for example that they, collectively, “call the people of our country and our country ‘garbage.’ ” This is an apparent reference to Ocasio-Cortez at one point saying that the American people shouldn’t settle for compromise public policy that is “10 percent better from garbage” — a claim that is awfully hard to position as a disparagement of the country as a whole.

But some tried. White House adviser Stephen Miller was asked about that claim and others in an interview on Fox News on Sunday.

"She's talking about — she's talking about policies,” host Chris Wallace said. “She's not talking about the country and the people. Is garbage such a horrible word?”

"She's saying that America in her view right now is garbage,” Miller replied, which is obviously not true.

Wallace was ready. He showed Miller this tweet from Trump.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/524707073649827840

Miller expressed frustration that Wallace was conflating Trump’s criticism of Obama with the congresswomen’s purported criticism of America.

“Let me just cut to the heart of the issue,” Miller replied. “These four congresswomen detest America as it exists, as it is currently constructed. They want to tear down the structure of our country.”

Why? In short, because they advocate socialist policies and oppose Trump’s rhetoric on the border. Though Miller framed this as their collectively backing “open borders,” which is obviously not the case.

Trump, Miller said at another point, had a philosophy of “America First.”

"Saying that America needs to improve to get closer to an America First ideal, as the president did as a candidate, criticizing Obama, criticizing our trade deals, our foreign policies, our immigration policies, is out of love for America,” Miller claimed. “Saying, as Representative Ocasio-Cortez did, that illegal immigrants are in effect more American than Americans is fundamentally an anti-American statement.”

It’s not clear how Ocasio-Cortez made that alleged claim, but the throughline here is clear. Miller’s objections to Ocasio-Cortez are ones rooted in policy, in his belief that she advocates for legislative changes that would “tear down the structure” of the country. Miller exaggerates policies with which he disagrees in order to present them and their supporters as hostile to the country itself.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) spoke with CBS on Sunday, where she was presented with the similar challenge of responding to Trump’s claims. She took the Miller approach a step further.

“These members of the House of Representatives — more, it’s not just these four, it’s also some of the candidates who are running for president on the Democratic side — fundamentally believe in policies that are dangerous for this nation,” Cheney said. “And as Republicans we are going to fight against those even if the mainstream media accuses us of racism when we do that.”

So Trump’s tweets were about a policy dispute — as his “love it or leave it” retcon has it — and, in response to that policy dispute, Trump was being labeled as racist! It’s gone full circle: The racism allegation wasn’t about Trump’s racist tweets, but, instead, was a bad-faith response to the thing Trump claimed his tweets were actually about. Which they weren’t.

The Trump era of politics is complicated. Sometimes the parachutes he offers get tangled. Sometimes, like Cheney, you end up back on the plane.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump embraces the ‘reverse racism’ feared by his supporters in a new ‘squad’ attack

For a week, President Trump and his supporters have been scrambling to distance his attacks against four Democratic congresswomen earlier this month from the obvious racist subtext they included. Trump decided that he’d present the attacks as being not about his views of the national origins of the women, none of whom are white, and instead on unsupported claims that they hate America. But as often happens when Trump is struggling to toe a line of argument, he couldn’t help but say what he actually thinks.

So, en route to the Supreme Court to pay his respects to the late justice John Paul Stevens, Trump tweeted a less-nuanced critique of the four, who refer to themselves as “the squad.”

“The 'Squad’ is a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart,” Trump wrote. “They are pulling the once great Democrat Party far left, and were against humanitarian aid at the Border . . . And are now against ICE and Homeland Security. So bad for our Country!”

The opposition to “humanitarian aid” is a reference to a vote in which the four — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) — opposed a funding deal last month because of concerns about increasing funding for Homeland Security agencies of which they’re critical. But that, of course, is the less interesting part of the tweet.

Trump has suggested before that the four are racist. As the controversy over his tweets telling them to “go back” to the places they came from was boiling last Monday, Trump tweeted that Democrats should be wary of uniting “around the foul language & racist hatred spewed from the mouths and actions of these very unpopular & unrepresentative Congresswomen.”

Asked later in the week about the “send her back” chant targeting Omar at his rally in North Carolina, Trump denied that the chant was racist, instead offering a counterexample of racism.

“No, you know what’s racist to me? When somebody goes out and says the horrible things about our country — the people of our country — that are anti-Semitic, that hate everybody, that speak with scorn and hate,” Trump said. “That, to me, is really a very dangerous thing. I think these four congressmen — and I could say some worse than others. But if you look at the statements they’ve made, when they call the people of our country ‘garbage,’ when they hit Israel the way they’ve hit Israel so hard, so horrible — I think, to me, that’s a disgrace.”

We’ll note, again, that this is not an accurate representation of what the four congresswomen have said. Trump and his allies have given multiple examples purporting to show anti-American activity on the part of the Democrats, the examples of which are centered on policy disputes with the administration.

In other words, Trump is claiming that allegations of racism directed at himself and his policies — and the supporters who embrace them — are themselves examples of racism. Analysis by The Washington Post found that Trump is three times as likely to accuse nonwhite people of racism as he is white people.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. When segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace was asked if he considered himself to be a racist during a 1968 interview, he offered a similar deflection.

“No sir, I don’t regard myself as a racist,” Wallace said, “and I think the biggest racists in the world are those who call other folks racist. I think the biggest bigots in the world are those who call other folks bigots.”

Last year, as the anniversary of the violent 2017 protests in Charlottesville arrived, Trump tweeted a condemnation of “all types” of racism. This was an obvious reference to the sort of reverse racism embedded in his and Wallace’s rhetoric: Purported racism against white people.

As we pointed out then, nearly two-thirds of Trump voters say they’re at least somewhat concerned about “reverse racism” impacting their lives — that is, the idea that whites are the focus of discrimination. That includes a quarter of that group who say they’re very concerned about it. Research from the Pew Research Center released in March shows that white Republicans and Republican-leaning independents see whites, blacks and Hispanics as about equally the target of discrimination.

About a tenth of respondents told Pew that whites face more discrimination than blacks; 80 percent of that group identified as Republican or Republican-leaning.

Trump’s response to the women criticizing him and his policies is to suggest that they are themselves racist. Ironically, it’s an example of what White House adviser Stephen Miller said in an interview Sunday that Democrats did all too often.

“I think the term ‘racist’ has become a label that is too often deployed by the left,” Miller said. “Democrats in this country simply to try to silence and punish and suppress people they disagree with, speech that they don’t want to hear.”

That raises an important subtext to this. Trump ran for office leveraging opposition to “political correctness,” the idea that traditional American conversation and interactions were being criticized out of existence. In the first Republican primary debate in 2015, the first question directed at him addressed his offensive criticisms of prominent women.

“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” he said, to applause. “I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness.”

Changing mores have meant more skepticism about and condemnation of racist or sexist comments. Those who make those sorts of traditionally racist and sexist comments or who reinforce traditional race and gender roles are generally members of the more powerful racial and gender groups: whites and men. Being told that it’s unacceptable to say or do things that others see as racist or which reinforce racial hierarchies is seen as a race-based criticism. Is seen, apparently, as racist.

Shortly after the 2018 midterm elections, journalist Yamiche Alcindor asked Trump if he wasn’t worried that his rhetoric was emboldening white nationalists. That, Trump declared, was a racist question.

What’s really remarkable about Trump’s tweet Monday is how it overlaps with his efforts over the past week to claim that he was just taking issue with purported anti-Americanism on the part of the Democrats. That’s his (bad) defense of his tweets telling the women to “go back” where they came from: He was simply telling them to leave because they hate America as manifested in their approach to Israel and immigration policy.

So then, what makes them racist? They are racist because they “want to tear down the structure of our country” (as Miller claimed on Fox News), largely because they oppose Trump’s policies on immigration?

If so, what does that say about whom Trump’s immigration policies are meant to support?

Earlier this month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi revised Trump’s campaign slogan into “Make America white again.” It was the latest effort on her part to tweak the president, linked to his push for a question on the census centered on citizenship.

Asked about it last week, Trump described Pelosi’s comment as “racist.”

#Resist

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Republicans spent the week being asked about racism. Their definitions of it were all over the map.

A big question in the days following President Trump’s controversial tweets about four minority congresswomen has been: Why aren’t more Republicans unequivocally denouncing them as racist?

One big reason GOP lawmakers haven’t all labeled Trump’s telling the four representatives — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) — to “go back” to the countries they came from as racist is because they know how loyal Trump’s base is. Given this, if they publicly offend him, the president could encourage his supporters to back a more Trump-loyal candidate in the next Republican primary. He did so to several in 2018.
Some Republicans clearly agreed with the sentiments Trump expressed and embraced them. Others did verbal gymnastics to not address the question — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) pivoted to frame the debate as about “socialism vs. freedom” rather than race. Some, like Rep. Mike Kelly (Pa.) contorted themselves to the point of redefining other phrases to avoid having to place any blame on Trump.

"You know, they talk about people of color. I’m a person of color. I’m white. I’m an Anglo Saxon. People say things all the time, but I don’t get offended,” Kelly told VICE News. “‘With a name like Mike Kelly you can’t be from any place else but Ireland.’”

But this week also showed how many Republicans vary in how they define or are willing to apply the word “racism.” That’s something Trump’s candidacy and presidency have forced to Republicans explore, publicly. They haven’t always been shy about using the R-word, even when criticizing Trump.

In December 2015, after hearing Trump’s support for banning Muslims from traveling to the United States, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who was running against Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, told Americans: “He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot."

Months later, Trump accused a judge presiding over a lawsuit involving his business of having a bias against him because of the judge’s Mexican heritage. Many Republicans remained silent, but then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) criticized the remarks claiming that the judge would be unfair to Trump because he is white as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

Now, as president, Trump has had nearly solid Republican support, no matter what he has said, even from some of his most harsh former critics in the GOP.

“A Somali refugee embracing Trump would not have been asked to go back,” said Graham this week, apparently referencing Omar, who fled civil war in Somalia as a child before immigrating to the U.S. “If you’re a racist, you want everybody from Somalia to go back cause they’re black or they’re Muslim.”

And when the House voted this past week to condemn the president’s statements as racist, some Republicans challenged whether the House could even use that label. In the end, only four GOP House members voted to support the resolution.

Before the vote, Rep. Will Hurd (R.-Tex.), the only black Republican in the House, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that Trump’s tweets were “racist.”

“I think those tweets are racist, and xenophobic,” he said. “They’re also inaccurate.”

He was joined by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Susan Brooks (Ind.) and Fred Upton (Mich.) in backing the resolution. Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.), who quit the GOP this month and became an independent, also voted in favor.

Part of the issue is that what constitutes racist language has changed over time. But to many academics who study the issue, the purpose of racism has been consistent.

Ibram Kendi, director of American University’s Antiracist Center, writes in his forthcoming book “How to Be an Antiracist” that racism is “a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas.”

And scholars Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields wrote about racism in “Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life" that “Racism refers to the theory and the practice of applying a social civic or legal double standard based on ancestry and to the ideology surrounding such a double standard,” they said. “Racism is not an emotion or state of mind, such as intolerance, bigotry, hatred or malevolence.”

“Racism is first and foremost a social practice, which means that it is an action and a rationale for action, or both at once,” they added.

There is of course, a strict dictionary definition of racism (“hatred or intolerance of another race or other races”). Most people in a position of power know that; it’s a matter of where they draw the line on what qualifies as racist, and whether they adjust that line when it’s politically convenient to do so.

While the president did not use any directly derogatory terms in his tweets, he tapped into tropes used in the past to raise anger against minorities. Leaving room for plausible deniability is a good way to give yourself, and your political allies, room to maneuver when you make statements that are racist. As The Fix’s Aaron Blake has written, Trump recognizes the benefit of plausible deniability, and frequently utilizes it.

Republicans seem to be on completely different pages about what constitutes racism. Some even blame the left, saying it is liberals who are increasingly invoking racism and showing intolerance. That argument on its face is not illegitimate. Liberals, especially those of color, would argue that they are more vocal in calling out racism because racism is indeed far-reaching in our society.

Either way, hearing that racism is so prevalent has allowed some Republicans to use claims of its omnipresence as an excuse to neither address it nor even acknowledge it at all.

But even more important than how Republican lawmakers define racism is Trump’s view that whether his tweets are racist or not may be irrelevant.

The day after the president’s original tweets, he was asked his thoughts about the fact that his comments had widely been interpreted as racist. And he replied:

“It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me. A lot of people love it, by the way.”

He’s right. A lot of people in his base did love it, so much so that at his campaign rally a few days later, Trump supporters began to chant “Send her back!” to display just how much they agreed with his original sentiments.

While the president eventually disavowed the chant that his original comments inspired, he has not apologized for his initial tweets and continues to question the patriotism and loyalty of the congresswomen, vowing Friday to punish them for their language.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump accuses four minority congresswomen of being ‘very Racist’ and ‘not very smart’

President Trump escalated his attacks Monday on a group of four minority congresswomen known as “the Squad,” calling them “very Racist” and “not very smart.”

Trump’s assessment came in a tweet as his motorcade traveled from the White House to the Supreme Court to pay his respects to the late Justice John Paul Stevens, who died last week at age 99 and was lying in repose.

It was the latest in a string of attacks directed at the four freshman lawmakers since a week ago Sunday, when Trump said in a tweet that they should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Only one of the four, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), was born outside the United States, and she became a U.S. citizen in 2000.

Trump has often tried to turn the tables on his political opponents, accusing them of the very shortcomings for which they criticize him.

“The ‘Squad’ is a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart,” Trump wrote. “They are pulling the once great Democrat Party far left, and were against humanitarian aid at the Border . . . And are now against ICE and Homeland Security. So bad for our Country!”

Over the past week, Trump has repeatedly defended his words directed at the four women — Reps. Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) — despite widespread criticism that his remarks were racist and divisive.

During a heated exchange on “Fox News Sunday,” Stephen Miller, a White House senior adviser, sought to defend Trump, saying that the term “racist” is being misused.

“I think the term ‘racist’ has become a label that is too often deployed by the left, Democrats, in this country simply to try to silence and punish and suppress people they disagree with, speech that they don’t want to hear,” Miller said.

Asked Monday about Trump’s tweet calling the four lawmakers “racist,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House: “Well, they certainly are young and inexperienced. That doesn’t stop all of you from elevating them into the stratosphere and superstardom.”

Trump has attacked the women on multiple issues in the past week, including over their views on Israel.

His mention of “humanitarian aid” on Monday referenced a $4.6 billion border bill passed by the House late last month. The measure would pump billions of dollars into the budgets of agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, that have been overwhelmed by the influx of Central American migrants at the United States’ southern border.

Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib voted against the legislation, saying it did not include enough restrictions on how the Trump administration could spend the money and did not include adequate protections for migrant children at detention facilities.

The lawmakers have also been highly critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a range of issues.

During an appearance Monday morning at an NAACP convention in Detroit, Tlaib was introduced as “one of the four women who was told to go back home.”

“Yeah, I’m not going nowhere, not until I impeach this president,” she said upon taking the stage.

Last week, Trump directed most of his ire at Omar, a Somali-born refu­gee. As he criticized her during remarks at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, the crowd broke out into chants of “Send her back!”

Trump later said he was not happy with the chant but has since characterized the crowd as “incredible patriots.”

Earlier last week, the Democratic-led House passed a resolution condemning his tweets directed at the four lawmakers.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Miss Michigan Loses Crown Because of Racist, Islamophobic Tweets

MAGA Twitter is enraged at officials of the oldest international beauty pageant for dethroning a beauty queen after racist and Islamophobic tweets surfaced on the Twitter account of a Trump supporter and reigning Miss Michigan.

Organizers of the Miss World America pageant dismissed Michigan winner Kathy Zhu for what they called “offensive, insensitive and inappropriate”social media content, according to a letter and texts from the organization posted to Twitter by Zhu, whom the Detroit Free Press called “a well-known political commentator and online figure.”

Think Progress reports that the 20-year-old serves as the vice president of the University of Michigan chapter of the College Republicans and communications director for the Chinese Americans for Trump Movement, while Zhu’s Twitter account reports that the Zhu is kinda racist.

“Did you know the majority of black deaths are caused by other blacks?” Zhu wrote, in one of the now-deleted Tweets, according to the Detroit Press. “Fix problems within your own community before blaming others.”

“This applies for every community,” Zhu explained to the Free Press after the tweets surfaced. “If there is a problem, fix things in your own community before lashing out at others and trying to find an issue there. That is all I wanted to say. It is not a problem against black people. Obviously, I am not racist or stuff like that.”

I agree with MAGA Miss Michigan. I honestly don’t see why those comments should be considered racist, although Zhu conveniently left out the fact that the vast majority of white murders are committed by white people, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. But I’m sure Zhu has tweeted a lot about white-on-white crime. Let me go check.

Well, someone must have obviously deleted those tweets...

“Or stuff like that.”

But Zhu didn’t just tweet out a few anti-black talking points used by every white supremacist with an internet connection. Zhu extended her bold bigotry to Muslims, too, as Think Progress explained:

One of the now-deleted tweets in question stems from an incident in February 2018, when Zhu was a freshman at the University of Central Florida, in Orlando. Zhu reportedly sprinted away from a Muslim Student Associate table on campus after a fellow student offered her a chance to try on a hijab, a head covering many Muslim women wear, as part of a World Hijab Day celebration.

“There is a ‘try a hijab on’ booth at my college campus,” Zhu, who is Chinese-American, wrote in a now-deleted tweet. “So you’re telling me that it’s now just a fashion accessory and not a religious thing? Or are you just trying to get women used to being oppressed under Islam?”

In a separate tweet, Zhu criticized a sign at the Muslim Student Association table that said “My hijab empowers me.”

“The hypocrisy of this is kind of disgusting,” Zhu reportedly tweeted at the time.



After she handed in her cubic zirconia crown, the hashtag #standwithkathyzhu took over Twitter. OK, only six people used the hashtag, but you know how Twitter suppresses conservative voices. Plus, when you consider the Disney Mermaid atrocity of 2019, the danger of Democrats instituting socialism, how hard it is to find a good pair of flag-emblazoned running shoes and the invasion Mexican toddlers crossing the border to take all the jobs, conservatives have their hands full trying to making America great again. But they were still angry enough to somehow twist the narrative into believing that Zhu lost her title because of her political beliefs while the pageant forced her to wear a hajib and banned from performing math on Twitter.

And of course, there were those who insisted that Zhu can’t be racist because she’s Chinese-American, which is like saying Hitler wasn’t a racist because he had Jewish and black ancestors.

However, I don’t understand why Zhu’s supporters are upset. I believe the pageant organizers handled the situation by using the principles of Trump and his conservative supporters. Zhu made public statements that some people thought were un-American. Therefore the people in charge did the only thing they could do in this situation:

They sent her back.

Now that is a thing of beauty.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Illinois Republicans pull Facebook post calling 4 Democratic congresswomen ‘The Jihad Squad’

Top leaders of the Illinois Republican Party launched an effort at damage control Sunday after a social media post echoed President Donald Trump’s criticism of four Democratic congresswoman and went further, referring to them in a movie-type poster of being a “jihad squad” and contending they believe any criticism is racist.

The post was made to the Illinois Republican County Chairmen’s Association Facebook page on Friday night but gained publicity over the weekend. It displayed images of Democratic U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and topped by a hijab-wearing Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. The four, all women of color, have been dubbed “the squad.”

“Political jihad is their game,” the Facebook post said. “If you don’t agree with their socialist ideology, you’re racist.”

The post also displayed the logo of the association.

The four members of Congress have been at the center of Trump’s social media posts for a week, after he initially told members of the group in a tweet “to go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

All four are citizens, and three of them were born in the United States.

Trump initially defended his tweet, then said it was not meant to be racist. He then traveled to a North Carolina rally, during which he criticized Omar as a crowd chanted, “send her back.” A day later he disavowed those saying the chant, but the next day defended those who chanted as “patriots.”

The Democratic-controlled U.S. House passed a resolution last week rebuking Trump’s tweets, calling them “racist comments."

The Illinois’ state Republican chairmen group’s Facebook post was roundly criticized in comments, and as news of the posting spread, state GOP Chairman Tim Schneider, the handpicked chairman of former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, acknowledged it represented “bigoted rhetoric.”

“The recent social media post coming from the IRCCA does not reflect my values or the Illinois Republican Party’s values,” Schneider said in a statement. “My intense disagreement with the socialist policies and anti-Semitic language of these four congresswoman has absolutely nothing to do with their race or religion. I urge everyone who opposes them to keep the rhetoric focused on policy and ideology.”

Mark Shaw, the Lake County GOP chairman who heads the state county chairmen’s group, said the posting was “not authorized by me” and said he was “sorry if anyone who saw the image was offended by the contents.”

Shaw said the post had been deleted, and he called it an “unfortunate distraction” from the ideological issues involving the four progressive congresswoman.

On Facebook, Shaw called the posting “unauthorized.” Then he explained how the group has a “multistage, approval process for all social media posts on any of its social media properties.” That process, he said, is being “reevaluated.”

Shaw was named to head the county GOP chairmen’s group and given the title of state Republican co-chairman in an attempt to heal the party and forestall a challenge to Schneider following Rauner’s near defeat in his bid for renomination in the 2018 March primary against former state Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton. Ives contended Rauner failed social conservatives by expanding abortion, transgender and immigrant rights.

Rauner went on to lose the general election to Democrat J.B. Pritzker, removing the biggest source of cash and loyalty to the state GOP. Neither Schneider nor Shaw addressed Trump’s original tweets in their statements.

Democratic state Sen. Cristina Castro of Elgin said Sunday she was speaking with the American Muslim Council when she received word of the Facebook posting.

“We were talking about Islamophobia and creating a welcoming community in Illinois and there’s this posting,” Castro said. “What is the Illinois Republican County Chairmen’s Association thinking?” she said. “They have become the party of Trump. They fan the flames. It’s actually really racist rhetoric. You can disagree with people on their viewpoints, but with this, you are continuing to divide and fan the flames.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

ICE has detained this U.S. citizen for more than three weeks

A Dallas-born U.S. citizen has been detained in federal custody for more than three weeks, his lawyer told The Dallas Morning News.

Francisco Erwin Galicia, 18, was traveling with his 17-year-old brother, Marlon Galicia, and a group of friends to a soccer scouting event when they were stopped at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Falfurrias in late June, the Morning News reported. Francisco Galicia had a Texas ID, which can only be obtained with a Social Security number, but his brother, who was born in Mexico and lacked legal status, only had a school ID.

Both brothers were detained and put into CBP custody, according to the newspaper report. After two days in detention, Marlon Galicia signed a voluntary deportation form and is now residing in Reynosa with his grandmother. Francisco Galicia spent three weeks in CBP custody, where he wasn't allowed to use the phone, his mother told the Morning News. He was moved Saturday into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handles the intake of single adults, and has been able to call his mother, the newspaper reported.

"He’s going on a full month of being wrongfully detained," his mother, Sanjuana Galicia, told The Dallas Morning News. "He’s a U.S. citizen and he needs to be released now."

Claudia Galan, Francisco Galicia's lawyer, told The Washington Post she presented CBP officers with the 18-year-old's birth certificate and other documents proving his citizenship but was unable to get him released. The Post reported that the delay could be in part because Francisco's mother, who is not a citizen, took out a U.S. tourist visa in his name while he was still a minor, falsely saying he was born in Mexico. Galan told the newspaper that the paperwork confusion only furthered the agency’s suspicion that Galicia’s U.S. documents were fake.

The lawyer told the Morning News she plans to present the same documents, which include a congratulatory certificate his mother was given by hospital staff when he was born and a high school ID, to ICE officers.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Brian Kemp Caught on Tape Warning His Donors About Black People Voting ... Again

After he was caught on tape for the second time telling supporters how worried he is about black people exercising their right to vote, Brian Kemp might need to change his name from “The Wizard of Voter Suppression,” to the “Self-Snitching King of the South.”

As Georgia’s Republican Candidate for Governor, Kemp would tell anyone willing to listen that he is not in favor of voter suppression. As Secretary of State and the man responsible for elections in Georgia, he would downplay the Associated Press analysis that shows 70 percent of the 53,000 voters he purged with his flawed “exact match” system were black. He would dispute the APM report that a disproportionate number of black voters were among the 107,000 voters purged from rolls using the “use it or lose it” law. Kemp would even dispute the ACLU lawsuit that alleges that Kemp’s office threw out at least 600 absentee ballots, including 1 in every 10 in the state’s most diverse county.

Yet, despite Kemp’s assertions that he is simply trying to prevent voter fraud (which coincidentally, happens about as often as Kanye saying something smart or Donald Trump telling the truth—almost never) audio doesn’t lie.

Rolling Stone has obtained audio of Kemp at a “Georgia Professionals For Kemp,” dinner where Republican supporters donate the extra money they saved on chicken seasoning to Kemp’s gubernatorial campaign. The fundraiser was held at the Blind Pig Parlour Bar, the winner for the most subconsciously racist restaurant name of the year, 1982- 2018, narrowly beating out Cracker Barrel each year.

In the leaked audio, Kemp confesses his concerns about the get-out-the-vote for Stacey Abrams campaign.

And as worried as we were going into the start of early voting was the literally tens of millions of dollars that [the Abrams camp] are putting behind the get-out-the-vote effort to their base. A lot of that was absentee ballot requests. They have just an unprecedented number of that,” he said, “which is something that continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote—which they absolutely can—and mail those ballots in, we gotta have heavy turnout to offset that.

Let’s dissect this for a second.

Here we have the man whose primary job is protecting and promoting the citizens’ right to vote telling people that his political success as a candidate for governor is diametrically opposed to the job he now holds. The man charged with upholding the integrity of Georgia’s ballots saying he is “concerned” about people exercising their right to vote should be an impeachable offense.

And just in case you don’t speak the Georgia dialect of Caucasoid, that “base” to which Kemp repeatedly refers is black people. White voters in Georgia overwhelmingly vote Republican while nearly 90 percent of the state’s black voters are unwavering Democrats.

This is not Kemp’s first time being caught on tape making these kinds of remarks. In 2014, Kemp warned his Republican supporters that Democrats “registering all these minority voters” could cause the GOP to lose the election.

Again, for Republicans like Brian Kemp, cheating is not a last resort.

It’s their entire strategy.

#Resist

[_priapism]

ICE has detained this U.S. citizen for more than three weeks

Not to make light of a serious problem, but I’m reminded of this.



He’s a US Citizen.  File a writ of Habeus Corpus for immediate release in Federal Court.  His lawyer is either stupid or working pro bono.

[psiberzerker]

He’s a US Citizen.  File a writ of Habeus Corpus for immediate release in Federal Court.  His lawyer is either stupid or working pro bono.

Assuming he was granted the privilege of a Lawyer.  You're right, that's the law, but the law is being suspended under the auspices of "Homeland Security."  They don't even have to read you your Miranda Rights (Which includes the right to an attorney) if they can prove that you're black, a Muslim, or hispanic.  

They can execute you, unarmed, on the street, with cameraphones running.  "I feared for my life!"  They can lock up children, without Charges, en mass.

Great legal advice, assuming the law is being applied here.

[_priapism]

He’s a US Citizen.  File a writ of Habeus Corpus for immediate release in Federal Court.  His lawyer is either stupid or working pro bono.

Assuming he was granted the privilege of a Lawyer.  You're right, that's the law, but the law is being suspended under the auspices of "Homeland Security."  They don't even have to read you your Miranda Rights (Which includes the right to an attorney) if they can prove that you're black, a Muslim, or hispanic.  

They can execute you, unarmed, on the street, with cameraphones running.  "I feared for my life!"  They can lock up children, without Charges, en mass.

Great legal advice, assuming the law is being applied here.

Foreign nationals have been denied access to counsel.  Not so for US Citizens, and habeus can only be denied in state of national emergency, which had not been declared (yet).

The problem for this kid is the fraudulent visa application his mother filed, stating he was a citizen of Mexico.  Once you are in the system wrong, it is a world of trouble to get it corrected.  The other problem, alluded to in my meme, is there are only 15 or so Hispanic surnames.  So when you complain “I’m not *that* Juan Garcia,” the authorities usually roll their eyes.

He has a lawyer.  And apparently he was released.  

ICE releases US citizen, 18, wrongfully detained near border (from @AP)  

[psiberzerker]

Not so for US Citizens, and habeus can only be denied in state of national emergency, which had not been declared (yet).

No, but it was attempted.  You know that, Goldfinger tried to make this a National Emergency, so that he had the executive power to break the law, and deny citizen's rights, to a greater degree.

He has a lawyer.  And apparently he was released.

I'm glad.  That's 1, one of the lucky ones.  However, it doesn't get even 1 lawyer for all of the kids being held, with Coyotes in the same cages, without being Charged, in any of the ethnic cleansing camps across this state.  

I'm just saying, the law doesn't really shield citizens, if a badge can be forced through that shield.  The entire point here is to revoke citizenship, by a dictator, who tells Legislators to stop telling us how to run our country (His Country) and go back to the shithole "Mexican" countries they came from.  

Where a serial sex offender sits on the bench, in the highest court in the land.  Another sits in the Oval office, and we don't even know how many are in the Senate, because the Senate oversite Committee (Of Senators) won't investigate it.  The watchers are in charge of watching the watchers.  

Under normal circumstances, citizens are granted certain rights.  This isn't a normal situation.

[psiberzerker]

2 years ago, I joked about Charles Manson being appointed to the Supreme Court.  We got someone worse.

Now, I'm only half joking about Epstein being appointed secretary of Child Protective Services. 

Does that illustrate how broken the government is now?

[_priapism]

He wasn’t an asylum seeker who paid a coyote.  He was a US citizen stopped on the US side of the border at the ICE checkpoint south of Falfurrias.

I agree with everything else you said.

[Lois]

Worse things are coming.  My job is to interview people for benefits.  One question that has always been greyed out previously is the question:

"Are you a naturalized citizen?"

This question is now active.  But of course most Americans have no idea what this means.  They think "naturalized" means something else entirely. LOL!  I've been educating them, but maybe I shouldn't.

So why is this question suddenly active?

[psiberzerker]

So why is this question suddenly active?

Is it xenophobia?  Because I think it's xenophobia.

[_priapism]

So why is this question suddenly active?

Just another way to trip people up.  Get them to lie on the application, then later cancel their benefits, order restitution, and charge them with benefits fraud.  Deportable offense.