Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts this weekend penned a column identifying a new hate group: the Republican Party. Pitts accused the party of being race baiting for years and now believes that they meet the definition of a hate group with the KKK and neo-Nazis. The column is the latest example of how we no longer recognize good-faith differences in opposing views in our age of rage. It also reflects how hate speech often is defined in highly generalized terms that allow for arbitrary designations, particularly for those who espouse different views than your own.
Pitts used the definition of The Southern Poverty Law Center which has been sued for labeling conservative groups as hate groups. The group has reversed some of its prior declarations of hate groups, but has not changed the loose definition that allowed it to capriciously select such groups or individuals as “extremists”. The Center defines the hate groups as denoting “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
So any group can be declared a hate group if either its beliefs or practices “malign” any group? Yes, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
That made it easy for Pitts who concluded that “For half a century, then, the GOP has taught white voters racial resentment, taught them to prioritize concerns about white prerogative over concerns about shuttered factories, dirty water, lack of health care, foreclosed futures. It did this in code — “Willie Horton,” “tax cuts,” “welfare queen” — which, while obvious to all but the most gullible, still allowed respectable white men and women to maintain fig leaves of deniability.”
With Trump, Pitts asserts that the GOP “fits [the definition] with room to spare.”
Under the SPLC definition, doesn’t Pitts’ column constitute maligning Republicans as a group? It is not an immutable characteristic (though I wonder with a few Republican friends), but such immutability is noted by the DPLC was merely “typical” and not essential.
The column could well have been tongue in cheek but suggesting that an entire political group qualifies as a hate group is hardly a light satire and Pitts seems entirely serious.
Pitts simply declared that “they are now is the party of “Send her back!” — of outrage over Colin Kaepernick kneeling and April Ryan asking questions.” Well, they do have a few other issues that define them. One can disagree with the party’s stance on global warming, immigration, military budgets, or other issues but those issues exist as core differences with the Democratic party. Moreover, the opposition to Kaepernick is shared by a majority of Americans in many polls. I am one of those who disagree with the protest during the anthem. Are we all a hate group because our opposition could be viewed as maligning those NFL players?
I have joined in the criticism of Trump for his tweets (like the highly offensive call for members of Congress to “go back” to where they came from). I have also criticized the GOP for not denouncing Trump on that and many other occasions. However, I do not view the GOP as a hate group or think that it is appropriate to do so. It is an example of how we no longer debate issues but label those with whom we disagree. It is not enough to disagree with the Republican Party. You must declare the entire party to be a hate group. Such arguments only highlight the subjectivity in such definitions — and the danger that such ambiguity holds for free speech.
OT:
“The left complains about high drug prices. President Trump is actually fixing it.
For years, the United States has paid exorbitantly higher prices for prescription drugs than other countries. Both Republicans and Democrats have talked about the skyrocketing cost of medicine for American patients, especially senior citizens.
But our leaders in Washington never did anything about it. Until now.
The Trump Administration’s new plan, announced this morning, will allow companies to import drugs sold in other countries—including Canada—to save Americans money. Manufacturers can now bring the lower-cost versions of drugs they sell abroad to the United States, so long as the FDA verifies the medicines are identical and meet safety standards.
Foreign countries buy drugs at substantially lower prices, meaning American patients subsidize the cost of the expensive drug research and development for the rest of the world. Many times, medicines that cost hundreds of dollars in the U.S. cost as little as a few dollars overseas. Time and time again, our own citizens get the worst deal.
This terrible system doesn’t only hurt patients. It costs our taxpayers billions. For example, one medication that helps prevent blindness costs Medicare more than $1 billion a year. It would cost only $187 million if we paid the prices that other countries pay.
Big Pharma doesn’t want that to change, but “President Trump listened to the American people,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says. “We heard about the pain Americans are feeling at the pharmacy counter, we learned that this was impacting Americans’ health, and we’re taking action.”
Today’s announcement builds on President Trump’s other efforts to make medicine affordable for all Americans. Following the release of the President’s blueprint to lower prescription drug costs last year, December 2018 marked the first time in 46 years that the official government measure of inflation in drug prices dropped.
More help is on the way—“to end foreign freeloading and put American patients first,” Secretary Azar says.”
OT: When the question of how many votes Trump and Hillary got, one needs to figure in the illegal voting which was substantial and what Epstein has to say. I think there is a good chance that without hanky panky Hillary would have lost the popular vote by a significant amount.
This author is writing a new book “How Google and Facebook Ate Your Brain, and How You Can Get a New One.” and likely should be read by about half of the people on the blog.
———–
When I testified before Congress on July 16, I reported some disturbing numbers that flow from the scientific research and monitoring projects I’ve been conducting in recent years.
The numbers included the facts that bias in Google search results likely shifted at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016 with no one knowing and without leaving a paper trail; that Google’s “Go Vote” reminder on Election Day in 2018 gave Democrats at least 800,000 more votes than it gave Republicans; that bias in Google search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes (spread across hundreds of state and regional races) to Democrats in the 2018 election; and that if Big Tech companies all favor the same presidential candidate in 2020, they could conceivably shift 15 million votes to that candidate — again, with no one knowing and without leaving a paper trail.
If numbers like this make you wonder whether next year’s election will be fair, listen to Google’s latest whistleblower. Then worry.
Robert Epstein (@DrREpstein) is senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and a former editor in chief of “Psychology Today.” He holds a PhD in psychology from Harvard University. He is the author of 15 books and more than 300 articles, and is working on a book called “How Google and Facebook Ate Your Brain, and How You Can Get a New One.”
NINE OF THE TEN POOREST STATES ARE REPUBLICAN
The racist nature of Trump’s attack is brought into sharp relief by pictures that are circulating on the Internet showing unsightly, garbage-strewn scenes not from Baltimore but from districts represented by Republican members of Congress. I can’t vouch for these photos, but the statistics don’t lie: Cummings’s district, with a poverty rate of 16.6 percent, is far better off than the districts represented by Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), which has a poverty rate of 29.1 percent; Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-La.), which has a poverty rate of 25.1 percent; or Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.), which has a poverty rate of 23.3 percent. Indeed, of the 10 poorest states (Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Arizona and Georgia), all except New Mexico are overwhelmingly Republican.
It would not be difficult to find unsightly pictures of poverty from any of these states. But, naturally, Trump chooses to focus on poverty in a largely African American district represented by an African American member of Congress. And most Republicans profess to believe, or at least not contest, the president’s disingenuous claims that he is “the least racist person that you have ever met.” In the 165-year history of the Republican Party, this is its most ignoble hour. It has become a cult of personality for a repugnant person.
Edited from: “This Is The Republican Party’s Most Ignoble Hour”
Today’s Washington Post
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For the past three days we’ve seen Trump supporters on this thread condemn Baltimore for having poverty. Like urban blight is some horrendous scandal reflecting directly on (Black) Democrats. Like urban blight is some recent issue never seen before in America.
And for the past three days I’ve been thinking about those states one might call “The Usual Suspects”. The Usual Suspects always turn up in grim statistics regarding health and welfare. Poverty, Infant Mortality, Premature Births, Diabetes, Obesity, Children In Poverty, Illiteracy, etc. The Usual Suspects are generally states from the Old Confederacy. States that used to be controlled by Dixiecrats. But for the past 40 years, these states have been Republican strongholds.
Not one Trump supporter on these threads seemed to be aware of The Usual Suspects in their sanctimonious denunciations of Baltimore. Instead they all pretended like Democrats invented poverty! Like rats were never in American cities until (Black) Democrats gained control. It all illustrates what I have said many times on this blog: ‘Rightwing Media Dumbs People Down’.
Hill, weaponizing America’s problems against opponents by stigmatizing districts or states is a disgusting trend practiced often here by posters like Karen and Oky who claim to love America, but who demonstrate pretty clearly that they hate much of it. That is now being practiced by our president in a vendetta against a congress man who is bearing down on his grifter family who operate from the heart of the WH swamp.
As I have tried to highlight, much of the rural heartland, including Appalachia, but also across the midwest, prairie states, and the deep south, is characterized by boarded up Main Streets, meth labs, and now declining life expectancy. If Trump – or Karen – was interested in America’s problems they would focus equally on these places and in a way addressing solutions, not false claims on how some enemy is responsible for them
So true, Anon. Small towns all over America are dying out for the same reasons that some big cities have died: ‘the decline of heavy industry’. Baltimore has been greatly affected.
Baltimore ranked among America’s Top 10 Cities for 180 years. It now ranks # 30. Baltimore has lost more than a third of its population since 1950. When cities lose that much population it destroys real estate prices. That in turn gives landlords less incentive to ever invest in upkeep. The result can be a downward momentum that’s hard to reverse.
i dont know about Baltimore but the Rust belt decline was well underway by the 70s. it has continued for 40 some years, ratcheting sideways and down, but with a lot of necessary adjustments along the way that are legitimately responsive to national differences in comparative advantage where industrial production is concerned. Some of it is unremediable, some is not. Overall, a structural and global trade issue and probably not fair to blame either party,
but it would be fair to blame both. to some degree, as both embraced free trade dogma, and pushed trade deals that were not good enough for the US. and had unintended consequences that were not sufficiently addressed once in place. such as the deleterious effects NAFTA had on Mexican agriculture which became a huge push factor on illegal immigration. Or, the ongoing horrible pollution perpetrated by Chinese industry which affects them both locall and globally. Lots of “externalities” have gone unmeasured.,
now Trump has pulled Republicans back from the ideological delusions into a more practical approach. we would welcome Democrats to maintain sanity on this topic whatever the electoral outcomes.
you apparently didn’t get the message that tariffs and trade conflict with China have helped the American steel industry not just management but workers too
steel industry is on an upswing, thank God
you had some positive things from the USW union but they shut that down before the midterm. team players ya know
talk to some steel workers, they love trump. i have done so.
that just tells you that the Republican party is appealing to the interests of the working poor better than the Dems are
you can easily figure that out on your own. Bill Clinton knew how to appeal to the working poor pretty well compared to the sad crew they have in charge today
It’s atypical for presidential candidates of note have grown up in the wage-earning strata. Among those who have are John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Tom Harkin, Jesse Jackson, Richard Gephardt, Gary Hart, and Henry Jackson. Just adjacent would be Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, and Alan Keyes.
Obama got a Nobel peace prize for what. At least Mother Theresa had a lifetime of commitment of working for the down trodden. And she also lived with her constituents, not with the rich and famous.
Let me guess, Democrats have evolved on this issue.
https://www.facebook.com/dave.reiser.9/videos/10213329614251019/
Pitts is 100% correct and accurate. The Republican Party as presently constituted is racist, fascist and lawless. Their sole consideration is the accumulation of power by whatever means available to them including rigging elections via gerrymandering and doing all they can to keep racial minorities from voting because they vote for Democrats by and large.
if you want Republican party to become racist, just keep it up. then it will be a most interesting situation, and far less time wasted anymore on these vain debates
The party won’t become racist. They may do or say stupid stuff, but they aren’t doing it out of racist motivations. Democrats appear to believe they’re onto something, but you know they know they’ve miscalculated, because they are in full retreat to the leftist crazyland of socialism. I expect Tulsi Gabbard is going to distance herself from the pack and plant her flag anywhere to the right of all of them.
OoooooKKkkkkkkk……
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAvPErxXsAs6Ze8.jpg:large
https://youtu.be/a8v_0riy4gA
One of the highlights is that PBS aired a documentary devoted to the rat infestation in Baltimore. Danged racist PBS.
What I didn’t like about the entire exchange was that Elijah Cummings yelled at Border Patrol without understanding the problem, or his own contribution to it, while Trump responded along the lines of don’t tell them how to do their job when you suck so bad at yours.
Democrats have withheld funding and blocked security, and then blamed everyone else but themselves. Calling people racists who like to harm children is never going to inspire a friendly, interested response.
How about Congress secure our border, abolish the policies that induce parents to drag little kids through the Desert with organized crime to gain access to our economy, deport those with deportation orders, and fund BP better? Republicans have been afraid to fight the flood of illegal immigration for fear of being labeled racist, but this is unconscionable. Our immigration system is like the Hunger Games.
Maya Cummings, 48, wife of Congressman Elijah Cummings, 68, is being investigated for feeding at the trough that her husband runs in Congress.
Elijah has had multiple children from various women out of wedlock. So much for moral standing.
Top Democrat’s wife may have gained ‘illegal private benefit’ from his committee activities
A charity run by the wife of Rep. Elijah Cummings received millions from special interest groups and corporations that had business before her husband’s committee and could have been used illegally, according to an IRS complaint filed by an ethics watchdog group.
Cummings, 68, a Maryland Democrat, is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. His wife, Maya Rockeymoore, 48, is the chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party and briefly ran in the state’s gubernatorial race last year. The couple married in 2008. Cummings was once heavily in debt — in part due to hefty child support payments to his first wife and two other women he had children with — but his financial situation has improved considerably over the past decade.
Rockeymoore runs two entities, a nonprofit group called the Center for Global Policy Solutions and a for-profit consulting firm called Global Policy Solutions, LLC, whose operations appear to have overlapped, according to the IRS complaint filed by watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center on Monday. The complaint states that the arrangement may have been used to derive “illegal private benefit.”
Since marrying Rockeymoore 11 years ago, Cummings’ financial outlook has improved considerably, according to financial disclosure reports and property records. The couple currently owns two rental properties in Baltimore worth between $250,000 and $500,000 each, and last year, they sold their three-bedroom Victorian row house in northwest Washington, D.C. for $896,000.
Cummings disclosed in his financial reports that his wife earns an unspecified salary from Global Policy Solutions LLC; he did not disclose that she receives a salary from her nonprofit organization, which was $152,000 in 2016, according to the group’s tax records from that year.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/top-democrat-elijah-cummings-wife-may-have-gained-illegal-private-benefit-from-his-committee-activities
“Fact-Checking Trump’s Claim He ‘Spent a Lot of Time’ With 9/11 Responders”
“The president repeated claims about his presence at ground zero during the signing ceremony for legislation to ensure health care funding for emergency workers who rushed to help.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/us/politics/trump-9-11-fact-check.html
“He’s very comfortable propagandizing that event for political purposes,” Mr. O’Brien said. “Even in the face of tragedy, he can’t help but self-promote and self-aggrandize.”
Yep. That’s our Tweeter-in-Chief.
It’s going to be up to moderate Democrats to rein in their party. Conservatives can’t do it. My grandparents were Democrats, and I cannot imagine they would support any of this nonsense nowadays, especially trying to force people to memorize up to 75 different pronouns so as not to upset those struggling with a mental illness. Or grown men competing in women’s sports and wiping them out of the upper echelons.
As long as those politicians get votes when they call conservatives racist, for decades, they will continue to do it. As long as the media gets any viewers airing 100% Hate Trump and Hate Republicans offerings, then they will continue to do it. Clearly, declining ratings isn’t enough impetus to return to unbiased journalism.
The moderates I know just turn off the news. I think they’re afraid to speak out against the extremism in the Democrat party, for fear they will be attacked and their lives ruined. They eat their own.
But it’s up to them to drag their party back from hate and extremism. It’s become too mainstreamed. I wouldn’t blame the party for the wild eyed ravings of some lunatic at the subway. But it’s prime time. It’s in Congress. It’s totally unthinking. Also, the intense rhetoric against law enforcement has got to stop. It has already translated into less policing, and a corresponding increase in murder and other crimes. Their acceptance of anti-police rhetoric may have emboldened those people to dump water on the heads of police arresting someone. This is dangerously close to violence. Already, more people have died since the police pulled back. Death is a pretty grim consequence. I hope that those who engage in this behavior just stop and think for a moment about what they’re doing.
Karen pretends that Democrats – the party who’s presidential candidates have won the vote in 6 of the last 7 races – are dominated by whatever style is in favor at Berkeley. Of course that’s nonsense, and even in a left leaning – with several centrists like Biden, Bennet, and Klobuchar – field of presidential candidates, none of them have voiced support for her examples.
Actually, Democrats have won a majority vote three times since 1966. One of these contests occurred in the midst of a perfect storm for the Democratic Party (and another while Republican organizers were subject to IRS harassment).
There’s a reason people have to act as a truth squad when you speak, JanF. The intramural culture of the Democratic Party is diseased.
A perfect storm for the Republican Party I should say.
TIA you f…king idiot. I said ” ..the party who’s presidential candidates have won the vote in 6 of the last 7 races …” That is a fact.
But it’s up to them to drag their party back from hate and extremism.
No time soon. The Democrats are choking; all they know is hate and extremism.
Leader of Virginia’s largest NAACP chapter resigns after sending racially derogatory text to political rival
The president of Virginia’s largest NAACP chapter is stepping down in the wake of a controversy over a racially derogatory text message he sent to a political rival who disagreed with his approach to leadership.
Kofi Annan, president of the NAACP’s Fairfax County chapter since 2016, announced Sunday night on Facebook that he will resign, citing his disagreement with how the civil rights organization is run.
His decision to resign followed a spat this month with the chapter’s former president, Shirley Ginwright, who Annan attacked in a series of angry text messages after she called his approach toward local police too confrontational.
“It’s bootlickin a– n—as like you that make the black community disrespect the NAACP,” Annan wrote to Ginwright, 70, whose lawyer — state Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City — fired off a cease-and-desist letter ordering Annan to stop contacting her. Annan later apologized for the text.
https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/leader-of-virginia-s-largest-naacp-chapter-resigns-after-sending/article_1fe74913-8a8c-587f-9d6f-36c9ceae090f.html
The NAACP has no serious institutional mission, and they made that perfectly clear when they rebuffed their executive director Bruce Gordon when he attempted to persuade them that practical projects were the way forward and they wanted cr!p like lobbying for ‘hate crimes’ bills. It exists to provide employment for the people it hires. That’s it. Interested parties should send their donor dollars to the Urban League or the United Negro College Fund and tell the NAACP (as well as those other vent pipes, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the King Center) to get stuffed.
In my personal observation over the past few days, Trump utilized the same reasoning used by most politicians, including Democrats. You don’t have a leg to stand on because you fail even worse in the same area. This was in response to a politician screaming about Border Patrol not having enough room and supplies, after he’d denied they needed help and funding, or that there were too many illegal aliens for facilities to hold.
Immediately, the cadre of Democrats who claim that Republicans are racists, and Trump is definitely racist, claimed that his comments about rat infested Baltimore referred to black people and Jews, and that the only reason he said it was because Cummings was black.
Ironically, Democrats used the exact same reasoning to claim that Trump was a hypocrite because Jared Kushner still owned stock in a company that owned low income housing, that has been accused of not making necessary repairs.
Then, it was pointed out that Trump has also accused Nancy Pelosi of not cleaning up the cesspool of San Francisco. Multiple news videos surfaced of the mayor of Baltimore saying she could smell the rats and dead animals, and they should tear it all down. It was unlivable conditions. Complaints of rat infestations have been going on for years, and the MTA union even protested it a few years ago.
Then, the narrative subtly shifted to, well, gee, Trump should clean up Baltimore, conservatives don’t care about the poor, and it’s like a Mad Libs of ad hominem against conservatives.
If they had any decency at all, they would apologize to all of us conservatives for claiming that the comment was racist, or in any way referred to black people.
This is why people walk away from the Democrat party, and why conservatives view those who behave in this way as unstable sheep. They obediently bleat “racist!” Then, when proven wrong, it’s instant amnesia. No apology. No taking responsibility for their actions, or their unjust accusations. It’s on to the next ad hominem with gusto! There are moderate Democrats that I know who don’t even watch the news any more. The hate is a complete turn off.
Well, guess what. JanF, Natacha, YNOT, Fishwings, and Diane don’t have any decency.
“Fact-Checking Trump’s Claim He ‘Spent a Lot of Time’ With 9/11 Responders”
“The president repeated claims about his presence at ground zero during the signing ceremony for legislation to ensure health care funding for emergency workers who rushed to help.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/us/politics/trump-9-11-fact-check.html
“He’s very comfortable propagandizing that event for political purposes,” Mr. O’Brien said. “Even in the face of tragedy, he can’t help but self-promote and self-aggrandize.”
Yep. That’s our Tweeter-in-Chief.
Who doesn’t “have any decency”???
Anonymous, your post was another sad example of the very hatred I was talking about.
Trump signed off on ensuring funding for 9/11 first responders never ran out…yet this article was a foolish hit piece. Trump said he was not a first responder, so why did the article ask a couple of guys if he was a first responder, or if they saw him? The author has no idea if Trump spoke w police and firemen or if he went down there. All of New York came together and helped each other out, grieved together. Why accuse Trump of being any different? He was deeply affected, like most New Yorkers.
I remember vividly watching people jump to their deaths on the news. I will never forget the sound as they hit. I was on the other side of the country, but I saw the footage with my own eyes and heard their violent deaths with my own ears. They were living, breathing, terrified human beings. I was anguished that journalists kept referring on air to “bodies falling.” They weren’t dead! They were faced with but I g to death or jumping. Many tried to aim for awnings in a fruitless attempt to survive leaping off the WTC.
Trump paid to care for the very ill first responders, who sacrificed their health to help in an environment thick with industrial toxins. The fact that Democrats still find something so stupid to attack him for, in that moment, and to assume he didn’t care, proves my point. It’s despicable behavior. For God’s sake, trashing him because you don’t know if a New Yorker spoke with first responders or offered support, after he just signed that bill, is atrocious.
We were ALL New Yorkers that day.
Auto correct made a mess of “burning to death”
Karen, Trump injected himself in a self flattering and false manner – no, he wasn’t “down there too” – way into an event where others died and sacrificed themselves. He’s a pig. That’s a fact.
PS He didn’t “Pay” to help anyone and has been trying to self promote himself or his neighboring building since 9/11 and falsely weaponize it against scape goats – American Muslims – for political reasons.
…”Also unproven: the donations Mr. Trump said he gave to charities involved in the relief effort. In 2016, Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller, said there was no evidence that a $10,000 donation pledge that Mr. Trump made after the attacks had ever been given to a charity called the Twin Towers Fund.
The White House did not respond to a question asking for clarification of Mr. Trump’s involvement at ground zero.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/us/politics/trump-9-11-fact-check.html
“Trump commemorates 9/11 first responders by making it all about him”
“It was incredibly gauche. It was classic Trump.”
By Aaron Rupar@atrupar Jul 29, 2019, 2:20pm EDT
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/29/8934904/trump-9-11-first-responders-event
Classic Karen:
https://jonathanturley.org/2019/07/29/columnist-gop-meets-definition-of-a-hate-group/comment-page-3/#comment-1869340
SMH.
JanF, Natacha, YNOT, Fishwings, and Diane don’t have any decency
Nor does Cummings….30 years !!!!
the Baltimore Sun
Mr. Cummings has not single-handedly solved Baltimore’s racial and class inequities, its injustices, its blight, its epidemics of lead poisoning and asthma, its violence or, indeed, its problems with rats. And he has been in office for a long time, more than 30 years between Congress and the Maryland House of Delegates.
We will agree with President Trump on one thing, though. We wish Mr. Cummings weren’t so focused on investigating the Trump administration
https://www.baltimoresun.com/
Cummings is a federal politician. The disaster that is Baltimore is a consequence of the failures of local politicians assisted by the state government. Cummings could have used his bully pulpit, I suppose. Then again, Baltimore politicians have a flat learning curve, so even if he has an intelligent thought between his ears, it would likely have no effect to give it voice. The political culture of Baltimore is just awful. The place needs to be put in receivership.
Cummings could have used his bully pulpit, I suppose.
Popes, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Saints in the making, etc often have the effect they do because of their bully pulpit. I often tell our local Catholic priests that if they used their one hour on Sundays at Mass, gratis, to shake the city, the trees and mountains would move. Instead we cry in our pews because they have no passion, no cojones or both
Karen, it has been explained to you several times that neither Trump, nor his supporters are conservatives. Conservatives disown Trump, his fiscal irresponsibility and his hateful rhetoric. I’ve suggested to you that you should read George Will’s writings that explain conservatism and why Trump and his supporters do not qualify for this title.
Trump is beating the drum of racism to shore up his base because he loses to multiple Democratic candidates in recent polls, including a Faux News poll. This entire scenario is a variant of the Kellyanne Pivot: Democratic members of Congress go to the Trump concentration camps and observe the deplorable conditions there and they report on them. Of course, Trump lets these conditions exist and persist in an effort to force Democrats to give him a blank check without any oversight, which he will use to build a wall, instead of freeing these people pending hearing on their asylum claims. This way he can blame Democrats for the crisis he created by his “catch and hold” policy. In a classic Kellyanne Pivot, Trump attacks those who criticize these human rights abuses, including Elijah Cummings, insulting him and his entire district, implying that people who live there aren’t human, which is as racist as it gets, and then expanding it to include other cities with non-white and Democratic Congressional representatives. Gullibles like you suck it up.
Slums have existed as long as there have been cities. Members of Congress are not individually responsible for the poverty, mental health problems, poor educational opportunities and substance abuse issues that result in urban decay, and the existence of such problems in no manner should serve as a deterrent to criticizing Trump or pointing out that he is a racist when he pivots away from the true issue: intentionally inflicting suffering on migrants for seeking asylum, which they have a legal right to do. Members of Congress have a responsibility to speak truth to such abuses. Trump’s slums were artificially created, and, as an added bonus, when he is criticized, it gives him a chance to attack members of Congress who aren’t white or who represent Democratic districts. People like you fall for it every time. “Conservative” sounds better than “racist”.
It’s been explained to you several times that no one not paid to listen to you is willing to read more than two sentences from your poison pen, yet you persist.
TIA said: ” It’s been explained to you several times that no one not paid to listen to you is willing to read more than two sentences…, yet you persist.”
So you say. Because you don’t like what Natacha has to say, TIA. Some of us feel the same way about Karen. And you, too.
And “yet you persist.”
TIA has no answer either.
Karen, who’s ‘walking away from the Democratic Party’..??? Democrats won the midterm elections by fairly strong ratios. The so-called ‘Walkaway Movement’ was a bust! And here you are pretending it really happened.
Do you deny the existence #WalkAway movement? Why not listen to some of their testimony to better understand what the turnoff is? Why not read Alan Dershowitz’s articles on the rise of anti-semitism in the Democratic Party? Do you think the attitude would be different if Ilhan Omar was a Republican, and she made such frequent, openly anti-semitic comments? Aren’t you concerned that, if implemented, the Green New Deal would make us a Third World country, people would be prohibited to travel by air, the power grid would collapse, we’d have rolling blackouts when the sun didn’t shine and the wind didn’t blow, food couldn’t be trucked because their are no tractor trailers that run on electric (that I know of), and our economy would collapse? We are depending upon Democrats to right the ship, but if they deny that there are any problems, it’s never going to happen.
I do think that there is a chance that Democrats may win the next election. It is very difficult to compete with the Democratic propaganda machine of the mainstream media, academia, K-12 teachers, Hollywood, Facebook, Twitter, GOOGLE, Youtube, Instagram…Those who view Democratic media never hear opposing viewpoints. They don’t hear anything good that Trump had done, which means they are not hearing balanced news. They are like good little Oktoberists.
It’s very difficult to think for yourself when you hear 24/7 that Republicans are racist, for decades. The fact that people actually believed that Trump was referring to black people when he said Baltimore was rat infested shows that there is very little critical thinking.
A relative is in Germany, and he said that all everyone appears to hear about America in Europe is through CNN, so many think Trump is Satan. This unbalanced coverage affects our geopolitical effectiveness.
Trump often inspires criticism, but it should be fair, and when he does something good, that should be acknowledged.
Trump often inspires criticism, but it should be fair, and when he does something good, that should be acknowledged.
Oh it is being acknowledged alright by Baltimore residents!!!!
The Baltimore Sun is running the following article and the facts of the piece give more credibility to Trump and nill to Cummings and the Dems defending him. Cummings should be forced to resign in disgrace
Not surprisingly the liberal media is attacking this black female resident of Baltimore.
Kimberly Klacik sparked a Trump tweetstorm, raised the ire of Baltimore leaders … and gained 60,000 followers
Baltimore Sun
Jul 30, 2019 | 7:48 AM
Armed with a camera and a Twitter account, Kimberly Klacik sparked a firestorm.
The videos she posted on social media of blight and trash in West Baltimore caught the eye of Fox News and then President Donald Trump, who over the weekend launched a blistering attack against U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, beginning a multiday war of words between the Republican president and the leaders and boosters of deep blue Baltimore.
Klacik — a Middle River resident who is a member of the 6th District Republican Central Committee and cable news commentator ― watched the intense reaction.
“The President saw my work,” she tweeted Saturday. “This just made my day.”
Over the next couple of days — as Trump continued to tweet insults and Baltimore leaders continued to defend ― Klacik’s Twitter followers grew from about 16,000 to close to 76,000. She said she become inundated with media requests and got word that unidentified liberal journalists were planning a “hit piece” on her.
On Monday, she said she wants to make it clear that the public’s attention should be on fixing the problems of West Baltimore, not the president’s tweets.
“Hopefully people understand I never had bad intentions,” Klacik said in an interview. “I never wanted this to become a political mess. I wanted Baltimore officials to see these conditions and to do something about it.”
https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-klacik-trump-20190730-35ucabkhefcxjkgqkwja5lmz6y-story.html
Karen, the Walkaway Movement was a bust. No one ‘walked away’.
And if Trump gets such terrible coverage from the media, that’s his own damned fault. If he could stop tweeting for a week, he might get better coverage.
Karen was just lamenting some posters calling her moral slob of a cult leader a racist, and here she is slurring an entire party – which also happens to be the party most American Jews follow and vote for and several of who’s most powerful leaders are Jews – – as anti-semitic. What a disgusting human being.
Anon provides another example of fraud when he called me an anti-Semite, just for criticizing the Democratic Party. This is exactly what I’m talking about. This has become mainstream. Politicians, academics, teachers, Hollywood all do it. Politicians do not rush to apologize, they do it themselves.
This renders critical words like anti-Semite and racist utterly meaningless. It was also untruthful as I’d just expressed my hope that moderate Democrats would pull the party back from hate and extremism. It appears Anon is rowing with the current of hate.
Of course one can criticize a political party. That tends to be how people determine their own affiliations.
Karen, I got your apology right here, you poor, poor put upon “conservative”.
Conservatives don’t constantly trim their direction toward whatever new low bar Trump has set like Karen better described as a cultist.. “Standards” would be inappropriate as she has none left.
Winning a Pulitzer is like winning a Nobel prize. Unless you are a liberal progressive lefty, you’ll never win one of these things.
If the Nobel doesn’t mean anything, why is Trump so jealous of Barak Obama’s, and why did he announce himself eligible for the prize by the (as we now know) meaningless nuclear agreement with Kim Jong Un?
The truth about Trump is: he’d love nothing more than to have his heavily-awarded home-town paper, the NYT praise him, gush over him and kiss his fat rear. It’s the validation he so desperately craves. The NYT has criticized him and his family for years, rightfully so, and it galls him, so he call them “the failing NYT”. The same is true of other media that don’t kiss up to him. It is truly sad to see such desperate narcissism.
Natacha, Trump thinks he deserves a Nobel prize for his nonexistent accord with North Korea. Never mind that North Korea keeps testing missiles. It’s just a mindless ‘What About?”
Unless you are a liberal progressive lefty, you’ll never win one…
Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta received a Nobel Prize in 1979, one she did not pursue nor wished to appear at the ceremony to receive any accolades. Instead she called attention to abortion and how it was a crime against humanity. Being a devout Catholic she evangelized and essentially stood like a giant in a sea of not so giants. LOL
Mother Teresa – Acceptance Speech
…..the greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child. For if a mother can murder her own child in her womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other? Even in the scripture it is written: Even if mother could forget her child – I will not forget you – I have carved you in the palm of my hand. Even if mother could forget, but today millions of unborn children are being killed. And we say nothing. In the newspapers you read numbers of this one and that one being killed, this being destroyed, but nobody speaks of the millions of little ones who have been conceived to the same life as you and I, to the life of God, and we say nothing, we allow it. To me the nations who have legalized abortion, they are the poorest nations. They are afraid of the little one, they are afraid of the unborn child, and the child must die because they don’t want to feed one more child, to educate one more child, the child must die.
And here I ask you, in the name of these little ones, for it was that unborn child that recognized the presence of Jesus when Mary came to visit Elizabeth, her cousin. As we read in the gospel, the moment Mary came into the house, the little one in the womb of his mother, lift with joy, recognized the Prince of Peace. And so today, let us here make a strong resolution, we are going to save every little child, every unborn child, give them a chance to be born. And what we are doing, we are fighting abortion by adoption, and the good God has blessed the work so beautifully that we have saved thousands of children, and thousands of children have found a home where they are loved, they are wanted, they are cared. We have brought so much joy in the homes that there was not a child, and so today, I ask His Majesties here before you all who come from different countries, let us all pray that we have the courage to stand by the unborn child, and give the child an opportunity to love and to be loved, and I think with God’s grace we will be able to bring peace in the world.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1979/teresa/26200-mother-teresa-acceptance-speech-1979/
Oh, now I get it. Unless you’re a Democrat, you are a racist. Yah, that’s it.
This what started it.
When Chairman Cummings stopped asking questions & began grandstanding & yelling at the acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan.
Cummings continued his rant stating, “’We are the ones that can go anywhere in the world and save people”
Cummings never visited any US Border facilities & now includes anywhere in the “world” except Baltimore.
Jerry, with all the problems at the border, why do we only have an ‘Acting’ Homeland Security Secretary? Shouldn’t we have a confirmed professional in that position?
And ‘why’ are children sitting around in filthy clothes lacking basic hygiene? Cummings is not exaggerating. Filthy young children were quite visible during a recent visit by a congressional delegation at a border detention center.
Donald Trump should be concerned about conditions at these centers. Instead Trump attacks Cummings and the people of Baltimore. Is that presidential leadership..??
why do we only have an ‘Acting’ Homeland Security Secretary? Shouldn’t we have a confirmed professional in that position?
Have the professionals working for the department of Homeland Security walked off the job until their acting Secretary stops acting and does the job for real?
And ‘why’ are children sitting around in filthy clothes lacking basic hygiene? Cummings is not exaggerating.
No, grandstanding would be more accurate. Perhaps Cummings would care to do a compare/contrast on the conditions for these children/families at the border with the conditions for the children/families in his district.
Instead Trump attacks Cummings and the people of Baltimore. Is that presidential leadership..??
He didn’t attack the people of Baltimore. He went after Cummings because it’s his district and he went after the so called leadership in that district for doing nothing to improve the deplorable conditions their conditions are living in. That’s Leadership. The fact it came from the president, well that’s presidential leadership.
conditions their constituents…
He went after Cummings because it’s his district and he went after the so called leadership in that district for doing nothing to improve the deplorable conditions their conditions are living in.
Trump is strategically bringing attention to a city that has been in the news for years for all of the wrong reasons. I believe the Baltimore mayor recently was forced to resign for being an opportunist and stealing money from taxpayers by promoting “children’s” books she wrote, supposedly.
Like Pelosi having to defend AOC and Ilhan Omar, both who are in the news for all of the wrong reasons, now Cummings, fully entrenched in Congress, is having to defend a district that is a “third world country” according to Socialist Bernie Sanders. Thus Trump is taking advantage of the news to his favor: Cummings is a Legislator for a failed district while he lives high on the hog. Talk about bad optics.
Brilliant actually.
Considering Pelosi, Ilhan Omar and others are vacationing at taxpayers expense in Ghana, this is a score for Trump
It is impressive how easily Trump will get the Democrats to defend the indefensible. The Democrats own words will be playing on a loop as the committee to reelect.
they are saying one thing to the news cameras to get their pretty faces on TV, media darling wh8res that they are However, they are gouging each others eyes and are in complete free fall. Pandemonium would be an appropriate descriptor.
Might this be the end of the Democrat Party? Will we have Trump to thank after all?
‘Monday Night Massacre at DCCC’: Dems choke on own identity politics, mutiny over lack of diversity
With the 2020 election just 15 months away, Democrats in Washington, D.C., appear to be in a state of chaos, as seen in a mass departure Monday night at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The first to go was Allison Jaslow, executive director of the DCCC. A top aide to DCCC chairwoman Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., Jaslow, an Iraq war veteran, turned to Twitter to announce her abrupt departure following a hastily planned meeting earlier in the day.
My statement on stepping down from my post at the @dccc today: pic.twitter.com/Fft4rK9DtK
— Allison Jaslow (@jaslow) July 29, 2019
Before the day was done, five others followed suit, to include communications director Jared Smith, political director Molly Ritner, deputy executive director Nick Pancrazio, top communications aide Melissa Miller, and the committee’s diversity director Van Ornelas, according to The Hill.
The motivating factor is reportedly a lack of diversity on the committee tasked with electing Democrats.
Lawmakers in the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus were reportedly not happy with Bustos for excluding minorities from key positions.
Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Filemon Vela, both Democrats from Texas, said Sunday in a statement that the DCCC was in “complete chaos.”
National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar shared his take on what led the mass exit.
“Identity politics: This whole uproar began after an African-American staffer was revealed to have posted past derogatory comments about Mexicans on her social media,” he tweeted.
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) July 29, 2019
“It’s the Monday Night Massacre at DCCC,” one lawmaker told The Hill. “Cheri campaigned as all things to all people, telling blue dogs one thing, telling progressives another. So inevitably once in office she would disappoint them.”
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/07/30/monday-night-massacre-at-dccc-dems-choke-on-own-identity-politics-mutiny-over-lack-of-diversity-779760
Might this be the end of the Democrat Party?
Nah. There will always be Democrats and Republicans. We may not recognize the Democrats right now, but give the Republicans time and they will make Democrats recognizable once again. They can’t help themselves.
Olly, here you make just making mindless generalizations. Cummings’ district actually ranks above average in Medium Household income, Yet you just arbitrarily assert that children in Cummings districts are as filthy as children detained at the border. The idea seems to be that detained children should be kept in filth until Cummings ‘cleans up his district’. ..That’s how dumb it gets..!!
LOL! Yeah, his district is a peach. Go back to sleep.
‘Neighborhoods are crying out’: Baltimore has highest homicide rate of U.S. big cities
The Baltimore Sun
Baltimore had the worst homicide rate among the nation’s 50 largest cities last year and the second-highest violent crime rate overall, according to new data from the FBI.
The grim news was the latest reminder of the sustained cycle of violence that has gripped the city since 2015, when the annual number of homicides soared above 300 for three consecutive years after the unrest that followed Freddie Gray’s death from injuries suffered in police custody.
There were 342 homicides in Baltimore last year, 56 per 100,000 people who live in the city. That’s the highest per capita in the city’s history and, according to the FBI report Monday, the highest rate of any American city with more than 500,000 people. It’s also significantly higher than the rate in other big cities.
“Sometimes it does seem, I won’t say hopeless, but there are neighborhoods that are crying out,” said Councilman John Bullock, whose West and Southwest Baltimore district has seen some of the worst violence.
Mayor Catherine Pugh said Tuesday that she has been attempting to curb the killings by attacking the root causes of poverty and lack of opportunity that fuel the violent drug trade.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-fbi-data-20180924-story.html
Olly, it’s a gerrymandered district. Half of it is suburbs. Trump didn’t bother to look at the district (on a map) before sending his mindless tweet. And it appears that ‘you’ didn’t bother looking either.
And obviously buffoonish Estovir didn’t bother looking at the district either. Whatever Trump says!
That’s a great political strategy.
Yeah, my district may be in Baltimore, but that’s not my problem.
Please, run with that.
This Baltimore rat was caught on camera during a live broadcast within Elijah Cummings Congressional district.
Gotta love it
Rat Photo bombs FOX45 live shot
BALTIMORE (WBFF) – A rat was seen running through a FOX45 reporter’s live shot during a story on President Trump’s tweet Baltimore is rat-infested.
Maxine Streicher was in west Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood today to report on conditions.
The neighborhood is part of U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Congressional District 7.
https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/rat-photo-bombs-fox45-live-shot
I cannot fathom how bad it has to be to have that type of infestation. I spent 20 years in the Navy and we used rat guards on the mooring lines. From the Persian Gulf, throughout ports in the IO, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, Mexico and the entire US Pacific coast. I cannot recall one time ever seeing a rat on the pier or trying to get up the lines.
You completely missed the point, Hill. On purpose?
Hill, you might want to comment on China President Xi Jinping. If you don’t know, should you know?
Go to the source. Gangs of Guatemala produce children of violence
This video was produced by CGTN, the Chinese government.
Hill – Democrats resist funding Border Patrol, and then complain when they run out of soap. They claimed there was no crisis, ignoring Border Patrol officers’ claims that they are being over run by waves of illegal immigrants swamping them en masse, and then express outrage at overcrowding. These are people who are sick and dirty, who have paid organized crime to smuggle them across hot, inhospitable deserts.
This is partly of their own doing.
What do they propose? They won’t fund BP. So, what? Just throw open the borders to everyone until our country collapses?
It really is too bad that Democrats keep luring people from around the world to drag their kids through dangerous, remote deserts. It’s terrible that Democrats fight with everything they have against securing our border, and deporting those who have had their day in court.
Karen: you’ve been watching Faux again. Under Barak Obama, border crossings were at a 50-year low. Those captured were released, pending a hearing on their asylum application. Then, we have an irresponsible knee-jerk narcissist take over the White House who keeps threatening to close the border altogether. The coyotes tell those wanting to migrate that it’s “now or never”, so they come. Obama did not incarcerate people seeking asylum, but Trump decided, to please people like you, to “catch and hold”. What has that policy accomplished? Has it stopped them from coming? There were no funds appropriated for the care of these people, no plans on how to provide for even the basic needs for this huge increase in migrants, which he caused, but that hasn’t stopped him. That is not leadership. Now, he gets to claim that it’s the fault of Democrats that these people are held in overcrowded facilities without the chance to bathe, brush their teeth, wear clean clothes or even have a place to lie down because they won’t give him a blank check without oversight as to how our taxpayer money is being used. Democrats were overwhelmingly elected to the House in 2018 as a rejection of Trump and his policies. Their constituents do not support the Trump concentration camps.
You want to end this mess? Arrest, en masse, the CEOs of hotels, restaurants, nonunion construction, landscaping, nanny and housekeeping services and others who hire illegals. So long as there are jobs, they’ll never stop coming here. For decades, there were work permits for seasonal agricultural work. The migrants worked during the growing and harvesting seasons, and then went home. They lived in dormitory facilities at the farms that hired them. Now, they work at all low-skill jobs not requiring fluency in English all over this country and they never leave unless they get deported. It has gotten out of control, and Republicans are the cause.
Republicans love illegal immigration because it helps the bottom line: illegals don’t seek overtime pay, unemployment or workers comp benefits, they don’t file sexual harassment or civil rights claims, either, and don’t demand fringe benefits. Republicans are the root cause of the problem. Until they own the problem and agree to punish those who hire illegals, they’ll keep coming in droves. The day will come when we taxpayers will be forced to pay reparations for the intentional emotional abuse Trump inflicted on the children of these migrants who are totally innocent in this mess. Of course, he’ll be long gone by then.
Under Barak Obama, border crossings were at a 50-year low.
Thanks for the a** pull. It’s been an education.
Everything Karen accuses the democrats of in this post is a lie.The object of her cult is the president and in charge of border security. His leadership – in this case, obvious lack of it – is necessary for both enforcement and in procuring new funding, if that is needed. Congress includes 535 individuals under 2 parties. It does not execute orders, define goals, or marshal resources. It is a resource.
he’s a crazy old fool!
The Southern Poverty Law Center is itself a hate group. Its bias, deficiencies, and misrepresentations have been amply documented in the media in recent years.
Growing up in a Baltimore where criminals reign supreme
It was a dark night two years ago, and I had to head out to a prayer service just a mile away from my home outside northwest Baltimore City. The carjackings and break-ins had spread to the suburbs, and the security situation was worse than at any time in my entire life, including during the Freddie Gray riots in 2015 and during the crime wave of the early 1990s. My neighbors were scared to even take their trash to the curb at night, although there were plenty of muggings and carjackings occurring during broad daylight too. To carry my gun or not to carry – that was the question on my mind this particular night.
You see, growing up just outside northwest Baltimore City (the county is also called Baltimore) my entire life, I developed a good sense of caution mixed with a good sense of geography. I always had negative feelings associated with the direction “south,” because the further south we’d travel from home, the worse the potholes would be to maneuver and the more likely you’d get mugged … or worse. Perhaps it was ingrained in me from the day I was born in the hospital in the northwest, where there are shootings every night behind the Saini Hospital campus.
But that’s the thing about Baltimore City, or as we call it, “the City.” The criminals could carry guns all they want and rack up more homicides per capita than in any other city. Yet law-abiding citizens could never carry guns to protect themselves. The police would never be there for us if we were in a pickle, but boy would they clamp down on us if we were caught “illegally” carrying in Maryland.
This was the thought that weighed on me that summer night in 2017. For the first time in my life, I considered carrying my full-size H&K VP9 just to go out to the prayer service, which was a few blocks into the City’s northwest area. It would only be for a half-hour, and I felt I needed it just to get to my car in front of my own home in a suburb! Yet, like most law-abiding citizens, even though I knew that Maryland was violating the most inviolable natural right enshrined even before the Bill of Rights, I decided to abide by the state’s lawless law and not carry.
I knew how strict they were. You see, the police will never be there for you if you are violently attacked in one of the very common beatings that take place in the city and often wind up on Drudge’s website. Even after the fact, the “youths” who have accrued multiple felonies within a few months won’t serve a day in prison because … “criminal justice reform!” But let me tell you, if you are a peaceful citizen seeking nothing more than self-defense via a natural right enshrined in the Bill of Rights, those cops will somehow be there to catch you. And you won’t be a beneficiary of “criminal justice reform, either.
As a result of the criminalization of basic police work since 2015, Baltimore police have retreated from the procedures and policies that have resulted in the two-decades decline in crime in most other large metro areas. Crime in Baltimore has skyrocketed to the point that the city set a new record for homicides with the most homicides per capita of any city in the country last year. While most of the murders have been downtown, the robberies and muggings have spilled over into the suburbs. My neighborhood is, on and off, in the worst security predicament I’ve seen in my lifetime.
With the police on the sidelines, certainly it is up to the people to protect themselves, right? Well, the leftist deviants thought of everything. While they let criminals out of jail and prosecute police officers for doing their jobs, they seriously infringe upon the gun rights of law-abiding citizens. Very few people are allowed to carry guns in Maryland, and many individuals who want to become first-time gun owners must go through a long process lasting several months to even purchase a single firearm for home defense.
Baltimore has a higher homicide rate than Central America! Baltimore’s homicide rate in 2017 was 56 per 100,000 people. That tops the 51 per 100,000 rate in El Salvador and dwarfs the rates of 40 and 22.4 in Honduras and Guatemala respectively. Incidentally, the homicide rates are plummeting in those countries while migration skyrockets.
And guess what? The homicides spiked right after the state passed a strict gun control law regulating purchase of firearms and banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
Thus, in many ways the Twitter spat between President Trump and one of Baltimore’s congressmen, Rep. Elijah Cummings, is the perfect issue over which to frame the future of the country. Do we want a country like Baltimore? A country that will be a sanctuary for illegal aliens, drugs, cartels, and gangs, weak on crime, and tough on self-defense?
The primary purpose of a government is to protect the liberties of its citizenry. Citizens have no liberty without security because they are restricted from movement. Growing up in the Baltimore area, we always had to work around that restriction of movement and ascertain the “no-go areas” within the city. Do we want all of America to be that way, and do we now want to import the criminals of other countries as well? If the president frames his campaign message in those terms and actually chooses policies that will drive the wedge even farther between Baltimore and safety, security, and sovereignty, he will easily win a second term.
The media class is feigning outrage over Trump referring to west Baltimore as a “rat-infested” area. The Baltimore Sun, the house organ for the local Democrats who helped turn this once proud city of one million people into a failing cesspool with fewer than 600,000, retorted to the president, “Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.” Well, as a lifelong resident of the area, I’d agree with that sentiment, but with one caveat: It’s better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to have violent criminals and gangs protected by vermin politicians with no ability to protect against them. At least rats usually don’t kill and aren’t on drugs, so they run away when you try to defend yourself. __Daniel Horowitz
The link to Allan’s opinion piece:
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/growing-baltimore-criminals-reign-supreme/
CUMMINGS’ DISTRICT IS MIX OF URBAN AND SUBURBAN
WHY THEN IS TRUMP CALLING IT “RAT INFESTED”..??
President Trump targeted Maryland’s 7th Congressional District as among America’s worst places. But census figures show the Baltimore-based district is actually in the upper half of the nation in a key economic measure.
“Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. No human being would want to live there,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning, one of several jabs at House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat whose Baltimore district takes in a bit over half the city of Baltimore, plus most of suburban Howard County.
Yet out of 435 House districts, the median household income in the 7th is in the upper half nationally. At $60,929, it ranks 242, per census data.
The district is about 60% African American and about 35% white, with Asian Americans and others making up the rest.
To be sure, the district has its rough areas, including neighborhoods portrayed in HBO’s The Wire, a 2002-08 series about the narcotics scene in Baltimore seen through the eyes of law enforcers as well as the drug dealers and users. And FBI statistics for 2017 placed Baltimore’s homicide rate well above that of any other large American metropolis.
Yet to the west, Columbia, Maryland, in 2018 was named the safest city to live in America by a personal finance company. A study by Wallet Hub compared more than 180 cities across 39 key indicators of safety, including things such as assaults per capita, unemployment, and road quality.
Edited from: “Maryland District Trump Hate-Tweeted A Mix Of ‘The Wire’ And Upscale Suburbia”
The Washington Examiner, 7/27/19
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
NOTE: The Washington Examiner is a conservative paper.
Regarding Above:
It’s odd that Trump refers to this gerrymandered district as “rat infested” when its medium income ranks above the national average. Does Trump call it ‘rat infested’ because the districts includes urban sections of Baltimore? Or is it because Cummings is Black and the district’s population is 60% Black?
And what are the optics when Trump, a man born to great wealth, refers to urban cores as ‘rat infested’? This comes less than two weeks after Trump called on a Somali-American congresswoman to “Go back to where she came from”. One recalls that Trump once labeled a group of developing nations as “s**thole countries”.
Trump’s father, of course, was one of New York’s richest citizens. Trump grew up in Jamaica Bay, the most affluent section of New York’s Queens borough. It is safe to guess that Trump never had to contend with the challenges of poverty. How fortunate for him. But how does it look when Trump is so dismissive of poverty?
Therefore Republicans need not wonder why their party is thought of as a ‘hate group’. Republican policies are generally punitive to the poor.
Voter I.D. Laws, Drug Testing For Public Benefits, Opposition To Minimum Wage Hikes, Right To Work Laws, Schemes To Privatize Medicare & Social Security, Opposition To Obamacare, Lack Of Funding For Infrastructure, The Defunding of Planned Parenthood and Opposition To Legalized Marijuana are all Republican policies punitive to the poor. Blacks and Hispanic have the most to lose from the implementation of these policies.
So when Republicans cry, “No, we’re not racist!”, it sounds increasingly disingenuous. When most of your policies are punitive to the poor, one has to wonder why.
Below is Trump’s actual Tweet.
“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….”
Without the misrepresentation and cherry picking it says something quite different than you claim.
It asks “the squad” to see if they can actually fix someplace that is actually broken, before breaking someplace that is pretty good.
It inarguably is NOT a demand to leave – Trump pointedly invites them to return to the US after they have learned how to fix a truly broken country.
Absolutely the tweet is mean and nasty -but not because it is racist. But because we all know quite well that none of the squad is capable of fixing dysfunctions at the local dog pound much less countries that are broken.
That is the mean part, and it is especially mean because it is true.
Trump did NOT say – if you hate america so much, why don’t you go back where you came from.
But maybe he should have.
Frankly that applies to most of the democratic party right now.
We can disagree, we can fight vicously over policy. We can press hard to fix whatever we things is wrong with the country.
But the left has gone beyond that. It is seeking to criminalize and destroy anyone who disagrees.
It is not merely seeking to change the country, but they quite litterally hate this country – and are open about it.
They hate nearly everything about it. They wish to entirely obliterate the past.
There is virtually nothing about american they are proud of.
Put simply – we can disagree with what is wrong, But if you really and truly hate the country as badly as the left and the media do – why are you here ?
If you wish to remake the US in the image of France or Sweden – France and Sweden actually exist.
If you do not recognize any way in which the US is superior – Why are you here ?
I am not asking you to leave, I am asking you why you actually want to stay in a place you clearly loath so much ?
Hill, before you wonder why Trump would refer to Baltimore as “rat infested”, you should look into it further.
https://youtu.be/RKTN35iUQ0g (News segment 4 years ago about massive rat infestation in Baltimore. One family discusses how they all sleep in one bed due to the rats)
https://youtu.be/OiTv_M8pD-A (MTA workers union protesting massive rat infestation in subway)
(https://youtu.be/71ZXEAc6pWs) Baltimore rat infestation. Major could smell the dead rats and said they should just tear it all down.
(https://youtu.be/YoiP94x2KvA) during this video you can hear them talking about the smell of dead animals
I am gobsmacked that when you complain about a rat infestation, Democrats in the media have claimed they were talking about black people, and on the radio, they said it referred to Jews. No, idiots. It refers to actual rats.
You love to try to sound sophisticated, don’t you, Karen: “gobsmacked”? Really? Are you pretending to be a Brit? How about the time you tried to mimic Tia Carrera’s character Juno Skinner in “True Lies” by using the line: “Pity”? I see you for what you are.
LOL! Obviously you see her as sophisticated. Your attempt to belittle her proves you have no idea what to do with her. And you won’t. Pity.
OLLY — Mr. I-have-trouble-connecting-the-dots — said to Natacha @ July 30, 2019 at 4:35 PM:
“…Obviously you see her [Karen] as sophisticated. Your attempt to belittle her proves you have no idea what to do with her.”
____
No. Natacha said that Karen tries “to sound sophisticated” — not that she believes that Karen IS sophisticated. And your second statement is just nonsense. If one doesn’t want to be ridiculed, then one shouldn’t say ridiculous things.
“Gobsmacked” is not a sophisticated word, Natacha.
Natacha says: July 30, 2019 at 4:35 PM
You love to try to sound sophisticated, don’t you, Karen: “gobsmacked”? Really? Are you pretending to be a Brit? How about the time you tried to mimic Tia Carrera’s character Juno Skinner in “True Lies” by using the line: “Pity”? I see you for what you are.
___
I rolled my eyes when I saw that, as well, Natacha, and almost commented. It’s another example of Karen being Karen. AFAIK, she isn’t “a Brit.” One has to laugh.
(https://youtu.be/l6X-ZE8FB_w) Bernie Sanders, 2015, said Baltimore looked like a Third World Country.
So, when Democrats cry that Republicans are racist, it does indeed sound increasingly disingenuous.
Stop falsely accusing political opponents of being racist, Nazi, etc for political gain. These words need to have a meaning.
Karen, here you are, on Jonathan Turley’s blog, demonizing poverty. That’s how it sounds. Like you’re just shocked that poverty exists in an American city. And you blame (Black Democrats). Is that Republican Urban Policy? ‘Blame Black Democrats for rat infested cities’?
At no time in the past 40 years have Republicans made a real effort to reach urban voters. That’s not a Republican faction. Republicans appeal to Whites in small towns and outer suburbs. The party chose to go that route about 40 years ago.
Therefore to blame Democrats for the centuries-old problem of rat infestations, without any urban policy, is just negative and childish. Where’s your solution, Trump? What are you doing for cities?
Trump should have an urban policy. He was an urban developer for most of his career. Logically urban policy should be Trump’s one field of expertise. But he’s oddly indifferent. Trump hates big cities because they won’t vote for him.
“Karen, here you are, on Jonathan Turley’s blog, demonizing poverty.” ( Hill to Karen)
Some of us just tune her out.
I am Hill’s sycophant.
We know who you are. (To Anonymous @ 2:09)
We know that Anonymous with the gray ink blot symbol is either Alan or Estovir. Like they don’t comment enough!
Alan and Estovir live in mortal fear that random readers might find liberal comments less radical than rightwing media portrays.
Anonymous with the gray inkblot
Good morning, cupcake.
I went to bed at 9 pm and was asleep by 9:30 pm with my wife turning off the lights shortly thereafter. I am encouraged I live in your head in that it tells me: post more Catholic content to convert you!
One keystroke at a time. God bless you Peter Shill!
😉
live in mortal fear
Ignore the color of inkblots. Rorschach tests are not diagnostic
😜
And here you want to demonstrate that you ‘do’, in fact, change handles.
We know what you are.
Hill’s sycophant.
Oh, okay. So Cummings is off the hook, and now Baltimore’s decades-old problems are Trump’s fault.
You people are bat-sh*t crazy. There’s no other explanation for the way you think.
Hill:
“Karen, here you are, on Jonathan Turley’s blog, demonizing poverty.” Where did I demonize poverty? Are you defending the rat infested conditions in which the poor live in Baltimore? Bernie Sanders called parts of Baltimore like a Third World country. Was he demonizing poverty?
Is this the new thing? Can no one complain, for example, about the garbage, human feces, dirty needles, and vomit with all the homelessness in Los Angeles, or else we’ll be accused of demonizing the homeless?
You do not libel garbage when you say it stinks.
“Therefore to blame Democrats for the centuries-old problem of rat infestations.” Infrastructure is one of government’s core purviews. When there is an infestation, or non hygienic conditions, the United States of America in the year 2019 should have some means of combatting it. I blame Democrats for chasing away jobs and creating blight. Democrats also attacked the police in Baltimore. There is no more proactive policing, and the result is skyrocketing murder rates and general crime. Police should just stay in their cars. If they do their jobs, they will be pilloried internationally if the perp was black.
Do you admit, then, that Baltimore literally has a rat infestation, and that Trump was not referring to black people or Jews? (I could not believe my ears, but when I tuned to a Left leaning radio program I heard them say that Jewish people were referred to as an infestation just like Trump.) Trump was referring to actual rats.
The criticism is, how can you tell me how to clean up a facility, when you don’t know how to clean up your own city?
Trump doesn’t hate big cities. He built the ice skating rink in New York City.
Democratic policies often lead to blight and the exodus of employers. Then, Democrats need the feds to bail them out. That’s fine, as long as they don’t continue the policies that required massive taxpayer money.
No irony intended by Karen, the foremost purveyor here of accusations of anti-semitism, not to mention being supporters of slavery. Rarely do we see a human type so many words with so little self awareness.
Perhaps Karen should reflect on the difference between addressing problems in America – like the meth and opioid infested rural counties of the heartland where most people left already – and weaponizing those problems against political opponents, especially when the inhabitants are also part of the accusers constituency. Does Karen really not understand this – that’s forgivable – or does she just run here and type after watching the latest Hannity?
Who GAF.
Anon, for you to write about the difference between addressing and weaponizing problems against political opponents, you must have a complete and total lack of self awareness.
Karen misses the fact that I have never attacked a city state or region of America – except once in a sarcastic response to Oky – while she does it regularly. Like her cult leader, she doesn’t love America or GAF about Baltimore. Those are props for false narratives pretending concern and bashing opponents.
Anon1,
Stop pretending most people don’t just see right through you & your multi-spectrum Autism disorder
Relax, just take a few more govt approved vaccines, you may be better.
BTW: What kind of Crazy Pills do they have on you for your retardation?
Yes,we should stop calling out our president who repeatedly attacks minority politicians – and now minority districts – so Karen can have more space to accuse Jews of anti-semitism.
“Yes,we should stop calling out our president who repeatedly attacks minority politicians ….”
*****************************
He attacks them for their corruption and ineptitude not their race. It’s like saying he attacks them because they’re bald. You’re becoming Pinnocci-anon1.
C’mon mespo. Trump is after Cummings for his subpoenas for Ivanka and Jared and because he knows his base is lily white, and some of it racist. He could care less about Baltimore, or if he did, he’s the f..king president. Do something!
Should be “couldn’t care less” – I hate the common malapropism “could care less” but somehow typed it.
“….But the attacks have also highlighted Cummings’ effectiveness as chairman of the House committee with the broadest scope to investigate the Trump Administration — even in the wake of persistent roadblocks from the very Administration he is trying to investigate.
As chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Cummings has the widest jurisdiction when it comes to probing the President and his Administration. And even with the Trump Administration’s repeated defiance of subpoenas and document requests, he’s managed to achieve some results. Most significantly, some of his victories involve two the President’s red lines — his finances and his children. And in an era of partisanship, he’s also managed to conduct himself while retaining some semblance of respect across the aisle.
“We know that Trump doesn’t like oversight. Elijah Cummings is not taking no for an answer,” said Molly Claflin, Chief Oversight Counsel at American Oversight, a non-partisan and anti-corruption watchdog group. “Now that [former Special Counsel] Mueller has concluded his report Representative Cummings is probably the single most dangerous person to Trump … I think Trump recognizes that.”…”
https://time.com/5637924/elijah-cummings-trump-oversight/
Noting that Trump is over generalizing, accomplishes very little.
Many of Trump’s remarks are outrageous.
The remarks of the media and democrats are also outrageous.
Rep. Cummings is among the more outrageous politicians and is atleast as offensive as Trump.
There is a gigantic gulf between – I do not like this. Or I have been insulted, and
racism of hate speech.
If actual hate speech were a crime, most of the left would be in jail.