Tag Archives: racism

national news

So, just who is the politician who ‘hates’ America?

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I cannot get past Donald Trump’s assertion that four members of Congress who criticize him and his policies “hate” the country they take an oath to protect and defend against foreign enemies.

Yes, the president takes the oath, too.

Who among them, though, has demonstrated faithfulness to their respective oaths?

Trump has gone to rhetorical war against Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. They “hate” the country, Trump said, because of the terrible things they say about the country, its leaders.

But wait a second!

Have any of them sided with a foreign hostile leader in the argument over whether his government attacked our electoral system? Trump has done precisely that, denigrating our professional intelligence agents and analysts who say Russia attacked our system in 2016.

Who among those four lawmakers has said called a murderous tyrant a “smart cookie” and a man with whom he has fallen “in love”? None! Yet the president has said those things about North Korean despot Kim Jong Un, in whom he has placed his trust in a phony pledge to stop developing nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump has exhibited more signs of “hatred” toward the nation by his dismissing of experts’ and by his snuggling up to dictators than anything these lawmakers have said.

The president’s incessant lying insults Americans’ sensibilities at every turn. He accuses one of the lawmakers, Rep. Omar, of “anti-Semitism” and yet he says via Twitter that she is free to return to the country of her birth — which she fled when she was 12 to become a U.S. citizen. The president’s tweets are soaked in racist intent — and yet he has the audacity to level charges of bigotry against other public officeholders?

Donald Trump’s calculated effort to divide the electorate and to appeal only to those who endorse his rhetorical clap-trap is fundamentally more hateful than the criticism he is receiving.

national news

Waiting for that first ‘go back’ insult to surface

If you still do not believe that Donald Trump’s “go back to where you came from” insult to four non-Anglo members of Congress wasn’t racist in nature, I want to share something with you.

Trump told four progressive congresswomen — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib — to go back to their country of origin. Three of them were born in the United States; the fourth, Omar, was born in Somalia and is now a naturalized U.S. citizen.

I have been writing this blog for about a decade and for the past two-plus years I have been savaging Donald Trump fairly relentlessly. I detest this man’s presence in the White House — which is our house. I have said so repeatedly. He is unfit for the office. He disgraces the presidency. He is ignorant of the government. He flouts the law. Trump’s pre-politics behavior is scandalous on its face.

No one who has taken issue with my view of Donald Trump ever has told me to “go back to where you come from.” Why do you suppose that’s the case? Here’s my hunch: I am of European descent.

I am only two generations removed from southern Europe. My father’s parents came from southern Greece; my mother’s parents hailed from the tiny of portion of Turkey that sits in Europe. They didn’t come here from “sh**hole countries.”

Yes, I have taken my share of criticism. I accept that it goes with the territory. No one, though, has had the gall to suggest I should go back to where I came from, which in my case would be to Portland, Ore., a fine, cosmopolitan city in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America. 

Do you get my point? It is that the president’s tweets about the four congresswomen were inherently racist.

And yet … the vast majority of Republican lawmakers chose to vote against a congressional resolution condemning Donald John Trump for the disgraceful manner in which he has treated these congressional critics.

Does this mean Donald Trump is a racist? Well, you be the judge.

national news

Racist tweets reveal chilling side of POTUS

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To critics of this blog who have challenged my assertions — along with those of others — that Donald Trump has posted “racist” tweets regarding four members of Congress, I want to respond with a question.

Would the president ever have dared to say such a thing had the congresswomen been of, say, western European heritage?

You know the answer. He would not have said such a thing. 

The four Democratic members of Congress, in case you’ve been hiding in a cave, are: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.

They are in order, of Puerto Rican, Somali, African-American and Palestinian descent. Three of them were born in the United States; Rep. Omar was born in Somalia, but came here when she was 12 years of age.

They’re all U.S. citizens. They all are duly elected members of the House. They all are women of color.

Donald Trump’s tweets — that said they should return to their countries of origin — are soaked in racism. Do they confirm that Donald Trump is a racist? Well, you know the saying about whether the shoe fits … correct?

The president has just made history once again by dragging his high office into the gutter of racism. Yes, Donald Trump’s Twitter rants are racist to the core!

national news

House condemns Trump’s racist tweets … what happens now?

This is no surprise in the least.

The U.S. House of Representatives, controlled by Democrats, has voted along most party lines to condemn Donald Trump’s racist tweets aimed at four progressive Democratic members of the House.

All the Democrats voted for the resolution. Four Republicans joined them. The rest of the GOP caucus stood with the president. I am sorry to say that my congressman, Van Taylor of Plano, stood with Trump and his idiotic notion that the Democrats — all of whom are U.S. citizens and three of whom were born in the United States — could return to their country of origin.

Oh, the racism element? They’re all women of color. One of them hails from Somalia, but she moved here when she was 12 years of age.

All of the women were duly elected to the House in 2018. They all have left an immediate imprint on the body. Sure, I have grown impatient at a couple of them. Rep. Rashida Tlaib used some profane language about impeaching the president even before she took office; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the most ubiquitous freshman member of the House in my recent memory.

But they do not deserve to be treated with such racist rhetoric by the president of the United States.

My question now is this: What happens with this condemnation?

Trump won’t give a damn about it. His Republican allies in Congress won’t care, either, as they have followed virtually in lockstep with a president who brought zero political history with him to the White House. Yet the GOP remains loyal to this guy? The reasons for that fealty boggle my mind.

I am not going use this blog to declare that Donald Trump is a racist. I am going to endorse the House resolution that declares that his Twitter tirade against four member of Congress was racist to its core. Of that there can be no doubt.

Why do congressional Republicans, with so frighteningly few exceptions, fail to recognize what most of the rest of us understand?

Donald Trump, local news, national news

Trump has become the cause for serious depression

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Donald Trump causes depression. I believe it might be a clinical depression at that.

Here I sit in Flyover Country, Collin County in Texas, a place where Trump still stands tall. I write this blog full time in my retirement years. I spend a lot of time cogitating over what to write, offering commentary on this and that public policy and those who make those policies.

The president’s latest Twitter tirade/torrent/tempest has taken aim at four members of Congress who have been critical of Trump and his policies. He has gone after them with racist rants.

It’s depressing, man. I find myself looking for positive elements.

The Amarillo Sod Poodles, the minor-league baseball team that now plays in the city where I used to live, is one option. I take joy in reading about the big crowds they’re drawing and that ballpark that graces the downtown district.

So, too, is the ongoing renovation of that city’s downtown business/entertainment district.

I like commenting on adventures with out 5-year-old pooch, Toby the Puppy.

I relish talking to you about retirement, travel and spending time with our precious granddaughter, Emma.

High Plains Blogger, though, is built largely around the discussion of public policy and the politics that drive it. I make no apologies for my bias. I know I have it, although my bias is no more pronounced than anyone else’s bias.

My commentary on the president, however, is getting me down. As in down in the dumps. I don’t like feeling this way. I don’t like the feeling of hopelessness that at times creeps into my skull when I think of this guy, which — I regret to acknowledge — is quite often … perhaps too often.

I’ll have to get over it. I’ll work through it.

If only Donald John Trump would stop providing all that grist that gets me down.

International news

Not a ‘small group,’ Mr. President

“I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.” 

So said Donald Trump today in response to a reporter’s question about white nationalism and whether it’s a worldwide problem.

Mr. President, it is not merely a “small group” of people. It is a growing crisis around the world. The New Zealand massacre at the two mosques in Christchurch presents a symptom of what we’re witnessing.

White supremacists are getting bolder in Europe. We see more of it in Latin America. Make no mistake, there has been a serious increase of white nationalist attacks in the United States of America.

I won’t belabor the reason for the increase in this country. We’ve trod down that path before in this forum and elsewhere. I just have to challenge the president’s assertion that it is not a “rising problem,” that the surge in such terror attacks are the work of a “small group of people” with “serious problems.”

Trump is correct to call it a “terrible thing, a terrible thing.”

Yes it is, Mr. President.

The crisis, though, is worse than you would have us believe. As the leader of the United States, the president needs to step up and lead the chorus against the scourge of race- and faith-based hatred.

national news

Rep. Meadows says he’s no racist, however . . .

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There goes that dadgum social media again, producing evidence that people in public life say things they ought to regret.

U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, bristled badly Wednesday when fellow House Oversight and Reform Committee member Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat, criticized him for bringing out an African-American staffer to prove he is “not a racist.” She thought that was a “racist” thing to do.

Meadows, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus wing of the GOP conference in the House, demanded that Tlaib’s comments be “stricken from the record.” Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, who is African-American, defended Meadows, calling him his “best friend.” Tlaib apologized for any incorrect inference that might have been drawn from her comments.

But then . . .

A video showed up. It is of Meadows campaigning for Congress in 2012. He talks about the “wrong direction” the country is headed under President Obama, the nation’s first African-American president.

Then he said it is time to send Obama “home, to Kenya or wherever it is . . . ”

Birtherism, anyone? Hmm?

Well, take a look at the link I am attaching to this post. The video is in there. Yep, it’s Rep. Meadows making the Kenya reference.

Check it out

I’m not going to call Meadows a racist. Just listen. You can make your own decision.

national news

Reparations for slave descendants? No

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Former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro — a candidate for president of the United States — has opened up a wide-ranging debate topic that needs a full airing.

However, the Democratic candidate, has to go a huge distance to persuade me of the need to pay reparations for the descendants of slaves.

I oppose such reparations understanding how it might look to those who favor them. I want to be crystal clear on a couple of key points.

First, slavery is the greatest sin this government has ever committed against Americans. I totally understand the pain it caused those who lived under human bondage. They were treated as property. They were considered to be three-fifths of a human being. They were bought and sold the way people buy and sell, oh, livestock.

They were “emancipated” in 1863, during the height of the Civil War, which was being fought over the issue of slavery. Slaves were set free more than 150 years ago.

Generations of African-Americans have come along since then. Yes, many of them have endured hatred, indignity, violence, outright discrimination on the basis of their race. However, this country has legislated equality for all Americans. I understand full well that those laws haven’t erased bigotry from all Americans’ hearts.

My concern over the issue of reparations deals with the time that has passed and the many generations that have come and gone since those terrible days when we enslaved fellow human beings.

Are there “direct descendants” of slaves? Sure. Have those descendants suffered directly from the enslavement of their great-great-great grandparents? Well, that is a highly debatable point.

It’s the timing of this proposal that Julian Castro has pitched.

Yes, our government has paid reparations to Japanese-Americans over their internment during World War II. But that atrocity occurred not quite 80 years ago. There are former internees still living to this day. Their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have been given some remuneration over what President Roosevelt decreed after the United States entered World War II; FDR feared Japanese-Americans would be more loyal to their ancestors than to the country of their birth, so he rounded ’em up along the Pacific Coast and sent them packing to concentration camps inland.

This idea of paying reparations for those descended from long-deceased slaves, though, gives me serious pause.

Do we stop working toward a “more perfect Union”? Of course not! Such a task involves eradicating bigotry and race-based hatred whenever and wherever we see it.

Reparations? That’s a bridge too far.

entertainment news

Smollett ‘hate crime’ story is inflicting some casualties

The Jussie Smollett Saga is inflicting some serious damage, regardless of how this story concludes.

Smollett is the openly gay African-American actor who said two men attacked him, declaring that he was in “MAGA Country’; Smollett said they assaulted him and hung a noose around his neck. Smollett stars in the Fox TV series “Empire.” The series producers have written Smollett out of the final two episodes of the current season; Smollett’s longer-term future with “Empire” remains unclear.

Then the police started sniffing around and they determined that Smollett orchestrated his own hate crime victimhood. Smollett is now charged with a fourth-degree felony of disorderly conduct.

The damage? It’s going to be inflicted on actual victims of hate crimes. Will actual victims of actual crimes be reluctant now to report them to the police? Will they fear the cops won’t believe them when they allege that someone has attacked them merely because of their race or religious faith or their sexual orientation?

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson seemed genuinely angry the other morning while he announced Smollett’s arrest. He is angry because of the time, money and assorted ancillary resources wasted on an allegedly phony hate crime.

The MAGA reference, of course, deals with Donald Trump, his signature slogan to “Make America Great Again.” To my mind, though, the Trump effect is a minor part of this story.

The bigger part of this saga deals with how the allegations against Smollett — who allegedly paid two brothers to assault him — will impact legitimate hate crime concerns.

Smollett, naturally, denies doing anything wrong. He stands by his initial complaint. The police, though, seem equally certain that he faked the attack.

I just fear what effect this story is going to have on future reports of actual hate crimes. My hope that it won’t inhibit such reporting is waging combat with that fear for the worst.

As for who to believe, I am leaning toward siding with the cops.

national news

Virginia: It’s for political discomfort

They say that “Virginia is for lovers,” which is a slogan the state uses to market itself to the rest of the world.

These days, though, the state is taking on a whole new definition. It’s now a place where the highest echelon of the state’s government is squirming in extreme discomfort.

Gov. Ralph Northam is facing an enormous amount of pressure to resign after a picture surfaced on his medical school yearbook page showing two men, one of them in black face, the other in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Northam’s name is on the page. He at first apologized for the photo, then said he wasn’t either of the men depicted in it and has resisted demands that he quit the governor’s office.

Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, the next in line for the top job in Richmond, has accused of sexual assault by a woman who said he raped her in a hotel room in 2004. Fairfax said the encounter was “consensual,” and has denied doing anything wrong. He’s also issued a type of apology for an act he said he didn’t commit. Go figure.

Attorney General Mark Herring, the next in line for the governor’s office after Fairfax, now reportedly appeared in black face in the 1980s, igniting yet another firestorm in the Virginia statehouse. Herring admitted to wearing black makeup to look like a rapper.

All three of these fellows are facing pressure to quit. They’re all Democrats. The next individual in line to take the top job, if all of them quit — as they likely should do — is the speaker of the Virginia House of Representatives. He’s a Republican.

It goes without saying that the balance of power in a significant “swing state” that has become vital to presidential candidates is teetering on the brink of a major shift.

Does all of this matter to a national audience? You bet it does! We’re talking about race relations and in the age of the #MeToo movement, any reference to sexual assault or harassment lifts it onto the national stage.

Oh . . . brother!

To think that Texas politics has been called a “contact sport.” In Virginia, it has become a “collision sport.”Â