Tag Archives: birtherism

national news

QAnon needs to um … go!

(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

I have to make an admission.

This kook fringe called “QAnon” had gotten past me forl far too long. I didn’t know much about it. Then I learned more than I ever wanted to know.

These morons are loons, freaks, conspiracy nut jobs. They allege all kinds of lunacy, such as Democrats killing and eating children, that demons are invading the United States. They adhere to the usual lunacy, such as the birther crap involving Barack Obama and now, Kamala Harris.

QAnon espouses death to all Muslims.

But get a load of this: Donald Trump won’t disavow QAnon. He makes some goofball statement about it being “out there,” and that he doesn’t know anything about it, so he won’t pass judgment. “I’ve heard these are people that love our country and they just don’t like seeing it. I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me. And they also would like to see problems in these areas … go away,” Trump said.

Huh? What the f*** is the matter with this clown?

I hear QAnon has some fans on the far right fringe. They include notables such as former Ku Klux Klan grand lizard David Duke, the hater who has endorsed Donald Trump’s re-election.

I want to hand out a bouquet to one Republican lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has condemned QAnon. “QAnon is a dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American politics,” Cheney said in a statement on Thursday.

There you go. Some sanity does exist within the GOP. If only it did in the Oval Office.

national news

Reprehensible response!

Donald Trump received a grooved pitch straight into the strike zone … and he whiffed.

On purpose!

Trump today was asked to disavow a racist rant that Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not qualified to run because her parents are immigrants.

“If she has a problem you would have thought she would have been vetted by Sleepy Joe (Biden),” Trump said.

Do you get it? Trump won’t say the right thing, which is:

“Of course I disavow this rant. It has no place in a discussion of presidential politics. The Constitution stipulates that candidates for president and vice president must be ‘natural born’ U.S. citizens, either by their birthplace or the citizenship of their parents. Sen. Harris was born in Oakland, Calif., and she certainly qualifies. Now, let’s squash this nonsense.”

But … the Racist in Chief didn’t go there.

Donald Trump is consciously, deliberately appealing to the very worst in his base of supporters. He is an utter disgrace!

national news

Why discuss this … at all?

I cannot believe we are engaging in yet another discussion of “birtherism” involving a prominent American politician.

The defamation of Sen. Kamala Harris shouldn’t even be discussed at any level, except for one major point: One of the principals involved in this matter happens to be Donald John “Fake News Master in Chief” Trump.

Harris came into this world in Oakland, Calif. Her Indian mother delivered her after conceiving her with her Jamaican husband. Donald Trump has given this hideous matter a bit of air simply by stating he would “look at” whether she is qualified to run for vice president on the Democratic Party ticket.

This is ridiculous. It also is a blatantly racist attack on a woman who has risen dramatically to national stature after assuming her U.S. Senate seat in 2017.

One might have hoped, albeit naively, that the birther issue had died when Barack Obama left the presidency. It hasn’t, quite obviously. What does the Obama birther matter have in common with Kamala Harris? Donald Trump was part of the Birther Brigade that spread the lie about Obama, just as he has joined the crew that is smearing Kamala Harris with the same defamatory idiocy.

I would say that we “deserve better” from the president of the United States. However, I have to remind myself that the racist managed to get elected to the office he occupies. We just cannot mess up a second time around.

national news

‘I’ll look at it’

There you go. The president of the United States had a chance this week to shoot down in flames the latest lie about a politician who happens to be “of color,” that she somehow isn’t constitutionally qualified to run for public office.

Instead, Donald Trump said “I’ll look at it.” The “it” being reports that U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who is now set to be nominated as her party’s vice-presidential candidate, was born somewhere other than the United States.

This is a racist rant that needs to be plowed under. Why in the name of presidential statesmanship doesn’t Donald Trump do so? Well, I know why. It’s because he is no statesman. Trump is a racist chump who trades on innuendo and invective.

Moreover, Trump is a card-carrying member of the lunatic/wack job/fruitcake/racist wing of what used to be a great political party.

Trump, you’ll recall fomented a similar lie about President Obama. Then he surrendered, offering a tepid “He’s a citizen of the United States” response to a question about the birther lie.

For the record, Sen. Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican man and an Indian woman. They met in California. They got married and they produced a daughter. Little Kamala came into this world in Oakland. Calif., in 1964. There. She’s a U.S. citizen. She is fully qualified. End of argument, yes?

Hardly. It will continue for as long as Donald Trump gives such idiocy any sort of currency, which is what he did with his “I’ll look at it” non-answer.

I like the response given by Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who called the birther baloney a “racist, ignorant lie.”

It’s all of that … and I also would call it “hate speech.”

national news

Dissent, protest … so very American

Donald Trump is accusing four freshman members of Congress of “hating” the United States, of “hating” Israel and of speaking ill of the country they purport to love.

They need to go back to where they come from, says the president of the United States. If they don’t like it here, they are “free to leave,” he says.

Oh, my. I am going to respond this way: Shouldn’t Donald Trump, while running for the presidency in 2016, followed such advice when he was trashing the policies of the man he sought to succeed?

The president has declared rhetorical war against Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez. They’re all Democrats, all women of color, all U.S. citizens. They’ve been vocal in their criticism of Trump and his policies.

The president has launched a frontal attack on all of them.

But to my point: Donald Trump called our political leadership “stupid” while running for president in 2016. He lambasted our national trade policies, our national defense policies, our economic policies. Beginning in 2011, he became a chief proponent of the lie that President Obama was not constitutionally qualified to serve in the White House, referring to phony allegations that Obama was born in Africa. He questioned Obama’s academic credentials, even suggesting that Obama never even attended Harvard University, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review.

Did anyone ever suggest that Donald Trump should “go back to where he came from,” or from where his mother emigrated?

No. Nor should they.

Trump was entitled under the rights granted by our Constitution to criticize the government, even if he was incorrect in his criticism. The four women he is challenging today are equally qualified to criticize government policies.

The president’s utter and unmistakable lack of self-awareness is on full display as he criticizes four duly elected members of Congress for doing the very thing he did while he ran for the only public office he ever has sought.

Amazing.

International news, national news

Yes, Jared, birtherism is ‘racist’ to the core

Jonathan Swan of Axios asked Jared Kushner as straightforward a question as possible: Is “birtherism” racist?

How did Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior policy adviser answer the direct question? “I wasn’t there,” Kushner said. Swan persisted. “I know you weren’t,” he said. “Is it racist?”

Kushner didn’t answer it again. One or two more times he avoided answering the question with the same lame non-answer, that he “wasn’t there.”

Well, I will answer it for him. Yes. Not just “yes,” but hell yes it’s racist!

It is the lie that the president kept alive for years, even after he ascended to the nation’s highest office. He sought to discredit the election of the nation’s first African-American president by fomenting the lie that he was ineligible to run for the office because he was born in a foreign country.

Oh, never mind that Barack Obama told us repeatedly he was born in August 1961 in Hawaii. Or that — reportedly at Trump’s insistence — he produced a birth certificate that validates what he had said all along.

Why did Donald Trump keep insisting that this racist mantra was true? Did he really believe it? Did he keep pitching it merely because of the racial makeup of the president of the United States?

The term never even was widely known prior to Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy. Therefore, to my ears, the “birtherism” was born of a mindset that adheres to a sick, racist policy.

Hmm. Imagine that.

national news

Sen. Romney stands on principle in voting ‘no’ on judge

I know that a single U.S. Senate vote does not signal a trend, but I have to be heartened by a principled “no” vote cast by Utah’s freshman Republican senator, Mitt Romney.

The former GOP presidential nominee was the lone Republican to vote against the nomination of Beaumont lawyer Michael Truncale to be a U.S. district judge. Truncale won confirmation by a narrow 49-46 vote to take a seat on the bench representing East Texas.

Why the “no” vote from Romney? Because Truncale describe President Obama in 2011 as an “un-American imposter,” which quite naturally was seen by many as a play into the “birther” lie that plagued Obama during much of his presidency; you know, what he was born in Kenya and, thus, was ineligible to run for, let alone serve as, president of the United States.

“He said some things disparaging of President (Barack) Obama and having been the Republican nominee in 2012, I couldn’t sign onto that for a district judge,” Romney told CNN.

Romney has demonstrated that he won’t be Donald Trump’s “yes man” on all matters that come before the Senate.

Truncale received a grilling from Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats about the remark and he answered that “it is possible” he was expressing frustration over what he called Obama’s lack of “overt patriotism.”

Yeah, sure thing, bub. Suppose he was merely popping off at that false assumption. Doesn’t that, therefore, speak to the man’s judicial temperament, or the lack thereof?

Romney famously said during the 2012 Al Smith Memorial Dinner in New York that he and President Obama — who were locked in a fierce battle for the White House at the time — did not harbor personal “ill will” toward each other despite their widely divergent world views.

Sen. Romney’s “no” vote against Michael Truncale keeps faith with that declaration.

media news

‘Fake news’ a product of Trump himself? Well, golly!

This is getting good.

As more details come out about special counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report into collusion, obstruction and other matters, the more we learn about the “fake news” hoax that Donald Trump keeps alive.

Mueller seems to have concluded that the “fake news” Trump kept criticizing was quite true. The only fake news was coming from the Trump administration.

Imagine that, will ya?

Those of us who know better likely aren’t terribly surprised to hear this kind of thing from the special counsel. Trump is the godfather of “fake news,” given his own penchant for lying and as well as his defamation of others, such as lie he perpetuated about Barack Obama’s place of birth.

The matter about why he fired FBI director James Comey is a shining example of “fake news” originating from within the White House. White House press flack Sarah Sanders said Comey had lost confidence of his key aides within the FBI. Wrong! He was fired because of the Russia investigation.

Fake news!

Will any of this sink into Donald Trump’s thick, but vacuous skull? Heavens no! It still remains worthy of note.

Donald Trump is the King of Fake News. The media he loathes and calls the “enemy of the people” are doing what they need to do, which is expose Trump as the liar he has proven to be.

national news

Former first lady takes ‘birther’ lie quite personally

To be honest, I never gave a thought to the view expressed by former first lady Michelle Obama regarding the hideous lie fomented by her husband’s successor as president of the United States.

Donald J. Trump for years kept repeating the lie that Barack Obama was born outside the United States and, thus, was not qualified to seek the presidency let alone serve as president. I viewed the lie from the outside, considering it to be a racist rant intended to demonize the first African-American ever elected to the presidency.

Trump eventually tossed out a throwaway line at the end of another set of remarks that the president “was born in the United States.” Then he returned later to the casting of doubt over the truth of Obama’s place of birth.

Now the former first lady has written in her memoir “Becoming” that she cannot “forgive” Trump because, in her view, he put her family in potential danger from “wingnuts and kooks” who might pick up a loaded gun and head to Washington to harm the Obamas’ two daughters.

Michelle Obama’s criticism of Donald Trump will resonate with millions of Americans. It, of course, will sound hollow to millions of others, those who subscribe to Trump’s idiotic lie.

As for Donald Trump himself, I have no doubt at all — none whatsoever — that Michelle Obama’s criticism has zoomed straight through is vacuous skull.

He doesn’t give a damn!

Donald Trump

Do we need tape recordings to prove racist view?

Omarosa Manigault Newman has dropped a few stools in the punch bowl regarding her former boss and (apparently) former friend, Donald John Trump.

She says she has heard tape recordings of the future president using the n-word to describe “Celebrity Apprentice” contestants. He account has been backed up by illusionist Penn Gillette, who says he heard Trump say it in the moment.

She’s written a book about her time as a special White House assistant, a post she left when chief of staff John Kelly fired her. Newman recorded the termination that occurred in the Situation Room, which is a serious breach of national security protocol. That, however, is a whole other story.

But I have to ask: Do we really need to hear these recordings to verify what has been virtually obvious? I mean, consider the following.

  • Trump fomented the lie about our first African American president’s place of birth.
  • He also challenged Barack Obama’s academic credentials that admitted him to Harvard Law.
  • Trump denigrates the intelligence of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, CNN News anchor Don Lemon and pro basketball superstar LeBron James … all prominent African American public figures.
  • The president calls NFL football players protesting police brutality — the players are virtually all black — “sons of bitches.”
  • And all the while, he declines to issue a categorical condemnation of white supremacists, Klansmen and neo-Nazis.

Does the president refer to white critics as being less than intelligent? Why in the world did he continue to promote the defamatory lie that questioned President Obama’s constitutional right to seek the presidency? And why can’t the president bring himself to condemn hate groups such as the Klan exclusively? He recently watered down such “condemnation” with that sterile “all types of racism” qualifier.

Again, I ask: Do we really need to hear these recordings to validate what many millions of Americans — including me — believe about the man who’s been elected president of the United States of America?

This individual is a racist.