Friday Open Thread | There’s A Reason Why They Call It – ‘ A Deal With the Devil’

Posted on June 15, 2018 by

Cause, the Devil ALWAYS WINS.

This has bothered me ever since I read it on Monday.
I still come back to the same question:

ARE.THESE.PEOPLE.SERIOUS.?

DA PHUQ?

ICYMI:

; For Black Lives Activists, Engaging in Trump’s Pardon Politics Feels Like a Deal With the Devil
Is it “worth boosting the reputation of a racist, misogynist, and dangerously authoritarian administration?”
Brandon E. PattersonJun. 11, 2018 3:24 PM
…………………….

“It’s clear that this is a PR stunt,” says Malkia Cyril, executive director and co-founder of the Center for Media Justice,
an Oakland-based group focused on the role of surveillance technology in incarcerating people of color. “That said, even a PR stunt can get some of our people free.”
“We have to make a decision,” she adds, “as to whether getting one or two, or three or four, or 10 people released from prison is worth
boosting the reputation of a racist, misogynist, and dangerously
authoritarian administration.”

The ONLY answer to whether or not you will even try to deal with Dolt45 is NO.

NO. NO. NO.
HAVE YOU LOOKED AT THIS DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE?

We LITERALLY have a man who was TOO RACIST DURING THE REAGAN YEARS now as the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of this country.

EVEN IF….you could look past the pure, unadulterated evil that is being done by this DOJ with regards to Immigration and Immigrants – ‘ because that’s not your issue’.
EVEN IF…you could look past the full frontal assault on Voting Rights – ‘ because that’s not your issue’.

Well, how about this? THIS, which is supposed to be’ your issue’.

Continue reading →

Posted in Open Thread, Politics, Racial Bias, Rikyrah's Rant | Tagged , , , , , | 70 Comments

This is why Harriet had to use her gun

Posted on June 14, 2018 by

For slave catchers like Ben Carson.

You know my feelings about Carson.
Slave catcher who got everything he has because of a government program, and now, he wants to hurt those who need it the most.
If he had grown up in this era of ‘ zero tolerance’, his azz would have been firmly ensconced in the School-to-Prison pipeline. Nobody would care if he had ‘ hidden talents’, since they didn’t include some sort of ball. Yet, he doesn’t have enough self-awareness to realize this.

I have said from the beginning that he’s nothing but the patsy to take the fall for those who are robbing HUD. Will not feel one ounce of sympathy when they take him away in handcuffs.

Carson’s housing plan would raise rents for poor by 20%, analysis shows

Housing department says proposal, which would affect 4m low-income households, will ‘give poor people a way out of poverty’
Associated Press in Charleston, South Carolina
Thu 7 Jun 2018 08.52 EDT

Ben Carson says his latest proposal to raise rents would mean a path toward self-sufficiency for millions of low-income households across the United States, by pushing more people to find work. For Ebony Morris and her four small children, it could mean homelessness, as experts warn of crippling costs that many families will be unable to bear.

Morris lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where most households receiving federal housing assistance would see their rent go up an average 26%, according to new analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities thinktank. But Morris’s increase would be nearly double that.

Overall, the analysis shows that in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, low-income tenants, many of whom have jobs, would have to pay roughly 20% more each year for rent under the plan. That rent increase is about six times greater than the growth in average hourly earnings, putting the poorest workers at an increased risk of homelessness because wages simply haven’t kept pace with housing expenses.

“I saw public housing as an option to get on my feet, to pay 30% of my income and get myself out of debt and eventually become a homeowner,” said Morris, whose monthly rent would jump from $403 to $600. “But this would put us in a homeless state.”

What poor person can handle a 20% RAISE IN RENT?
Please tell me.

And, WHEN this man becomes homeless, Carson will be one of the first ones to purse his lips that this man should ‘ pull himself up by his bootstraps’

Just as HE and his ilk, have robbed the man of his boots.

They are so loathesome.

Got this news on Sunday:

Ben Carson walks back plan to triple rent for poor
By Max Greenwood – 06/09/18 04:14 PM

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson backed away on Friday from a plan to triple the minimum rent that the poorest Americans pay for federally subsidized housing.

Speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center, Carson said additional funding from Congress eliminated the immediate need to raise rents.

“The reason we had to consider raising rents at all is because we were dealing with a $41 billion budget,” Carson said. “And in order to be able to keep from raising rents on the elderly and the disabled, and in order to not displace people who are already being taken care of, that was necessary.”

“Now that the budget has been changed, the necessity for doing that is not urgent,” he added.

Watch for what happens after the midterms, folks.
I’m just saying…..

Posted in Open Thread, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Thursday Open Thread | This is why the kids will win

Posted on June 14, 2018 by

I am so impressed with the Parkland kids. I think they are the leaders that we have been waiting for. They just need for us to have their backs.

The latest from the kids is that they are going on a Summer Bus Tour. At each stop, not only are they having town halls, but there will be also VOTER REGISTRATION.

March for Our Lives: Road to Change

This summer, the students of March For Our Lives are making stops across America to get young people educated, registered, and motivated to vote. We call it March For Our Lives: Road to Change.

When people across the country rallied at the March For Our Lives just over 2 months ago, we showed our politicians that we refuse to accept gun violence as an unsolvable issue. Now it’s time to turn our energy into action.

If you want to be alerted as to when the tour will hit your area, just click on the link above and sign up for notifications.

This is brilliant on so many levels.
School is out. So, there will be no school shootings. But, taking these young people and using their energy when they are out from school. They can relate to other kids out from school.
Someone wrote on another board that this reminds them of the Freedom Rides, and why not?
The Voter Registration is great on another level.
1. It’s practical
2. It’s useful
3. You can get anyone involved in it.
Know that song ‘ stay in your lane’….well, not everyone can be on television…not everyone is a great public speaker.. not everyone can do policy papers with politicians…but, pretty much anyone can be in the ‘Voter registration’ lane. And, it’s a way to keep people involved, because there are ALWAYS people that need to be registered to vote. Always someone young just turning 18. Always someone moving into a new voter jurisdiction. Always someone out there that needs to update their voter registration.

I love that the kids have hooked up voting and registering to vote with EVERYTHING that they send out. I appreciate that.

People look at this

and go…

No No…MY child should NOT have to be reading this….and, it steels the spine to fight. The kids get a new ally.

 

 

Trump’s School Safety Commission Won’t Look at Guns, Betsy DeVos Says

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told a Senate committee on Tuesday that the federal commission on school safety set up this year after the Parkland, Fla., school massacre will not focus on the role guns play in school violence…
“That’s not part of the commission’s charge, per se,” Ms. DeVos said in response to a question from Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, about whether the commission would look at the role of firearms in the gun violence that has plagued the nation’s schools.
“So we’ll look at gun violence in schools, but not look at guns? An interesting concept,” Mr. Leahy said in response.

Think that they’re going to be so smart. Naw, you unqualified piece of garbage…folks see right through this. And, they are not going to let you and your ilk just lie about it.

Continue reading →

Posted in Gun control, Gun Violence, Open Thread, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 63 Comments

Wednesday Open Thread | The GOP Continues to Attack Voting Rights

Posted on June 13, 2018 by

ICYMI

Lisa Desjardins
‏Verified account @LisaDNews

A BIG DEAL: The Supreme Court 5-4 just upheld Ohio’s voter rolls law which automatically dropped voters who had not voted for two years or confirmed desire to vote.
7:14 AM – 11 Jun 2018

As always, my go-to person to check in with when it comes to Voting Rights is Ari Berman. He’s always going to tell it to you straight, and what evil is being perpetrated.

Ari Berman
‏Verified account @AriBerman
10h10 hours ago

Breaking: In 5-4 decision Alito reverses 6th circuit & upholds Ohio’s purging of infrequent voters. Ohio has purged 2 million voters since 2011, more than any other state. Black voters 2x as likely as whites to be purged in state’s largest counties

Republicans Are Trying to Kill a Key Voting Rights Law
The Supreme Court could soon make it harder to register to vote.
Ari Berman
Jan. 8, 2018 6:00 AM

Thirty years ago, the United States had a big problem. Barely half of eligible voters had cast a ballot in the 1988 presidential election—the lowest voter turnout since the 1920s. In an effort to increase participation, Democrats in Congress—backed by a few Republicans— drafted the National Voter Registration Act, a bill that would require states to allow voters to register at Department of Motor Vehicle offices and other public agencies.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, led the opposition to the legislation. “This bill wants to turn every agency, bureau, and office of state government into a vast voter registration machine,” McConnell said in 1991. “Motor voter registration, hunting permit voter registration, marriage license voter registration, welfare voter registration—even drug rehab voter registration.” That same year, McConnell, who is now the Senate majority leader, wrote that “low voter turnout is a sign of a content democracy.”

The NVRA passed Congress in 1992, but President George H. W. Bush vetoed it. Congress passed it again a year later, and this time President Bill Clinton signed it into law, calling it “a sign of a new vibrancy in our democracy.” The “motor voter” law, as it became known, was an immediate success. In its first year in effect, more than 30 million people registered or updated their registrations through the NVRA. Roughly 16 million people per year have used it to register ever since.

But in recent years, Republicans have sought to gut the law. In 2013, the Supreme Court weakened a key part of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that states with long histories of voting discrimination no longer needed to clear their election changes with the federal government. After winning that fight, Republicans are now going after the NVRA in what voting rights advocates say is a thinly veiled effort to make it more difficult for Democratic-leaning constituencies to register to vote—and far easier for state officials to remove them from the voter rolls. “We’re seeing a coming fight over how voter rolls are maintained,” says Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “It’s a new front in the voter suppression battles.”

…………………..

Even as Republicans are seeking to weaken the NVRA, three conservative lawyers who worked in the George W. Bush Justice Department are turning the law on its head by attempting to use it to force states and localities to engage in Ohio-style voter purges. As my colleague Pema Levy reported, they’ve targeted nearly a dozen states, along with small counties in places like Mississippi and Texas with large minority populations:

The letter to Noxubee County [Mississippi] alleged that the county was violating a federal law that requires states to keep their rolls up to date. The commissioners maintained that they were following the law. In fall 2015, the ACRU’s [American Civil Rights Union] attorneys began to push the commission to sign a consent decree that would commit the county to vigorous vetting of its registered voter list in order to avoid a lawsuit. Among its provisions, the draft decree would require the commission to send a non-forwardable notice to all registered voters asking them to confirm their eligibility. Every voter who did not fill it out and return it would be put on a list of inactive voters, and anyone on that list who failed to vote in two federal elections would be removed from the rolls.

Continue reading →

Posted in Open Thread, Politics, Voter Suppression, Voting Rights | Tagged , , , | 54 Comments

Tuesday Open Thread | The Evil from this Administration-IMMIGRATION

Posted on June 12, 2018 by

This tweet from Oliver Willis

 

Is ABSOLUTELY ON POINT.

The story behind this tweet:

This father is NOT a criminal. He wasn’t swept up doing criminal activity.
He went, ON HIS JOB, to deliver pizza to an Army Base, AND SOMEONE CALLED ICE ON HIM.
He.was.doing.his.phucking.JOB.
And, some evil azz muthaphucka called ICE on him.

The restaurants in the area are fighting back – not only fighting to bring this father home, but refusing to deliver to the Army Base until he is let loose by ICE.

Here is the latest in him:

I am sorry that this is the most positive story I have.

I, like, Oliver Willis, want folks to understand what we’re fighting against. Those who voted for Dolt45 are complicit in what is being done in the name of the United States of America.

In my last immigration post, I told you, that the OFFICIAL POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS TO RIP CHILDREN AWAY FROM THEIR PARENTS.
And, I want to make this clear:
This is NOT just those people that are coming here illegally.
This is happening to people ATTEMPTING TO GO THROUGH THE LEGAL ASYLUM PROCESS.

The blood is on those who voted for Dolt45.
The damage to these children and their families is on those who voted for Dolt45.

I will say this again:
The simplicity of the evil of this cuts through the bullshyt 😠

A new “Trail of Tears ‘…..

Continue reading →

Posted in ICEgov, Immigration, Open Thread, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 60 Comments

Monday Open Thread | Yes…the Demons Are STILL After Obamacare

Posted on June 11, 2018 by

This came through last week.

Trump’s Justice Department says the ACA is unconstitutional

The Justice Department will not defend the Affordable Care Act in court, and says it believes the law’s individual mandate — the provision the Supreme Court upheld in 2012 — has become unconstitutional.

Why it matters: The Justice Department almost always defends federal laws when they’re challenged in court. Its departure from that norm in this case is a major development — career DOJ lawyers removed themselves from the case as the department announced this shift in its position.

The details: The ACA’s individual mandate requires most people to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. The Supreme Court upheld that in 2012 as a valid use of Congress’ taxing power.

When Congress claimed it repealed the individual mandate last year, what it actually did was drop the tax penalty to $0.
So the coverage requirement itself is still technically on the books. And a group of Republican attorneys general, representing states led by Texas, say it’s now unconstitutional — because the specific penalty the Supreme Court upheld is no longer in effect.
The Justice Department agreed with that position in a brief filed Thursday night.
DOJ said the courts should strike down the coverage requirement, as well as the provision of the law that forces insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions.

 

From the LA Times:
Got a preexisting condition? The Trump administration wants insurers to deny you coverage

In its latest effort to undermine the Affordable Care Act — and in the process, raise premiums for many Americans — the Trump administration is urging a federal judge in Texas to throw out the law’s protections for people with preexisting conditions.

In other words, the administration wants insurers to be able to deny coverage to the people most in need of it, or to charge them considerably higher premiums than they’re allowed to charge today.

This is jaw-dropping. Even Republicans who’ve complained about Obamacare have been loath to undo the protections for people with preexisting conditions who are not covered by large employers’ health plans. That’s because the public supports them, and unequivocally so.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in June 2017 showed that 70% of those polled, including 59% of Republicans, wanted Washington to continue barring insurers from charging people with preexisting conditions more for their coverage. Federal law has long provided such protection for people with health benefits at work; the ACA extended it to people shopping independently for insurance.

But then, the administration has done just about everything in its power to toss older, less healthy people under the bus if they’re unfortunate enough not to be covered by employer health insurance plans.

Continue reading →

Posted in Affordable Care Act, Healthcare, ObamaCare, Open Thread, Politics | Tagged , , , | 83 Comments

Sunday Praise & Worship | Sounds of Blackness

Posted on June 10, 2018 by

Sounds of Blackness is a Grammy Award-winning vocal and instrumental ensemble from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota who perform music from several genres music including gospel, R&B, soul, and jazz. The group scored several hits on the Billboard R&B chart and Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in the 1990s. One of the group’s current members is Cynthia Johnson, who rose to fame with Lipps, Inc.

The group was founded in 1969 by Russell Knighton at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the group was called the Macalester College Black Voices. It was in 1971 when current director Gary Hines took leadership over the ensemble, and the group name was officially changed to Sounds of Blackness (SOB).

The group had acquired local celebrity status throughout the years though never signed with a record company because of various reasons including the fact that many companies were not comfortable with the group’s name. Some companies even suggested to Hines that the group’s name be changed to “The Sounds of Music.”

Posted in Christianity, Current Events, Gospel, News, Open Thread, Politics, Praise, Worship | Tagged , , , , , | 48 Comments