The Isolated Political Blurt Thread

IrezumiKiss said:

This is an all too common error by journalists and one perpetuated by politicians who know the only way to get support for their plans to cut Social Security is to convince America the program is going down the tubes anyway. Workers have enough reasons to worry about their fiscal futures. As long as some in the media continue to hawk this type of misinformation, a legitimate conversation about how to address the 21% shortfall will remain virtually impossible.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/03/11/stop-with-the-zombie-lies-no-social-security-is-not-going-broke/

Click to expand...

MrBates2 said:

Click to expand...

BotanyBoy said:

Click to expand...

MrBates2 said:

Click to expand...

Beco said:

Click to expand...

IrezumiKiss said:

Click to expand...

Next to "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times," I remember my mom most often saying to my sister and me when we were young and constantly fighting, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." I've really had nothing nice to say these past 11 days and so this page has been quiet. There's no nice words to write when a coward holding an AK-47 hoses down a family and their friends sharing laughs and a mild evening on a back porch in Wilkinsburg. There's no kind words when 6 people are murdered. When their children have to hide for cover and then emerge from the frightened shadows to find their mother's face blown off or their father's twisted body leaking blood into the dirt from all the bullet holes. There's just been nothing nice to say. And I've been dragging around this feeling like a cold I can't shake that rattles in my chest each time I breathe and makes my temples throb. I don't want to hurt anymore. I'm tired of hurting.

You needn't be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday. I will tell you they live within 5 miles of Franklin Avenue and Ardmore Boulevard and have been hiding out since in a home likely much closer to that backyard patio than anyone thinks. They are young black men, likely teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They've grown up there. They know the police. They've been arrested. They've made the circuit and nothing has scared them enough. Now they are lost. Once you kill a neighbor's three children, two nieces and her unborn grandson, there's no coming back. There's nothing nice to say about that.

But there is HOPE. And Joe and I caught a glimpse of it Saturday night. A young, African American teen hustling like nobody's business at a restaurant we took the boys to over at the Southside Works. This child stacked heavy glass glasses 10 high and carried three teetering towers of them in one hand with plates piled high in the other. He wiped off the tables. Tended to the chairs. Got down on his hands and knees to pick up the scraps that had fallen to the floor. And he did all this with a rhythm and a step that gushed positivity. He moved like a dancer with a satisfied smile on his face. And I couldn't take my eyes off him. He's going to Make It.

When Joe paid the bill, I asked to see the manager. He came over to our table apprehensively and I told him that that young man was the best thing his restaurant had going. The manager beamed and agreed that his young employee was special. As the boys and we put on our coats and started walking out -- I saw the manager put his arm around that child's shoulder and pat him on the back in congratulation. It will be some time before I forget the smile that beamed across that young worker's face -- or the look in his eyes as we caught each other's gaze. I wonder how long it had been since someone told him he was special.

There's someone in your life today -- a stranger you're going to come across -- who could really use that. A hand up. A warm word. Encouragement. Direction. Kindness. A Chance. We can't change what's already happened, but we can be a part of what's on the way. Speak up. Reach out. Dare to Care. Give part of You to someone else. That, my friends, can change someone's course. And then -- just maybe THEN -- I'll start feeling again like there's something nice to say.

Click to expand...

Aglaopheme said:

Unfreakingbelievable.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/new..._anchor_fired_after_racist_facebook_post.html




http://www.ftvlive.com/todays-news/...k-post-viewers-demand-pittsburgh-anchor-fired


Here is her full post:

Click to expand...

IrezumiKiss said:

- onevagabond:

March, 23 2016 - The “War on Drugs” was actually a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people, a former Nixon White House adviser admitted in a decades-old interview published Tuesday. John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon’s domestic policy chief, laid bare the sinister use of his boss’ controversial policy in a 1994 interview with journalist Dan Baum that the writer revisited in a new article for Harper’s magazine.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying,” Ehrlichman continued. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,“ Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Ehrlichman served 18 months in prison after being convicted of conspiracy and perjury for his role in the Watergate scandal that toppled his boss.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said Ehrlichman’s comments proved what black people had believed for decades.

“This is a frightening confirmation of what many of us have been saying for years. That this was a real attempt by government to demonize and criminalize a race of people,” Sharpton told the Daily News. “And when we would raise the questions over that targeting, we were accused of all kind of things, from harboring criminality to being un-American and trying to politicize a legitimate concern.”

In 1971, Nixon labeled drug abuse “Public Enemy No. 1” and signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, putting into place several new laws that cracked down on drug users. He also created the Drug Enforcement Administration. By 1973, about 300,000 people were being arrested every year under the law — the majority of whom were African-American.The drug war was continued in various forms by every President since, including President Ronald Reagan, whose wife Nancy called for people to “Just say no.”Ehrlichman’s 22-year-old comments resurfaced Tuesday after Baum wrote about them in a cover story for the April issue of Harper’s, titled “Legalize It All,” in which he argues in favor of legalizing hard drugs.The original 1994 interview with Ehrlichman was part of Baum’s research for his 1997 book, “Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure,” in which Baum laid bare decades of unsuccessful drug policy.

“Think of all the lives and families that were ruined and absolutely devastated only because they were caught in a racial net from the highest end reaches of government.”

Source:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/nixon-aide-war-drugs-tool-target-black-people-article-1.2573832

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nixon-drug-war-racist_us_56f16a0ae4b03a640a6bbda1

If you think Trump is the most disgusting man who ever ran for the Whitehouse, think again.

https://thisiseverydayracism.tumblr.com/post/141796432176/onevagabond-march-23-2016-the-war-on-drugs

Click to expand...

IrezumiKiss said:

A follow-up article on The Root broke her shit down even further:


Wow. So she began this screed with some hyperbolic description of how this was making her feel? As if her particular feelings are the only ones that matter here?

Yes.

And then, despite no actual evidence suggesting this to be true, she states that the killers were black, were from the neighborhood (and not just from the neighborhood, but hiding out in the neighborhood), and have mothers who slept around and have just as many jobs as baby daddies?

Yes.

And then she shares a completely unrelated story about some server at a restaurant; connecting that experience to the murders even though the only thing this server and the (presumed) killers have in common is that they’re black?

Yes.

And then she proceeds to morph into some post-racial Scarlett O’Hara, remarking how great he was at getting on his hands and knees to pick up her family’s scraps, and complimenting his “rhythm” and how he “moved like a dancer” with a “satisfied smile;” practically turning this server kid into a hamboning Bruno Mars in blackface?

Yes.

And then, as the cherry on the privilege pound cake, she had the audacity to suggest that the compliment she gave him might have been the first compliment he had ever heard; implying that these types of compliments from nice white women can stop black boys like this server from being murderers?

Yes.

OK. So what happened next?

She was publicly reprimanded by her station. And then, Wednesday, she was fired. Which, at that point, seemed inevitable.

Even more disturbing and illuminating than Bell’s post, however, are the many who believed—and still believe—she did nothing wrong. These are people who believe Bell was being real not racist. And some of these people don’t just scoff at the suggestion that Bell’s creed was white privilege personified. They don’t even believe white privilege exists. They don’t see how Bell’s words were an articulation of a worldview that assures these types of white people that their thoughts, opinions and feelings are the only ones that matter. That there’s nothing wrong with saying that the only thing separating a server from a murderer is a white woman’s smile. They don’t want to admit that this privilege is so ingrained in America’s zeitgeist, so specifically American, that challenging it feels insulting, threatening even, to them. They don’t realize that the incredulousness felt when forced to acknowledge the presence of privilege is actually proof of its existence.

I see. So what happens next?

Well, according to her interview Wednesday with the Associated Press, Wendy Bell still considers herself to be a victim. Which means she’ll definitely have a job at Fox News next week.

White Privilege, Explained, With Help From the Ex-News Anchor Who Lost Her Job Over a Racist Facebook Post

Click to expand...