Privilege Is NOT a Way Of Life

I say this for those who believe, like apparently 39% of Americans, that white people are "under attack" in America.

Of course this is a stretch in logic. There are plenty of reasons (given in the link) why by any reasonable metric this feeling is unfounded.

But I supposed that is the crux of the matter: something is making people feel this way. Because white people are not being rounded up, separated from their families or targeted by the authorities.

If 9-11 happened, like, every month, in cities that were predominately white and the terrorists behind it were sending videos after each event claiming that this was because of white people, then that could be called an attack.

The only thing that can be arguably in danger is white privilege. Not the ability to argue with a police officer without fear of getting shot. Not having to worry about someone placing bananas or nooses on the door to your children's dorm-room. Not being labeled lazy because you can't find work, and if you do, not having to hear that you got the job because of your race.

So yeah, white privilege may be in danger; but not white lives or a white person's way of life.

Hillary Clinton Cares So Much About America, She Wrote a Book to Make Money Off of Them

Can't Let Something Like a City-Destroying Storm Get In the Way of Profits!

Joel Osteen, he of soothing voice and prosperity gospel advocacy, was recently in the spotlight for being shamed to opening the doors of his church to flood victims who may or may not all be part of his congregation.

It's good that he finally did (hey, it took Moses a little while to get with the program; God's used to working with stubborn people).

HOWEVER...

When you run a tax-exempt organization that's allowed to do most anything without scrutiny, you gotta find some way to compensate for those bums who may be *gasp* trying to take advantage of your (strong-armed) goodwill!

So why not pass that plate around while people who are looking for shelter are still hanging around? They may not have a house, but I bet there's still money in the bank!

Let it be said that this humble blogger's theory is: Osteen never wanted to open the church as a shelter in the first place because he was thinking about Sunday service, and he wanted his congregation to come into a nice clean church, not something out of Book of Eli. He probably also realized that donations might be a little low if half of the people present could barely avoid what in the vending machines (his mega-church use to be the home of the Houston Rockets; I'm just guessing the vending machines are still there). It probably wasn't malice, just business. Cold, uncaring, greedy business; like in the Bible.

The Democrat's "Resistance" Needs Work

On the heals of a Russian scandal*, defending protests that included a modern-day Nazi running over people with his car, and hawking a book while Houston was drowning, California Senator Diane Feinstein (D) had this to say about President Trump:

“The question is whether he can learn and change,” Feinstein told the crowd at the Commonwealth Club event. “If so, I believe he can be a good president...we’ll have to see if he can forget himself enough and have the type of empathy and direction the country needs...there are things that can be done....I have to work with people and a punch in the nose is not going to do it."

OK fine, I get it, you don't wanna fight all the time. But let's just remind ourselves that there is very little about Trump's agenda that should appeal to any Democrat. And therein lies the rub: there are Democrats in Congress who will work for any person who happened to be President, whether it was Trump, Hillary Clinton or Dracula. They are the same type that get smacked around by the GOP when there's a Democrat in the White House and/or they have a majority, but when they have no leverage all they want to talk about is "working with" the people who treat them like scum.

Those types of Democrats are not needed; they will not help in pushing an agenda to help the American working class. They will not challenge bloated defense spending. They will not refuse to authorize or support questionable military policies and/or operations. They won't challenge a society where cops will kill a black man over cigarettes but do nothing when a white supremacist shoots his gun at a crowd.

Democrats who talk resistance online and on news shows then vote for the agenda they are supposed to be resisting are selling their constituents falsehoods.




*It's really more of an annoyance, and the hacking angle is being debunked by anyone who cares, but it's still something lingering over Trump's administration.

Trump Is Using Neo-Liberal Slurs For Progressives Attack EVERYONE Who Is Left of Center

C'mon guys; stop counting your money and start working on the issues (Universal Healthcare, Affordable College, Repairing our Infrastructure, Police Reform, Ending Unnecessary Wars, Getting Money Out of Politics, Creating a Viable Jobs Program).

Food For Thought

Remember whenever there was a shooting at a school or other public place, and if someone asked for either tougher gun legislation or just to enforce what's on the books, the reaction was some comment about cars ("They kill people too, should be ban them?")?

Well fast forward to what went down in Charlotte VA, where a guy actually did use his car to attack people, and someone died.

Interesting how the defenders are saying that this was an accident and not intentional, huh?

If You're An Older Black Man in the Marvel Netflix Universe, You're Probably Going to Die

I was hoping that this unfortunate pattern would be broken with "The Defenders," but alas, once again, an older black man died on a Netflix Marvel show.

um...SPOILERS!

Of all the pros and cons of the team-up series and each character's respective shows (and personally, I still think the good outweighs the bad) this is the most annoying.

To wit (most of these guys can be found under tvtrope's MCU:New York citizens entry):

1. Daredevil: Ben Urich; choked to death by the Kingpin (with his bare freaking hands, no less). Urich and Karen Paige were both digging into Fisk's history for dirt, but Karen managed to slip past Fisk's radar. 
2. Jessica Jones: Detective First Grade Oscar Clemons; shot in the head by Will Simpson. By the time this had happened, Simpson was hopped up on pseudo-super soldier performance enhancers, not to mention an obsession with keeping Jessica's step-sister/best friend safe. Clemons was basically in the wrong place at the wrong time.
3.  Luke Cage: Henry "Pop" Hunter; shot up in his own freaking barber shop by an overenthusiastic underling of Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes. Pop had made an arrangement with Cottonmouth to exchange some stolen money for the thief's life. Cottonmouth even told his underling to only go on the offensive if said thief tried to run. The thief never tried to run, but the underling felt shooting up a barbershop would send a message. Oh, and this was like in the second episode. 
4.  Iron Fist: Lawrence Wilkins; shot in the head by Harold Meachum. Yeah; a guy getting shot by someone who was supposed to be dead makes for an interesting story. And Wilkins was basically a jerk, but still.

I have my issues with all of these deaths. Urich and Pop were killed basically to drive Daredevil and Luke Cage into action in their respective shows. Clemons was killed to show how evil Simpson had become. Wilkins' death came at the tail end of Iron Fist's season, and his death did little but make Danny Rand (and the Meachum kids) path back to running Rand less rocky. 

But the fact remains: all black men, all older than the main characters, all dead.

This is why I hope Nick Fury or War Machine don't ever show up in these shows; they wouldn't last past Episode 7. 

So who died in Defenders to keep this trend going? Well I won't spoil it yet, but he's technically the the oldest person of African descent to ever be in these shows, and he was very knowledgeable (Jessica would probably say a bit too much).  Don't lose you head trying to figure it out!

Neo-Nazi Who Talked About Attending a Protest With Weapons Claims That He Didn't Want To Get Hurt

Seriously. But for me, here's the money quote:

“The problem is that my country has descended to a point where your political opinions get you charged with felonies, and that’s what I’m upset about,” he said. “I get a little emotional about the fact that all this is going on, and now people want to throw me in prison because I want to save my race and nation.”

Oh Please. I am curious to how removing statues celebrating pro-slavery is threatening his "race and nation." Last I checked the current President shares his views, and as far as his race goes, the demographics of those running Wall Street, Congress, and the entertainment industry reflect him as well.

Now economically-speaking...

Thought of the Day

If people were as passionate about protecting the environment as they were about protecting statues, then out planet would be in much better shape.

If You Really Want To Help

If you're not black, you witnessed what happened in Charlotte, VA, you are adamantly opposed to what the protesters are all about, have read stories like this and this, and are confused because you just really want to help and show support and don't know how...

Here's one humble solution, broken down in steps.

1. Declare your candidacy for elected office (state or federal, executive or legislative, it doesn't matter).
2. Run a campaign without taking lobbyist money (that way you won't be obligated to follow their agenda).
3. Create/enact policies that will help the working class (here, "help"means "reduce their expenses and increase their disposable income."
4. Make sure that these policies help as many people as possible in your sphere of influence.
5. Refuse to do any TV shows and/or interviews that will not allow you to talk in details about your policies (your opinions are not relative to having the policies enacted).
6. Make sure that some of your staff include those you are trying to help (and yes, they should both want to work in this field and have the adequate qualifications). 
7. Encourage like-minded people in your circle of friends and relatives to do the same.

You have all the weapons you need; now fight.

They Are Still Punching Down

Michael Tomsky writes a very interesting (and sure to be shared) opinion piece about how that Donald Trump's uncouth approach regarding foreign affairs is an example of why Hillary Clinton should have gotten more votes from liberals/progressives:

I’ve been looking back over some articles from last year and am reminded that it was a surprisingly robust theme, this idea that Clinton was more dangerous than Trump. I doubt many votes hinged on this single issue, but it became a key talking point in the larger narrative that Clinton was corrupt and unprincipled and there really wasn’t much difference between her and Trump.

Do Tell.

Most of this nonsense came from the anti-Clinton and anti-Democrat left. Here, for example, was Jill Stein, a reliably useful idiot, appearing on C-SPAN last October: “On the issue of war and nuclear weapons, it is actually Hillary’s policies which are much scarier than Donald Trump who does not want to go to war with Russia.” She favored Trump on Russia, of course, because she herself was a Friend of Vlad.

Well, about all that: (1) Jill Stein's PBS interview was heavily edited; (2) most people, upon reading her platform, will come to learn that hers was just as progressive as Bernie Sanders, which is to say that it was demonstratively more progressive than Hillary Clinton's; and (3) Hillary has her own ties to Russia, thankyouverymuch.

(And before anyone says, "All those videos came from Jimmy Dore!" please try to find out what's actually inaccurate about them instead of attacking the source. Hint: not enough to discredit them!)

Moving on:

The point of this column is not to defend Clinton’s policies. She was somewhat too hawkish for my tastes. I’ve written critically of her vote for the Iraq War many times. And it’s the darkest irony of her political life that a vote that seemed the politically “safe” one at the time ended up crippling her politically for the rest of her career. It almost certainly cost her the Democratic nomination in 2008 and it damaged her badly in 2016, when Bernie Sanders hammered away at it.

See, this is the problem. The point is any politician should be subject to the review/breakdown of and then acceptance/rejection of their policies. It's not enough to vote for Hillary Clinton because she was running on the Democratic Party ticket. It's not enough that she would have been our country's first female president has she won. It's not enough that she backtracked on some of her (and her husband's) stances. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if Hillary Clinton wanted to really become president, she should have ran in 2004, when the Iraq War was essentially strangling the Bush Administration and the Good Feelings of the Clinton Administration was still in the back of the minds of American voter. She was at her most progressive, and would have easily beaten John Kerry in the primary (the Democrat who campaigns to the left wins 9 times out of 10). All she would have had to do in this hypothetical presidential debate was say, "Look; it's Clinton vs Bush, and we all how well that went the last time for America." Would the Iraq war vote have been an issue? Sure, but no where to the degree it was in 2008 (or even now after God-only-knows how many conflicts).

So let's wrap this up:

On some other matters, I think she got an unfair rap. She wanted to do more in 2011 to help the anti-Assad fighters in Syria. True, there’s a chance her position might have kicked off a fateful escalation. But it’s hardly a certainty that it would have. Her instinct was to try to stop a slaughter, which in the end the United States and the rest of the world shamefully just let happen.
But this isn’t about her. It’s about a mindset on the left that helped give us President Trump. It’s a view of the world rooted in the conviction that Democrats and liberals, not Republicans and conservatives, are the real enemies of progress, because you expect malevolence from the latter, while failure by the former to stop them is the real problem.

OK; here's the thing: she lost all sympathy from the left of the Democratic Party when she:

1. Dismissed the Black Lives Matter Movement;
2. Started schmoozing with John Negroponte and Henry Kissinger;
3. Ignored unions, the pipeline protests and the fight for a higher minimum wage;
4. Embraced Senator chuck Schumer's strategy of courting suburban Republicans over urban Democrats;
5. Decided to spend more time attacking Trump personally than on policy.

As for that last sentence: well, DUH. Of course progressives would not expect a party who wants to wall off Mexico, ban Muslims, blame black teens who got shot by cops for wearing hoodies, encourage cops to beat up protesters, ban all scenarios of abortion, keep transgender people from going to public bathrooms, prevent women from getting contraceptives, and keep universal health care of the table to be civil or respectful. But yes, the other party who claims that they are better should be fighting them at every turn on every front instead of thumb-pointing at them and going, "Do you really want to take your chances with these guys?"

In California, Democrats are preventing single payer from coming to life in that state. There's nary a peep from Democrats in New York about Stop and Frisk. Are any Democrats in Michigan banging the pots and pans over the water problems in flint? And Why did the Democrats in Congress give Trumps way more than he originally asked for in Defense Spending? Not sure about anyone else, but to me, all of these are examples of being "enemies of progress."

Democrats need to stand for something other than "We're not them." And if they stand for progressive ideas, that (guess what?) progressives will gravitate toward them. The Kronos vs Kang Argument will not work forever.