Saturday, June 13, 2020

Juneteenth: Trump changes Tulsa Oklahoma rally date 'out of respect'

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53032664


US President Donald Trump is postponing his first post-coronavirus lockdown election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma so it does not fall on a holiday commemorating the end of US slavery.
He tweeted that the 19 June rally would be held a day later out of respect for the occasion, known as Juneteenth.
The choice of date had drawn criticism amid nationwide anti-racism protests.
The location was also controversial, as Tulsa saw one of the worst massacres of black people in US history in 1921.
Up to 300 people died when a white mob attacked the prosperous black neighbourhood of Greenwood, known as the "Black Wall Street", with guns and explosives. About 1,000 businesses and homes were also destroyed.
 

Friday, June 12, 2020

Leslie Marshall: Trump sinking in polls – voters tired of his failures and angry tweets

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/donald-trump-joe-biden-election-leslie-marshall


Millions of Americans are fed up with divider-in-chief Donald Trump and the awful job he’s done dealing with the coronavirus pandemic that has killed over 113,000 Americans and protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police – among his many failures.
As a result, President Trump’s poll ratings are sinking and the prospects are increasing that former Vice President Joe Biden will send Trump into political retirement in the November election.
Trump has appealed only to his base and sought to fan the flames of division and conflict between Americans. This is one more sign of the incompetent leadership of our reality TV president and it is also an unwise political move.

 

Mark Zuckerberg blasts Trump for ‘incendiary rhetoric’ in response to scientists' ‘misinformation’ complaint

https://www.foxnews.com/tech/mark-zuckerberg-blasts-trump-for-incendiary-rhetoric-in-response-to-scientists-misinformation-complaint


In their response to the scientists, Zuckerberg and Chan write that they, too, were bothered by Trump’s message.
“(W)e are deeply shaken and disgusted by President Trump’s divisive and incendiary rhetoric at a time when our nation so desperately needs unity,” they write. “This is an extraordinarily painful inflection point in our nation’s story, particularly for the Black community and our Black colleagues, who have lived with the impacts of systemic racism for generations.”
But they also note, referring to a Zuckerberg post from last Friday, that Facebook is disinclined to censor messages unless the content “is actually inciting violence.”
The couple go on to say that they and other leaders at the initiative and at Facebook were committed to helping “advance racial justice” through steps that include considering “a diversity of perspectives, viewpoints and lived experiences.”
 

Trump Fails To Mention George Floyd At Event On Race And Police | The 11th Hour | MSNBC


Trump Grilled on the Howard Stern Show John Di Domenico 6.09.20


Fox News host corrects Trump on 'looting, shooting' origin


America's Low Barr


White House didn't receive heads up about Milley apology

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/white-house-milley-apology/index.html

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley did not give the White House a heads up before he released a recorded a video on Thursday admitting it was a "mistake" to appear in a photo-op last week with President Donald Trump, two administration officials told CNN.
Milley's apology -- in which he declared unequivocally "I should not have been there" -- was a remarkable admission for the four-star general, let alone from a top official in an administration led by a President known for his refusal to apologize.

 

Far-right extremists spreading antisemitic conspiracies about COVID-19

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/far-right-extremists-spreading-antisemitic-conspiracies-about-covid-19-631209


The most common conspiracy of the five which studied in the report claims that “The ‘Jewish-controlled government’ is exploiting the virus to serve Jewish interests."

 

Time for Pence to jump ship?

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/11/opinions/time-pence-jump-ship-opinion-dantonio/index.html



At this point, as President Trump's support weakens, Pence should weigh the merits of declaring he won't be vice president for a possible second term. There's an argument that Pence's status in Trumpworld might be endangered anyway. If the President continues to trail Joe Biden by double digits in the polls this summer and if the Democratic contender picks a woman of color for his running mate, he could be tempted to shake up his ticket by selecting Nikki Haley or another candidate for VP. Such a move could bring back some of the white suburban women Trump needs to win re-election and remind everyone that he's not a typical politician.

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Lincoln Project Ad Marks 100,000 American Deaths From Coronavirus | NowThis


Flag of Treason


Criminal stereotype of African Americans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_stereotype_of_African_Americans


 The criminal stereotype of African Americans in the United States is an ethnic stereotype according to which African Americans, and African American males in particular, are dangerous criminals.[1][2] The origin of this stereotype is that as a demographic they are proportionally over-represented in the numbers of those that are arrested for committing crimes: For example, according to official FBI statistics,[3] in 2015 51.1% of people arrested for homicide were African American; even though African American people account only for 13.4% of the total United States population.[4] The figure of the African-American man as a criminal has appeared frequently in American popular culture,[5][6][7] further reinforcing this image in the collective unconscious (in the form of this negative stereotype).

Fareed Zakaria: There are deep inequities in this country


Trump official says there is no systematic racism in US


Trump White House Rejects 'Systemic Racism' In Law Enforcement | The 11th Hour | MSNBC


The US national security adviser says there's no systemic racism in policing. Studies suggest otherwise

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/systemic-racism-in-policing/index.html

 When a Trump administration official said he doesn't think systemic racism exists in policing, many were stunned -- especially after studies have shown different races are often treated differently.
"No, I don't think there's systemic racism," national security adviser Robert O'Brien told CNN. "I think 99.9% of our law enforcement officers are great Americans. Many of them are African American, Hispanic, Asian."
 

There’s overwhelming evidence that the criminal-justice system is racist. Here’s the proof.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/systemic-racism-police-evidence-criminal-justice-system/

Of particular concern to some on the right is the term “systemic racism,” often wrongly interpreted as an accusation that everyone in the system is racist. In fact, systemic racism means almost the opposite. It means that we have systems and institutions that produce racially disparate outcomes, regardless of the intentions of the people who work within them. When you consider that much of the criminal justice system was built, honed and firmly established during the Jim Crow era — an era almost everyone, conservatives included, will concede rife with racism — this is pretty intuitive. The modern criminal justice system helped preserve racial order — it kept black people in their place. For much of the early 20th century, in some parts of the country, that was its primary function. That it might retain some of those proclivities today shouldn’t be all that surprising.





How racist policing took over American cities, explained by a historian

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/6/21280643/police-brutality-violence-protests-racism-khalil-muhammad


Social science played a huge role. What we’d call today “academic experts,” of one kind or another, were part of the effort to define black people as a particular criminal class in the American population. And what they essentially did was they used the evidence coming out of the South, beginning in the first decades after slavery. They used the census data to point to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans. They were almost three times overrepresented in the 1890 census in Southern prisons.

So that evidence became part of a national discussion that essentially said, “Well, now that black people have their freedom, what are they doing with it? They’re committing crimes. In the South and in the North, and the census data is the proof.”

Data | How badly are African-Americans affected by police brutality in the U.S.?

https://www.thehindu.com/data/data-how-badly-are-african-americans-affected-by-police-brutality-in-the-us/article31734968.ece


African-Americans are three times more likely to be killed in police shootings than white people. Close to 42 per million population of African-Americans were killed in such shootings in the period, the highest among all races.