John Kelly's Civil War comments shouldn't surprise us.

"Ignorant, dumb and just plain stupid plus he grew up in a place we used to call Birmingham North. "John Kelly’s comments about the Civil War, according to historians, were “strange,” “sad” and “wrong.” One thing they shouldn’t be, however, is surprising.

The immediate online backlash to Kelly’s assertion that the country’s bloodiest conflict resulted from “the lack of an ability to compromise” belied a troubling reality: The chief of staff is actually in good company. In 2011, a 48 percent plurality of Americans in a Pew poll said the war was mostly about states’ rights. Most teachers tell their students more or less the same thing, and history textbooks for decades have hawked the false tale of the Lost Cause. Even the U.S. citizenship test accepts “economic reasons” and “states’ rights” as correct responses to the prompt, “Name one problem that led to the Civil War.”

The Civil War, of course, was about slavery. But when so many still subscribe to the alternative narrative, there’s no reason to expect a Republican president’s right-hand man to do any different. There was also no reason to expect Kelly not to defend his boss when he got into a spat with a Gold Star widow this month, or not to wade into the culture wars (women are “sacred,” society cares too little for the “dignity of life”) at the same time...



John Kelly's Civil War comments shouldn't surprise us

Puerto Rico to lean on NY, FL for help restoring its grid after Whitefish "After terminating a controversial deal with Whitefish Energy, Puerto Rico will have lots of assistance from New York and Florida getting its grid working About a month after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, nearly 70% of residents are still without basic electricity."

 

 Puerto Rico to lean on NY, FL for help restoring its grid after Whitefish: ""

Trump on Papadopoulos: 'He's an excellent guy'

Breaking Down Kelly's Civil War Comments in reaction to racist John Kelly continued statements| MSNBC

 

Breaking Down Kelly's Civil War Comments | MSNBC: ""

'This is only the beginning': Inside Mueller probe | MSNBC

'This is only the beginning': Inside Mueller probe | MSNBC:

Mueller’s First Indictments Send a Message to Trump - The New York Times

Mueller’s First Indictments Send a Message to Trump - The New York Times: 

Ignorant And Racist John Kelly Says Lack Of 'Compromise' Started Civil War, Defends Statues | HuffPost

"On Fox News, Trump’s chief of staff calls Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee an “honorable man ... who gave up his country to fight for his state.”



White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said on Monday that a “lack of ability to compromise led to the Civil War” and called the removal of Confederate monuments a “dangerous” scrubbing of history.



Kelly, speaking to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham during the debut of her new show, “The Ingraham Angle,” made the comments when asked about his thoughts on the removal of two plaques honoring President George Washington and Gen. Robert E. Lee at a church in Alexandria, Virginia.



“I think we make a mistake, though, and as a society and certainly as, as individuals, when we take what is today accepted as right and wrong and go back 100, 200, 300 years or more and say: ‘What Christopher Columbus did was wrong,’” Kelly said. “You know, 500 years later, it’s inconceivable to me that you would take what we think now and apply it back then.”



John Kelly Says Lack Of 'Compromise' Started Civil War, Defends Statues | HuffPost

Two NYPD detectives charged with handcuffing woman, 18, and raping her | US news | The Guardian

"Two detectives threatened an 18-year-old woman with arrest over a bottle of prescription pills, handcuffed her, drove her around in their police van and then raped her, authorities said Monday in announcing charges against the two.



The detectives, Eddie Martins and Richard Hall, were arraigned Monday on a 50-count indictment that included rape and kidnapping counts, said the acting Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez. He said DNA recovered from the woman matched both defendants..."



Two NYPD detectives charged with handcuffing woman, 18, and raping her | US news | The Guardian

Highlights of the Special Counsel’s Case Against George Papadopoulos - The New York Times

"Lies about contacts with Russia-linked people

On or about the 27th day of January, 2017, defendant GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch of the Government of the United States, to wit, defendant PAPADOPOULOS lied to special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, concerning a federal investigation based out of the District of Columbia, about the timing, extent, and nature of his relationships and interactions with certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with senior Russian government officials.

Mr. Papadopoulos is charged with lying to the F.B.I. during an interview in early 2017. A 14-page statement of the offense that accompanies the brief criminal information filing shows that Mr. Papadopoulos was questioned by the F.B.I. about his interactions during the campaign with two apparent Russian agents — an unnamed professor and an unnamed ‘female Russian national,’ who each had substantial connections to Russian government officials. The filing says Mr. Papadopoulos falsely played down the significance of those conversations and falsely said he had not yet joined the campaign when they reached out to him.

Lying to federal investigators is a felony that can carry a sentence of up to five years in prison, giving Mr. Papadopoulos an incentive to cooperate in exchange for leniency."

(Via.). Highlights of the Special Counsel’s Case Against George Papadopoulos - The New York Times:

What is now known is that Russia tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign — and did so successfully, at least at some level

What is now known is that Russia tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign — and did so successfully, at least at some level. Put in context of other reporting around the Russia story, it is a remarkable establishment.

The court documents also establish that Russia promised "thousands of emails" that would have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton to Papadopoulos in April 2016. A trove of hacked Democratic emails was released by WikiLeaks three months later — in the midst of the Democratic National Convention.
"I will tell you this, Russia: If you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said, appearing to encourage Russia to continue digging. His campaign denied he was doing that. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."

Papadopoulos tried to set up additional meetings or contacts between people in the Trump campaign and Russians. There were many contacts, according to the court documents, which describe meetings or messages between Papadopoulos and at least two Russians, a "professor" in London and a woman."

Russia Tried To Infiltrate Trump Campaign, Mueller Documents Confirm
http://www.npr.org/2017/10/30/560786546/grand-jury-approves-first-charges-in-muellers-russia-investigation

Federal judge blocks enforcement of Trump’s directive banning military service by transgender individuals

"The court upheld part of the president’s directive blocking military personnel from having sex reassignment surgery.

This is a developing story. It will be updated."



Federal judge blocks enforcement of Trump’s directive banning military service by transgender individuals

Three former Trump campaign officials charged by special counsel

Washington Post: Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis - The Washington Post

Paul Manafort, Who Once Ran Trump Campaign, Told to Surrender - The New York Times

 "WASHINGTON — Paul Manafort and his former business associate Rick Gates were told to surrender to federal authorities Monday morning, the first charges in a special counsel investigation, according to a person involved in the case.

The charges against Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, and Mr. Gates, a business associate of Mr. Manafort, were not immediately clear but represent a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over the president’s first year in office…."

(Via.).  Paul Manafort, Who Once Ran Trump Campaign, Told to Surrender - The New York Times:

After Charlottesville, White Supremacists Abandon Their Own Tennessee Rally

"A coalition of neo-Nazis and white nationalists suffered a setback in Tennessee Saturday when the larger of two planned rallies for the day was abruptly canceled in the face of massive local counter-protests.

The back-to-back rallies in Shelbyville and Murfreesboro were planned as the first joint event for extremist groups with racist, anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi views including the League of the South, the Traditionalist Worker’s Party, National Socialist Movement, Vanguard America and Anti-Communist Action since the August rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that resulted in a riot with dozens of injuries, one dead counter-protester and two police officers killed in a helicopter crash.

At the morning rally in Shelbyville, roughly 350 counter-protesters gathered to wait in 30 degree weather for the white supremacists to arrive. Most were local, hailing from Shelbyville or as far away as Nashville. Hundreds of police officers patrolled the area and kept the counter-protesters back about fifty yards from the designated demonstration zone. Three helicopters circled overhead. Approximately 200 protesters finally showed up at around 11:30 am, an hour and a half late.

Police had told counter-protesters that weapons, helmets and shields were not permitted, and people carrying such equipment were turned away from the rally until they had disposed of those items. But when the members of the far right and alt right arrived, many were wearing helmets and some held shields. The police did not order them to leave or confiscate those items.

For an hour and a half the white supremacists took turns speaking into a bullhorn, mostly drowned out by the chants, jeers and bullhorns of the counter-protesters.

"Make me a sandwich! Make me a sandwich!" shouted one man, wearing a T-shirt that read "White supremacists suck, Nazis swallow."

Ken Nichols, a local man in his late 20’s, wasn't pleased that the police kept him so far away."



After Charlottesville, White Supremacists Abandon Their Own Tennessee Rally

Largely White Opioid Epidemic Highlights Black Frustration | Tennessee News | US News

"...Of all deaths in 2015 from opioid and heroin overdoses in Tennessee and nationwide, about 90 percent of the people were white.

Black people accounted for little more than 6 percent in Tennessee and 8 percent across the country, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Among African-Americans critical of the modern drug war launched four decades ago by President Richard Nixon, the fact that the opioid epidemic is primarily striking the majority race helps explain why it is largely being called an epidemic and treated as a public health crisis, rather than a war.
"Look at the inner city, it's always been what we consider an epidemic," said the Rev. Ralph White, pastor of Bloomfield Full Gospel Baptist Church in Memphis.

"If this had been the case in other areas, the community would have been crying out long ago," White said. "But now that it's taking the lives of European Americans, we find that it's at a time of crisis."
Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University sociology professor as well as minister and author, offered a similar view after an appearance in February at the University of Memphis.

"White brothers and sisters have been medicalized in terms of their trauma and addiction. Black and brown people have been criminalized for their trauma and addiction," said Dyson, whose latest book is "Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America..."

Largely White Opioid Epidemic Highlights Black Frustration | Tennessee News | US News: ""

Imeachment ad runs on Fox & Friends

Raising a black son in the US: ‘He had never taken a breath, and I was already mourning him’ | Life and style | The Guardian

 " looked at the phone on the floor and thought of the little boy swimming inside me and of the young men I know from my small community in DeLisle, Mississippi, who have died young. There are so many. Many are from my extended family. They drown or are shot or run over by cars. Too many, one after another. A cousin here, a great-grandfather there. Some died before they were even old enough legally to buy alcohol. Some died before they could even vote. The pain of their absence walks with their loved ones beneath the humid Mississippi sky, the bowing pines, the reaching oak. We walk hand in hand in the American South: phantom children, ghostly siblings, spectre friends.

Sign up for the Bookmarks email Read more As the months passed, I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake at nights, worrying over the world I was bearing my son into. A procession of dead black men circled my bed. Philando Castile was shot and killed while his girlfriend and daughter were in the car. Alton Sterling was killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the police who shot him were never held accountable for his murder, for shooting and killing the man who smiles in blurry pictures, for letting him bleed out in front of a convenience store. Eric Garner choked against the press of the forearm at his throat. ‘I can’t breathe,’ he said. ‘I can’t breathe.’

My son had never taken a breath, and I was already mourning him…"

(Via.). Raising a black son in the US: ‘He had never taken a breath, and I was already mourning him’ | Life and style | The Guardian:

Tennessee police on high alert for white nationalist and neo-Nazi rallies | US news | The Guardian

  "As white supremacists prepared to rally in two small Tennessee towns on Saturday, local law enforcement was imposing strict security measures including the use of hand-held metal detectors to detect guns, pipes, chains and a long list of other banned objects.

Three men charged after protesters shot at following Richard Spencer speech  Both small cities are a short drive south of Nashville, and have majority white populations."

Tennessee police on high alert for white nationalist and neo-Nazi rallies | US news | The Guardian: "

First charges filed in Robert Mueller's Trump Russia probe | MSNBC

First charges filed in Robert Mueller's Trump Russia probe | MSNBC

There Are No 'Happy Endings' At An Illegal Asian Massage Parlor

"I represented a number of these woman back in another life. They were trafficked, back then, primarily from the ROK, just as the article says, including the age group. That someone would make a rap son g about them and ad insult to injury by mocking their accent is deeply offensive. I have repeatedly said that I like Germany's hate speech regulations far better than what I consider the overly broad projection provided for abusive degradation of racial, ethnic and religious groups. 



§ 130: Incitement to hatred

Main article: hate speech

Section 130 makes it a crime to:

incite hatred against segments of the population or call for violent or arbitrary measures against them in a manner capable of disturbing the peace

to insult, maliciously malign, or defame segments of the population in a manner capable of disturbing the peace

disseminate, publicly make accessible, produce, obtain, supply, stock, offer, announce, commend, undertake to import or export, or facilitate such use by another of written materials that assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming segments of the population or a previously indicated group

approve of, deny or downplay an act committed under the rule of National Socialism in a manner capable of disturbing the peace."



There Are No 'Happy Endings' At An Illegal Asian Massage Parlor

The First FBI Crime Report Issued Under Trump Is Missing A Ton Of Info | FiveThirtyEight

"...Changes to the UCR’s yearly report are not unheard of, and the press release that accompanies the 2016 report, which was published in late September, acknowledges the removal of some tables, saying that the UCR program had “streamlined the 2016 edition.” But changes to the report typically go through a body called the Advisory Policy Board (APB), which is responsible for managing and reviewing operational issues for a number of FBI programs. This time they did not.



In response to queries from FiveThirtyEight about whether the changes to the 2016 report had been made in consultation with the Advisory Policy Board, a spokesman for the UCR responded that the program had “worked with staff from the Office of Public Affairs to review the number of times a user actually viewed the tables on the internet.” When FiveThirtyEight informed a former FBI employee of the process, he said it was abnormal.



“To me it’s shocking that they made these decisions to publish that many fewer tables and they didn’t make the decision with the APB,” James Nolan, who worked at the UCR for five years and now teaches at West Virginia University, told FiveThirtyEight.



Nolan called the FBI’s removal of the tables for lack of web traffic, “somewhat illogical.” (A spokesman for the UCR program told FiveThirtyEight that in the last year, the UCR received 3,045,789 visitors.)



“How much time and savings is there in moving an online table?” Nolan said. “These are canned programs: You create table 71 and table 71 is connected to a link in a blink of an eye.”



These removals mean that there is less data available concerning a perennial focus of Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions: violent crime. Trump and Sessions have frequently talked about MS-13, a gang with Salvadoran roots, as a looming problem in the country. MS-13 has been cited in 37 Department of Justice press releases and speeches in 2017, compared to only nine mentions in 2016 and five in 2015. Sessions gave a speech on the organization last month, while Trump gave a speech on Long Island in July, saying the gang had “transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into bloodstained killing fields. They’re animals.” Trump also frequently refers to gun violence in Chicago, and at the beginning of his presidency, he established a Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, which aims to study and promote awareness of crimes committed by immigrants who entered the country illegally..."



The First FBI Crime Report Issued Under Trump Is Missing A Ton Of Info | FiveThirtyEight

Trump’s Voter Fraud Panel under investigation | MSNBC

Trump’s Voter Fraud Panel under investigation | MSNBC

For Whom the Bell Tolls | Opinion - Once again the late Harvard Law School professor presciently predicted the different reaction to White kids using drugs to when the problem afflicted White kids. The Harvard Crimson

 “In the 'Chronicle of the Amber Cloud,' a strange affliction attacks priviliged white adolescents and is quickly diagnosed as 'Ghetto Disease.' Their skin color darkened, 'youngsters who had been alert, personable, and confident became lethargic, suspicious, withdrawn and hopelessly insecure.'

A cure for the disease is discovered, but when it is suggested that the same cure be given to poor black youngsters, the public balks. The courts defend the exclusion of Blacks from treatment on the grounds that since the disease itself afflicted whites, the cure could be limited to caucasians on medical and not racial grounds. Such are the limits of the 'Equal Protection Clause.'

Bell invokes the metaphor of disease throughout And We Are Not Saved to describe negative aspects of Black behavior. Thus the crime rate among Blacks can be cured like an illness. Again and again, cures for Black pathologies are discovered, then destroyed. But Bell is doing more than laying bare the hypocrisy of whites who blame the victims. By harping on the analogy of disease as an absurd explanation for Black behavior, he makes the unstated point that it is whites who are stricken with a disease: racism. Ultimately, it is they who must be cured. And, Bell seems to be saying, only Blacks can do it.

As the Curia sisters say, 'We find courage in the knowledge that we are not the opressors and that we have commited our lives to fighting the oppression of oursleves as well as others.' One hopes that Bell does not abandon his search for a new way of talking about civil rights and that And We Are Not Saved marks the beginnings of a legal movement that forces Americans finally to realize their own ideals."

(Via.). For Whom the Bell Tolls | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson:

Jimmy Kimmel Mocks Trump’s ‘Ivy League’ Brag: ‘He Might Be the Most Insecure Person Ever’

Wikileaks confirms Trump campaign reached out | MSNBC

Wikileaks confirms Trump campaign reached out | MSNBC: ""

Trump crosses another line - The Washington Post

 

 

 "PRESIDENT TRUMP’S disdain for the integrity of the Justice Department may no longer surprise a weary public. But it is nevertheless shocking to learn that Mr. Trump has breached tradition to personally interview two candidates for U.S. attorney — both of whom would have the power to investigate him in the future.

Politico and CNN report that Mr. Trump met with Geoffrey Berman and Ed McNally, whom the administration is considering for the roles of U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York, respectively. This isn’t the first time Mr. Trump has spoken directly to a U.S. attorney candidate. In March, he met with Jessie Liu, who has since been confirmed as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

The White House and the Justice Department assert that the president is acting within the scope of his authority, because he has the constitutional power to nominate U.S. attorneys in the first place. But the fact that Mr. Trump’s actions are legal does not mean that they are acceptable.
According to Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman under President Barack Obama, Mr. Obama never interviewed a candidate for U.S. attorney. Past presidents have remained at arm’s length from nominees — and later, the attorneys themselves — to preserve the Justice

Department’s ability to enforce the law without political interference. It’s just this principle that Mr. Trump violated in requesting the loyalty of then-FBI Director James B. Comey and pushing the FBI and Justice Department to drop proceedings he disliked.

Any presidential interview of a U.S. attorney candidate would cross the line. But it is particularly concerning that Mr. Trump chose to speak with the men and women who could lead investigations into his business in New York and his activities as president in Washington. With special counsel Robert S. Mueller III already investigating Mr. Trump for possible obstruction of justice — and reports that the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office is now looking into possible money laundering by former Trump aide Paul Manafort — such interference is not an abstract concern.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to confirm Ms. Liu after she assured members that Mr. Trump had not requested her loyalty or discussed any ongoing or future investigations. The same may turn out to be true of Mr. Berman and Mr. McNally. But the fact that the president spoke with them is concerning enough. And Mr. Trump’s continued violations show that a stronger response from Congress is required."

Trump crosses another line - The Washington Post: ""

NAACP warns black passengers of flying American Airlines after 'disturbing incidents' | US news | The Guardian

"We do not and will not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” CEO Doug Parker wrote in a memo to employees. “We have reached out to the NAACP and are eager to meet with them to listen to their issues and concerns.”



The first of the four cases cited by the NAACP appears to involve a flight boarded by the Rev Dr William Barber, a civil rights activist and president of the NAACP’s North Carolina branch. The Barber case is already the subject of a pending lawsuit.



Barber says he was kicked off an AA flight in 2016 after responding to two verbally abusive white passengers, who were allowed to remain on the flight.



“This differential treatment was based on race, as other passengers noted and stated to American Airlines employees,” the lawsuit says. “Reverend Barber was calm, complied with all directives from the flight crew, and did nothing that remotely warranted being ejected from the airplane.”



According to the lawsuit, a black airline employee at the gate told Barber that “this tends to happen a lot”. She said she was “sick of American Airlines doing this”.



NAACP warns black passengers of flying American Airlines after 'disturbing incidents' | US news | The Guardian

John Kelly showed his true colors (opinion) - CNN

 

 ""Dorothy A. Brown is a professor of law at Emory University. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN)On October 4, tragedy struck and four Americans were killed in Niger. For over a week Donald Trump was silent. On October 16, President Trump was asked why he had not spoken about the Niger ambush.

His answer: most presidents, including President Obama, had not contacted families of American troops killedin duty. He said, however, that he planned to make calls. When reporters followed up, President Trump conceded that President Obama probably did make calls sometimes. Trump said he was merely repeating what he had been told and that he relies on his generals.Trump finally did call the widow of one of the four service members killed, and controversy erupted when he reportedly told her that her slain husband "knew what he was getting into."

Dorothy A. Brown

But the real guilty party here is not President Trump, for insensitivity, but White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly.Kelly, whose son, Robert, died in Afghanistan in 2010, was thrust into the spotlight on this issue by his boss, and appeared in the White House briefing room on Thursday afternoon. Here he delivered a powerful recounting of how the remains of soldiers killed in action are taken from the battlefield to their homes, honored, and revered. As stirring and emotional as these early remarks from the chief of staff were, what followed in the press conference revealed something else about Kelly: He is a Make America Great Again kind of guy.

Some background: Many found hope when Kelly was appointed as White House chief of staff. They said a grown-up was now in the White House.Kelly was appointed and heads rolled: out went Anthony Scaramucci, Steve Bannon, and Sebastian Gorka

Kelly was photographed hanging his head when, during a Q&A with reporters, President Trump was unable to condemn the Nazis and white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, while describing violence "on many sides."
In Kelly's press conference Thursday, he didn't live up to his reputation as a grown-up. He said, "President Obama did not call my family, " though he made it clear he wasn't criticizing Obama. He appeared to jump from his personal experience and to the conclusion that President Obama must not have called any families.

The White House chief of staff did not do his homework. President Obama not only made calls but he often consoled family members in real time. Whatever a chief of staff is supposed to do, he is supposed to get the facts right before advising the President or speaking to the press.
He also talked wistfully about how women were sacred in his youth and he seemed to long for those times. Kelly was born in 1950, so his youth wasn't particularly the best time for women or people of color in the US. Also, women have never been treated like we were sacred. Not when Kelly was a child and not in 2017.Some context: October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. It was not created because once upon a time women were sacred but now we need a month dedicated to domestic violence awareness because somehow we lost our way. Marital rape was not even a crime until 1979 -- and at the time was still not a crime in every state.Women are not sacred today. If we were, the White House would not be occupied by a man who was taped admitting to sexually assaulting women because "they let you do it," as he so unartfully put it. Kelly works for that guy.

If women were sacred, Kelly would not have referred to an elected member of Congress, a black woman, as an "empty barrel" -- an insult to Frederica Wilson's intelligence that was far out of line for someone who claims not to want to politicize this situation further. Neither would he have lied about what Wilson said at a dedication ceremony of an FBI building in 2015.
With this press conference, Kelly has done his President and the country a disservice. He took a tragic situation and made it worse. He owes his boss and the country an apology.

John Kelly showed his true colors (opinion) - CNN: ""

John Kelly's disgraceful and frightening failure to apologize - Chicago Tribune Old Schoo racists do not apologize. Sadly hjis behavior is as American as apple pie.

"I can think of no charitable reason that Kelly found this speech empty or unpleasantly stunning, or that he got so much wrong in his retelling.

At best, he was extremely careless with the truth when he embroidered his account with specifics that he didn’t recall accurately. At worst he flat-out lied in an effort to deflect criticism of his boss, thinking there wouldn’t be a video record to expose his treacherous deceit.

Either way it reflected poorly on him. An apology was in order and would have gone some distance in maintaining his moral standing — as a retired Marine general who has lost a son to war, Kelly came to the White House in late July with the presumption that he was a disciplined, ethical, serious person.

His failure in the days since to apologize to Wilson or correct the record has been surprising, disappointing and scary.

Surprising and disappointing because many of us hoped Kelly would be a stabilizing force in the West Wing, the Trump whisperer who moderated the rash, narcissistic and mendacious president. Instead, Kelly showed himself to be yet another enabler ready to throw away his reputation for momentary political advantage.

Scary because his refusal to apologize signals that he shares Trump’s stubbornness, vindictiveness and lack of humility, traits that can lead a nation headlong into nuclear conflict.

Seriously.

Kelly was supposed to be the man of integrity and reflection — the foot on the brake, not the pedal to the metal.

Oh well. Those of us looking for someone to save the country from Trump’s worst impulses are just going to have to keep looking."

(Via.).  John Kelly's disgraceful and frightening failure to apologize - Chicago Tribune:

Mr. "Personal Responsibility" Bill O'Reilly Plays the Blame Game: LOL, typical phony, self righteous conservative mocked for his hypocrisy. The Da...

The Megyn Kelly Problem - The New York Times

"You know that part in “Jurassic Park” when Dr. Grant and the kids are about to get chomped by velociraptors, but the Tyrannosaurus rex shows up and demolishes the raptors with her superior jaws? And you kind of forgive the T. rex for the first half of the movie when she was insatiably hungry for child meat, because in the end she stuck her neck out, as only a dino could, so our heroes could get away?



That’s how I feel when Megyn Kelly goes in on Fox News and Bill O’Reilly. Except, of course, that Kelly, unlike a fictional dinosaur, has been through some truly horrific sexual violations, including vile and gendered comments from a man who is now the president of the United States, as well as an online silencing campaign that will most likely continue for as long as she refuses to capitulate. (Though, by the same token, that T. rex, as far as we know, has never gone on television and insisted that “Santa just is white.”)



It’s a long, silly way to express the conflict at the heart of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is still your enemy. Kelly spent more than a dozen years as part of the Fox News machine, churning out the same brand of soft propaganda that helped lead to the Iraq war, the Tea Party and, eventually, “fake news” and President Trump.



Kelly happily trafficked in racist tropes for profit — black communities have a “thug mentality,” asking repeatedly whether the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown were necessarily related to race — until her own dehumanization at the hands of Roger Ailes, O’Reilly and others became untenable. If you’ve heard the term “white feminism” tossed around your social media feeds, this is a prime example: fighting for freedom and justice as far as the boundaries of your own identity and not beyond.



It’s an unfortunate reality that Kelly’s stature as a right-of-center icon confers a degree of credibility that the Fox News rank and file — and, let’s be honest, the public — withhold from the traditional heralds of the ills of rape, abuse and sexual harassment: feminists. Activists and scholars who devote their lives to the study of gender-based violence and its legislative and social amelioration have been systematically smeared as reactionary liars. America’s traditionalist wing has set a tidy trap: The more you actually know about the way abuse functions, the less seriously you’re taken. So, what do we do with the fact that, as destructive as some of Kelly’s work has been, there are people who listened to her indictment of Ailes who would never have listened to, say, Anita Hill.



When Kelly finds a righteous purpose, she is potent. She found one this week, when — with the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations still at a fevered peak — news broke that O’Reilly had agreed to pay a $32 million settlement to the former Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl.



“That is a jaw-dropping figure,” Kelly said Monday on her new NBC morning show. “O. J. Simpson was ordered to pay the Goldman and Brown families $33.5 million for the murders of Ron and Nicole. What on earth would justify that amount? What awfulness went on?”



In a profoundly hostile and disturbing interview about the settlement, O’Reilly told The New York Times that he had been the subject of no formal complaints to human resources in 43 years. Kelly dunked on that one, too: “O’Reilly’s suggestion that no one ever complained about his behavior was false. I know because I complained.”



She also released an email that she sent to Fox executives in 2016, when O’Reilly dismissed sexual harassment allegations on air. “Perhaps he didn’t realize the kind of message his criticism sends to young women across this country about how men continue to view the issue of speaking out about sexual harassment,” Kelly wrote.



It’s a phrase that wouldn’t have been out of place in Bitch or Bust or Jezebel. But what about the kind of message American conservatism has been sending to young women — particularly women who are not wealthy and white and conventionally attractive and heterosexual — for generations?



Kelly crystallizes an uncomfortable tension that’s risen to the fore since the Weinstein story hit: What happens when #MeToo meets “I’m not a feminist, but”? It goes without saying that men across the political spectrum routinely victimize the women in their lives. It goes without saying because feminists have already been saying it for years. Yet, in the flood of anger and catharsis this past week, I’ve seen multiple eloquent and heartbreaking accounts of rape and abuse from conservative women, who are careful to specify that they are not like those other women, those radicals, those tedious, troublesome feminists. That’s fine. Whether you like us or not, we carved out this space for you.



Conservative women, anti-feminist women, apolitical women, it is simply a fact: You are participating in feminism just by being alive. In the most passive sense, you are beneficiaries. You can vote, you can work, you can have your own bank account, you can bring a sexual harassment claim against someone at your place of employment, you can prosecute your husband for rape, you can get an abortion. These rights weren’t just won by the women’s movement of the past; they are protected by the feminist movement of today — and they are under constant attack by the Republican Party, particularly the current administration.



But in a more active sense, by participating in #MeToo, by fighting back against harassment, by telling your story, you are standing up for the idea that women are autonomous human beings who are preyed upon and subordinated by men. Sorry, but that’s feminism. We’ll be here when you’re ready."



The Megyn Kelly Problem - The New York Times

Rep. Frederica Wilson Might Have a Defamation Case Against John Kelly | LawNewz

"General John Kelly got it wrong. And how.



While threatening to drench a White House lectern with tears borrowed from a large reptile or Hollywood prop shop, Kelly recited what was likely a prepared takedown aimed at Democratic Representative Frederica Wilson. He said:



A congresswoman stood up, and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that [FBI] building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money, the $20 million, to build the building, and she sat down.



Except Kelly’s version of events isn’t remotely close to the truth.



The Orlando Sun Sentinel posted video footage of Wilson’s 2015 remarks about the FBI building in question.



In that video, Wilson does take credit for moving the legislation which named the building forward. But that’s a far cry from claiming that she “took care of her constituents” by securing the funding for the building.



And, it’s not just a matter of Kelly misremembering what occurred. Because his version of events is as detailed and lengthy as it brazen and false. It would be one thing if Kelly simply flubbed it by mixing up the words “naming” and “funding.”



Whom among us hasn’t accidentally given our recently purchased pets or newborn children a pile of cash instead of a name? It happens all the time.



But here, Kelly continued on and created a whole cloth tapestry of never-happened events to give his story a bit more imagery and vibrancy. After all, when you’re going to lie, go big or go home. And the White House trotted Kelly out like a weathered show poodle for a reason so he was quite eager to perform like the very good boy he is.



Instead of simply misremembering, Kelly’s attack on Wilson’s credibility created: (1) a scenario where she claimed to have helped her constituents–which she never claimed; (2) a repeat of the claim that got the money–which, again, she never said; and (3) a braggadocios description of a phone call with Barack Obama–both of which never occurred in our version of reality.



So, this was planned and probably scripted.



The most charitable reading for the general here is that he was fed the misinformation by Stephen Miller or some associated underling anxious to overplay their hand for a pat on the head. Good boys abound in the White House these days and they need constant affirmation. But Kelly should know better than to rely on the MAGA true believers and agitprop producers he’s supposed to be exacting a moderating influence upon. Turns out he’s not really doing that anymore–and probably never was.



So, once again conservatives are put into that classic bind from which they’ve got to choose whether to believe the rough-hued words of their father figure-like social betters or their own lying eyes. It should be fairly interesting to see how this all plays out.



In fact, were Representative Wilson so inclined, she might find it worth her while to pursue a claim of defamation against General Kelly. To be a bit conclusory–and based on the available evidence–it looks like most of the elements are there. They are:



The defendant made a false and defamatory statement concerning the plaintiff;

The defendant published the statement without privilege to a third party;

The defendant’s fault in publishing the statement amounted to at least negligence; and

Either the statement was actionable as a matter of law irrespective of special harm or its publication caused the plaintiff special harm.

Not only did Kelly baldly lie about Wilson’s remarks, he cast them in such a light that they would certainly qualify as defamatory–and by virtue of badmouthing Wilson in front of the nation, the publication element is easily satisfied. Simply defamatory statements alone don’t automatically rise to the level of legal defamation, of course, so Wilson would also have to show that Kelly was acting with something akin to negligence or actual malice–knowledge the statement was false.



Here, the availability of public records–from which Kelly could have referenced before making his accusations–and the possibility of Kelly having relied upon the Trump White House for the version he relayed to the country at least pose a question which could be provided to a jury. Since defamation cases rise and fail based on summary judgments, Wilson would have a fairly worthwhile case in line with D.C. court precedents. Where she would have the most trouble is the final element, pleading special harm.



In legalese, “special harm” isn’t particularly special. It just means an economic loss. Personally, Wilson isn’t likely to have suffered any such loss. However, if the representative could show a diminished amount of fundraising for her congressional campaign or something that effect, it would be an interesting case of first impression for the D.C. court system to hash out.



Needlessly distracting from Kelly’s genuine issues with the truth, however, Representative Wilson bizarrely characterized “empty barrel” as some sort of racial epithet. It’s not. (Though that charge might make a hypothetical slander lawsuit all the more interesting.)



There is the possibility that Kelly harbors anti-black bigotry because he grew up in Boston, a beautiful city with an exceedingly ugly history and legacy of racism and racial discord. But that’s not quite the same as inventing a racial slur out of thin air.



Kelly lied or was willingly fed misinformation by the error prone White House. That’s bad enough. So, let’s leave it at that."



Rep. Frederica Wilson Might Have a Defamation Case Against John Kelly | LawNewz

General Kelly's attack against Frederica Wilson was made maliciously with clear knowledge of it's falsehood. He must be sued for liable.

Congresswoman Frederica Wilson appears to have a strong case of libel against General Kelly.  He lied about her speech which he claimed to attend.  By calling her an empty barrell he show clear malice.  The law is clear here.  General Kelly must be sued:

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (No. 39)   376 U.S. 254

Argued: January 6, 1964

Decided: March 9, 1964

"The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made [p280] with "actual malice" -- that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not. An oft-cited statement of a like rule, which has been adopted by a number of state courts, [n20] is found in the Kansas case of Coleman v. MacLennan, 78 Kan. 711, 98 P. 281 (1908). The State Attorney General, a candidate for reelection and a member of the commission charged with the management and control of the state school fund, sued a newspaper publisher for alleged libel in an article purporting to state facts relating to his official conduct in connection with a school-fund transaction. The defendant pleaded privilege and the trial judge, over the plaintiff's objection, instructed the jury that

where an article is published and circulated among voters for the sole purpose of giving what the defendant [p281] believes to be truthful information concerning a candidate for public office and for the purpose of enabling such voters to cast their ballot more intelligently, and the whole thing is done in good faith and without malice, the article is privileged, although the principal matters contained in the article may be untrue, in fact, and derogatory to the character of the plaintiff, and in such a case the burden is on the plaintiff to show actual malice in the publication of the article.

In answer to a special question, the jury found that the plaintiff had not proved actual malice, and a general verdict was returned for the defendant. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Kansas, in an opinion by Justice Burch, reasoned as follows (78 Kan., at 724, 98 P. at 286):

It is of the utmost consequence that the people should discuss the character and qualifications of candidates for their suffrages. The importance to the state and to society of such discussions is so vast, and the advantages derived are so great, that they more than counterbalance the inconvenience of private persons whose conduct may be involved, and occasional injury to the reputations of individuals must yield to the public welfare, although at times such injury may be great. The public benefit from publicity is so great, and the chance of injury to private character so small, that such discussion must be privileged.

The court thus sustained the trial court's instruction as a correct statement of the law, saying:

In such a case the occasion gives rise to a privilege, qualified to this extent: any one claiming to be defamed by the communication must show actual malice or go remediless. This privilege extends to a great variety of subjects, and includes matters of [p282] public concern, public men, and candidates for office.

78 Kan. at 723, 98 P. at 285.

Such a privilege for criticism of official conduct [n21] is appropriately analogous to the protection accorded a public official when he is sued for libel by a private citizen. In Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. 564, 575, this Court held the utterance of a federal official to be absolutely privileged if made "within the outer perimeter" of his duties. The States accord the same immunity to statements of their highest officers, although some differentiate their lesser officials and qualify the privilege they enjoy. [n22] But all hold that all officials are protected unless actual malice can be proved. The reason for the official privilege is said to be that the threat of damage suits would otherwise "inhibit the fearless, vigorous, and effective administration of policies of government" and "dampen the ardor of all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible, in the unflinching discharge of their duties." Barr v. Matteo, supra, 360 U.S. at 571. Analogous considerations support the privilege for the citizen-critic of government. It is as much his duty to criticize as it is the official's duty to administer. See Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375 (concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Brandeis), quoted supra, p. 270. As Madison said, see supra p. 275, "the censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people." It would give public servants an unjustified preference over the public they serve, if critics of official conduct [p283] did not have a fair equivalent of the immunity granted to the officials themselves.

We conclude that such a privilege is required by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

III

We hold today that the Constitution delimits a State's power to award damages for libel in actions brought by public officials against critics of their official conduct. Since this is such an action, [n23] the rule requiring proof of actual malice is applicable. While Alabama law apparently requires proof of actual malice for an award of punitive damages, [n24] where general damages are concerned malice is "presumed." Such a presumption is inconsistent [p284] with the federal rule. "The power to create presumptions is not a means of escape from constitutional restrictions," Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. 219, 239, "the showing of malice required for the forfeiture of the privilege is not presumed but is a matter for proof by the plaintiff. . . ." Lawrence v. Fox, 357 Mich. 134, 146, 97 N.W.2d 719, 725 (1959).   

Bias, not behavior, holding women back at work, study says - CNET

"In a report published Monday in the Harvard Business Review, data analysts from McKinsey & Co. and workplace analytics company Humanyze said they decided to test the argument that women just behave differently than men.

To do that, they issued 100 'sociometric badges' across 'all five levels of seniority' in a company at a large, multinational strategy firm that's overwhelmingly male. Over four months, those badges measured 'movement, proximity to other badges, and volume of tone of voice when speaking. They can tell us who talks with whom, where people communicate, and who dominates conversations,' the researchers wrote.

They then anonymized the data, although they still knew each person's gender, role in the workplace and number of years working at the office."

(Via.) Bias, not behavior, holding women back at work, study says - CNET:

There’s a ‘poisonous dynamic among white people’ over who’s to blame for racism - The Washington Post

 Duh!  But plenty of the White middle class voted for Trump so you are continuing the divide and conquer narrative.

To further my education in the political motivations of the white working-class and their support of President Trump, I read “White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America” by Joan C. Williams. I’m so used to discussing the role race played in his election, the uncorked enmity of whites towards black and brown Americans and others, that I didn’t anticipate Williams’s twist in the conventional wisdom.

For more conversations like this, subscribe to “Cape UP” on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

“White people who are not privileged feel belittled. They feel stereotyped. They feel openly ridiculed and they are really, really angry because of what elite white people are doing to them,” Williams told me in the latest episode of “Cape Up.” “Now, because of this poisonous dynamic among white people, guess who’s paying the price?”

Williams devotes an entire chapter in her book to teasing out the difference between white working-class racism and the racism practiced by the “professional managerial elite,” or PME. “There’s an element here of privileged whites distancing themselves from racism by displacing the blame for racism onto less-privileged whites,” she writes. But Williams exposes a modern-day version of the wedge intentionally driven between “a cross-race coalition of the disenfranchised” that developed in the years after the Civil War.[The real reason working-class whites continue to support Trump]
“The idea of the way to control working-class whites is to deflect their anger onto immigrants or onto blacks or other people of color. This has been going on . . . This is a glorious American tradition,” Williams told me on the podcast. She further clarifies in her book. “Working-class whites, whose claims to privilege rest on morality and hard work, stereotype black people by conflating hard living and race,” she notes. “Professional-class whites, whose claims to privilege rest on merit, stereotype black people as less competent than whites.”

“There’s enough blame for racism to go around,” Williams told me on the podcast.
Photo by: Jonathan Capehart/The Washington PostBut there’s more going on with the white working-class than racial animosity. Class plays a major role in the present toxic dynamic. The worldview of the working class and the PME reflects a night-and-day existence and forms the basis of questions Williams asks in her book and that we discussed on the podcast. “Why doesn’t the working class just move to where the jobs are?” and “Don’t they understand that manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back?” are just two of them.

[Dignity: The improbable word Arthur Brooks says explains why Trump won]
Listen to the podcast to hear Williams explain why the working-class admire the super rich they see on television but can’t stand the professionals they interact with everyday. Part of it has to do with the glib condescension of the elite. “We call them rednecks with plumber’s butt in flyover states. And then they get offended,” Williams said. “Gee, why would that be? Because we’re insulting them.”

There’s a ‘poisonous dynamic among white people’ over who’s to blame for racism - The Washington Post: ""

(Via.)

Duh!
“This is a really poisonous dynamic in this country between white people.”
To further my education in the political motivations of the white working-class and their support of President Trump, I read “White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America” by Joan C. Williams. I’m so used to discussing the role race played in his election, the uncorked enmity of whites towards black and brown Americans and others, that I didn’t anticipate Williams’s twist in the conventional wisdom.
For more conversations like this, subscribe to “Cape UP” on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.
“White people who are not privileged feel belittled. They feel stereotyped. They feel openly ridiculed and they are really, really angry because of what elite white people are doing to them,” Williams told me in the latest episode of “Cape Up.” “Now, because of this poisonous dynamic among white people, guess who’s paying the price?”
Williams devotes an entire chapter in her book to teasing out the difference between white working-class racism and the racism practiced by the “professional managerial elite,” or PME. “There’s an element here of privileged whites distancing themselves from racism by displacing the blame for racism onto less-privileged whites,” she writes. But Williams exposes a modern-day version of the wedge intentionally driven between “a cross-race coalition of the disenfranchised” that developed in the years after the Civil War.[The real reason working-class whites continue to support Trump]
“The idea of the way to control working-class whites is to deflect their anger onto immigrants or onto blacks or other people of color. This has been going on . . . This is a glorious American tradition,” Williams told me on the podcast. She further clarifies in her book. “Working-class whites, whose claims to privilege rest on morality and hard work, stereotype black people by conflating hard living and race,” she notes. “Professional-class whites, whose claims to privilege rest on merit, stereotype black people as less competent than whites.”
“There’s enough blame for racism to go around,” Williams told me on the podcast.
Photo by: Jonathan Capehart/The Washington PostBut there’s more going on with the white working-class than racial animosity. Class plays a major role in the present toxic dynamic. The worldview of the working class and the PME reflects a night-and-day existence and forms the basis of questions Williams asks in her book and that we discussed on the podcast. “Why doesn’t the working class just move to where the jobs are?” and “Don’t they understand that manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back?” are just two of them.
[Dignity: The improbable word Arthur Brooks says explains why Trump won]
Listen to the podcast to hear Williams explain why the working-class admire the super rich they see on television but can’t stand the professionals they interact with everyday. Part of it has to do with the glib condescension of the elite. “We call them rednecks with plumber’s butt in flyover states. And then they get offended,” Williams said. “Gee, why would that be? Because we’re insulting them.”

Want to increase black turnout? Make the fight for voting rights a core campaign issue

 

 "If Democrats want to win elections—which is how we’ll be able to make positive changes and make America a more just place—we need to connect the dots. Two articles came out this week about black voters. One looked back to voter suppression in 2016, while the other was about black turnout in upcoming elections this fall. In order to achieve those electoral victories, we need to link these two subjects.

Mother Jones has a terrific piece of journalism by Ari Berman, who has been focused for some time on voter suppression, and who wrote a book on the struggle for voting rights since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. His article highlights the experience of Andrea Anthony, an African-American woman who should have been able to cast her vote last fall in Milwaukee, but was stymied by that state’s draconian voter ID laws, which were passed by Republicans with the specific intent of suppressing the votes of poor and minority voters. A backer of the law, former state senator and now-Congressman Glenn Grothman, said openly that the law would help Republicans win elections: “and now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.”

After talking about Ms. Anthony’s story, Berman examined the broader data her story represents and concluded that there was enough voter suppression in Wisconsin to throw the state from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. Yes, there were other factors, and without Comey it wouldn’t have even been close enough to matter. But there was Comey, and it was close enough to matter. And voter suppression swung the state.

Want to increase black turnout? Make the fight for voting rights a core campaign issue: 

Don Lemon's open letter to Donald Trump: 'Please stop'

General Kelly Owes Representative Wilson an Apology: The Daily Show

President Donald Trump Undercuts Gold Star Widow Myeshia Johnson When will America show outrage for the way Trump is treating these two Black women who the President Trump and Chief of Staff John Kelly. If these women were White there would be national outrage! I am disgusted but my life has taught me that there are far too few decent people in America, far to few. The double standard is obvious. We will never receive equal concern and respect in America because the vast majority of White people do not give a damn about Black people and this includes lots of liberals as well as of course conservatives. I have not said the "Pledge of Allegiance or sang the Star Spangled Banner since I was in the 8th grade and I never will. I do not support their lie. They are not inspirational to me, they are hypocritical, phony as Frederick Douglas said " your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

Encourage everyone you know to register and vote in 2018. Send Trump and the Republicans a message.

Is it ‘against the law’ for NFL players to kneel for the national anthem, as Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore said? No

Myeshia Johnson, Gold Star widow, discusses President Trump's condolence call - The Washington Post

"Nineteen days after her husband’s death and two days after his wrenching burial, the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson said she has “nothing to say” to President Trump, whose condolence call pulled the grieving widow into the center of a national controversy.



“Very upset and hurt; it made me cry even worse,” Myeshia Johnson told “Good Morning America” about her conversation with the president.



Making her first public comments since she took the call from Trump last week — on the same day her husband’s remains were flown back to the United States — Johnson recalled that the president said her husband “knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways. And it made me cry. I was very angry at the tone of his voice, and how he said it.”



She added: “I didn’t say anything. I just listened.”



Trump on Monday disputed Johnson’s account, characterizing his conversation with her as “very respectful.”





"[I was] very upset and hurt. It made me cry even worse." – Myeshia Johnson, widow of Sgt. La David Johnson to @GStephanopoulos pic.twitter.com/JguNqTaYa3



Myeshia Johnson, Gold Star widow, discusses President Trump's condolence call - The Washington Post

D.E.A. Says Hondurans Opened Fire During a Drug Raid. A Video Suggests Otherwise. - The New York Times

D.E.A. Says Hondurans Opened Fire During a Drug Raid. A Video Suggests Otherwise. - The New York Times

Trump’s Boogeymen? Women! - The New York Times

By Charles M. Blow Oct. 22, 2017, www.nytimes.com October 23rd, 2017



Frederica Wilson at the graveside service for Sgt. La David T. Johnson. Wilson was present during the controversial call between President Trump and the widow of the fallen soldier. Credit Joe Skipper/Reuters

Photo by: Joe Skipper/Reuters

Donald Trump has a particular taste for the degradation of racial, ethnic and religious minorities and women — and God forbid those identities should overlap — as a way playing out his personal sense of racial, sexist, and patriarchal entitlement. And as he degrades, he plays to those very same entitlements in the base that elected him.



This has manifested itself most recently in a despicable episode in which Trump became embroiled in a controversy — mostly of his own making! — over an unacceptable call he made to a pregnant widow of one of four soldiers killed in a still-murky attack in Niger.



Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, a black woman, knew the fallen soldier and his widow and was in the car when the president called to offer condolences. Wilson seems to have correctly reported what Trump said.



This set Trump off and he issued a stream of lies to defame Wilson. The White House even sent its chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, out to defend the president. He, too, lied about Wilson.



When asked about Kelly’s lies, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it was “highly inappropriate” to question a four-star general.



Aside from this not being a third-world military junta where a person in a high-profile political job can’t be questioned, this illustrates how Trump’s fetish for military generals also acts as an expression of his racial exclusion and preference for patriarchy. Military generals are a fraternity comprised almost exclusively of white men, according to a government report from 2011. How dare their word be questioned?



But there is no limit to the questioning of women in the Trump universe, no matter how high those women have risen, no matter the merits of their claims, particularly if the women are black or brown or if they have directly challenged Trump.



As Michelle Lyn wrote for Vogue.com last week:



“According to Trump’s sordid he-said-she-said turn of events, however, Wilson isn’t an elected official supporting a constituent and friend, she’s a ‘wacky’ woman. Just like Clinton and San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz were ‘nasty’; Brzezinski had a ‘low IQ’; Megyn Kelly has ‘blood coming out of her wherever”; and Jessica Leeds, who accused Trump of assault, ‘would not be [his] first choice.’”



She continued:



“Women who hold truth to Trump’s power are often met with petty insults and cyberbullying (Paging Melania!) — but most of all, Trump and company brand them liars or assail them as absurd.”



One common thread is to reach beyond attacking these women on the merits of their claims to attacking the way they look. And this isn’t simply constrained to Trump himself; it is apparently in the bloodline. Donald Trump Jr. once referred to Congresswoman Maxine Waters as looking “like a stripper.”



Another strategy of dismissal is to portray these women as mere ideological, party-serving puppets, rather than as fierce advocates with their own opinions and power.



Trump tweeted, for example, that Mayor Cruz was “told by the Democrats that you must be nasty” to him.



None of this is out of step with what his base wants. Trump is advancing an agenda of white male identity politics and for those in his camp and in his corner, this is the dawn of a blissful new day.



Trump isn’t simply doing this on a personal level; he’s also doing it on the broader policy level.



At the same time that he’s pushing massive tax cuts for the top 1 percent, he is also seriously considering welfare reform. You may not fully comprehend the racial dimensions of this, so allow me to elucidate.



According to a Tax Policy Center report issued late last month about the Republican tax plan, in 2018, “Taxpayers in the top one percent (incomes above $730,000), would receive about 50 percent of the total tax benefit,” and by 2027, “about 80 percent of the total benefit would accrue to taxpayers in the top one percent.”



And who exactly are the top 1 percent, demographically? Well, a 2011 analysis by The Grio found that they are 96.2 percent white, and a 2012 study found that about eight in 10 were men.



Contrast that with welfare, where the majority of recipients are women. Although white people are the largest group of recipients of most of the major government assistance programs, many white people, and Republicans in particular, don’t seem to realize this. A YouGov poll taken in January of 2016 found that a plurality of respondents and an even higher percentage of Republicans wrongly believe that black people are welfare’s largest recipients.



Much of the money is directed at white people, but most of the stigma is directed at black and brown people, and Trump is, like a multitude of Republicans before him, exploiting the misperception.



Donald Trump’s boogeymen are very often boogeywomen, and they are particularly primed for attack if they are black or brown."



Trump’s Boogeymen? Women! - The New York Times

Nancy Pelosi on Gen. Kelly, Rep. Wilson and Niger | MSNBC

Nancy Pelosi on Gen. Kelly, Rep. Wilson and Niger | MSNBC: ""

Clearly General Kelly purposefully lied about Congresswoman Frederica Wilson

Donald Trump Is Rush-Shipping Condolences to Military Families - The Atlantic

 

"The Trump administration is scrambling to defend the president’s characterization of his communications with grieving military families, including rush-delivering letters from the president to the families of servicemembers killed months ago. Donald Trump falsely claimed this week that he had called ‘virtually’ all fallen servicemembers’ families since his time in office.

Timothy Eckels Sr. hadn’t heard anything from President Trump since his son Timothy Eckels Jr. was killed after a collision involving the USS John S. McCain on August 21. But then, on October 20, two days into the controversy over the president’s handling of a condolence call with an American soldier’s widow, Eckels Sr. received a United Parcel Service package dated October 18 with a letter from the White House.

‘Honestly, I feel the letter is reactionary to the media storm brewing over how these things have been handled,’ Eckels told The Atlantic. ‘I’ve received letters from McCain, Mattis, and countless other officials before his. I wasn’t sure if the fact that the accident that caused Timothy’s death has still yet to officially have the cause determined played into the timing of our president’s response.’

He added that the letter ‘seemed genuine and even mentioned Timothy’s siblings.’ It was ‘a respectful letter,’ Eckels wrote. The family of Corey Ingram, another Navy systems technician who died in the collision on the USS John McCain, also confirmed to The Atlantic they received a rush-delivered letter from the White House on October 20. A third family, of another sailor who perished in the accident, John M. Hoagland III, said they, too, received a rush-delivery letter this week. It was not immediately clear whether White House condolence letters are typically sent via this expedited shipping. But one former official who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations said that it would be unusual for condolence letters to be sent weeks after the fact, because they were seen as 'priority correspondence, to get to the family in a week or two if possible.'

The White House declined to address The Atlantic’s specific questions about how Trump has—or has not—comforted grieving military families. ‘The president and the nation are grateful for the service and sacrifice of our fallen American heroes,’ a White House official told The Atlantic.‘We have addressed the president’s outreach to the families extensively and out of respect, we are not going to comment further.’"

(Via.).  Donald Trump Is Rush-Shipping Condolences to Military Families - The Atlantic:

Ret. Gen. David Petraeus: 'We're all fair game' for criticism Video - ABC News

 

ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

Ret. Gen. David Petraeus: 'We're all fair game' for criticism Video - ABC News: ""

(Via.)

Exclusive: Pentagon Document Contradicts Trump’s Gold Star Claims #LiarInChief is as usual #LiarInChief

 

:"In the hours after President Donald Trump said on an Oct. 17 radio broadcast that he had contacted nearly every family that had lost a military servicemember this year, the White House was hustling to learn from the Pentagon the identities and contact information for those families, according to an internal Defense Department email.

The email exchange, which has not been previously reported, shows that senior White House aides were aware on the day the president made the statement that it was not accurate — but that they should try to make it accurate as soon as possible, given the gathering controversy.
Not only had the president not contacted virtually all the families of military personnel killed this year, the White House did not even have an up-to-date list of those who had been killed.
The exchange between the White House and the Defense secretary’s office occurred about 5 p.m. on Oct. 17. The White House asked the Pentagon for information about surviving family members of all servicemembers killed after Trump’s inauguration so that the president could be sure to contact all of them.

Capt. Hallock Mohler, the executive secretary to Defense Secretary James Mattis, provided the White House with information in the 5 p.m. email about how each servicemember had died and the identity of his or her survivors, including phone numbers.
The email’s subject line was, “Condolence Letters Since 20 January 2017.”

Mohler indicated in the email that he was responding to a request from the president’s staff for information through Ylber Bajraktari, an aide on the National Security Council. The objective was to figure out who among so-called Gold Star families of the fallen Trump had yet to call. Mohler’s email said that the president’s aides “reached out to Ylber looking for the following ASAP from DOD.”
Trump had said in a Fox News Radio interview earlier that day that he had contacted the families of “virtually everybody” in the military who had been killed since he was inaugurated.

“I have called, I believe, everybody — but certainly I’ll use the word virtually everybody,” Trump said.

Since then, the Associated Press contacted 20 families and found that half had not heard from Trump. It is not clear how many of the families that have heard from the president received the calls this week, since the controversy over his contacts with military families erupted. It is not clear when the White House first asked for data on Gold Star families, but it is clear that the answers had not been provided before Tuesday.
The Pentagon email indicates that 21 military personnel had been killed in action during Trump’s tenure, and an additional 44 had been killed by means other than enemy fire, such as ship collisions that took 17 sailors’ lives in the Pacific this summer.

Trump has clearly been active in reaching out to military families who have suffered the ultimate loss, as the AP reports show.
But the White House-Pentagon email scramble Tuesday undermines the veracity of Trump’s statement about his record of contacting all Gold Star families. The internal document also sheds light on how the White House staff, on this and other occasions, has had to go into damage-control mode when the president makes inaccurate statements.

Exclusive: Pentagon Document Contradicts Trump’s Gold Star Claims: ""

After Video Refutes Kelly’s Charges, Congresswoman Raises Issue of Race - The New York Times

 

By Yamiche Alcindor, Michael D. Shear"

WASHINGTON — Video of a 2015 speech delivered by Representative Frederica S. Wilson revealed Friday that John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, misrepresented her remarks when he accused her of bragging about securing $20 million for a South Florida F.B.I. building and twisting President Barack Obama’s arm.

Mr. Kelly, escalating a feud between Mr. Trump and Ms. Wilson, had cast the congresswoman on Thursday as a publicity-seeking opportunist. However, the video, released by The Sun Sentinel, a newspaper in South Florida, showed that during her nine-minute speech, Ms. Wilson never took credit for getting the money for the building, only for helping pass legislation naming the building after two fallen federal agents.
She never mentioned pleading with Mr. Obama, and she acknowledged the help of several Republicans, including John A. Boehner, then the House speaker; Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Curbelo; and Senator Marco Rubio.
Ms. Wilson, in an interview on Friday, called Mr. Kelly a liar and hinted strongly that the altercation, prompted by a call from President Trump to the widow of a fallen black soldier, was racially charged.
“The White House itself is full of white supremacists,” she said.
“I feel very sorry for him because he feels such a need to lie on me and I’m not even his enemy,” Ms. Wilson said of Mr. Kelly. “I just can’t even imagine why he would fabricate something like that. That is absolutely insane. I’m just flabbergasted because it’s very easy to trace.”
While she stopped short of accusing Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine general, of racial animus, she did say that others in the White House are racially biased.

“They are making themselves look like fools. They have no credibility,” she said. “They are trying to assassinate my character, and they are assassinating their own because everything they say is coming out and shown to be a lie.”

But Mr. Trump and his top aides remained defiant on Friday, even after the video was released. In an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Mr. Trump said he found Ms. Wilson’s criticism of Mr. Kelly “sickening.” The president called his chief of staff “a very elegant man,” and added that Mr. Kelly “is a tough, strong four-star Marine.”
Mr. Kelly, Mr. Trump said, was offended that Ms. Wilson publicized what the president said was a “very nice” call to the widow of a soldier killed in action in Niger.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Kelly “absolutely” stands by his Thursday remarks.
“General Kelly said he was ‘stunned’ that Representative Wilson made comments at a building dedication honoring slain F.B.I. agents about her own actions in Congress, including lobbying former President Obama on legislation,” Ms. Sanders said in a statement. “As General Kelly pointed out, if you’re able to make a sacred act like honoring American heroes about yourself, you’re an empty barrel.”

John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, on Thursday. Credit Tom Brenner/The New York TimesPhoto by: Tom Brenner/The New York TimesMs. Sanders escalated the messaging a few hours later: “As we say in the South: all hat, no cattle,” she said. Ms. Wilson is known in the Capitol and in South Florida for her colorful hats.

Ms. Sanders also told a reporter who questioned Mr. Kelly’s veracity that “if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate.”

The charges and countercharges on Friday veered into the incendiary issue of race. Ms. Wilson is African-American, as is Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, one of four American soldiers killed on Oct. 4 in Niger.
People in Ms. Wilson’s South Florida district and some members of the Congressional Black Caucus echoed Ms. Wilson’s accusations, though they also noted that Mr. Trump attacks people of all races. The caucus chairman, Representative Cedric L. Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana, defended Ms. Wilson as “a champion for the people of South Florida.”

“It is unfortunate that the president of the United States lacks the capacity to comfort a grieving widow,” Mr. Richmond said. “It is also unfortunate that he and his chief of staff saw fit to attack a sitting member of Congress.”
Clifford W. Jordan, 60, the general manager of a nursing company in the same building as Ms. Wilson’s Miami Gardens office, said the criticism of the congresswoman smacked of racism and sexism.

“There’s all this noise around the one black guy who died in Niger — no one is even talking about the other guys — and now they’re going after this black congresswoman,” said Mr. Jordan, whose father died in the 1960s while serving as a sergeant in the Air Force.
“It’s almost like General Kelly was telling the congresswoman, ‘You don’t know your place, you’re not supposed to criticize the president,’” said Mr. Jordan, who is black. “That’s how it looks to the black people.”

Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat and the Virgin Islands’ delegate to Congress, said she was especially offended that Mr. Trump did not seem to know Sergeant Johnson’s name.
“He continually called that fallen soldier ‘your guy’ to his wife. That was his wife,” she said. “It was almost as if he doesn’t believe that we have husbands and wives as black people. And that I find very disturbing, that he would not give her the respect of calling that soldier her husband.”
“I think he challenges anybody who goes after him and corrects him, whether they are black or white or male or female,” she continued. “I think the attack is more stark when it is a woman of color.”

Representative Karen Bass, Democrat of California, said it was not surprising to see people attack Sergeant Johnson’s widow in racially derogatory terms on social media. “He has given license to this,” Ms. Bass said of President Trump. “He’s promoted it. He’s agitated it. He’s encouraged it.”
Ms. Sanders did not speak to the issue of race when asked later to respond to such comments. “It’s appalling the congresswoman continues to make the death of an American hero about herself instead of honoring the fallen who selflessly gave their lives for all of us,” Ms. Sanders said in an emailed statement.

The issue exploded this week when Ms. Wilson went public to say that in a condolence call to Ms. Johnson, Mr. Trump had said that Sergeant Johnson “knew what he signed up for.”

Mr. Trump flatly declared that Ms. Wilson’s account was fabricated, but on Thursday, when Mr. Kelly defended the president, he did not reject her account.

Instead, he accused her of turning Sergeant Johnson’s death into a political stunt. The congresswoman had known Sergeant Johnson and his family for years, beginning when, in elementary school, he joined a mentoring program that she had started. She was in the limousine with Ms. Johnson and her two children, awaiting Sergeant Johnson’s body at Miami International Airport, when the president’s call came in over a speakerphone.
Although he did not use her name, Mr. Kelly said he and the congresswoman were both at the 2015 ceremony for a new Miami F.B.I. building that was named after Benjamin P. Grogan and Jerry L. Dove, agents who were killed in a 1986 shootout. Mr. Kelly said Ms. Wilson had taken credit for getting the funding for the building. Ms. Wilson’s congressional district includes parts of Miami.
“And we were stunned — stunned that she’d done it,” Mr. Kelly said. “Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned.”
Mr. Trump’s aides — many of whom had teared up during Mr. Kelly’s remarks on Thursday, seeing them as an emotional defense of the president — were angry on Friday as the controversy continued.

“It should have ended yesterday after General Kelly’s comments. But it didn’t. It continued,” Ms. Sanders said. “He thought it was important that people got a full and accurate picture of what took place.”
If that was his goal, Mr. Kelly failed. His recollection of Ms. Wilson’s appearance at the dedication of the F.B.I. building was highly inaccurate, and only ratcheted up the political tensions.

During the April 2015 dedication ceremony for the building that houses the F.B.I.’s South Florida operations, Ms. Wilson spoke about how quickly she was able to get a bill through the typically slow and bureaucratic Congress.
“It is a miracle, to say the least,” Ms. Wilson said of the swift legislative action. But, she said, the quick passage shows how much respect Congress has for the F.B.I.

“Most men and women in law enforcement leave their homes for work knowing that there is a possibility they may not return,” Ms. Wilson said.
Correction: October 20, 2017 Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated that all members of the Congressional Black Caucus are Democrats. There is one Republican member.

After Video Refutes Kelly’s Charges, Congresswoman Raises Issue of Race - The New York Times: ""

By Yamiche Alcindor, Michael D. Shear

Andy Borowitz: The End of Trump | The New Yorker

Racist, violent, unpunished: A white hate group’s… — ProPublica

"It was about 10 a.m. on Aug. 12 when the melee erupted just north of Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia.



About two dozen white supremacists — many equipped with helmets and wooden shields — were battling with a handful of counter-protesters, most of them African American. One white man dove into the violence with particular zeal. Using his fists and feet, the man attacked one person after another.



The street fighter was in Virginia on that August morning for the “Unite the Right” rally, the largest public gathering of white supremacists in a generation, a chaotic and bloody event that would culminate, a few hours later, in the killing of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was there to protest the racist rally.



The violence in Charlottesville became national news. President Donald Trump’s response to it — he asserted there were “some very fine people on both sides” of the events that day — set off a wave of condemnations, from his allies as well as his critics.



But for many Americans, conservatives as well as liberals, there was shock and confusion at the sight of bands of white men bearing torches, chanting racist slogans and embracing the heroes of the Confederacy: Who were they? What are their numbers and aims?



There is, of course, no single answer. Some who were there that weekend in Charlottesville are hardened racists involved with long-running organizations like the League of the South. Many are fresh converts to white supremacist organizing, young people attracted to nativist and anti-Muslim ideas circulated on social media by leaders of the so-called alt-right, the newest branch of the white power movement. Some are paranoid characters thrilled to traffic in the symbols and coded language of vast global conspiracy theories. Others are sophisticated provocateurs who see the current political moment as a chance to push a “white agenda,” with angry positions on immigration, diversity and economic isolationism.



ProPublica spent weeks examining one distinctive group at the center of the violence in Charlottesville: an organization called the Rise Above Movement, one of whose members was the white man dispensing beatings near Emancipation Park Aug. 12.



The group, based in Southern California, claims more than 50 members and a singular purpose: physically attacking its ideological foes. RAM’s members spend weekends training in boxing and other martial arts, and they have boasted publicly of their violence during protests in Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley. Many of the altercations have been captured on video, and its members are not hard to spot.



Indeed, ProPublica has identified the group’s core members and interviewed one of its leaders at length. The man in the Charlottesville attacks — filmed by a documentary crew working with ProPublica — is 24-year-old Ben Daley, who runs a Southern California tree-trimming business.



Many of the organization’s core members, including Daley, have serious criminal histories, according to interviews and a review of court records. Before joining RAM, several members spent time in jail or state prison on serious felony charges including assault, robbery, and gun and knife offenses. Daley did seven days in jail for carrying a concealed snub-nosed revolver. Another RAM member served a prison term for stabbing a Latino man five times in a 2009 gang assault.



“Fundamentally, RAM operates like an alt-right street-fighting club,” said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism."



Racist, violent, unpunished: A white hate group’s… — ProPublica