By Arianna Huffington
Earlier today, (December 7, 2015), the candidate currently leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” That was, of course, Donald Trump. As Jeffrey Goldberg just tweeted, “Donald Trump is now an actual threat to national security. He’s providing jihadists ammunition for their campaign to demonize the US.”
“IOTD” is image of the day, a concept I came up with. I teach visual meditative therapy – or in easy terms – a mini mental holiday. For some people it is very difficult for them to get their image right. I post an image a day for people to use in their mini mental vacay. Some are serious, some are silly, and some are just beautiful!”
There’s also a law known as the “Americans with Disabilities Act”.
There’s the “Golden Rule”.
Mainly there’s common sense.
This man truly believes that he’s above everyone and everyone.
He doesn’t care about badmouthing or disrespecting anyone. Remember the Mexicans, John McCain, Megyn Kelly, “illegal immigrants, Jorge Ramos, Black Lives Matter …. and so many others.
Donald Trump Slammed For Mocking Disabled New York Times Reporter Serge Kovaleski
Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Tuesday night Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump seems to mock New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a chronic condition called arthrogryposis which affects the movement of his arms.
Trump imitates Kovaleski while defending comments he has made over the past few weeks, asserting that members of the Muslim communities in New Jersey celebrated following the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers in 2001.
The New York Times has slammed Trump’s actions as ‘outrageous’.
(This is not direct discrimination, it’s lower than that).
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is a law that was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990. In 1986, the National Council on Disability had recommended enactment of an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and drafted the first version of the bill which was introduced in the House and Senate in 1988.
It was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H. W. Bush, amended and signed by President George W. Bush with changes effective January 1, 2009.
The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that is intended to protect against discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[4] which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal.
~Donald Trump mocks disabled New York Times reporter~
~Published on Nov 26, 2015~
Donald Trump mocks reporter with disability
Donald Trump Criticized After He Appears to Mock Reporter Serge Kovaleski – New York Times Slams Trump’s ‘Outrageous’ Mocking of Reporter With Congenital Condition
This Thanksgiving, No Place for Refugees at the American Table
Posted on Nov 18, 2015 By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
In the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, there has been a crushing backlash against refugees from the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. As Americans prepare for one of the most popular national holidays, Thanksgiving, which commemorates the support and nourishment provided by the indigenous people to English refugees seeking a better life free from religious persecution, a wave of xenophobia is sweeping the country.
In the U.S. Congress, no less than six separate bills have been put forward to block any federal funding to resettle refugees from Syria or Iraq and to empower states to deny entry into their “territory.”
Imagine if all of a sudden we had 50 “statelets” creating their own border checkpoints, stopping all travelers, looking for anyone suspicious, i.e., any and all Syrians.
So far, 31 state governors have essentially demanded this.
Republican Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback issued an executive order forbidding any agency of state government from cooperating in any way with Syrian refugee support efforts. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have called for a pause in the Syrian refugee program, with the support of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer.
(all so called Chrstians)
It has been almost 400 years since that first, fateful Thanksgiving feast in Massachusetts.
Xenophobic policies like those threatening to shut out refugees from these wars, if allowed to stand, should serve as a shameful centerpiece at every Thanksgiving table this year.
We’ve been around the political block long enough to know that almost all presidential candidates exaggerate, dissemble, take statements out of context and, yes, lie.
But from the start of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign (remember Mexican rapists?), he has taken this to a level we haven’t seen before in American politics.
Consider just these two examples from the weekend.
First, Trump said on Saturday in Alabama:
“I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering.”
In fact, as the New York Times writes, “No news reports exist of people cheering in the streets, and both police officials and the mayor of Jersey City have said that it did not happen. An Internet rumor about people cheering in the streets, which said it was in Paterson, not Jersey City, has been denied numerous times by city and police officials.” But when ABC pressed Trump on his statement, he stood his ground.
“It did happen. I saw it … It was on television. I saw it.”
Second, Trump retweeted a graphic claiming — falsely — that African Americans are responsible for the killing of most blacks and whites in America. “That is not true, the Washington Post notes. “According to data from the FBI, most whites are killed by whites, as most blacks are killed by blacks.
There’s an obvious reason for that: Most people are killed by someone they know.”
I do not get it. I simply don’t. It’s not even a matter of which political party anyone is affiliated with or which beliefs anyone holds. I grew up in Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States but never the less “US land”. I was brought up thinking how great the US was …. as a country, as a leader, as an example to the world.
I cannot believe what I’m seeing and hearing now.
Any human with decreased number of brain cells can get what this “person” is doing and saying. There are no limits to his “statements”, nothing is off limits. He’s raised the “idiocy bar” so high that the other presidential hopefuls have no other option but to go along or even come back with more asinine statements. If they don’t, they will be left in his dust.
It’s true … this man isn’t an embarassment of this country. He’s an indictment of it.
Freedom fries is a political euphemism for French fries in the United States. The term came to prominence in 2003 when the then Republican Chairman of the Committee on House Administration, Bob Ney, renamed the menu item in three Congressional cafeterias in response to France’s opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq.
Although originally supported with several restaurants changing their menus as well, the term fell out of use due to declining support for the Iraq War.
Following Ney’s resignation as Chairman, it was quietly reverted.
Watch John Oliver Cast His Ballot for Voting Rights for U.S. Territories
ROCK THE VOTE … A TAD LATE BUT ALWAYS INFORMATIVE
To help commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march on Selma, Alabama, John Oliver focused his Last Week Tonight ire on a topic that does not tend to generate headlines: voting rights for the U.S. island territories — that is, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the Marianas Islands.
According to Oliver, there are 4.1 million people living in Puerto Rico and the island territories. Of that population, 98.4% are racial or ethnic minorities, none of whom have the right to vote in U.S. elections. According to Oliver, the more you look into the reasons that the U.S. territories don’t have voting rights, the harder it is to understand why these dated laws have not been changed.
Way back in 1901, it was said that the island territories were inhabited by “alien races” that couldn’t “understand Anglo-Saxon principles” and thus were denied the vote. That hasn’t changed, despite the fact that even at the time, American legal thinkers thought that the territories’ lack of voting power should only last for a limited time.
Fast forward 114 years and the U.S. citizens living on these territories still can’t vote, which Oliver compares to failing to update your computer operating system for over a millennium.
~~GALLERY~~
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But Puerto Rico is lucky compared to some of the other U.S. territories.
American Samoans aren’t even automatically granted U.S. citizenship, which, according to Oliver, renders the “American” part as moot as the phrases “social media expert” or “People’s Choice Award nominee.” Instead, they’re considered U.S. nationals, but not citizens. Over on Guam, 27% of the island is occupied by U.S. Navy and Air Force bases, and a staggering high number of Guam citizens are veterans of the U.S. military, but they still have no voting rights. Despite that, Guam holds a straw poll every presidential election and has higher voter turn-out than any other U.S. state — you know, the ones whose votes actually count.
It’s a valuable civics lesson and an important reminder to ask — if you don’t mind cribbing a line from Oliver — how is this still a thing?
The US Supreme Court in the early 20th century ruled that these territories are inhabited by “alien races” that may not be able to understand Anglo-Saxon principles that guide American law. Although this decision wasn’t supposed to be permanent, governments as recent as the Obama administration have cited it to continue denying people in US territories equal rights.
“There are a lot of complicated issues surrounding what the precise status of all the US territories should be and what the people who live there would prefer,” Oliver said.
“But surely, when it comes to denying Americans the right to vote, we have to find a better reason than citing a 100-year-old legal decision written by a racist that was always supposed to be temporary.”
I am very much aware of this situation in Puerto Rico, my country. However, I must confess that I wasn’t aware that this was the case with the other territories. I didn’t even know which other countries in this world were “territories”.
This is something that I wasn’t taught about in school.
Since I read the best selling book “War Against All Puerto Ricans” by Nelson A. Denis, I’ve been looking at the past. I have learned facts that are making me question the “nature of the beast”.
AMERICAN BULLY
I’ve been wondering what the historical relationship between the United States, Guam, the Philippines and even Hawaii has been.
“America’s five unincorporated territories and commonwealths: Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the US Virgin Islands.”
From the “War Against All Puerto Ricans” book:
Don Pedro Albizu Campos expressed his amazement at how “owning a man makes you a scoundrel, yet owning a nation makes you a colonial benefactor.”
John Lewis "good trouble." “Never Give Up” “Never Give In” “Always Keep The Faith”Whoopi said, “Don’t get scared, It’s your country, take it back” Elijah Cummings said; “This is our Watch”
