You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

[Econoline]

Trump, in a tweet at 9:05 PM - 31 Jul 2019

• I said I will never let you down, and I haven’t. We will only grow bigger, better and stronger TOGETHER!

Hmmmm...where have we heard that slogan before?

• • 

[RayThom]

Is it "body shaming" if they're Trump's ladies?

[Scooter]

Pence: 'Spend more time on your knees than on the internet'

Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday he was surprised by media criticism of his wife’s decision to teach art at a school with devout Christian beliefs, and said he’s gotten lots of practice in forgiving his critics.

“As a Christian believer we’re charged to pray for our loved ones, but also pray for our enemies. You have lots of opportunities in politics to do that,” Mr. Pence said.

He was speaking to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian religious liberty organization, and ADF CEO Michael Farris asked him for advice on how to handle attacks on his faith and beliefs.

Mr. Pence recounted the criticism of his wife Karen earlier this year when she returned to a part-time position reaching art at Immanuel Christian School, in Northern Virginia, which discourages gay teachers or students.

Her decision drew criticism in the press, and fierce pushback from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which said it was “a terrible message.” Mr. Pence said one television commentator said he should have expected the outrage over the decision.

“We honestly didn’t see that one coming. Our kids went to this school,” he said.

Mr. Pence said that as a politician he faces a lot of attacks, and had several pieces of advice.

“No. 1 is, spend more time on your knees than on the internet,” he said.

He also added: “Forgiveness is a great gift.”

[RayThom]

... “No. 1 is, spend more time on your knees than on the internet,” Pence said.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Returning to the theme of the 'Billy Graham Rule' - and I'm only posting this in the 'couldn't make it up' thread because that's where it started - we now have a cop in NC claiming to have been fired for religious reasons because he refused to train a female officer.

Now I have no problem with how anyone chooses to run their own private lives so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses, but claiming that he has been discriminated against for religious reasons seems way out of line to me. If he's out on patrol and has to bring back a female prisoner or maybe a female citizen who needs help, does he have to call in a backup?

Strikes me he needs another job. Hermits R Us may be looking for talent.

[Joe Guy]

If he were in a position that he needed to fire a weapon at someone, his religion probably wouldn't allow that either, would it?

[Scooter]

[Econoline]

Monica wins the internet!

[Big RR]

[Scooter]

Some white people don’t want to hear about slavery at plantations built by slaves

“It was just not what we expected.”

“I was depressed by the time I left.”

“ … the tour was more of a scolding of the old South.”

“The brief mentions of the former owners were defamatory.”

“Would not recommend.”

These are a few of the apparently negative reviews posted online about guided tours of Southern plantations, some of which went viral Thursday after former Colorado congressional candidate Saira Rao tweeted a screenshot of one.



Approximately 12.5 million human beings were kidnapped from their homes in Africa and shipped to the New World from 1514 to 1866, according to historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. One in eight died en route. Most were sent to South America. In 1860, the Census counted approximately 4 million enslaved people in the United States, according to PolitiFact.

“Would not recommend. Tour was all about how hard it was for the slaves,” wrote one reviewer of the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana.

Slaves who lived on plantations typically worked 10-16 hours a day, six days a week, according to the University of Houston’s Digital History. Children as young as 3 were put to work.

“I was depressed by the time I left and questioned why anyone would want to live in South Carolina,” read one review posted to Twitter about the McLeod Plantation in Charleston.

In 1860, 402,406 people were living in South Carolina not because they wanted to, but because they were enslaved. They made up 57 percent of the state’s population, according to census data.

“I felt [the African American tour guide] embellished her presentation and was racist towards me as a white person,” another McLeod visitor wrote.

In 1993, historian Clarence J. Munford estimated the value of the labor performed by black slaves in the United States between 1619 and 1865, compounded with 6 percent interest, to be $97.1 trillion. In today’s dollars, without further compound interest added, that would be $172 trillion.

“Our guide Olivia offered a heavy bias with only the hand-picked facts that neatly fit her narrative and for a large part weren’t germane to a plantation tour,” one person said of the McLeod Plantation, according to a review posted to Twitter, before following up with the racist comment, “I found it amusing when she told us some freed slaves fled to northern cities like Baltimore and Detroit where they continued to thrive to this day!”

As many as 100,000 people escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad, according to historian James A. Banks.

“There is really nothing good you can say about slavery but I felt [the tour guide] took it too far. His information is correct but I think he left off part of the story,” one review read.

This month, Virginia will commemorate the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in 1619, which ushered in 246 years of brutal subjugation for millions of men, women and children. One of those slaves was named Angela.

[She was captured and enslaved 400 years ago. Now Angela symbolizes a brutal history.]

“If you’re looking to visit a traditional plantation, look elsewhere,” one review read.

Many plantations, including George Washington’s Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, are working to present a more accurate image of what life was like for slaves and slave owners.

For those who may prefer a fuzzier, less accurate portrayal of plantation life, “Gone with the Wind” is streaming on Amazon and iTunes for $3.99 — a low price but still higher than the average slave’s wage, which was $0.

[BoSoxGal]

I long for the days when I was largely ignorant of just how stupid and hateful so many of my fellow citizens are.

[Scooter]

Straight Pride Organizer: 'We're a Totally Peaceful Racist Group'

A proposed "Straight Pride" event in the city of Modesto, Calif., about 100 miles east of San Francisco, may have gone off the rails after its organizer admitted the people behind the event are a "totally peaceful racist group."

Don Grundmann, an antigay chiropractor from the San Francisco Bay Area, was loudly berating the Modesto City Council when the shocking statement was uttered on Wednesday. Grundmann accused the council of pulling "the race card" against the event's organizers, saying, "You pulled the race card to pull in attacks against us, to justify attacks against us in that park, and when they come you're going to turn right around and say we deserved it. We haven't done anything, we’re a totally peaceful racist group." (Watch the video below.)

The council chambers erupted in applause and laughter, with one of the council members guffawing and covering her face.

"He said it!" screamed a member of the audience, according to NBC News.

It's not clear if Grundmann's utterance was an admission or a slip of the tongue. The longtime LGBTQ rights foe turned to the crowd and proclaimed he was a member of the Whites Against Racism alliance. He then pivoted ineffectively to Planned Parenthood, claiming the health organization was racist, not him.

Another speaker at the council meeting was Matthew Mason, the gay son of a different Straight Pride organizer, Mylinda Mason. The younger Mason told NBC News his estranged mother is a homophobic racist who homeschooled him in "white slavery." Mylinda Mason's history lessons ignored "the genocide, slavery, and white nationalism that built [America]," he said.

Modesto's Straight Pride is currently scheduled for Saturday, August 24. A similar event is planned for Boston on August 31.

[wesw]

don t get too down, BS gal....

...you are still largely ignorant.

[Econoline]

So...I guess that means that many of our fellow citizens are even *MORE* stupid and hateful than we think they are?



I guess your own posts here *DO* make a good case for that...

[MajGenl.Meade]

I long for the days when I was largely ignorant of just how stupid and hateful so many of my fellow citizens are.

That's no way to speak of wesw and lib!

[Burning Petard]

to stupid and hateful, add ignorant. Really too bad the complainer about the plantation tour knows so little about her family ancestors. I can't say much for Sicily, but inasmuch as it was very much a part of the classic Greek culture, they probably had slaves. Certainly the Germanic tribes did. In some of them even the slaves were permitted to own other slaves.
So if none of their ancestors owned slaves, that could only mean they were slaves themselves.

snailgate

[ex-khobar Andy]

Trump of course is promoting the idea that the Clintons and Ted Cruz's dad conspired to murder Epstein. (I may have some of the details wrong.)

And during the 2016 campaign, he promoted the idea of foul play as a reason for Justice Scalia’s death.

“I’m hearing it’s a big topic,” he said then. “It’s a horrible topic but they’re saying they found the pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow,” Mr. Trump told the radio host Michael Savage.

I'd forgotten that. But personally, whenever I smother someone and I want to make it look like a natural death, I take the pillow off the face before I leave the room. Apparently it's a dead giveaway. (Did you see what I did there?)

[Sue U]

PS: like Don Kathy, I'm still married to my first wife. I tend to avoid introducing her as such when we meet new people. I find it's not helpful.

Try introducing her as your ex-girlfriend.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Is there no limit to how fucking thick some of these people are?

"Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge," Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Tuesday, twisting Emma Lazarus' famous words on a bronze plaque at the Statue of Liberty.

Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, on Monday.

What's depressing is that after I wrote that I reconsidered. Most normal people are too smart to mess with an icon such as Ms Lazarus' poem. Even though they might think it, they wouldn't say it. But, as I say, I reconsidered. Maybe he is actually being very smart and he, like his boss, has calculated that there are no votes to be lost (anyone who might think that the poem should be left alone is already lost as a vote) and that there might be a vote or two to be gained. Not unlike the fact that the most depressing thing about the 2016 election was not Trump himself - that was bad enough but we should be able to get through it - but that close to 50% of voters thought that he was a good thing. Really, if you had asked me say a year before the election how many people would vote for Trump in a race against HRC, I might have guessed 10%.

It's worth noting, BTW, that Emma Lazarus was of Sephardic Jewish stock. Sephardic= Hispanic, in Hebrew.

[Sue U]

Is there no limit to how fucking thick some of these people are?

"Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge," Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Tuesday, twisting Emma Lazarus' famous words on a bronze plaque at the Statue of Liberty.

I find this truly sickening, and I think it represents the abandonment of what I had always believed was a fundamental American value: That the United States represents a beacon of freedom and opportunity for marginalized and oppressed people the world over, that all are welcome to make their own American Dream come true. I thought at least this was something we could all agree on as Americans, all of us the descendants of immigrants ourselves (indigenous peoples excluded).

Until recently, I thought we all shared pretty much the same goals for ourselves, our families our communities and our country, and our political divides were mostly about the way to achieve those goals. However. I am now daily confronted with evidence that a substantial portion of population here simply does not share the same core values that I had believed were integral to being American: that we stood up for the downtrodden, that we lent a hand to those who needed it, that rich and poor alike were all equal before the law, that we didn't discriminate based on anyone's race, color, creed or country of origin, that we embraced democracy and rejected authoritarianism. Sure, we always fell somewhat short of the ideal, but our common goal, I thought, was to get as close as possible.

I don't think that anymore, and it is beyond depressing.