Racism has brought us to this point

Kenosha has a racism problem

(So do we)

I come from that part of the world. When jobs were plentiful at American Motors, African Americans moved north for the good paying jobs. The racist joke was American Motors was African Motors because there were so many black people working there. The implication was, their cars were inferior because of the workforce. When the jobs went away, racism simmering under the surface boiled over. It never got better. Of course, Republicans then made the racist claim black people moved Kenosha and Wisconsin because of the generous welfare benefits.

If you're a person of color, the deck is stacked. You're viewed as lazy, shiftless, of inferior intellect, and dangerous. You make babies for the welfare benefits, or because it's easy to get an abortion. (More racist BS)

That car in the picture? It was built in Kenosha by American Motors. At one time the company was run by George Romney, a moderate to progressive Republican. There aren't too many of them left. They've been purged from the party, labeled RINOs, impure.

Rise up. Make your voice be heard.

And Still I Rise

Protests are not to be confused with riots. Protests have the power to create change. In my lifetime, protests helped make changes in civil rights, voting rights,  and topple the Berlin Wall. Obviously, it is not just protest that generates change, but the increased awareness motivates action.

 "Power concedes nothing without a demand."  -Frederick Douglass 

Without protest, the voices of the oppressed go unheard. The demand for change must be loud and clear.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise. -Maya Angelou

They think we're dumb.

There were many false and misleading statements at the RNC last night. There will be many more tonight. 

From FactCheck.org

Summary

Vice President Mike Pence and others twisted facts on the economy, some of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s positions and more:

• Pence claimed that President Donald Trump “created the greatest economy in the world.” But the economy had been growing for seven years before Trump took office.
• Pence falsely suggested Biden would “defund the police” and baselessly claimed Americans “won’t be safe” if Biden were president.
• Pence cited a federal officer’s killing during “the riots in Oakland, California.” But he didn’t explain that the death was unrelated to demonstrators protesting in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Federal prosecutors have charged a right-wing extremist with the killing.
• 1960s Civil Rights figure Clarence Henderson said Trump “created” a “record” number of jobs for Black Americans. Actually, Black employment grew faster under Obama.
• White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said that, under Trump, “the single mom with two kids, two jobs, two commutes … finally has health insurance.” But the number of uninsured women ages 19 to 64 decreased during the Obama administration and had increased under Trump, as of 2018.
• Pence misleadingly claimed that Biden “even opposed the operation that took down Osama bin Laden.” Biden said he opposed the timing of the operation, and suggested that the raid should be delayed in order to take further steps to confirm bin Laden was at the compound in Pakistan.
• Sen. Marsha Blackburn falsely claimed that “Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their radical allies … encourage protests, riots and looting in the streets.” Biden has repeatedly condemned violent protests.
• Richard Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence, criticized the Russia investigation as unwarranted — but multiple independent reports found that there were grounds to investigate the Trump campaign’s contacts with people with ties to the Russian government.
• Rep. Elise Stefanik criticized the House impeachment of Trump last year as “illegal.” It’s not. The Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power to impeach the president.
• Pence wrongly claimed that Trump “suspended all travel from China,” when the administration’s restrictions contained exceptions.
• Pence misled when he said that “after years of scandal,” Trump “reformed the VA and veterans choice is now available for every veteran in America.” Although the Trump administration expanded the program, it began in 2014 under Obama.

And there were several repeat claims on fracking, abortion, school choice, military pay and immigration.

This only the beginning. You can expect the same lies to be reported over and over as Republican talking points up to and including the election. 

Voter Suppression

Voter Suppression and Republicans

It's Racists

Voter suppression is no longer billy clubs and hoses and dogs. It's administrative rules. It's bureaucratic barriers.It's precincts that seem to close the dead of night. -Stacey Abrams


According to a report last year from Reuters, 1200 precincts in the south closed. "The report comes as Republican-led states impose a range of other restrictions, from shorter voting hours to photo-ID requirements. As turnout has surged in recent elections, voters in cities like Phoenix, Arizona and Atlanta, Georgia, have endured hours-long waits to cast their ballots." Seven counties in Georgia now have only one precinct.


The Guardian reported that places where black and Latino population is growing by the largest numbers in Texas experienced the majority of closures and could benefit Republicans.


Now Republicans are after voting by mail claiming rampant fraud. Trump admitted the real reason. In April, president Trump admitted why he and many Republicans oppose the expansion of voting by mail. In an article by Adam Russell Taylor for Sojourners, he quoted Trump, "Republicans should fit very hard when it comes to state-wide mail-in voting. For whatever reason, doesn't work out well for Republicans." Taylor pointed out Trump does not want to make it easier for people to vote, even amid a pandemic, because it disadvantages Republicans.

It Gets Worse

Propublica reports the falsehoods run rampant on Social Media.
“Outright Lies”: Voting Misinformation Flourishes on Facebook

While the social media giant says it opposes voter suppression, the data shows a stark picture: Nearly half of all top-performing posts that mentioned voting by mail were false or misleading.

Trump’s false attacks on voting by mail had a total of 3.8 million interactions on Facebook. Among them, a Trump post that falsely claimed Nevada had illegally sent out ballots had the most interactions of any post that has mentioned vote by mail in the last 12 months in the U.S. Trump’s false claim that California is sending ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there” drew the third most interactions of any post that mentioned voting over the same period, ranking behind a post from Obama and a pro-Trump meme.

In recent months, Trump has also claimed on Facebook that “mail-in ballots will lead to a “RIGGED ELECTION!” and falsely said they are “substantially fraudulent”; he made false statements about the legality of actions taken by election officials in Michigan and Nevada; and he misrepresented his own power to deny funding to states that expand vote by mail. Trump continued those false claims last week, arguing a debunked distinction between mail-in voting and absentee voting.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla says. “What is frustrating is that Trump can post or tweet whatever he wants without the proper checks and balances.” “What keeps me up at night is that he’s clearly setting the stage to question election results that he might not like in November.”

According to Propublica, for now, misinformation may be difficult to stop before it goes viral. On July 13, conservatives on Facebook pounced on a video in which an unidentified Trump supporter said she was denied the right to vote, apparently in Louisiana. Many of these pages framed it as evidence of voter fraud and a Democratic plot to steal the election. By the time the post was deemed false by PolitiFact, a Facebook fact-checking partner, it had received more than 3.7 million views and been shared more than 170,000 times.

Offering A New Choice (Abortion)

What's Next?

Let's say you win. By stacking the court you end a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion.

What is your intent? You've cut off the legal supply but not the demand. Are we back to those back room abortions?

This was recently covered in an article in the New York Times. In the comments section was something insightful. For me, It's a whole new approach to this issue. Instead of punishing people, how about going for the root cause driving demand?

The argument in the article centered around the idea of abortion and racism.

Anti-abortion writers argue that Planned Parenthood’s leaders have effectively acknowledged the connection between abortion and racism. “This does not excuse their continued perpetuation of her legacy (Margaret Sanger) through their insidious practice of targeting the most vulnerable, especially poor women and women of color (both of whose populations so often intersect), by locating the vast majority of Planned Parenthood clinics within walking distance of nonwhite neighborhoods,” Serrin Foster and Damian Geminder write in America, a Jesuit publication.

The reply below is right on target.

Cathy, a Times reader in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., responded in the Comments section:

“You can convince me that structural racism, poverty, lack of opportunity, expensive child care, wage inequality and any number of social ills make abortion more necessary, but the sin lies with our society, not Planned Parenthood. If we want to reduce abortion, and want to argue that racism is an inherent part of abortion, we need to reduce the demand, not the supply.”

Think about that. Reduce the demand by going after the root cause instead of choking off the supply. I'm thinking this compassionate approach would be loved by Jesus who wanted all of us to love one another.