Thomas Barr Jr.'s Blog, page 3
January 20, 2017
American fashion v. African dress
Here���s one thing Donald Trump could do to get black Americans on his side
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Story By D. Watkins
The most painful inauguration in the history of inaugurations is running toward us. I was always taught to stand tall and to never run away from pain,
so I’m gearing up to go to Donald Trump’s first big day in D.C. and see all of the closet racists, proud racists and Uncle Toms bask in his Russian-hacked glory.
It should be easy to find them because I’m sure that about 99
percent of the rallying kind of Trump supporters can’t afford to stay in Trump’s D.C. hotel. The bulk of them will probably be hugged up in tents all over the city’s parks, and when they get sick from the cold, their Obamacare should still
cover them. It hasn’t been repealed yet.
One of the saddest moments for me will be seeing the beautiful Obama family walk away from the White House, leaving the door open for Trump, his 200th wife and clone-like adult kids. It’s like we
jumped 100 years ahead with President Barack Obama and his progressive administration, only to fall 1,000 years back to an administration full of people who discriminate and deal in racist ideologies.
But I’m ready for them and willing
to do whatever it takes to preserve our rights. Before those battles begin, however, I’d like to offer some advice to Trump on what he could do to counter his
downward-trending popularity by growing his support among black people and truly unifying the country.
If you listen to Trump, you know that he has had multiple conversations about race in which he has clearly denied being
a racist. He has said he can and wants to help “the blacks” in ways that, for example, Bill and Hillary Clinton never did. I think that’s going to be super easy since the Clintons were responsible for the policies that sent my whole family
and neighborhood to prison for nonviolent crimes.
Trump’s path to building a coalition with black Americans is simple. First, stop tweeting BS. Second, Trump needs to understand that meeting with black people — I can’t even call them
leaders, just African-Americans nobody listens to like Steve Harvey and Martin Luther King III — is never going to move the dial. The key to getting respect from black people is paying
reparations for slavery.
Come on, Donald, make America honest and progressive like Germany and pay “the blacks” back for centuries
of servitude, racist Jim Crow laws and systemic mistreatment. Cut a check!
The government doesn’t even have to pay all black people. It can hold out on the washed-up sellouts like Raven-Symoné, Stacey Dash, Ray Lewis and the rest of
the #AllLivesMatter-America-doesn’t-have-a-race-problem black people. The U.S. is just fine for them,
even when Trump joyfully led rallies with racist rhetoric, egging on crowds of cowards who covered themselves with swastikas and Confederate flags. Trump can also hold out on the black celebrities who said stupid things like “African Americans don’t
cash for reparations; they need free college!” (Please, celebrities, speak for yourself.)
You can keep the collection of remedial classes and pointless electives that add up to a liberal arts degree in this rough job market for black people.
I’ll take the cash.
It’s that simple; we will believe your talk if you pay up. It’s not a handout: Enslaved Africans, our ancestors, really did build America. That’s not up for debate.
January 6, 2017
The 17 Stupidest, Most Offensive Things Politicians Ever Said
All of us can have a slip of the tongue or make an incorrect, top-of-the-head comment that we quickly come to regret. And for politicians, who can give dozens of addresses in a single day when on the campaign trail, such errors are quite common.
When the questionable comment comes from a prepared address, though, that’s where we have to draw the line. They mean it then. And sometimes they know what they’re saying is wrong, but say?it anyway,
specifically to mislead and misinform.
Consider the following “17 Stupidest, Most Offensive” we gathered, for example, all of which were delivered in meetings, addresses, or prepared interviews. ?(And if you know of others of the same caliber
that were issued in the same prepared format, be sure to share them in comments below and on Liberal America’s?Facebook page!)
By Tiffany Willis
1) Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.
(Image Credit: U.S. Army)
That was George W. Bush‘s exiting statement from a 2008 G-8 Summit meeting in Japan. He was punching his fist in the air beaming with pride as he babbled this baloney, too. (This might be ironic, or maybe just typical, but ? W was wrong. The U.S. is actually the second biggest polluter on the planet. ? Not that it makes a difference or anything.)
2) Literally, if we took away the minimumwage ? if conceivably it was gone ? we could potentially, virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.
(Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via
Flickr)
In a Jan. 2005 interview with the Twin Cities? Pioneer Press, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) offered this rather Marxian statement. (And the economy would be skyrocketing with all these penny-a-day
workers, now wouldn’t it? I mean, we’d all have so much to spend, which would create new jobs!) It wasn’t a misstatement or slip of the tongue, either; she defended that comment, reiterating its sentiment, in a June 2011 interview with ABC News.
And we have talent.
(Image Credit: Time Life Pictures)
Referring to a coal leasing panel he created, James Watt, Sec. of the Interior in the Reagan Administration
(1981-83), offered this magical statement while speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about Affirmative Action in
Sept. 1983. The statement led to his resignation shortly after, and earned his listing in Time’s ?Top
10 Worst Cabinet Members? 25 years later.
(Image Credit: Wikimedia)
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) issued that warning when speaking at South Carolina’s The Charleston Meeting in Nov. 2013, claiming the Food & Drug Administration’s new restriction on trans fats would completely eliminate these and other food items.
(For the record: Dunkin? Donuts, Krispy Kreme and other doughnut brands do not use trans fats. Dunkin? once did, but removed that ingredient back in 2007, six years before
Paul’s tirade.)
(Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
At an Aug. 2013 Town Hall meeting, Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Florida)
claimed that an Affordable Care Act tax on tanning salons was discriminatory
against whites. His evidence? He once met an Indian man who told Yoho that he had never used a tanning booth. (Tanning is cited as a direct cause of melanoma, and persons who use tanning salons are 20 percent more likely to acquire that cancer. The tax was already in effect on a temporary basis prior to the ACA, which only removed its temporary status.)
6) If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.
(Image Credit: New York Magazine)
In an Aug. 2012 debate, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Missouri) offered this statement when asked if abortion in cases of rape would conflict with his pro-life stance. According to medical research, however, an average of 32,101 American women are impregnated by rape every year. In addition, almost one-third of the victims (32.4%) don’t
learn of their pregnancies until the second trimester.
(Image
Credit: Daniel Oines via Flickr)
Pat Robertson isn’t an actual politician, but is active with many political groups, as well as leader of the Christian Coalition and host of The 700 Club. And it was at the 1992 Republican National Convention when made this inane comment. The delegates
attending responded with a sea of applause.
(Image Credit: WIkimedia)
Get
a bunch of 17-to-24 year olds, stick them in military barracks, and give ?em guns, and ? well, ladies?sexual assault should be expected, right? Excusable rape! That was the argument of Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia) when discussing
the subject at a June 2013 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. (The U.S.
Dept. of Veterans Affairs reports that 28 percent of women in the military have been sexually assaulted; 55 percent faced
sexual harassment.)
(Image Credit: Library of Congress)
This is going back many years, but its vileness hasn’t tarnished with age. In Feb. 1900, and while
speaking from the Senate floor, U.S. Sen. Benjamin Ryan Tillman Jr. (D-South Carolina) admitted to racist election tampering, and even to the murder and lynching of African Americans. He stayed in that office for another 18 years, too. And a statue dedicated to this racist SOB still remains on the grounds of the South Carolina state legislature.
use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere?
(Image Credit: House GOP via Flickr)
At a meeting of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment in March 2009, U.S.
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Illinois) offered this counterargument to ?Cap and Trade? regulations on
CO2 emissions. (And for the record, the carbon dioxide produced by refineries far
exceeds the amount that plants can consume.)
(Image
Credit: Rick Santorum via Wikimedia)
Rick Santorum offered this comment at a Jan.
2012 press conference during his bid in the Republican presidential primary. He later tried to backpedal away from the statement, claiming he was actually saying ?blah? instead of ?black.? (Sure. We believe him.)
who believes that men and women, no matter their effort, should all be equal. [?] You see, some of us believe in freedom. Others want equality.
(Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
So equality is a negative thing? And you can’t have freedom if everyone else has
a right to equality? That was the argument of U.S. Sen. Tim
Scott (R-South Carolina) against the Affordable Care Act, which he gave at an address to a local 9/12 group in his state in July 2012. Apparently, Scott doesn’t know the Declaration of Independence, the second sentence of which reads ?all
men are created equal,? and upon which was this nation founded.
(Image Credit: Univ. of Denver via Flickr)
Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm (D) was supposed to be arguing for sick elderly to have the right to physician-assisted suicide when he made this statement in 1984. It wasn’t a verbal gaffe, either; Lamm was reading a prepared speech to the Colorado Health Lawyers Association.This
?duty to die? comment ? which only seemed to promote a ?Logan’s Run? society ? didn’t sit too well with his state’s senior population, though.
He later switched to the Reform Party and tried to run for president in 1996, but lost this third-party nomination to Ross Perot.
(Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) made this statement in a March 2010 interview on Fox News, claiming the ACA called for IRS agents to enforce its rulings complete with weapons. His bizarre statement originated from a press release from House Republicans on the Ways and
Means Committee, but Paul added the ?armed? factor. And both Paul and House GOP Committee were proven wrong over and over again. (House GOP based its statement on the fact that the IRS might have to hire more people to handle the tax refunds more Americans
would be afforded under the ACA, and retracted the silly claim shortly after its issuance ? but not soon enough to prevent Paul from expounding on it.)
where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn?t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the
temperature to go up? [?] I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.
(Image
Credit: Texas Radio News Service via Flickr)
U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) offered this ?wind is a finite resource? address at a March 2009 Congressional committee meeting, supporting the oil companies in his state by attacking alternate energies with this bizarre claim.
16) (T)he idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical.Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.
(Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
U.S. Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) offered this claim in an April 2009 interview with
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. (We can honestly say, though, that when Boehner speaks junk like this, the words from his mouth smell just like cow manure.)
down this fall.
(Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)
In Sept. 2013, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) actually called for a government shutdown during his ham-it-up filibuster. And in October that year, it was Republicans
in the House who arranged the shutdown, with Rep. Eric Cantor making a last-minute rule change that
prevented a vote. But somehow Cruz had the audacity to shift the blame in a Jan. 2014 television
interview.
Know of any other stupid, offensive quotes from politicians that you think missed the list? Share them on Liberal
America’s Facebook page!
July 11, 2016
The Benefits of Fish
Louisiana is, by one measure, the most corrupt state in the country, report says
By Robert
McClendon, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
Louisiana is, by one measure, the most corrupt state in the country, reports statistics blog FiveThirtyEight.
The state has had more politicians convicted in federal court than any other in the modern era, when counted as a share of total population.
The study underpinning the report sought to measure corruption by counting up federal convictions between 1976 and 2010. Louisiana had 960 over that stretch, about 25 per year. That works out to about 2 convictions for every
10,000 residents, the highest per-capita rate in the country.
In terms of the absolute number politicians sent to the clink, New York takes the crown.
As the piece points out, measuring only federal corruption convictions doesn't capture the
whole picture. What about prosecutions in state court, such as the one launched against former Orleans Parish juvenile judge Yolanda King?
There is no central tracking of such prosecutions, so it would be a nightmare to tally them across the country,
but it would be interesting to see how Louisiana stacks up against other states on a more holistic statistical measure.
